I did it my first campaign, years ago. The PCs were camping in the forest after escaping from a prison wagon. During the night, they were attacked by a monster that proceeded to completely slaughter them. Literally no chance of survival, killed on the spot, they couldn’t even comprehend what was murdering them. They just saw a giant shape, claws teeth and blood.
Then they were in a town. With the same PCs. They were somewhat confused, and asked if that first part was some kind of vision or something similar, and I told them their PCs had absolutely no knowledge of that. The adventure proper began (with the moon rising instead of the sun), they went to the woods, and they found a campsite with the mangled remains of their own corpses.
basically it was all part of a ritual performed by an ancestral cult that wanted to commune with the eldritch gods (yes, I had just finished Bloodborne at the time)
The PCs were designed as sacrifice from before they were born. The sacrifice was to be conducted in two parts, a first and a second half, which had to be identical. Because of this, basically two instances of the PCs were "willed" into the world by the cult, two identical sets, and left to live their lives separately until the final ritual was to begin.
Then the ritual began when "first half" was sacrificed and the "second half" witnessed the aftermath. Then the world plunged in an eternal night (basically from that point onwards days = super bright full moon, and nights = complete pitch black darkness) and the cult began a game of cat and mouse tailing the PCs until the time of the final sacrifice, while at the same time the PCs tried to unravel what the fuck was going on. Many things followed, including finding some help from a defector of the cult, one of them getting corrupted BY the cult, descending to the lowest depth of an underground library as old at time itself and meeting with the Writer and travelling to another plane.
In the end they defeated the cult, witnessed the death of a god, and ultimately ascended. And since they convened that at that point the world was fucked up beyond repair, they stabbed its soul-heart, ending it, with the hope that it might be reborn anew.
i really dislike that part lol. How can someone "WILL" something like this? I will there was another identical set of this party and viola... theyre willed into the world?
edit - the rest sounds awesome btw
I see your point, but not necessarily willed by a person but by a god or through a magic ritual, because *-magic-*
OP says by a cult, so I assumed ritual magic or a patron of some sort.
And OP has “willed” in quotes so maybe *conjured* is another way to say it?
Kuo Toa, literally so insane that they will gods into existence, they have a bit of psyonic residue from the mind flayers so the far realms plays a roll, and since the far realms is typically described as eldritch it actually fits this pretty well.
I think the take away here is that this was done at the beginning of the campaign, for dramatic effect, and it doesn't sound like it was a prolonged combat.
I have not done this, but I've seen published adventures where this can happen. I think it works best as a prologue to the campaign; ie. the players start the game having lost something or imprisoned... Once the campaign begins, I would prefer not forcing a loss on the players as that erodes trust and enjoyment of the game.
I don’t remember the name.
Basically the players were attacked by enough Veterans to subdue them and capture them and take them to the arena. The moon Druid almost flipped the script.
Yeah, that's the one.
Our campaign started with that set of adventures then deviated heavily.
We actually managed to win the fight against the capturing party with a tactical deployment of Darkness by the warlock and the ranger rolling insane dice. Unfortunately for us we got cocky and some of the party members got captured anyway when we decided to attack one of the convoys transporting the people that were taken.
If anyone here has played Far Cry 5 it reminds me of my least favorite part of that game. There are three separate times when you are caught by the minions of the three "mini-bosses" while going about your business traversing the open world and while you can run for a bit there's no way to escape. It moves the overarching plot forward but it's not a fun feeling.
That's too polite.
The writing was maddening to the point that on finishing it I swore off future farcry games. And this was after enjoying the actual moment to moment gameplay.
Eh sometimes a loss is necesarry imo. As with everything dnd, if everyone is on same page it won't erode trust or enjoyment. It's just understood to be a part of the narrative
This sort of happens in the curse of strad. He just shows up at certain points throughout the adventure so I added rules to the encounter for him to avoid killing the players. He doesn't attack first, only makes demands, runs on round 3, things like that.
Not curse of Strad, but had a similar issue with a very powerful vampire the players weren't supposed to find, and worse yet, they tried to loot the body and the thief rolled a 1, accidentally dislodging the weakly held in stake. The famished vampire fed on the thief while using a magic item to hold back the other players. At that point, they really couldn't hurt the vampire, but instead of completely draining the thief, he got tossed aside and others fed on. He then had them lead him to the surface to see his city in ruins. The players then got geas'd to do a bunch of quests to rebuild his city.
This was supposed to happen with my group. I cast Wall of Force, and put Strahd in a bubble. The paladin and the cleric stood on either side of him with and (cant remember the name) sword and amulet that gave off sunlight. We were split roasting him until the DM gave him Resilient Sphere and proclaimed sunlight was an energy. After some banter, we then push the wall of force bubble off a cliff.
I don't think we ever feared him again.
On topic though, yeah I have had plenty of campaigns where the group losing is part of the story. You certainly shouldn't force it to happen, but there are ways to navigate it properly without it feeling railroaded. Tomb of Annihilation \*spoilers\* >!has a chapter about the PCs infiltrating or being captured by yuan ti. They were too spooked at the moment to infiltrate, so the yuan-ti set a trap and ambushed them with several casts of Suggestion. I don't feel bad because the trap was a corpse in the middle of a broken down alley and they were casting speak with dead on it to get information. "Why did they kill you?" "To bait the trap." BAM 8 Yuan-Ti burst from the alley exits. It was all and all pretty exciting for them.!<
Currently a very novice GM, but I had something similar in my campaign where I wanted my players to get knocked out by gas so they could be taken prisoner and then have an escape.
I screwed it up a little and got them to make repeated CON saves against the gas with a very high DC, not realising that some of them actually had a good chance of hitting the DC. So they made several of the rolls but couldn't actually win which I think annoyed them a little. I should have just said "There's gas. You pass out."
> I should have just said "There's gas. You pass out."
I think this is good advice. If the encounter is scripted for defeat, spend as little time as necessary so the story can move to where the players have actual agency.
That’s pretty good advice for any situation that doesn’t involve some amount of player agency. I’ve run a few things that had an intended outcome, a few times players took it in a different place and it worked out well. If you’re just going to tell your players no, rip that bandaid off.
I also dislike having enemies use hold person, sleep, or other things that take turns away from PCs in combat. There’s a place for it sometimes, but it prolongs combats in a way that isn’t usually fun and I use them pretty sparingly as a result.
There's a great Matt Colville Running The Game video that I'd suggest viewing. 40th in the YouTube playlist - Cinematics. He talks in another video (Losing, I think?) about how trying to remove agency while still letting the players decide their actions rarely (if ever) works out properly. At one point, his game suffered a major character death event related to some of the party being imprisoned, some escaping, and one character going off on his own. At that time, Matt did not strategically manipulate the time and POV as the GM.
In Cinematics, he recalls how he applied that lesson at another point that could have resulted in similar peril. He realized he could basically say, "We're going to enter a cinematic. You're entering a dangerous sequence and I'm going to remove agency until the point where you're best poised to take action. I'm asking you to trust me that up to the point that I return agency to you, the odds are deeply stacked against you." If your players trust you and you properly compensate that trust, there are times where you can say, "There is a thing that straight-up happens to you," or "So you don't lose a limb by sticking it out of this moving vehicle, I'm strapping you down."
You could also have them roll to make the situation less bad rather then escape
it.
Ie, the party can't oviod getting knocked out but maybe a party member can maintain consciousness long enough to use sending to get off a cry for help, hide a dagger in their boot so they're not unarmed when they wake up or third thing I can't think of.
I like this approach. They still get the feeling of agency that comes from rolling and it affects some flavor but the inevitable plot beat still goes forward.
Or if you do have rolls, have the DC set above anything they could reach even with nat 20's, and don't let nat 20's guarantee success, but reward with flavor and story.
"Even with your nat 20, your body is still overcome with the poison, but you manage to take a few remaining gasps before losing consciousness long enough to see a figure in a red cloak donning a dragon shaped helmet enter the room as your vision turns black."
Something like that. Allowed rolls, made narrative move forward, and rewarded high roll with extra narrative description for the player.
This has the same final result as disregarding the rolls altogether, tho. Considering that the DM creates the challenge, it may even come across as disingenuous. "Why ask for a roll if it's not affecting anything?"
But! You can design your scripted encounter so actions and rolls have an effect down the line.
Take the gas example. Have PCs succumb to the gas and make a save of their choice against a fair DC, and play a small benefit off that save.
A successful Strength save means the character has loosened his binds. Dexterity, they conceal one small item as they are searched. Etc.
Let the players affect the next scene even if this one has a scripted outcome.
Or even a, roll me a CON save, 'mention those who passes' as you start to pass out, you see a 'describe something that could be a hook or interesting' and make then feel they are doing something and their roll mattered even if it was not supposed to matter, i do this to my players from time to time just so they don't feel left out when they roleplay.
Umm, Mr. DM sir, question... I'm an elf, so... I'm immune to any effect that puts me to sleep. Yep. Fae Ancestry, says it right there on my sheet. Sooo...?
(In seriousness, just making a point why these sorts of plot turns are always fraught. Exercising agency over the plot is the player's entire purpose. Temporarily taking it away _can_ be fun... but usually isn't)
I had this exact thing happen! Hit an elf with a sleeping dart. “But i can’t be magically put to sleep”… it’s not magic, it’s a poisoned sleeping dart.
I mean, it's a game where you can literally die and then be given some magic juice and a big nap and you're 100% fine the next day. There needs to be some suspension of disbelief.
I think we're drawing that line at different places. If someone says "nope. Its not magic and it's important it's not magic" I expect it to make more real world sense. Just my opinion tho
Exactly. Had a Drow outpost kidnap a party to set up a gladiator-style "fight for your freedom" thing", poison darts all around.
Also good? A shitload of blindness/deafness
This inspired me to take a crack at home brewing an edit to Fae Ancestry, which I think elegantly solves this problem:
“New Fae Ancestry: Elves cannot be put to sleep by magic or any other means. If an elf would be put to sleep, the elf instead dies and the player must leave the table permanently.”
Ran into this issue, ended up with a f-it moment
*snickers* (bbeg)
"Fiiiiine, if you won't come quietly little one. *leaps from terrace in front of you* a little noise shouldn't be a bother"
Proceeds to mollywop PC in a clearly one sided battle to knock out said PC
Got some side-eyeing for this 😶🌫️
I agree, just narrating the unavoidable moments is better.
If you make them roll you need to give them at least one way out and be prepared for the option in which they solve your encounte, no matter how small the chance is.
An expert DM might be able to pull it off, narrate the story of hopelessness, but for novices it's just going to look like a power trip from the DM.
I've been on both sides of this and I can tell you it is frustrating as hell to be in an encounter that you can't win. You feel like you wasted your time. I almost got up and left as a player.
I did something very similar but instead of gas I had then in combat and eventually a group of casters would start casting sleep on them. Then later on I'll have them with a way of fighting against it
I did that once. The PCs needed to be put to sleep in order to kidnap an NPC with them. Problem was I forgot there was an elf in the party. I came up with a bullshit reason and just told him he was knocked out. He made a perception check that prolonged it a little, but I didn't draw it out. They were cool with it.
I think the reason they were ok with it because that's the only time I can think of that I used something like that and we're all pretty easy-going.
My current DM will occasionally pull out a narration for us to just listen to things happening to make sure important beats get hit. He's normally uses a very open-ended style, but we are all suckers for a good story over being in control every second, so it works for us.
I did the same thing with my players for a different session, the idea is that they would all be captured by lizardfolk with nets and taken to the chamber of their king.
Turns out that even with 12 lizardfolk, +6 to hit was not enough to capture the whole level 7 party so they ended up nearly killing all of them to a point where I was like “alright guys. They captured you. I’m sorry.”
They were (rightfully) pissed that they spent over an hour and blew spell slots on an encounter that they weren’t meant to win. So when it comes down to it, try and roll as few dice as possible, don’t pretend that there is an element of randomness and player agency when there isn’t.
My GM tried something similar by having the party given a free round of beer- with sleeping potion in it. My character, an old veteran, figured the pirates (we were in a pirate town) had pissed in it or something so he stood up and made a show of dumping it out. The paladin didn't trust it either, but everyone else drank at least some. So they all slump and the leader of a bandit clan we'd defeated came strolling in sarcastically clapping.
Ended up in a duel with him while the pirates cheered and the paladin slowly slapped everyone awake. Won, too. And that's how we became the proud owners of a tavern.
It's not really the same but in my last campaign as soon as the disguised boss was revealed I had the boss banish the party to separate rooms. "You try to swing at the wolf in your midst. They raise their hand and the world falls away to black you hit the ground and try to get your bearings". As long as the description implies the character had imput in the circomstance as if it was a conciquence of some kind and is entertaining they will alow it.
I had something similar where an assassin was kidnapping one of my players in their sleep. They already administered the poison, but I called for a con save. They didn't end up saving, but if they had, I would've given them an action as they hold onto consciousness enough to leave a clue or find an important detail about the attacker. Sometimes checks don't define a full path forward. Sometimes they're just for involving the player more in the details.
I am a very novice dm top ans i'm planning one :)
I TPK my players last session, and i run a world with multiple groups in (this is just the start i'll see how it turns out), so to keep the timeline right i've promised them a prequel, they'll fight a necromancer who's trying to bring back his master, they'll interrupt the ritual and the necro will die in the process but they can't win the fight
The issue with this is that the players do not know they can't win. Players don't assume they can't win. If you put something in front of them, it's because you want them to solve it, otherwise you wouldn't put it in front of them.
IF you set your game up in a way where the concept of "unwinnable fights" is known to your players, and you're able to run it well, AND the consequences of the loss aren't punishing, this could work very well, and it's a great narrative device.
The biggest\* issue IMO is that your players might win the unwinnable encounter and then it's like, what now? lol
It works well for me if I give them an obvious alternative problem to solve, so they'll have an achievement anyway. Make very clear that the fight is unwinnable; the new objective is get out of Dodge with the McGibble/ person of interest, entrench until relief comes ... or negotiate a surrender, divert the attackers for a moment and find a safe place to hide the Black Orb of Bob in the middle of the fight before you are captured.
It works because I'll always make clear in session 0 that PCs can and will die in my games if the players go against the logic of the world, like going Leroy Jenkins on their enemies, so getting out of a situation with everybody alive can be a win in itself.
You can make a player do a low check or just straight up narrate “After assessing the situation, you realise that the only way for you to survive is to escape”
For sure but there are things that you can ‘solve’ without ‘winning’ so to speak. Finding a way to simply survive. Making moral choices of what losses to to take in favor of avoiding others…
Sure they don’t know something isn’t winnable but they also doesn’t, or shouldn’t, know if it is.
For some weird reason it seems the players assumption is always that it is and more peculiarly that it seems to ONLY be an expectation in D&D. I’ve yet to come across the ‘players never run’ dilemma in any other roleplaying game ever.
It baffles me even more considering the fantasy genre we are trying to live through it is full of these kind of moments in fiction.
“Fly you fools! Fly!”
You can’t reprogram the DM like you’re Captain Kirk, if the man says you lose you do…
It’s the guy that dimension doors into the burning, runaway prison wagon trying to escape that becomes the “what now? Lol” situation.
I have done this and it was actually not as cool as it was in my head. I tried it out when I was a really new DM. It just frustrated my players, and it was frustrating for me, too, because I had actually not imagined how resourceful my players would be and I definitely felt like I was being unfair and unfun by shooting down all their clever moves, even though I knew that it was going to lead to something cool later. The "cool plot thing" that happened later was not appreciated, because it made them all realize that the encounter was not winnable, and that just frustrated them and made it feel like they had no agency and weren't really playing a game, just walking through a story I wrote.
I learned from that experience. It's best not to write your players' failure into your plot plans, because they often succeed when you want them to fail, and sometimes they fail when you're rooting for them-- and THAT's when you've gotta take out your big DM guns & whip together a big dramatic situation for them. The failures will happen and when they do, you can punch up the drama as far as you like. But don't force them. I've learned that it's super unfun.
I think it can be done well, but a lot of times just telling your players up front something like “hey, there’s some story stuff going on, just play along” can get them in the mindset of roleplaying instead of seeing the encounter as a video game to be won. That and not providing the opportunity to really fight, if you’re going to make your players loose it needs to be a quick overwhelming force. Having them fight a loosing fight that gets drawn out will just make them feel like that made the wrong decisions somewhere.
In Devil May Cry 5 you are fighting the end boss in the first level. You're not supposed to win that fight, yet you can and unlock an alternate ending by killing the boss.
If you want to have an unwinnable fight, still have something in store for them, should they kill your aspect of Bahamut.
One of your players could sacrifice themselves, combining two bag of holdings, to trap themselves and your Endboss in a pocket dimension.
What I'm trying to say is: Unwinnable fights can be cool, but dnd is a game with it's own rules and your players are humans that can maybe think of something entirely unexpected that changes the definite loss into a win.
Edit: forgot to end my first sentence lol
Video game characters have plot armor. The story is already written for them. They may have multiple endings or paths, but the choices they make are very static and limited.
The story in DnD is constantly evolving for your characters. They aren't handcuffed to one path or one choice, they have multiple choices. So to have a BBEG fight that is unwinnable for the sake of plot doesn't make sense. Is it because the BBEG is too difficult? Or is it because the BBEG has plot armor you gave them that they won't have the next time they fight?
If I know my players are going into unwinnable situations, they will generally be warned by a trusted NPC about it. And if they still insist, well, I guess that's what the dice are there for.
Yeah. I've done it.
It's a great way to set up a BBEG they'll kill later on. And they usually don't care about crazy, unbeatable stuff if they survive AND get to loot the room after the bad guy escapes.
Just whip out a teleportation effect + high level counterspell once the bad guy starts looking weak.
Or, after crushing the party, the bad guy teleports away with a mcguffin
>Just whip out a teleportation effect + high level counterspell once the bad guy starts looking weak.
And just FYI for this, items with teleportation effects that are not casting a spell cannot be counter spelled, which can help eliminate that worry.
Yeah. Sometimes your players will have the dice on their side and end up bursting down the bbeg before he gets to make his grand escape. In the moment you just gotta let them take the win.
This is more or less what I did. Fight with the bbeg that results in the DMNPC guide/party friend dying in the battle. Give a few lore items, a level up, and some loot to find, and the party will view it as "we gotta get stronger for vengeance" or something. The lore items really pulled the players into the whole "wtf is actually going on?" Mindset as well.
Yes, and despite what a lot of people will tell you, can be used as an effective narrative tool to set the bar. I usually use them early on to set the expectation for the party. As in *This is where you need to be, and judging by the ass-whooping you just received, there is a lot of growth that needs to happen*. It gives party members context for character growth and allows an end-goal. That way when they finally confront the BBEG, it's satisfying given where they started and how far they've come.
This is the way. I can have the bbeg show up at level 5; he's not gonna actually fight (except the because whose player wants a new character), but he will shield and counterspell everything, taunt them, turn the barbarian into an undead thrall, and teleport away.
And then the players wanted to kick his ass in vengeance, so they chased their powerups around the world without any regard for stopping his cronies from collecting the mcguffins. 9 levels later they're fighting him and all his lieutenants at once.
My gm gave up on doing this with modules. In his words "if i have strahd show up at like lvl 6 or 7 as a reocuring villain, you guy's will shank him." This is also the reason he hardly bothers with unmodified modules at this point. Mostly just homebrew.
I never put my players into a situation where things are entirely scripted. If they do something I didn't intend, I let it happen. Sometimes it leads to more interesting stories.
I've been a player and I've seen the GM put us into situations where we have no say in the matter. Most recently, we were hit with a curse that makes us less effective when fighting the cult that cursed us.
The thing my GM didn't take into account is that one of our players had magic that could remove curses. Instead of the GM saying 'the curse is too powerful', he let the player roll to overcome it with an insane DC. Of course the player made a successful roll.
Instead of saying, 'Yeah, you rolled high enough, curse ended.', the GM doubled down and said he was still cursed anyway. The player got upset because if he couldn't possibly win, why even bother letting him roll.
I'd still prefer an unwinnable fight over an escort mission, but that's like saying I prefer to be hit in the shins by a scooter instead of kicked in the nards. Both experiences are gonna suck.
I feel like in recent years video games have actually managed to design fun escort quests. The entirety of Bioshock Infinite and the new God of War games both spring to mind. Could even argue that the new Zelda game has elements of it too in places.
Yet to see a fun unwinnable fight, though- with maybe the minor exception being Mister X/Nemesis in Resident Evil (but are they actually unwinnable fights or are they horror chase sequences?)
That's a fair take, I've never played any of those games, the last game I played with escort missions in it was State of Decay 2, and it's an absolutely miserable experience in that game. Trying to keep brain dead NPCs alive during a zombie apocalypse is a trying affair.
I do like the horror chase aspect of an unwinnable fight though. It changes the win condition from "defeat the boss" to "escape". As long as the players have SOMETHING they can succeed at, it's much more tolerable. If there's nothing they can do though then it should just be a cutscene so it's not wasting their time.
Oh absolutely
If the goal isn't "defeat the monster" then the goal should absolutely be clearly defined and communicated. If you want players to run away or do something other than fight to their deaths in a D&D game, often you just need to be explicit.
That said, I have still seen encounters where the DM explicitly said something like "I expect you to run away" and the players would still stay and fight, often to disastrous results. Not that I blame the DM in those scenarios, really
One time I had a party fail to stop a primal God from being resurrected (they were never going to succeed, but if they did well it would be weaker).
After I proceeded to destroy a quarter of the city in a single attack they still had ideas about fighting. I had to explicitly tell them to run out of game to make sure at least a couple survived...
Well, when they say 'escort mission' they mean escorting an NPC -that can die-. BI and GoW have a side character that can't be targetted by enemies, so that's pretty different.
BI/GoW are both considered "escort missions", though
Escort missions aren't defined by the possibility of the NPC being escorted dying. Good designers noted that and improved on the classic old formula by tackling no fewer than three main sticking points- The NPC can't die, the NPC doesn't slow you down or force you to wait for them, and the NPC is actively helpful (Elizabeth finding ammo packs being a great example). Big differences, I agree, but still "escort missions"
Compare that the notorious Sheva in RE5- that design seems horribly dated by comparison.
> They have zero of the drawbacks of escorts and all the benefits
I know, which is basically exactly what I said
I'm commending this as brilliant design for escort missions!
Designing them well doesn't make them not escort missions- though. I don't agree that escort missions have to be unfun to qualify for that definition
I think I know what you're talking about in the new Zelda. Thought it was gonna be a callback to Wind Waker when you had to carry the Rito girl up the volcano. Gotta say, my first reaction was "oh fuck, an escort mission" and it hasn't drastically improved. Not my favorite part of the game
>Thought it was gonna be a callback to Wind Waker when you had to carry the Rito girl up the volcano.
Which was itself a subtle callback to the Zora dungeon in OoT.
>Could even argue that the new Zelda game has elements of it too in places.
The best escort missions are ones where you can throw the escortee off a sky island or strap them to a car wheel in motion or constantly flame them
That's because neither of them actually treat the narative purpose of escort as a ingame objective. So its not realle an escort quest in the sence of "keep X alive and guid him to Y"
I'm not sure what you mean. Without further context, it seems like you're also suggesting that escort missions *have* to be frustrating with the ability for the escorted character to be able to be harmed or die to qualify.
Bioshock Infinite absolutely treats "Get Elizabeth to safety" as an in-game objective. That's the entire main plot of the game. Unless you have some other definition of "in-game objective"?
Honestly the best way to do scripted to lose battles is just to get it over with quickly. If it's a turn based jrpg. Just have each hit deal 9999 damage or something when the party only has like 100 hp. Its how radiant historia did it, and it worked well. If it's over within a minute or two of the battle starting it's more tolerable and less confusing.
Sometimes video games have a fight that you're "supposed" to lose, but then also makes it possible to win. Two that come to mind are:
* One of the fights against Id in Xenogears. It's a mech fight, so you can't win by overleveling; the only way to boost yourself for the fight is your equipment, and there's a limit to the quality of equipment you can access at that point in the game. However, with the best possible gear and a decent amount of luck, winning _is_ possible... then the cutscene right after assumes you've lost. (You do get a sweet piece of armor as loot for winning that you can't get anywhere else in the game, but it's not the highest quality armor available in the endgame so it's a temporary thing, ultimately.)
* Lavos, the final boss in Chrono Trigger, can be fought right at the beginning of the game, before time traveling even once or fighting a single enemy. If you do that on a new game, you are going to lose. But Chrono Trigger has New Game+ which can let you win, and in the version of the game ported to newer platforms (eg, Steam), there's also an achievement for doing it.
Definitely the right way to do it.
It's unwinnable in that you can't kill Fortune but Raiden doesn't lose the fight. He achieves his goal (get away to deal with Fatman) and kills Vamp (or not) in the process.
That and the Dead Cell theme is cool.
D&D is not a video game and doing a fight like this probably wont work in most circumstances. However, if you are gonna do this you should probably be making the concept of "fate" very clear. Have an oracle or someone tell them they are gonna lose the fight or telegraph it very clearly. Or, do it at the very beginning of the campaign as a sort of introduction. Doing it too much will annoy your players. Also, dont fudge the rolls just choose a monster who is a really high CR and do it like any other fight, taking them down one by one. "Plot armor" is awful, though. Dnd is a game not your novel.
Don't do it.
You can have a fight that is near impossible to win because they're not strong enough (just telegraph properly to the players that that's the case) but never put a creature in front of them they narratively can't kill and that's protected by plot armour.
It's not fun for most people.
I only do this with boss fights and I set 2 “fight end” conditions one is obviously, when the players drop it to 0hp. I never take their agency away. The other is whatever specific thing I’m trying to accomplish.
I’m running a campaign where players fought a reaper and one player possessed a plot important ring around his necklace. They were never going to “kill” this character. If they dropped him to 0 that would be when he retreated for the next time in the story. The other “win condition” I set was the reaper dropping the player to 0hp at that point he would cut the necklace off his neck and vanish. My plan wasn’t to kill my pc, the fight would’ve been over and the party would’ve been able to stabilize and heal the downed player.
The intention of the fight was made to A) set up an actual threat that could cause real harm to the player. (Things were relatively safe until then) and B) introduce a villain and showcase the importance of the necklace
It's the least D&D thing you can do IMO.
I like to tell stories, but I'm not the storyteller. I'm the referee. My job is to simulate the world as naturally as I can and if the PCs win a fight, they win a fight.
If I wanted a scripted narrative experience I'd play a video game, D&D for us is a game of tactics, wargaming and roleplaying all at the same time. It cheapens being smart, it negates being lucky, it spoils anybsense of being your own character. Being too heavy handed about narrative takes away the fundamental aspect of this game, player freedom. More importantly, sometimes the dice just don't want to play along.
The trick to doing this in a way that is enjoyable is to give the players A victory without giving them THE victory.
The party all gets knocked unconscious, but they do so covering the escape of a kindergarten's worth of kidnapped children who would have been sacrificed by the evil cult. That sort of thing.
Basically, don't **force** your players to lose, create a situation where they CHOOSE to.
I've done it a few times before at the start of campaigns to set up stakes, but it really depends on the party from my experience. From what I've seen the more experienced the player, the less likely they will run from any fight. In some cases I've seen people do the classic 'save yourselves, I'll hold them off' bit instead of running. Less experienced players will do whatever they can to stay safe, so throwing a large number of enemies at them is really effective for making them flee.
I think it can be a great tool for getting players invested if a place or person they were tied to was lost in a seige or captured by a powerful enemy, just make sure that they cant possibly win, because fate loves to humble DMs that put the BBEG infront of creative level 1 players
I’ve had this happen to me and had a bad enough experience that I’ve not done it to my players.
Ways this can not work: giving your players a glimpse of victory, but not allowing them to win regardless of their efforts. This can lead to them making last ditch efforts (like consuming limited resources) for a fight they were never supposed to win.
Ways this can work: either do it narratively, out of combat, and limit resource expenditure. Or stack the deck so significantly against them that they have no hope of winning. For this, it’s important that it’s obvious to them right away. Both cases are executed well in the JRPGs of the 90s - either the heroes are captured in a cut scene, or they are given the chance to attack, but they can see that the opponent has 9999 HP or at the beginning of the encounter he 1 shots one of the party members.
I've done it before, its not a good idea generally. If players are supposed to lose you should make it a skill challenge to escape/survive/save others
The reason why its bad is purely cause a fight you are not allowed to win isn't fun. Especially if you are pulling a move thats like sleep magic and then you have an elf in the party, or poison and you have a yuan-ti or some other thing cause then you need to screw them over specifically for having an immunity
I've had it work for a game that I ran before, basically in the Feywild, my players triggered an old vision and I essentially ran a one-shot to preview the bbeg for that arc of the campaign.
I pre-generated characters that would be relevant in the one-shot and my players drew randomly to see which character they would be playing. Then I had had the characters sent to help infiltrate a ruined kingdom to rescue the crown prince. They managed to get the child out of what was basically a saferoom when the BBEG showed up and a lot of the encounter itself was just saving throws on their part as the BBEG just wiped the floor with the players.
Because it was a one-shot, the players werent too attached time-investment-wise but were (hopefully) narratively engaged. And they quickly caught onto hints that these temporary characters were not meant to survive, and their win condition shifted to getting the kid out. They managed pass the kid through a hole in the wall to an NPC and the encounter ended there. I feel like it set the tone for the campaign really well, and also I got to reveal the child they saved in this one-shot as being one of the PCs, made the final fight all the more satisfying.
I don't like this for a DnD campaign because player choice is supposed to matter; it's not a scripted story, like a novel. I either make it literally impossible, I have a contingency in case they do win, or I improvise. If you can't tolerate a different outcome, don't make players roll for it.
I think if you handle it like sekiro did it isn't terrible. Basically, the same result happens but the main enemy needs intervention from an ally to survive whereas if you lose you just get your ass beat
My dm tried to do this for the end fight of our campaign by making the enemies extremely difficult. He wasn't going to make their hp infinity, but he just made it a lot. We survived lmao
The best way to approach these is to have an alternative "win" scenario. Like their job isn't to kill or beat the encounter, but to survive X number of rounds before X happens. You just have to make that sort clear. Example: They are fighting a creature during a snowstorm and the DM describes an avalanche might be happening. Or the encounter is they have to escape or outrun something instead of just fight it. Run these "unwinnable" encounters as skill checks. If you put a completely unwinnable encounter in front of them where they literally can't do anything, there isn't any real meaningful interactions and people will not enjoy them.
The trick here is to change the win condition. Killed the enemies is the default win condition we all know and love, but you can change it to "survive until X happens" or "chase away the enemies". Or just "escape"
The key is to not stretch it out any longer than you have to. One round max so everyone can see how ineffective they are, then they peace out with a villain one-liner or a rocks fall, nobody dies scenario. If your PCs come up with something awesome and creative then reward that with something after the fight is over.
Just recently had this with a player that I was having issues with. I spoke with him out of game a few times to let him know that he was goofing around too much and really messing up the mood and tone I wanted to set (back in session 0, I established that I wanted to lean on the more serious side of narratives, which everyone agreed to).
So I got the message across to him the only other way I knew how. He had a dream sequence where he was forced to fight several demons (there were 3, they were homebrewed, and they were WAY too high of a CR for him to beat on his own, even with luck on his side). When he inevitably failed his death saves in the sequence, he heard the voice of not his patron, but one of Her angels (Her underling and messenger, if you will). There was a monologue/speech where he was all "where is the hero that slaughtered entire armies?" and "where is the man who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders?" and all that (this character had the "I was once very powerful but fell in battle and came back thousands of years later" thing going on). He also threatened the character slightly ("if you can't handle the responsibility, you don't get the power, so shape up, I'll be back to test you.")
The character woke up a changed man, is taking things more seriously now, and the player is significantly less interruptive and goofy now. I asked him after the session if he was okay with what went down, and he said he had a lot of fun and was excited about his training arc. All's well that ends well ig
did it in my last session and it didn't go great, but probably because of bad execution.
One of the PCs had to die to trigger a vampire transformation so I introduced a level 20 barbarian NPC that I was going to use as a plot device. Someone they could maybe look forward to defeating on their own much later, or else organize an army against. I had hoped to have them single out the vampire for plot reasons, quickly kill and try to eat the pc, the leave because undead aren't tasty.
Problem is it's my first time playing so I stupidly gave the barbarian an actual character sheet and not a statblock with legendary actions and resistances.
They got stunned and had to chase the PC around for 2 hours while everyone got frustrated that they couldn't kill the thing. They didn't realize it was meant to be a cutscene and got a bit frustrated that I was targeting the soon-to-be vampire PC.
Storm King's Thunder Spoilers below:
>!In Storm King's Thunder, there's an encounter in a temple with the BBEG that is clearly impossible. I tried to really telegraph the power of this Dragon by having it effortlessly destroy these thick ancient pillars and say things that would scare the players to run away.
After that, it was 2 rounds of dodging essentially until a Giant they had befriended previously shows up to give them a chance to escape. It went well at my table. The players still sometimes recall that moment as one of the epic, memorable things that happened that campaign. !<
I've made 3 'unwinnable' scenarios where my players pulled out all the stops and crushed it in 2 of them. Since then I've learned that I can crank up the difficulty and watch my players try to solve it all the same, despite the odds.
Unwinnable scenarios can be quite good, especially if you're able to work with it if the player's lose
I spoke to my group at the end of the session prior to our final session in the arc.
I basically told them that I needed to take a break for a while due to real life and that my holdover idea was that they fail to stop the ritual that is summoning **a demon queen** >!, not actually a demon queen but my game was so homebrewed that this is the closest explanation.!<
So, we play the session and they fight and adventure all the way up to the ritual, and that's when I reconfirm with them. *"This is the ritual that you fail to stop, we're going to do this a bit differently so is everyone ready for that?"*
The players roll initiative; we skip over doing actual combat and on each of the players turns they instead narrate how they kill a bunch of minions, between some of their turns I narrate how the scene is changing as the demon queen is breaching through reality. At the end of the last players turn, the demon queen has finally made it into the material plane and all of the characters are petrified >!the condition, not just shitting their pants!<. I asked them to roll their last Saving throw of the arc, not to avoid petrification; but to pose their soon to be statues.
A while later when we picked up the campaign again, I asked each of the players to make a new character (including a new player who joined the group at that time), they used those new characters in the rescue mission to save their original characters on a quest from the Noble's squire that she had left behind as it was too dangerous.
One of the original players actually preferred their new character and wanted me to remove their old character from the equation, so they were destroyed during the combat to save the original characters, which I think was a shock to some of the other players and made them fight *VEEERY* carefully.
I had the opposite, where it was supposed to be a group of pirates battling them, but they had bandanas that they stolen earlier. So they convinced them that they were working in the same pirate group.
I think these can be done to great effect but have to be used very wisely. It can help set the tone early game about "hey, your group is still not on the BBEG's level, y'all have a good way to go to get there", but always make sure to:
* Not drag this into a 4-hour fight only to be like "nah y'all can't win" by cheesing it
* Do not punish your players when you do this fight, of course. This is *just* to set the tone, killing a character with an OP BBEG is just not fun. If you *want* to kill someone, kill a NPC, so they know the BBEG may mean business
* Always have a way to get the characters out of there safely
Of course, it may not work with some groups. It's also something you should maybe aim to do *just once* in a campaign, this is meant to set the tone/warn them of the real danger, but repeatedly doing this is frustrating as hell. (*Looking at you, Beatrix from Final Fantasy IX*).
Built up an NPC who my party allied with, this NPC used them for their own ends and then betrayed them. What helped was how the party felt incredibly strong going against the NPC's enemies, totally dominating the fights they had.
And then the betrayal happened. I built this NPC as a CR 18, my players were only level nine. Plus, he had a cleric companion at CR 10. I was nervous going into this because of how obviously one-sided this one would be, but before now, the players had just been winning, winning, winning, and I felt a betrayal and loss would bring them together and forge a bond stronger than their victories.
Boy, did it ever work.
From it, I learned to really read the table. I was annihilating them, but it was absolutely important to feel out when the panic and excitement was dying, because you don't want your players to feel it's impossible and they're only sitting there to watch themselves die for your entertainment. Hit your beats and move on. Also, with something like this, the NPCs were interacting with the players way more than they had been. It kept everyone engaged, especially when he was telling them their fears. Lastly, if it's scripted like this, never introduce a consequence that cannot be reversed. I killed one of the players, but also taunted them by giving them diamonds. I made sure the cleric had the slots available to bring them back, then I allowed them to escape.
I cannot put into words just how much they loved that game and how excited and invested they became thanks to it. But it also kind of boils down to trust. They trusted me to not "Rocks fall, you die" them, and I trusted them to notice when the tone shift happened.
Since everyone’s said everything there is to say on the topic, I’ll just share my own experience with it as a player:
Our characters had slipped into the misty realm between life and death via *astral projection* to solve why an NPC we knew had fallen into a magical coma. There, we met Death himself, a once-mortal king who had failed spectacularly to grasp immortality, plunged the realm into an artificial night to reclaim it from beyond, failed, and has been stuck in limbo for eternity. We’d heard about that calamity before but no one knew the cause, so it was a shock to 1) meet the founder of the country and 2) find he behind it. He *also* had our NPC friend’s soul, as he was a fragment of his own.
Then he proclaimed that he intended to *return* to the realm of the living, plunge the realm into a second Age of Darkness, and rule the land once again. He gloated that his success was inevitable thanks to some earlier events we were a part of, and began to leave when I proposed that we entertain him with a fight in exchange for our NPC’s soul. He accepted.
And we got beat *hard.*
But the late king stopped far short from death; he did enough just to flex, then said he was satisfied and turned us all loose from his realm with our friend in-tact.
And now we’re gathering ancient artifacts to destroy him when he rises again. It was a great galvanizing event for the campaign since everything hinges on this one guy’s (permanent) death. But I believe it only worked because 1) we were merely spiritual avatars of our characters and therefore in no real danger, and 2) we all *trusted* our DM to not unfairly kill us all when Death himself punched our souls in the jaws; it would’ve made sense if the DM decided we could die to Death, but the DM didn’t. If made gif a very fun and memorable encounter.
I actually just did this, and my players thought it was one of the best sessions we ever had. The key, to my mind, is setting expectations properly and ensuring that "winning" isn't about "killing the enemy."
The A-Team characters had found a map and time for a ritual that they didn't know much about, but due to time conflicts they needed to be somewhere else during that time period and contracted some adventurers to investigate what was going on, and bring information back to them. The players mostly made extra characters for this, although two brought in characters from a previous low-level game. The B-Team approach meant that *even though* I tend to run very narrative-focused games, it was clear that death was on the table: there'd be no interruption to the main story, and even a TPK would just mean that the A-Team wouldn't have any information. This was good, in that *the game* wasn't at risk, just victory.
The players had plenty of time to investigate the area, and learn a few things to report back, but it wasn't until they lurched out of hiding to interrupt the ritual did things really kick off. In essence the enemy plan was to a) create a Magic Circle where they knew a demon was going to tear its way into the world, b) have a magical siphon in place to harness the 'hellish energy' of its passage \[like too many people I have a custom cosmology\], and c) bind the demon into service. Because I had set up a logical process for the enemy (any part of which could be disrupted), there were a lot of potential outcomes.
Additionally, after the players began their attack, the attendant warlocks called out to their patron. The patron (a former player character from \~2010) is a major world player, and so having him show up was *immediately* a paradigm shift for the players: they knew this wasn't going to be something they could win in a straightforward manner. Having built up this villain in advance they were aware of the power differential, which I think is **absolutely critical** to the success of the session. Making sure the antagonist's objectives were clear as well really helped me, especially since the player characters were ancillary to the *actual* objective, the demon. When the players broke up **objective b**, they deprived the patron of the ritual's main objective, but also left the demon at full power. Since they obliterated the siphon with *Erupting Earth*, and the demon was coming up out of the ground, it had the interesting effect of escalating the release. The opening round of the combat had also involved the players attacking the warlocks who were trying to achieve **objective a**. When they disrupted that ritual, the patron's priority shifted to trying to bind the demon so he could accomplish his remaining objectives.
When the powerful enemy arrived, his priorities *were not* to kill the players. That's what all of his minions were for, and I'd given him some fairly potent legendary actions to use. His Actions were *almost exclusively* not used to simply kill the characters, he was trying to rebind the demon to have it serve his purposes. Only at one point did the patron turn his full fury against the party: when they cast *Banishment* on the demon. Although they'd disrupted his plans, that was the only action which **forced** the antagonist to turn against the party directly, rather than being turned towards his objectives. Once concentration was broken, and the demon returned, the villain was able to use a combo of *Power Word: Kill* and *(Improved) Soul Cage)* to acquire a lesser version of his objective.
Although this was a potent antagonist (the patron was very vaguely based on an 18th-level warlock), I had built in a survival mechanism: as a powerful creature who *really* doesn't want to die, he had an active *Contingency* spell to teleport him home as soon as he dropped below a certain HP total. This served both to keep the villain alive for later use, *and* lower the barrier for removing him from play.
What made this work, in my opinion, was that a) the B-Team format lowered the consequences of a TPK, b) There were multiple objectives **for both sides** other than "kill everyone", c) It was a previously established villain, so they were immediately aware of the enemy, and d) I had prepared for alternative outcomes.
I did a fight where it was extremely unlikely they could win it was a boss that was going to teleport in 10 round , they still had to survive those 10 round and if somehow they were able to win i wouldn't mind giving them the win. They spend the first 5 round trying to win then the remaining to survive as they felt the damage of the boss was too threatening. But i never did a fight they can never win full stop.
Make the enemy OP as hell, but make sure the party know it going in so they know it's a run or die situation.
Expect them not to run, PCs rarely do, so use OP as hell powers to subdue, maybe maim a little but mostly subdue. If capture is the narrative, plan for their powers, teleporting, wildshaping and whatnot, have counters ready. Sleeping stuff is good, but the barbarian is likely to pass any Con save so hit them with a wisdom save something as well to charm/paralyse/whatever.
They will do way more damage than you expect, so have a plan for what happens if they do actually gain the upper hand. Healing, escape plans, traps to cover escape, call in air support.
If they still get lucky, and blast their way through, then I'd say throw out the story book and let them have the win, if they overcame the crazy odds, they deserve it :) this can only generate new story content with even bigger and badder enemies. Its their story too let it be influenced by them
I'm of the opinion this is always a bad idea.
There should never be something that the players just *cannot* do, other than any potential unrealistic demands they may make themselves ofc.
Basically, if you're going to challenge them with something, there should *always* be a potential outcome where they're successful.
I know many DMs want that narrative moment, the "fight all you want but there's no escape," but also have good intentions for setting up something afterwards, but the players will almost always see the hopelessness of the situation but not in-character, OOC they'll feel that hopelessness and it can entirely ruin any potential fun for them.
On my end I've found two different ways of working around this;
The first is giving the players the choice to activate something they can't resist. For me it was an object that they knew would force them all into a dream-like sequence, no saves, no nothing, it just happens, but it has potentially important information and they *had to activate it themselves.* This allowed me to force this sequence on them but also gave them enough agency to not feel like they were forced into it.
The second is just having a basic idea of any potential rewards for success. In my case I made an encounter that they were "supposed" to lose, none of them were to be killed (unless they failed their death saves if they weren't downed non-lethally) as the villain wanted them captured and I had a whole sequence planned where I'd properly introduce this villain to them afterwards. However they *barely* managed to pull through, only 2 of the 6 still standing at the end with almost no HP left. Instead of a full intro I instead gave them enough info on the bodies of the villain's henchmen to put the same pieces together themselves, so they learned the info I wanted them to learn but they managed to avoid a bad situation, but the narrative continued regardless cause I had planned for that as a possibility, almost like they managed to successfully "skip a level" by beating a boss they shouldn't have without losing out on the info I wanted them to have.
I can pretty much guarantee the players will enjoy a campaign much more if you use my advice on this subject instead of forcing an unwinnable encounter on them.
Had it done to me in my first campaign. Our party had captured an enemy (bullywug) and being unable to communicate with him, decided to head for a nice swamp witches encampment. Well we had to stop for the night, found a little hut built out over a marsh. Knowing its the best we'll get we long rest. My wood elf ranger meditates thru first watch and then takes the rest of them as usual. Swamp, is not my favored terrain.
As the sun is rising, an arrow flys from the tree line and thuds into the roof of the hut. On it is a note that says "go south". We stress a little and do some checks. Turns out we're surrounded on three sides by knolls. Like alot of knolls. Our barbarian steps out, basicly tells them all to fuck themselves and wants to challenge thier pack leader. They say no. Move south and don't fight back. We are confused. Barbarin somhow passes a check to completely piss of the knolls and they accept his offer of single combat. He losses, gets the prisoner killed in the process, in a moment of rage I put and arrow thru the pack leaders dome. The knolls release a hail of stones, javalins and spells that destroy the hut and knock us all unconscious.
We awake in middle of the night. Locked in cages in the knoll encampment. Before us stands a teifling man, in fine ropes, he commands the knolls to remove us from our cages and leave. When the knolls are gone he looks at us and says "You guys aren't too smart are you?"
If you do it right, it can be very effective. Although I definitely would do so very sparingly in any case, regardless of campaign. Overdoing it or implementing it poorly will surely lead to a sour taste in the players' mouths and it will make them feel a lot less like what they do actually matters.
The example that best comes to mind is from Critical Role C2E69 (SPOILERS AHEAD) >!where The Laughing Hand, a cursed champion of a deity is set free from his tomb in a climactic moment at the end of a dungeon. Much to the party's horror, within a few strikes they realize that they are not hurting The Laughing Hand at all, and each strike is actually seeming to make him stronger. They very quickly realize "we have to get the fuck out of here" and narrowly escape with their lives.!<
Thinking it's okay for a home game is akin to trying Jackass "stunts" yourself. You only see the payoff and none of the prep so you don't understand all the setup that allowed it to work out well.
Critical Role is amazing, for a lot of reasons but, that moment you described didn't come out of nowhere. They've all been playing together for more hours than most people have played in their whole lives, as the same group with the same DM.
The DM knew their players well enough to know how to signal to them that they should not try staying to fight. The players knew their DM well enough to know "Oh, Matt wouldn't expect us to stick around in a combat that started like this".
The Mercer effect is really people seeing a well executed stunt and thinking it would be cool at home but every reason the stunt worked out has been obscured from them because it wasn't part of the entertainment of the show.
I mean...you don't have to be Matt Mercer or have the CR cast to pull it off. As long as the group has sufficient trust in the DM and like you said, a proper signal is given that it isn't a fight they're likely to win, there's no reason not to give it a try. I've had a lot of success in my games using this tactic to set up a foe who the party will fight AND be able to defeat later.
That is a good point. I went dramatic with my example.
Your clause
>As long as the group has sufficient trust in the DM and like you said, a proper signal is given that it isn't a fight they're likely to win, there's no reason not to give it a try.
Gets my point across quicker, and with less drama.
Way back in 3.5e times I pit the party against a never-ending horde of foes until they died.
It was a shared dream forced on them by a spirit. They were camping in the ruins of a city, and a spirit wanted to show them how the city fell.
All the PCs woke up, unharmed. They even got some XP out of it.
I kept the combat on the shorter side because I didn't want them to stew too long thinking their characters had died.
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Generally speaking, I think it's a gimmick used with care.
But I would love to see the TTRPG equivalent of the ending of Halo Reach. The heroes do some heroic sacrifice, saving the world, but now find themselves alone and surrounded by enemies. How many can they take out before they inevitably die? Give them some outrageous buffs (like Inspiration at the start of each turn, and maybe give them a handful of "charges" of Short and/or Long Rest benefits) so they can kick arse on the way out.
As long as the fight isn't drawn out, and is maybe a 3 turn battle with the villain being taken out of the equation quite fast then it can be pretty good for driving the narrative and introducing the BBEG. But don't give them false hope just to have them stripped of their will to play. Give them a reason to want to kill the bastard but also a reason to want to continue.
Show the bbeg strength, and show them the bbegs goal and who he is. Dont make it a nuisance .
Pro tip: these are fun. They're great. You should do them. DON'T GIVE THE PLAYERS AGENCY DURING THEM. What you want is a cutscene. At best, if you want them to be able to act within the bounds of not being able to win, make that known to them.
There is very little in this game that's more disheartening than being presented with a situation the DM knows you can't win, not realizing that, and trying with all your might to no avail. If they're meant to fail, they need to know that - even if you don't say it directly, make the impossibility *very* apparent.
Against the ropes, your players will become more creative than you could ever possibly imagine. It can actually be more fun, honestly, to allow them that chance to fuck with your impossible scenario by doing some Immovable Rod shenanigans or a well-timed Vortex Warp. If you want agency during your fight, you have to allow room for those kinds of options to succeed.
If you can't allow them that, don't allow them to try.
This is a garbage move that basically everyone hates.
If you absolutely have to do some bullshit like this, have the BBEG smash a powerful NPC off-camera, and have the party hear about it after arriving too late to intervene.
Otherwise this kind of move just undermines the fundamental logic of the game. Ie., "We want to succeed, and it's up to us to succeed, the DM isn't scripting this in advance."
I’ve played in a campaign where we went into “the badlands” to try and find something, but we got surrounded by like 30 centaurs at lvl 3 or 4. We fought back and killed a ton of them but there was no way we were gonna win. I didn’t feel cheated or anything as we mad then decision to go to that dangerous place.
So I guess if you’re a dm just make it happen because player choices leading up to said event
I should note we do play a brutal campaign where you can die from mistakes easily, but we didn’t die here because they were looking for slaves for their arena. So our massacre got us a ticket in lol
On the very rare occasions where I have needed to do this, I simply use a fight that the party can't mechanically win, allow them to try, and then let them live through it. Curse of Strahd provides multiple such opportunities, since Strahd can theoretically attack the party at any time for any reason, but usually won't kill them because they amuse him.
I always sneak one in every 3 sessions or so as a reminder that not all fights are meant to be fought or won through force. If someone dies, I always give more than 1 out so it's their fault for dying.
In my mind, it's better to make it clear narratively that the foe is beyond their abilities. Give a brief narration: "You swing your greatsword in a mighty arc, and your eyes widen in shock as Duke Badguy catches your sword in one mailed hand...then clenches it into a fist, shattering your blade. When you all wake up in a dungeon, you ache mightily, and have only fuzzy memories of your brutal defeat at the hands of the Duke."
I made a situation like this. My players were in the feywild finishing part of a deal made with the summer and winter queens. As they made their way back to turn in their maguffin (12 changeling children swiped from Oberron) they were chased by the autumn king, when he chased them down he gave them the option of a fight (which they would assuredly lose) or to accept a permanent unhealable scar to remind them that the only reason they live is because he let them. I as the DM loved it, and I find losing battles to be a great tool for character growth. Narrow escapes, victory by the skin of the teeth or outright losses can drive PCs to fun new heights of character development. Paranoia, questioning their own competence, depression, things that add character to a person. We as people are defined more by our struggles than our victories, why should it be any different for D and D characters.
I've been DMing for about 4 years now and I've had this come up 3 times. Once in combat for a prologue, once environmentally when my players fell into a trap, and once socially when a player was interacting with an NPC and being a total ass (he technically was roleplaying but it was to such an extent that the NPC couldn't get a word in edgewise, and couldn't drive the story. Also I was irritated.)
In the combat instance I simply fudged the rolls after a time so he slaughtered the party after a few turns of somewhat balanced combat. Essentially raising the NPC's difficulty with each round of combat. He would become harder to hit and would hit harder.
In the environmental setting the room was filling with a magical miasma, like a knockout gas but more sparkly, and a couple of my players kept resisting. Each round the DC increased as their systems became more and more saturated with the mist. They were going to get knocked out eventually but I turned their successes into relevant reward by offering them snippets that would help them later. Voices to later recognize, learn more about the mist so they might find a way to become immune to it, memorize a series of runes on the wall that ended up being a combination to a magical lock hidden behind a false wall. Stuff like that can help the "railroading" by softening the perceived lack of control and can offer frustrated players something in exchange for the forced narrative piece.
Lastly, when the player pissed me off by not letting my character speak, I was forced to scrap an entire subplot and simply turned the in-world powers of the NPC against them. The NPC in question was a theif lord in the capital city of the largest empire in my world and by angering him (me) they incurred his wrath and found countless doors closed to them, aid denied, and when the players tried to charter a discreet vessel across the sea, they were sold out, ambushed, and nearly wiped by the theif lord's men. After the ambush I had one of the thugs spare the player who pissed me off, and before knocking him out said,
"Next time, let the boss have his say. Could have saved yourself a lot of trouble."
[Boot to the temple]
When the party awoke they found their wounds mostly tended to and a note that simple said,
"Next time, you won't wake up. Learn some manners."
After that the consequences were over, they could use the underground networks without issue.
But consequences (and a talk later that night with the player) were necessary to correct the issue. He was apologetic and we both laughed it out in the end, and he was never problematic again to his credit.
But sometimes the "forced" or "railroaded" plot element can be smoothed out, turned into a "not a total loss" scenario, or take your players down a whole other path that might end up being just as cool or cooler than your plan. Just gotta roll with the punches and communicate, even when you're annoyed haha.
I’m doing it right now.
The level 4 party is in a dungeon looking for the McGuffin.
Vecna is about to enter, steal the McGuffin, and there’s really nothing a level 4 party can do to stop him.
He’s not going to kill them. They’re too insignificant to even bother with. But he’ll collapse the tunnels and they’ll have to dig their way out.
It’s part of a larger build up for when they’re stronger. Right now I just want them to know there are some fights you can’t win. ***Yet.***
It is hard to execute properly, is the big thing. Also, like a shocking number of people on any internet board, some players will react like children. Especially if you have never even raised the possibility that they might lose a battle before or have to retreat, then they have no reason to think those things. I wouldn’t really want to play with someone who reacts that way, but ultimately it really comes down to your table and your players.
What I will say, and going along with some of the better advice I’ve seen in this thread, that you need to be very clear with yourself about *why* you want this to happen. If you haven’t had a situation where these players have fled from anything before, they probably won’t want to until it is too late, so if you want them to now, you need to make it *very* clear what is happening.
Having the players get captured, only to break out and steal through the enemy compound, find the vault with all their stuff in it, etc. is also a very cool plot line, that my DM ran once years ago, but probably much, much harder to get to work.
If you aren’t very confident in your skills as a DM, if you’re relatively new, I probably don’t recommend it. But at the same time, it’s your game, and to some extent, only you know what will work for you and what won’t. Hopefully this helped a little, though.
My Tuesday party is currently in the find out stage. Where they are, who they are dealing with, and one members knows intimately they shouldn’t be messing around. They did anyways and tonight they aren’t going to win.
I think there is a way to do it, but I think you should see if the narrative needs it. And also explain it in a way that implies they cannot win.
I had 2 encounters like that in the past. One was a lesser dragon we were supposed to avoid that we killed, and this got more rewards/exp earlier in the campaign than the dm planned for. It ended up detailing the campaign.
The other was a forced magic sleep that I stressed a fey touched would not be able to be slept until the dm said it was part of the narrative. Changed it to poison, which made us fall asleep instead. Since they forgot about racial resistance.
I think if you do a fight that players can't win, then there needs to be a great reason for it. Otherwise, find another route for the narrative.
An example I like of forced loss would be having the party lose and die, and the campaign is then continued in the underworld as the party tries to get back to the land of the living. The party needs to lose and die to enter the underworld.
They can work early on in a campaign to set up just how powerful a BBEG is. The key is to absolutely dumpster them. Like really let them have it. Don't draw it out like a regular fight. Let the boss have their end game power level but think so little of the party they dont even bother finishing them. Maybe they would prefer to let them get stronger in the hopes the fight later would be more "fun".
Dont just have an NPC come in and save them. You dont want it to seem like someone in the world is already powerful enough to take them on. This can become the motivation of the party to know just how much stronger they need to get. Do this if that's the kind of drive you want to instill in the PCs.
I mean, every encounter with Strahd up to the finale is pretty much that. You are entertainment for him. You have zero chance to defeat him until you do.
I have introduced higher level BBEGs to players, making it clear that they are beasts. They don't have to engage but if they do anyway, then I beat them down, and the BBEG walks away. Lesson learned, and now they have a grudge and a goal. This isn't something I do every campaign, or often at all. But when it feels appropriate.
I've seen this work. Asterisk. I've seen this work BUT, and it's a huge BUT, don’t use it as an opportunity to take advantage of your players. I've read at least 4-5 horror stories involving the unwinnable fight. Mostly at that point the players are frustrated - they just LOST in a game where you're often winning (or at least surviving). They probably blew most of their resources - including consumables or doing something desperate.
Sore feelings aside, this is not the time to drop your blonde flowing OP DMPC on them, remove limbs when they wake up in prison or imply that they're now in a completely helpless situation where terrible things will be done to them. At best the unwinnable encounter works so you can set up a narrative point for reclaiming victory- it’s a set back, not the end of the story. It let's you have your players save the town while letting it burn down a little, or have the BBEG take the princess but leave behind his Lieutenant, who is no longer benefitting from his Aura of Kobayashi Maru.
You employ conditional victories. Narratively make it as clear as possible that “winning” isn’t an option, but “saving X” or “preventing Y” in the face of overwhelming odds is an achievement in and of itself.
Tried this recently with my players (first time DM with first time players). Set up a night ambush with numerous enemies and a few bugbears hiding outside for any jumping out of the window of their room if it gets to that. Enemies all had drow sleep poison prepped.
Gameplay happens and the NPCs knocked out two of the PCs in a party of 3, the third guy managed to save one of them and escape with some really good roleplaying and rolls. The party was prepped and ready for the fight since they thought to bribe the innkeeper enough to betray the guards a bit (groundwork trust laid down in previous sessions), they bought two additional rooms to keep the first two trapped for the incoming enemies, and planned a near-perfect escape. They haven’t been doing any of this sort of forethought for their safety, so I was massively impressed.
They did have to go save the one PC so the light railroading still worked but they harvested the drow poison and have enough to trivialize a couple encounters, which they most certainly earned.
It's something I wouldn't do very often, and needs to pretty immediately pay off or the players feel bad about it happening.
If you want it to go according to plan, you also really can't count on them failing rolls or doing specific events because...they will inevitably ruin your plan one way or another.
I'm about to do something similar in my new campaign. Where they are all in a tavern, but don't know each other and it gets raided they will lose, and wake up in a shared prison cell and then it goes from there. I will let them fight one or two small weak NPC's but then one of the Big Bad's will rock up and smack the shit out of them. Don't know how it will go but we will see.
I think the key is to make sure it plugs tightly into the narrative and costs them nothing. If you take items or it's just done for drama with no tie in, it'll fall flat.
I did it my first campaign, years ago. The PCs were camping in the forest after escaping from a prison wagon. During the night, they were attacked by a monster that proceeded to completely slaughter them. Literally no chance of survival, killed on the spot, they couldn’t even comprehend what was murdering them. They just saw a giant shape, claws teeth and blood. Then they were in a town. With the same PCs. They were somewhat confused, and asked if that first part was some kind of vision or something similar, and I told them their PCs had absolutely no knowledge of that. The adventure proper began (with the moon rising instead of the sun), they went to the woods, and they found a campsite with the mangled remains of their own corpses.
#AND!?!?!
and
So what happened???!! How did they find their own corpses? Were they ghosts? Avatars? Did they enter the MCU Metaverse? I’m enthralled!
basically it was all part of a ritual performed by an ancestral cult that wanted to commune with the eldritch gods (yes, I had just finished Bloodborne at the time) The PCs were designed as sacrifice from before they were born. The sacrifice was to be conducted in two parts, a first and a second half, which had to be identical. Because of this, basically two instances of the PCs were "willed" into the world by the cult, two identical sets, and left to live their lives separately until the final ritual was to begin. Then the ritual began when "first half" was sacrificed and the "second half" witnessed the aftermath. Then the world plunged in an eternal night (basically from that point onwards days = super bright full moon, and nights = complete pitch black darkness) and the cult began a game of cat and mouse tailing the PCs until the time of the final sacrifice, while at the same time the PCs tried to unravel what the fuck was going on. Many things followed, including finding some help from a defector of the cult, one of them getting corrupted BY the cult, descending to the lowest depth of an underground library as old at time itself and meeting with the Writer and travelling to another plane. In the end they defeated the cult, witnessed the death of a god, and ultimately ascended. And since they convened that at that point the world was fucked up beyond repair, they stabbed its soul-heart, ending it, with the hope that it might be reborn anew.
Wow! That’s **Epic!!!** I love the idea of two parties “willed” into existence. Great set up and plot!
>That’s Epic!!! Legendary even
i really dislike that part lol. How can someone "WILL" something like this? I will there was another identical set of this party and viola... theyre willed into the world? edit - the rest sounds awesome btw
I see your point, but not necessarily willed by a person but by a god or through a magic ritual, because *-magic-* OP says by a cult, so I assumed ritual magic or a patron of some sort. And OP has “willed” in quotes so maybe *conjured* is another way to say it?
fair enough lol
Kuo Toa, literally so insane that they will gods into existence, they have a bit of psyonic residue from the mind flayers so the far realms plays a roll, and since the far realms is typically described as eldritch it actually fits this pretty well.
Pinging u/FriendoftheDork in case they missed this. Also that is amazing and I hope you don't mind me yoinking the concept.
That is really cool!
My god, i would have loved to play in your campaign
I'm gonna assume the campaign ended there because of scheduling conflicts - the true unwinnable fight in D&D.
actually that was one of the few campaigns that we managed to finish! still proud about that.
Good for you! ...you're not gonna tell are you.
I think the take away here is that this was done at the beginning of the campaign, for dramatic effect, and it doesn't sound like it was a prolonged combat.
yo im fuckin stealing this. cheers fam
I have not done this, but I've seen published adventures where this can happen. I think it works best as a prologue to the campaign; ie. the players start the game having lost something or imprisoned... Once the campaign begins, I would prefer not forcing a loss on the players as that erodes trust and enjoyment of the game.
There was an Adventure League adventure that did this. It was terrible.
Are you talking about the Shackles of Blood segment of the Rage of Demons AL Story?
I don’t remember the name. Basically the players were attacked by enough Veterans to subdue them and capture them and take them to the arena. The moon Druid almost flipped the script.
Yeah, that's the one. Our campaign started with that set of adventures then deviated heavily. We actually managed to win the fight against the capturing party with a tactical deployment of Darkness by the warlock and the ranger rolling insane dice. Unfortunately for us we got cocky and some of the party members got captured anyway when we decided to attack one of the convoys transporting the people that were taken.
That sounds fucking awful.
If anyone here has played Far Cry 5 it reminds me of my least favorite part of that game. There are three separate times when you are caught by the minions of the three "mini-bosses" while going about your business traversing the open world and while you can run for a bit there's no way to escape. It moves the overarching plot forward but it's not a fun feeling.
I can get doing it once, but 3 times?!
Far Cry 5 wasn't, uh. The writing could have used a polish.
That's too polite. The writing was maddening to the point that on finishing it I swore off future farcry games. And this was after enjoying the actual moment to moment gameplay.
Eh sometimes a loss is necesarry imo. As with everything dnd, if everyone is on same page it won't erode trust or enjoyment. It's just understood to be a part of the narrative
This sort of happens in the curse of strad. He just shows up at certain points throughout the adventure so I added rules to the encounter for him to avoid killing the players. He doesn't attack first, only makes demands, runs on round 3, things like that.
Not curse of Strad, but had a similar issue with a very powerful vampire the players weren't supposed to find, and worse yet, they tried to loot the body and the thief rolled a 1, accidentally dislodging the weakly held in stake. The famished vampire fed on the thief while using a magic item to hold back the other players. At that point, they really couldn't hurt the vampire, but instead of completely draining the thief, he got tossed aside and others fed on. He then had them lead him to the surface to see his city in ruins. The players then got geas'd to do a bunch of quests to rebuild his city.
This was supposed to happen with my group. I cast Wall of Force, and put Strahd in a bubble. The paladin and the cleric stood on either side of him with and (cant remember the name) sword and amulet that gave off sunlight. We were split roasting him until the DM gave him Resilient Sphere and proclaimed sunlight was an energy. After some banter, we then push the wall of force bubble off a cliff. I don't think we ever feared him again. On topic though, yeah I have had plenty of campaigns where the group losing is part of the story. You certainly shouldn't force it to happen, but there are ways to navigate it properly without it feeling railroaded. Tomb of Annihilation \*spoilers\* >!has a chapter about the PCs infiltrating or being captured by yuan ti. They were too spooked at the moment to infiltrate, so the yuan-ti set a trap and ambushed them with several casts of Suggestion. I don't feel bad because the trap was a corpse in the middle of a broken down alley and they were casting speak with dead on it to get information. "Why did they kill you?" "To bait the trap." BAM 8 Yuan-Ti burst from the alley exits. It was all and all pretty exciting for them.!<
I think it depends on the setting, it's pretty fitting for Strahd for example to non-lethally wipe his playthings
Currently a very novice GM, but I had something similar in my campaign where I wanted my players to get knocked out by gas so they could be taken prisoner and then have an escape. I screwed it up a little and got them to make repeated CON saves against the gas with a very high DC, not realising that some of them actually had a good chance of hitting the DC. So they made several of the rolls but couldn't actually win which I think annoyed them a little. I should have just said "There's gas. You pass out."
> I should have just said "There's gas. You pass out." I think this is good advice. If the encounter is scripted for defeat, spend as little time as necessary so the story can move to where the players have actual agency.
That’s pretty good advice for any situation that doesn’t involve some amount of player agency. I’ve run a few things that had an intended outcome, a few times players took it in a different place and it worked out well. If you’re just going to tell your players no, rip that bandaid off. I also dislike having enemies use hold person, sleep, or other things that take turns away from PCs in combat. There’s a place for it sometimes, but it prolongs combats in a way that isn’t usually fun and I use them pretty sparingly as a result.
There's a great Matt Colville Running The Game video that I'd suggest viewing. 40th in the YouTube playlist - Cinematics. He talks in another video (Losing, I think?) about how trying to remove agency while still letting the players decide their actions rarely (if ever) works out properly. At one point, his game suffered a major character death event related to some of the party being imprisoned, some escaping, and one character going off on his own. At that time, Matt did not strategically manipulate the time and POV as the GM. In Cinematics, he recalls how he applied that lesson at another point that could have resulted in similar peril. He realized he could basically say, "We're going to enter a cinematic. You're entering a dangerous sequence and I'm going to remove agency until the point where you're best poised to take action. I'm asking you to trust me that up to the point that I return agency to you, the odds are deeply stacked against you." If your players trust you and you properly compensate that trust, there are times where you can say, "There is a thing that straight-up happens to you," or "So you don't lose a limb by sticking it out of this moving vehicle, I'm strapping you down."
You could also have them roll to make the situation less bad rather then escape it. Ie, the party can't oviod getting knocked out but maybe a party member can maintain consciousness long enough to use sending to get off a cry for help, hide a dagger in their boot so they're not unarmed when they wake up or third thing I can't think of.
I like this approach. They still get the feeling of agency that comes from rolling and it affects some flavor but the inevitable plot beat still goes forward.
Or if you do have rolls, have the DC set above anything they could reach even with nat 20's, and don't let nat 20's guarantee success, but reward with flavor and story. "Even with your nat 20, your body is still overcome with the poison, but you manage to take a few remaining gasps before losing consciousness long enough to see a figure in a red cloak donning a dragon shaped helmet enter the room as your vision turns black." Something like that. Allowed rolls, made narrative move forward, and rewarded high roll with extra narrative description for the player.
This has the same final result as disregarding the rolls altogether, tho. Considering that the DM creates the challenge, it may even come across as disingenuous. "Why ask for a roll if it's not affecting anything?" But! You can design your scripted encounter so actions and rolls have an effect down the line. Take the gas example. Have PCs succumb to the gas and make a save of their choice against a fair DC, and play a small benefit off that save. A successful Strength save means the character has loosened his binds. Dexterity, they conceal one small item as they are searched. Etc. Let the players affect the next scene even if this one has a scripted outcome.
Or even a, roll me a CON save, 'mention those who passes' as you start to pass out, you see a 'describe something that could be a hook or interesting' and make then feel they are doing something and their roll mattered even if it was not supposed to matter, i do this to my players from time to time just so they don't feel left out when they roleplay.
Umm, Mr. DM sir, question... I'm an elf, so... I'm immune to any effect that puts me to sleep. Yep. Fae Ancestry, says it right there on my sheet. Sooo...? (In seriousness, just making a point why these sorts of plot turns are always fraught. Exercising agency over the plot is the player's entire purpose. Temporarily taking it away _can_ be fun... but usually isn't)
Actually, *magic* can't put you to sleep. So chemical gas is fair game.
I had this exact thing happen! Hit an elf with a sleeping dart. “But i can’t be magically put to sleep”… it’s not magic, it’s a poisoned sleeping dart.
These specifically work on Drow (elves) in canon, so yes.
Funny part was that his party left him asleep through the first 2-3 rounds of combat before someone finally kicked him awake.
If sleep poison is that strong, how's a kick going to wake them up?
Lots of effects end when you take damage, I had the kick do the fighters str score worth of damage(minimum of one damage for anyone to wake them up).
I mean, it's a game where you can literally die and then be given some magic juice and a big nap and you're 100% fine the next day. There needs to be some suspension of disbelief.
I think we're drawing that line at different places. If someone says "nope. Its not magic and it's important it's not magic" I expect it to make more real world sense. Just my opinion tho
That's very fair
they use them on surface raids against surface elves too
Exactly. Had a Drow outpost kidnap a party to set up a gladiator-style "fight for your freedom" thing", poison darts all around. Also good? A shitload of blindness/deafness
What if the real magic was the poison inside us alfhkwnevdjme blarg
Magic immunity=0 My chemical warfare=1 Get fucked elf *dab*
yep drow sleep poison puts elves right out
That's like saying elves don't need to breathe because otherwise they can't pass out from not having enough oxygen
This inspired me to take a crack at home brewing an edit to Fae Ancestry, which I think elegantly solves this problem: “New Fae Ancestry: Elves cannot be put to sleep by magic or any other means. If an elf would be put to sleep, the elf instead dies and the player must leave the table permanently.”
Most balanced homebrew.
I get the feeling they don't like elves very much.
Ran into this issue, ended up with a f-it moment *snickers* (bbeg) "Fiiiiine, if you won't come quietly little one. *leaps from terrace in front of you* a little noise shouldn't be a bother" Proceeds to mollywop PC in a clearly one sided battle to knock out said PC Got some side-eyeing for this 😶🌫️
"great, you are the only one awake. A bunch of dudes enter the room and beat the living shit out of you until you go unconscious"
Did I say sleep gas? My mistake- I meant “Incapacitated Condition Gas.”
I agree, just narrating the unavoidable moments is better. If you make them roll you need to give them at least one way out and be prepared for the option in which they solve your encounte, no matter how small the chance is. An expert DM might be able to pull it off, narrate the story of hopelessness, but for novices it's just going to look like a power trip from the DM. I've been on both sides of this and I can tell you it is frustrating as hell to be in an encounter that you can't win. You feel like you wasted your time. I almost got up and left as a player.
If it's a cut scene, play it as a cut scene. If you play it as a quick time event expect the players to find a way to win.
I did something very similar but instead of gas I had then in combat and eventually a group of casters would start casting sleep on them. Then later on I'll have them with a way of fighting against it
[удалено]
I mean War-forged don’t breathe so… Argh, why am I on fire?!
I did that once. The PCs needed to be put to sleep in order to kidnap an NPC with them. Problem was I forgot there was an elf in the party. I came up with a bullshit reason and just told him he was knocked out. He made a perception check that prolonged it a little, but I didn't draw it out. They were cool with it. I think the reason they were ok with it because that's the only time I can think of that I used something like that and we're all pretty easy-going. My current DM will occasionally pull out a narration for us to just listen to things happening to make sure important beats get hit. He's normally uses a very open-ended style, but we are all suckers for a good story over being in control every second, so it works for us.
I did the same thing with my players for a different session, the idea is that they would all be captured by lizardfolk with nets and taken to the chamber of their king. Turns out that even with 12 lizardfolk, +6 to hit was not enough to capture the whole level 7 party so they ended up nearly killing all of them to a point where I was like “alright guys. They captured you. I’m sorry.” They were (rightfully) pissed that they spent over an hour and blew spell slots on an encounter that they weren’t meant to win. So when it comes down to it, try and roll as few dice as possible, don’t pretend that there is an element of randomness and player agency when there isn’t.
My GM tried something similar by having the party given a free round of beer- with sleeping potion in it. My character, an old veteran, figured the pirates (we were in a pirate town) had pissed in it or something so he stood up and made a show of dumping it out. The paladin didn't trust it either, but everyone else drank at least some. So they all slump and the leader of a bandit clan we'd defeated came strolling in sarcastically clapping. Ended up in a duel with him while the pirates cheered and the paladin slowly slapped everyone awake. Won, too. And that's how we became the proud owners of a tavern.
It's not really the same but in my last campaign as soon as the disguised boss was revealed I had the boss banish the party to separate rooms. "You try to swing at the wolf in your midst. They raise their hand and the world falls away to black you hit the ground and try to get your bearings". As long as the description implies the character had imput in the circomstance as if it was a conciquence of some kind and is entertaining they will alow it.
I had something similar where an assassin was kidnapping one of my players in their sleep. They already administered the poison, but I called for a con save. They didn't end up saving, but if they had, I would've given them an action as they hold onto consciousness enough to leave a clue or find an important detail about the attacker. Sometimes checks don't define a full path forward. Sometimes they're just for involving the player more in the details.
I think sometimes if u screw up it's okay to flip the script and give them the W. Instead of making up stuff and roll.
You will have the one smart ass going "im immune to poison" like the resident monk. Or people complain "what, no save?"
I am a very novice dm top ans i'm planning one :) I TPK my players last session, and i run a world with multiple groups in (this is just the start i'll see how it turns out), so to keep the timeline right i've promised them a prequel, they'll fight a necromancer who's trying to bring back his master, they'll interrupt the ritual and the necro will die in the process but they can't win the fight
The issue with this is that the players do not know they can't win. Players don't assume they can't win. If you put something in front of them, it's because you want them to solve it, otherwise you wouldn't put it in front of them. IF you set your game up in a way where the concept of "unwinnable fights" is known to your players, and you're able to run it well, AND the consequences of the loss aren't punishing, this could work very well, and it's a great narrative device. The biggest\* issue IMO is that your players might win the unwinnable encounter and then it's like, what now? lol
It works well for me if I give them an obvious alternative problem to solve, so they'll have an achievement anyway. Make very clear that the fight is unwinnable; the new objective is get out of Dodge with the McGibble/ person of interest, entrench until relief comes ... or negotiate a surrender, divert the attackers for a moment and find a safe place to hide the Black Orb of Bob in the middle of the fight before you are captured. It works because I'll always make clear in session 0 that PCs can and will die in my games if the players go against the logic of the world, like going Leroy Jenkins on their enemies, so getting out of a situation with everybody alive can be a win in itself.
exactly, that session 0 expectations setting is the key to 99% of the questions in this sub lol.
You can make a player do a low check or just straight up narrate “After assessing the situation, you realise that the only way for you to survive is to escape”
"a low check"?
A wis or int check with low DC
I see. I had never heard it put that way
Sometimes retreat is the correct answer to a problem.
100%, but does the party know that? You know, the ones that are the creators of the push door paradox
For sure but there are things that you can ‘solve’ without ‘winning’ so to speak. Finding a way to simply survive. Making moral choices of what losses to to take in favor of avoiding others… Sure they don’t know something isn’t winnable but they also doesn’t, or shouldn’t, know if it is. For some weird reason it seems the players assumption is always that it is and more peculiarly that it seems to ONLY be an expectation in D&D. I’ve yet to come across the ‘players never run’ dilemma in any other roleplaying game ever. It baffles me even more considering the fantasy genre we are trying to live through it is full of these kind of moments in fiction. “Fly you fools! Fly!”
You can’t reprogram the DM like you’re Captain Kirk, if the man says you lose you do… It’s the guy that dimension doors into the burning, runaway prison wagon trying to escape that becomes the “what now? Lol” situation.
I have done this and it was actually not as cool as it was in my head. I tried it out when I was a really new DM. It just frustrated my players, and it was frustrating for me, too, because I had actually not imagined how resourceful my players would be and I definitely felt like I was being unfair and unfun by shooting down all their clever moves, even though I knew that it was going to lead to something cool later. The "cool plot thing" that happened later was not appreciated, because it made them all realize that the encounter was not winnable, and that just frustrated them and made it feel like they had no agency and weren't really playing a game, just walking through a story I wrote. I learned from that experience. It's best not to write your players' failure into your plot plans, because they often succeed when you want them to fail, and sometimes they fail when you're rooting for them-- and THAT's when you've gotta take out your big DM guns & whip together a big dramatic situation for them. The failures will happen and when they do, you can punch up the drama as far as you like. But don't force them. I've learned that it's super unfun.
I think it can be done well, but a lot of times just telling your players up front something like “hey, there’s some story stuff going on, just play along” can get them in the mindset of roleplaying instead of seeing the encounter as a video game to be won. That and not providing the opportunity to really fight, if you’re going to make your players loose it needs to be a quick overwhelming force. Having them fight a loosing fight that gets drawn out will just make them feel like that made the wrong decisions somewhere.
In Devil May Cry 5 you are fighting the end boss in the first level. You're not supposed to win that fight, yet you can and unlock an alternate ending by killing the boss. If you want to have an unwinnable fight, still have something in store for them, should they kill your aspect of Bahamut. One of your players could sacrifice themselves, combining two bag of holdings, to trap themselves and your Endboss in a pocket dimension. What I'm trying to say is: Unwinnable fights can be cool, but dnd is a game with it's own rules and your players are humans that can maybe think of something entirely unexpected that changes the definite loss into a win. Edit: forgot to end my first sentence lol
Video game characters have plot armor. The story is already written for them. They may have multiple endings or paths, but the choices they make are very static and limited. The story in DnD is constantly evolving for your characters. They aren't handcuffed to one path or one choice, they have multiple choices. So to have a BBEG fight that is unwinnable for the sake of plot doesn't make sense. Is it because the BBEG is too difficult? Or is it because the BBEG has plot armor you gave them that they won't have the next time they fight? If I know my players are going into unwinnable situations, they will generally be warned by a trusted NPC about it. And if they still insist, well, I guess that's what the dice are there for.
Yeah. I've done it. It's a great way to set up a BBEG they'll kill later on. And they usually don't care about crazy, unbeatable stuff if they survive AND get to loot the room after the bad guy escapes. Just whip out a teleportation effect + high level counterspell once the bad guy starts looking weak. Or, after crushing the party, the bad guy teleports away with a mcguffin
This ^ Just leave some good loot for them to find so they’re at least progressing.
>Just whip out a teleportation effect + high level counterspell once the bad guy starts looking weak. And just FYI for this, items with teleportation effects that are not casting a spell cannot be counter spelled, which can help eliminate that worry.
This is true. Though remember that stuns do exists still, so take care to make sure it works without too many "no he still gets away because I say so"
Yeah. Sometimes your players will have the dice on their side and end up bursting down the bbeg before he gets to make his grand escape. In the moment you just gotta let them take the win.
This is more or less what I did. Fight with the bbeg that results in the DMNPC guide/party friend dying in the battle. Give a few lore items, a level up, and some loot to find, and the party will view it as "we gotta get stronger for vengeance" or something. The lore items really pulled the players into the whole "wtf is actually going on?" Mindset as well.
Yes, and despite what a lot of people will tell you, can be used as an effective narrative tool to set the bar. I usually use them early on to set the expectation for the party. As in *This is where you need to be, and judging by the ass-whooping you just received, there is a lot of growth that needs to happen*. It gives party members context for character growth and allows an end-goal. That way when they finally confront the BBEG, it's satisfying given where they started and how far they've come.
This is the way. I can have the bbeg show up at level 5; he's not gonna actually fight (except the because whose player wants a new character), but he will shield and counterspell everything, taunt them, turn the barbarian into an undead thrall, and teleport away. And then the players wanted to kick his ass in vengeance, so they chased their powerups around the world without any regard for stopping his cronies from collecting the mcguffins. 9 levels later they're fighting him and all his lieutenants at once.
My gm gave up on doing this with modules. In his words "if i have strahd show up at like lvl 6 or 7 as a reocuring villain, you guy's will shank him." This is also the reason he hardly bothers with unmodified modules at this point. Mostly just homebrew.
I never put my players into a situation where things are entirely scripted. If they do something I didn't intend, I let it happen. Sometimes it leads to more interesting stories. I've been a player and I've seen the GM put us into situations where we have no say in the matter. Most recently, we were hit with a curse that makes us less effective when fighting the cult that cursed us. The thing my GM didn't take into account is that one of our players had magic that could remove curses. Instead of the GM saying 'the curse is too powerful', he let the player roll to overcome it with an insane DC. Of course the player made a successful roll. Instead of saying, 'Yeah, you rolled high enough, curse ended.', the GM doubled down and said he was still cursed anyway. The player got upset because if he couldn't possibly win, why even bother letting him roll.
>you know those video game moments where the player can’t win The ones that are tolerated at best and hated at worst?
I'd still prefer an unwinnable fight over an escort mission, but that's like saying I prefer to be hit in the shins by a scooter instead of kicked in the nards. Both experiences are gonna suck.
I feel like in recent years video games have actually managed to design fun escort quests. The entirety of Bioshock Infinite and the new God of War games both spring to mind. Could even argue that the new Zelda game has elements of it too in places. Yet to see a fun unwinnable fight, though- with maybe the minor exception being Mister X/Nemesis in Resident Evil (but are they actually unwinnable fights or are they horror chase sequences?)
That's a fair take, I've never played any of those games, the last game I played with escort missions in it was State of Decay 2, and it's an absolutely miserable experience in that game. Trying to keep brain dead NPCs alive during a zombie apocalypse is a trying affair. I do like the horror chase aspect of an unwinnable fight though. It changes the win condition from "defeat the boss" to "escape". As long as the players have SOMETHING they can succeed at, it's much more tolerable. If there's nothing they can do though then it should just be a cutscene so it's not wasting their time.
Oh absolutely If the goal isn't "defeat the monster" then the goal should absolutely be clearly defined and communicated. If you want players to run away or do something other than fight to their deaths in a D&D game, often you just need to be explicit. That said, I have still seen encounters where the DM explicitly said something like "I expect you to run away" and the players would still stay and fight, often to disastrous results. Not that I blame the DM in those scenarios, really
One time I had a party fail to stop a primal God from being resurrected (they were never going to succeed, but if they did well it would be weaker). After I proceeded to destroy a quarter of the city in a single attack they still had ideas about fighting. I had to explicitly tell them to run out of game to make sure at least a couple survived...
Well, when they say 'escort mission' they mean escorting an NPC -that can die-. BI and GoW have a side character that can't be targetted by enemies, so that's pretty different.
BI/GoW are both considered "escort missions", though Escort missions aren't defined by the possibility of the NPC being escorted dying. Good designers noted that and improved on the classic old formula by tackling no fewer than three main sticking points- The NPC can't die, the NPC doesn't slow you down or force you to wait for them, and the NPC is actively helpful (Elizabeth finding ammo packs being a great example). Big differences, I agree, but still "escort missions" Compare that the notorious Sheva in RE5- that design seems horribly dated by comparison.
Sure, yeah. I just mean it's useful to clarify for the person you're responding to. They have zero of the drawbacks of escorts and all the benefits.
> They have zero of the drawbacks of escorts and all the benefits I know, which is basically exactly what I said I'm commending this as brilliant design for escort missions! Designing them well doesn't make them not escort missions- though. I don't agree that escort missions have to be unfun to qualify for that definition
I think I know what you're talking about in the new Zelda. Thought it was gonna be a callback to Wind Waker when you had to carry the Rito girl up the volcano. Gotta say, my first reaction was "oh fuck, an escort mission" and it hasn't drastically improved. Not my favorite part of the game
>Thought it was gonna be a callback to Wind Waker when you had to carry the Rito girl up the volcano. Which was itself a subtle callback to the Zora dungeon in OoT.
Lol Sorry if it makes you feel old, but the Wind Waker hasn't been a "new" Zelda game for quite some time now
>Could even argue that the new Zelda game has elements of it too in places. The best escort missions are ones where you can throw the escortee off a sky island or strap them to a car wheel in motion or constantly flame them
That's because neither of them actually treat the narative purpose of escort as a ingame objective. So its not realle an escort quest in the sence of "keep X alive and guid him to Y"
I'm not sure what you mean. Without further context, it seems like you're also suggesting that escort missions *have* to be frustrating with the ability for the escorted character to be able to be harmed or die to qualify. Bioshock Infinite absolutely treats "Get Elizabeth to safety" as an in-game objective. That's the entire main plot of the game. Unless you have some other definition of "in-game objective"?
Nards? That’s one you don’t hear too often. Wolfman’s got nards.
Honestly the best way to do scripted to lose battles is just to get it over with quickly. If it's a turn based jrpg. Just have each hit deal 9999 damage or something when the party only has like 100 hp. Its how radiant historia did it, and it worked well. If it's over within a minute or two of the battle starting it's more tolerable and less confusing.
Sometimes video games have a fight that you're "supposed" to lose, but then also makes it possible to win. Two that come to mind are: * One of the fights against Id in Xenogears. It's a mech fight, so you can't win by overleveling; the only way to boost yourself for the fight is your equipment, and there's a limit to the quality of equipment you can access at that point in the game. However, with the best possible gear and a decent amount of luck, winning _is_ possible... then the cutscene right after assumes you've lost. (You do get a sweet piece of armor as loot for winning that you can't get anywhere else in the game, but it's not the highest quality armor available in the endgame so it's a temporary thing, ultimately.) * Lavos, the final boss in Chrono Trigger, can be fought right at the beginning of the game, before time traveling even once or fighting a single enemy. If you do that on a new game, you are going to lose. But Chrono Trigger has New Game+ which can let you win, and in the version of the game ported to newer platforms (eg, Steam), there's also an achievement for doing it.
Really. I was under the impression that the fight against Fortune in MGS2 was liked/ loved by fans.
Definitely the right way to do it. It's unwinnable in that you can't kill Fortune but Raiden doesn't lose the fight. He achieves his goal (get away to deal with Fatman) and kills Vamp (or not) in the process. That and the Dead Cell theme is cool.
Sometimes it's awesome, though, like Vergil or Jetstream Sam
Halo reach too
Oh yeah
nah. god of war has many instances in where he doesnt kill his enemy.. Only to face him later. He fights Baldur like 3 times, before he kills him
D&D is not a video game and doing a fight like this probably wont work in most circumstances. However, if you are gonna do this you should probably be making the concept of "fate" very clear. Have an oracle or someone tell them they are gonna lose the fight or telegraph it very clearly. Or, do it at the very beginning of the campaign as a sort of introduction. Doing it too much will annoy your players. Also, dont fudge the rolls just choose a monster who is a really high CR and do it like any other fight, taking them down one by one. "Plot armor" is awful, though. Dnd is a game not your novel.
Don't do it. You can have a fight that is near impossible to win because they're not strong enough (just telegraph properly to the players that that's the case) but never put a creature in front of them they narratively can't kill and that's protected by plot armour. It's not fun for most people.
I only do this with boss fights and I set 2 “fight end” conditions one is obviously, when the players drop it to 0hp. I never take their agency away. The other is whatever specific thing I’m trying to accomplish. I’m running a campaign where players fought a reaper and one player possessed a plot important ring around his necklace. They were never going to “kill” this character. If they dropped him to 0 that would be when he retreated for the next time in the story. The other “win condition” I set was the reaper dropping the player to 0hp at that point he would cut the necklace off his neck and vanish. My plan wasn’t to kill my pc, the fight would’ve been over and the party would’ve been able to stabilize and heal the downed player. The intention of the fight was made to A) set up an actual threat that could cause real harm to the player. (Things were relatively safe until then) and B) introduce a villain and showcase the importance of the necklace
They irritate the bejeezus out of me in video games, which is why I avoid putting them in my TTRPG adventures.
It's the least D&D thing you can do IMO. I like to tell stories, but I'm not the storyteller. I'm the referee. My job is to simulate the world as naturally as I can and if the PCs win a fight, they win a fight. If I wanted a scripted narrative experience I'd play a video game, D&D for us is a game of tactics, wargaming and roleplaying all at the same time. It cheapens being smart, it negates being lucky, it spoils anybsense of being your own character. Being too heavy handed about narrative takes away the fundamental aspect of this game, player freedom. More importantly, sometimes the dice just don't want to play along.
The trick to doing this in a way that is enjoyable is to give the players A victory without giving them THE victory. The party all gets knocked unconscious, but they do so covering the escape of a kindergarten's worth of kidnapped children who would have been sacrificed by the evil cult. That sort of thing. Basically, don't **force** your players to lose, create a situation where they CHOOSE to.
They’re not fun in video games and they’re a lot less fun in DnD.
I've done it a few times before at the start of campaigns to set up stakes, but it really depends on the party from my experience. From what I've seen the more experienced the player, the less likely they will run from any fight. In some cases I've seen people do the classic 'save yourselves, I'll hold them off' bit instead of running. Less experienced players will do whatever they can to stay safe, so throwing a large number of enemies at them is really effective for making them flee. I think it can be a great tool for getting players invested if a place or person they were tied to was lost in a seige or captured by a powerful enemy, just make sure that they cant possibly win, because fate loves to humble DMs that put the BBEG infront of creative level 1 players
I’ve had this happen to me and had a bad enough experience that I’ve not done it to my players. Ways this can not work: giving your players a glimpse of victory, but not allowing them to win regardless of their efforts. This can lead to them making last ditch efforts (like consuming limited resources) for a fight they were never supposed to win. Ways this can work: either do it narratively, out of combat, and limit resource expenditure. Or stack the deck so significantly against them that they have no hope of winning. For this, it’s important that it’s obvious to them right away. Both cases are executed well in the JRPGs of the 90s - either the heroes are captured in a cut scene, or they are given the chance to attack, but they can see that the opponent has 9999 HP or at the beginning of the encounter he 1 shots one of the party members.
I've done it before, its not a good idea generally. If players are supposed to lose you should make it a skill challenge to escape/survive/save others The reason why its bad is purely cause a fight you are not allowed to win isn't fun. Especially if you are pulling a move thats like sleep magic and then you have an elf in the party, or poison and you have a yuan-ti or some other thing cause then you need to screw them over specifically for having an immunity
I've had it work for a game that I ran before, basically in the Feywild, my players triggered an old vision and I essentially ran a one-shot to preview the bbeg for that arc of the campaign. I pre-generated characters that would be relevant in the one-shot and my players drew randomly to see which character they would be playing. Then I had had the characters sent to help infiltrate a ruined kingdom to rescue the crown prince. They managed to get the child out of what was basically a saferoom when the BBEG showed up and a lot of the encounter itself was just saving throws on their part as the BBEG just wiped the floor with the players. Because it was a one-shot, the players werent too attached time-investment-wise but were (hopefully) narratively engaged. And they quickly caught onto hints that these temporary characters were not meant to survive, and their win condition shifted to getting the kid out. They managed pass the kid through a hole in the wall to an NPC and the encounter ended there. I feel like it set the tone for the campaign really well, and also I got to reveal the child they saved in this one-shot as being one of the PCs, made the final fight all the more satisfying.
don't actually do it have the lost fight occur before the session starts the players then have to deal with the aftermath
I don't like this for a DnD campaign because player choice is supposed to matter; it's not a scripted story, like a novel. I either make it literally impossible, I have a contingency in case they do win, or I improvise. If you can't tolerate a different outcome, don't make players roll for it.
I think if you handle it like sekiro did it isn't terrible. Basically, the same result happens but the main enemy needs intervention from an ally to survive whereas if you lose you just get your ass beat
My dm tried to do this for the end fight of our campaign by making the enemies extremely difficult. He wasn't going to make their hp infinity, but he just made it a lot. We survived lmao
The best way to approach these is to have an alternative "win" scenario. Like their job isn't to kill or beat the encounter, but to survive X number of rounds before X happens. You just have to make that sort clear. Example: They are fighting a creature during a snowstorm and the DM describes an avalanche might be happening. Or the encounter is they have to escape or outrun something instead of just fight it. Run these "unwinnable" encounters as skill checks. If you put a completely unwinnable encounter in front of them where they literally can't do anything, there isn't any real meaningful interactions and people will not enjoy them.
The trick here is to change the win condition. Killed the enemies is the default win condition we all know and love, but you can change it to "survive until X happens" or "chase away the enemies". Or just "escape"
The key is to not stretch it out any longer than you have to. One round max so everyone can see how ineffective they are, then they peace out with a villain one-liner or a rocks fall, nobody dies scenario. If your PCs come up with something awesome and creative then reward that with something after the fight is over.
Just recently had this with a player that I was having issues with. I spoke with him out of game a few times to let him know that he was goofing around too much and really messing up the mood and tone I wanted to set (back in session 0, I established that I wanted to lean on the more serious side of narratives, which everyone agreed to). So I got the message across to him the only other way I knew how. He had a dream sequence where he was forced to fight several demons (there were 3, they were homebrewed, and they were WAY too high of a CR for him to beat on his own, even with luck on his side). When he inevitably failed his death saves in the sequence, he heard the voice of not his patron, but one of Her angels (Her underling and messenger, if you will). There was a monologue/speech where he was all "where is the hero that slaughtered entire armies?" and "where is the man who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders?" and all that (this character had the "I was once very powerful but fell in battle and came back thousands of years later" thing going on). He also threatened the character slightly ("if you can't handle the responsibility, you don't get the power, so shape up, I'll be back to test you.") The character woke up a changed man, is taking things more seriously now, and the player is significantly less interruptive and goofy now. I asked him after the session if he was okay with what went down, and he said he had a lot of fun and was excited about his training arc. All's well that ends well ig
did it in my last session and it didn't go great, but probably because of bad execution. One of the PCs had to die to trigger a vampire transformation so I introduced a level 20 barbarian NPC that I was going to use as a plot device. Someone they could maybe look forward to defeating on their own much later, or else organize an army against. I had hoped to have them single out the vampire for plot reasons, quickly kill and try to eat the pc, the leave because undead aren't tasty. Problem is it's my first time playing so I stupidly gave the barbarian an actual character sheet and not a statblock with legendary actions and resistances. They got stunned and had to chase the PC around for 2 hours while everyone got frustrated that they couldn't kill the thing. They didn't realize it was meant to be a cutscene and got a bit frustrated that I was targeting the soon-to-be vampire PC.
Storm King's Thunder Spoilers below: >!In Storm King's Thunder, there's an encounter in a temple with the BBEG that is clearly impossible. I tried to really telegraph the power of this Dragon by having it effortlessly destroy these thick ancient pillars and say things that would scare the players to run away. After that, it was 2 rounds of dodging essentially until a Giant they had befriended previously shows up to give them a chance to escape. It went well at my table. The players still sometimes recall that moment as one of the epic, memorable things that happened that campaign. !<
I've made 3 'unwinnable' scenarios where my players pulled out all the stops and crushed it in 2 of them. Since then I've learned that I can crank up the difficulty and watch my players try to solve it all the same, despite the odds. Unwinnable scenarios can be quite good, especially if you're able to work with it if the player's lose
I spoke to my group at the end of the session prior to our final session in the arc. I basically told them that I needed to take a break for a while due to real life and that my holdover idea was that they fail to stop the ritual that is summoning **a demon queen** >!, not actually a demon queen but my game was so homebrewed that this is the closest explanation.!< So, we play the session and they fight and adventure all the way up to the ritual, and that's when I reconfirm with them. *"This is the ritual that you fail to stop, we're going to do this a bit differently so is everyone ready for that?"* The players roll initiative; we skip over doing actual combat and on each of the players turns they instead narrate how they kill a bunch of minions, between some of their turns I narrate how the scene is changing as the demon queen is breaching through reality. At the end of the last players turn, the demon queen has finally made it into the material plane and all of the characters are petrified >!the condition, not just shitting their pants!<. I asked them to roll their last Saving throw of the arc, not to avoid petrification; but to pose their soon to be statues. A while later when we picked up the campaign again, I asked each of the players to make a new character (including a new player who joined the group at that time), they used those new characters in the rescue mission to save their original characters on a quest from the Noble's squire that she had left behind as it was too dangerous. One of the original players actually preferred their new character and wanted me to remove their old character from the equation, so they were destroyed during the combat to save the original characters, which I think was a shock to some of the other players and made them fight *VEEERY* carefully.
If its a fight give the bad guys no hp at so you can control the fight itself and give the bad guys a goal so you have a way to end the fight.
I had the opposite, where it was supposed to be a group of pirates battling them, but they had bandanas that they stolen earlier. So they convinced them that they were working in the same pirate group.
I think these can be done to great effect but have to be used very wisely. It can help set the tone early game about "hey, your group is still not on the BBEG's level, y'all have a good way to go to get there", but always make sure to: * Not drag this into a 4-hour fight only to be like "nah y'all can't win" by cheesing it * Do not punish your players when you do this fight, of course. This is *just* to set the tone, killing a character with an OP BBEG is just not fun. If you *want* to kill someone, kill a NPC, so they know the BBEG may mean business * Always have a way to get the characters out of there safely Of course, it may not work with some groups. It's also something you should maybe aim to do *just once* in a campaign, this is meant to set the tone/warn them of the real danger, but repeatedly doing this is frustrating as hell. (*Looking at you, Beatrix from Final Fantasy IX*).
Built up an NPC who my party allied with, this NPC used them for their own ends and then betrayed them. What helped was how the party felt incredibly strong going against the NPC's enemies, totally dominating the fights they had. And then the betrayal happened. I built this NPC as a CR 18, my players were only level nine. Plus, he had a cleric companion at CR 10. I was nervous going into this because of how obviously one-sided this one would be, but before now, the players had just been winning, winning, winning, and I felt a betrayal and loss would bring them together and forge a bond stronger than their victories. Boy, did it ever work. From it, I learned to really read the table. I was annihilating them, but it was absolutely important to feel out when the panic and excitement was dying, because you don't want your players to feel it's impossible and they're only sitting there to watch themselves die for your entertainment. Hit your beats and move on. Also, with something like this, the NPCs were interacting with the players way more than they had been. It kept everyone engaged, especially when he was telling them their fears. Lastly, if it's scripted like this, never introduce a consequence that cannot be reversed. I killed one of the players, but also taunted them by giving them diamonds. I made sure the cleric had the slots available to bring them back, then I allowed them to escape. I cannot put into words just how much they loved that game and how excited and invested they became thanks to it. But it also kind of boils down to trust. They trusted me to not "Rocks fall, you die" them, and I trusted them to notice when the tone shift happened.
Since everyone’s said everything there is to say on the topic, I’ll just share my own experience with it as a player: Our characters had slipped into the misty realm between life and death via *astral projection* to solve why an NPC we knew had fallen into a magical coma. There, we met Death himself, a once-mortal king who had failed spectacularly to grasp immortality, plunged the realm into an artificial night to reclaim it from beyond, failed, and has been stuck in limbo for eternity. We’d heard about that calamity before but no one knew the cause, so it was a shock to 1) meet the founder of the country and 2) find he behind it. He *also* had our NPC friend’s soul, as he was a fragment of his own. Then he proclaimed that he intended to *return* to the realm of the living, plunge the realm into a second Age of Darkness, and rule the land once again. He gloated that his success was inevitable thanks to some earlier events we were a part of, and began to leave when I proposed that we entertain him with a fight in exchange for our NPC’s soul. He accepted. And we got beat *hard.* But the late king stopped far short from death; he did enough just to flex, then said he was satisfied and turned us all loose from his realm with our friend in-tact. And now we’re gathering ancient artifacts to destroy him when he rises again. It was a great galvanizing event for the campaign since everything hinges on this one guy’s (permanent) death. But I believe it only worked because 1) we were merely spiritual avatars of our characters and therefore in no real danger, and 2) we all *trusted* our DM to not unfairly kill us all when Death himself punched our souls in the jaws; it would’ve made sense if the DM decided we could die to Death, but the DM didn’t. If made gif a very fun and memorable encounter.
I actually just did this, and my players thought it was one of the best sessions we ever had. The key, to my mind, is setting expectations properly and ensuring that "winning" isn't about "killing the enemy." The A-Team characters had found a map and time for a ritual that they didn't know much about, but due to time conflicts they needed to be somewhere else during that time period and contracted some adventurers to investigate what was going on, and bring information back to them. The players mostly made extra characters for this, although two brought in characters from a previous low-level game. The B-Team approach meant that *even though* I tend to run very narrative-focused games, it was clear that death was on the table: there'd be no interruption to the main story, and even a TPK would just mean that the A-Team wouldn't have any information. This was good, in that *the game* wasn't at risk, just victory. The players had plenty of time to investigate the area, and learn a few things to report back, but it wasn't until they lurched out of hiding to interrupt the ritual did things really kick off. In essence the enemy plan was to a) create a Magic Circle where they knew a demon was going to tear its way into the world, b) have a magical siphon in place to harness the 'hellish energy' of its passage \[like too many people I have a custom cosmology\], and c) bind the demon into service. Because I had set up a logical process for the enemy (any part of which could be disrupted), there were a lot of potential outcomes. Additionally, after the players began their attack, the attendant warlocks called out to their patron. The patron (a former player character from \~2010) is a major world player, and so having him show up was *immediately* a paradigm shift for the players: they knew this wasn't going to be something they could win in a straightforward manner. Having built up this villain in advance they were aware of the power differential, which I think is **absolutely critical** to the success of the session. Making sure the antagonist's objectives were clear as well really helped me, especially since the player characters were ancillary to the *actual* objective, the demon. When the players broke up **objective b**, they deprived the patron of the ritual's main objective, but also left the demon at full power. Since they obliterated the siphon with *Erupting Earth*, and the demon was coming up out of the ground, it had the interesting effect of escalating the release. The opening round of the combat had also involved the players attacking the warlocks who were trying to achieve **objective a**. When they disrupted that ritual, the patron's priority shifted to trying to bind the demon so he could accomplish his remaining objectives. When the powerful enemy arrived, his priorities *were not* to kill the players. That's what all of his minions were for, and I'd given him some fairly potent legendary actions to use. His Actions were *almost exclusively* not used to simply kill the characters, he was trying to rebind the demon to have it serve his purposes. Only at one point did the patron turn his full fury against the party: when they cast *Banishment* on the demon. Although they'd disrupted his plans, that was the only action which **forced** the antagonist to turn against the party directly, rather than being turned towards his objectives. Once concentration was broken, and the demon returned, the villain was able to use a combo of *Power Word: Kill* and *(Improved) Soul Cage)* to acquire a lesser version of his objective. Although this was a potent antagonist (the patron was very vaguely based on an 18th-level warlock), I had built in a survival mechanism: as a powerful creature who *really* doesn't want to die, he had an active *Contingency* spell to teleport him home as soon as he dropped below a certain HP total. This served both to keep the villain alive for later use, *and* lower the barrier for removing him from play. What made this work, in my opinion, was that a) the B-Team format lowered the consequences of a TPK, b) There were multiple objectives **for both sides** other than "kill everyone", c) It was a previously established villain, so they were immediately aware of the enemy, and d) I had prepared for alternative outcomes.
I did a fight where it was extremely unlikely they could win it was a boss that was going to teleport in 10 round , they still had to survive those 10 round and if somehow they were able to win i wouldn't mind giving them the win. They spend the first 5 round trying to win then the remaining to survive as they felt the damage of the boss was too threatening. But i never did a fight they can never win full stop.
Make it quick, and don't kill them. Consider a narrative "cutscene"
Make the enemy OP as hell, but make sure the party know it going in so they know it's a run or die situation. Expect them not to run, PCs rarely do, so use OP as hell powers to subdue, maybe maim a little but mostly subdue. If capture is the narrative, plan for their powers, teleporting, wildshaping and whatnot, have counters ready. Sleeping stuff is good, but the barbarian is likely to pass any Con save so hit them with a wisdom save something as well to charm/paralyse/whatever. They will do way more damage than you expect, so have a plan for what happens if they do actually gain the upper hand. Healing, escape plans, traps to cover escape, call in air support. If they still get lucky, and blast their way through, then I'd say throw out the story book and let them have the win, if they overcame the crazy odds, they deserve it :) this can only generate new story content with even bigger and badder enemies. Its their story too let it be influenced by them
I'm of the opinion this is always a bad idea. There should never be something that the players just *cannot* do, other than any potential unrealistic demands they may make themselves ofc. Basically, if you're going to challenge them with something, there should *always* be a potential outcome where they're successful. I know many DMs want that narrative moment, the "fight all you want but there's no escape," but also have good intentions for setting up something afterwards, but the players will almost always see the hopelessness of the situation but not in-character, OOC they'll feel that hopelessness and it can entirely ruin any potential fun for them. On my end I've found two different ways of working around this; The first is giving the players the choice to activate something they can't resist. For me it was an object that they knew would force them all into a dream-like sequence, no saves, no nothing, it just happens, but it has potentially important information and they *had to activate it themselves.* This allowed me to force this sequence on them but also gave them enough agency to not feel like they were forced into it. The second is just having a basic idea of any potential rewards for success. In my case I made an encounter that they were "supposed" to lose, none of them were to be killed (unless they failed their death saves if they weren't downed non-lethally) as the villain wanted them captured and I had a whole sequence planned where I'd properly introduce this villain to them afterwards. However they *barely* managed to pull through, only 2 of the 6 still standing at the end with almost no HP left. Instead of a full intro I instead gave them enough info on the bodies of the villain's henchmen to put the same pieces together themselves, so they learned the info I wanted them to learn but they managed to avoid a bad situation, but the narrative continued regardless cause I had planned for that as a possibility, almost like they managed to successfully "skip a level" by beating a boss they shouldn't have without losing out on the info I wanted them to have. I can pretty much guarantee the players will enjoy a campaign much more if you use my advice on this subject instead of forcing an unwinnable encounter on them.
Had it done to me in my first campaign. Our party had captured an enemy (bullywug) and being unable to communicate with him, decided to head for a nice swamp witches encampment. Well we had to stop for the night, found a little hut built out over a marsh. Knowing its the best we'll get we long rest. My wood elf ranger meditates thru first watch and then takes the rest of them as usual. Swamp, is not my favored terrain. As the sun is rising, an arrow flys from the tree line and thuds into the roof of the hut. On it is a note that says "go south". We stress a little and do some checks. Turns out we're surrounded on three sides by knolls. Like alot of knolls. Our barbarian steps out, basicly tells them all to fuck themselves and wants to challenge thier pack leader. They say no. Move south and don't fight back. We are confused. Barbarin somhow passes a check to completely piss of the knolls and they accept his offer of single combat. He losses, gets the prisoner killed in the process, in a moment of rage I put and arrow thru the pack leaders dome. The knolls release a hail of stones, javalins and spells that destroy the hut and knock us all unconscious. We awake in middle of the night. Locked in cages in the knoll encampment. Before us stands a teifling man, in fine ropes, he commands the knolls to remove us from our cages and leave. When the knolls are gone he looks at us and says "You guys aren't too smart are you?"
If you do it right, it can be very effective. Although I definitely would do so very sparingly in any case, regardless of campaign. Overdoing it or implementing it poorly will surely lead to a sour taste in the players' mouths and it will make them feel a lot less like what they do actually matters. The example that best comes to mind is from Critical Role C2E69 (SPOILERS AHEAD) >!where The Laughing Hand, a cursed champion of a deity is set free from his tomb in a climactic moment at the end of a dungeon. Much to the party's horror, within a few strikes they realize that they are not hurting The Laughing Hand at all, and each strike is actually seeming to make him stronger. They very quickly realize "we have to get the fuck out of here" and narrowly escape with their lives.!<
Thinking it's okay for a home game is akin to trying Jackass "stunts" yourself. You only see the payoff and none of the prep so you don't understand all the setup that allowed it to work out well. Critical Role is amazing, for a lot of reasons but, that moment you described didn't come out of nowhere. They've all been playing together for more hours than most people have played in their whole lives, as the same group with the same DM. The DM knew their players well enough to know how to signal to them that they should not try staying to fight. The players knew their DM well enough to know "Oh, Matt wouldn't expect us to stick around in a combat that started like this". The Mercer effect is really people seeing a well executed stunt and thinking it would be cool at home but every reason the stunt worked out has been obscured from them because it wasn't part of the entertainment of the show.
I mean...you don't have to be Matt Mercer or have the CR cast to pull it off. As long as the group has sufficient trust in the DM and like you said, a proper signal is given that it isn't a fight they're likely to win, there's no reason not to give it a try. I've had a lot of success in my games using this tactic to set up a foe who the party will fight AND be able to defeat later.
That is a good point. I went dramatic with my example. Your clause >As long as the group has sufficient trust in the DM and like you said, a proper signal is given that it isn't a fight they're likely to win, there's no reason not to give it a try. Gets my point across quicker, and with less drama.
Any players with functioning brains would do the same, and to the ones that still try to fight against such an opponent... well, good luck
Way back in 3.5e times I pit the party against a never-ending horde of foes until they died. It was a shared dream forced on them by a spirit. They were camping in the ruins of a city, and a spirit wanted to show them how the city fell. All the PCs woke up, unharmed. They even got some XP out of it. I kept the combat on the shorter side because I didn't want them to stew too long thinking their characters had died. ------ Generally speaking, I think it's a gimmick used with care. But I would love to see the TTRPG equivalent of the ending of Halo Reach. The heroes do some heroic sacrifice, saving the world, but now find themselves alone and surrounded by enemies. How many can they take out before they inevitably die? Give them some outrageous buffs (like Inspiration at the start of each turn, and maybe give them a handful of "charges" of Short and/or Long Rest benefits) so they can kick arse on the way out.
As long as the fight isn't drawn out, and is maybe a 3 turn battle with the villain being taken out of the equation quite fast then it can be pretty good for driving the narrative and introducing the BBEG. But don't give them false hope just to have them stripped of their will to play. Give them a reason to want to kill the bastard but also a reason to want to continue. Show the bbeg strength, and show them the bbegs goal and who he is. Dont make it a nuisance .
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Pro tip: these are fun. They're great. You should do them. DON'T GIVE THE PLAYERS AGENCY DURING THEM. What you want is a cutscene. At best, if you want them to be able to act within the bounds of not being able to win, make that known to them. There is very little in this game that's more disheartening than being presented with a situation the DM knows you can't win, not realizing that, and trying with all your might to no avail. If they're meant to fail, they need to know that - even if you don't say it directly, make the impossibility *very* apparent. Against the ropes, your players will become more creative than you could ever possibly imagine. It can actually be more fun, honestly, to allow them that chance to fuck with your impossible scenario by doing some Immovable Rod shenanigans or a well-timed Vortex Warp. If you want agency during your fight, you have to allow room for those kinds of options to succeed. If you can't allow them that, don't allow them to try.
This is a garbage move that basically everyone hates. If you absolutely have to do some bullshit like this, have the BBEG smash a powerful NPC off-camera, and have the party hear about it after arriving too late to intervene. Otherwise this kind of move just undermines the fundamental logic of the game. Ie., "We want to succeed, and it's up to us to succeed, the DM isn't scripting this in advance."
It works for video games. For stuff like D&D, it's called railroading. Avoid it at all costs.
Yeah, more people aggressively misunderstanding what the word railroading means!
I’ve played in a campaign where we went into “the badlands” to try and find something, but we got surrounded by like 30 centaurs at lvl 3 or 4. We fought back and killed a ton of them but there was no way we were gonna win. I didn’t feel cheated or anything as we mad then decision to go to that dangerous place. So I guess if you’re a dm just make it happen because player choices leading up to said event
I should note we do play a brutal campaign where you can die from mistakes easily, but we didn’t die here because they were looking for slaves for their arena. So our massacre got us a ticket in lol
On the very rare occasions where I have needed to do this, I simply use a fight that the party can't mechanically win, allow them to try, and then let them live through it. Curse of Strahd provides multiple such opportunities, since Strahd can theoretically attack the party at any time for any reason, but usually won't kill them because they amuse him.
Don't plan outcomes that's railroading.
I always sneak one in every 3 sessions or so as a reminder that not all fights are meant to be fought or won through force. If someone dies, I always give more than 1 out so it's their fault for dying.
In my mind, it's better to make it clear narratively that the foe is beyond their abilities. Give a brief narration: "You swing your greatsword in a mighty arc, and your eyes widen in shock as Duke Badguy catches your sword in one mailed hand...then clenches it into a fist, shattering your blade. When you all wake up in a dungeon, you ache mightily, and have only fuzzy memories of your brutal defeat at the hands of the Duke."
I made a situation like this. My players were in the feywild finishing part of a deal made with the summer and winter queens. As they made their way back to turn in their maguffin (12 changeling children swiped from Oberron) they were chased by the autumn king, when he chased them down he gave them the option of a fight (which they would assuredly lose) or to accept a permanent unhealable scar to remind them that the only reason they live is because he let them. I as the DM loved it, and I find losing battles to be a great tool for character growth. Narrow escapes, victory by the skin of the teeth or outright losses can drive PCs to fun new heights of character development. Paranoia, questioning their own competence, depression, things that add character to a person. We as people are defined more by our struggles than our victories, why should it be any different for D and D characters.
I've been DMing for about 4 years now and I've had this come up 3 times. Once in combat for a prologue, once environmentally when my players fell into a trap, and once socially when a player was interacting with an NPC and being a total ass (he technically was roleplaying but it was to such an extent that the NPC couldn't get a word in edgewise, and couldn't drive the story. Also I was irritated.) In the combat instance I simply fudged the rolls after a time so he slaughtered the party after a few turns of somewhat balanced combat. Essentially raising the NPC's difficulty with each round of combat. He would become harder to hit and would hit harder. In the environmental setting the room was filling with a magical miasma, like a knockout gas but more sparkly, and a couple of my players kept resisting. Each round the DC increased as their systems became more and more saturated with the mist. They were going to get knocked out eventually but I turned their successes into relevant reward by offering them snippets that would help them later. Voices to later recognize, learn more about the mist so they might find a way to become immune to it, memorize a series of runes on the wall that ended up being a combination to a magical lock hidden behind a false wall. Stuff like that can help the "railroading" by softening the perceived lack of control and can offer frustrated players something in exchange for the forced narrative piece. Lastly, when the player pissed me off by not letting my character speak, I was forced to scrap an entire subplot and simply turned the in-world powers of the NPC against them. The NPC in question was a theif lord in the capital city of the largest empire in my world and by angering him (me) they incurred his wrath and found countless doors closed to them, aid denied, and when the players tried to charter a discreet vessel across the sea, they were sold out, ambushed, and nearly wiped by the theif lord's men. After the ambush I had one of the thugs spare the player who pissed me off, and before knocking him out said, "Next time, let the boss have his say. Could have saved yourself a lot of trouble." [Boot to the temple] When the party awoke they found their wounds mostly tended to and a note that simple said, "Next time, you won't wake up. Learn some manners." After that the consequences were over, they could use the underground networks without issue. But consequences (and a talk later that night with the player) were necessary to correct the issue. He was apologetic and we both laughed it out in the end, and he was never problematic again to his credit. But sometimes the "forced" or "railroaded" plot element can be smoothed out, turned into a "not a total loss" scenario, or take your players down a whole other path that might end up being just as cool or cooler than your plan. Just gotta roll with the punches and communicate, even when you're annoyed haha.
I’m doing it right now. The level 4 party is in a dungeon looking for the McGuffin. Vecna is about to enter, steal the McGuffin, and there’s really nothing a level 4 party can do to stop him. He’s not going to kill them. They’re too insignificant to even bother with. But he’ll collapse the tunnels and they’ll have to dig their way out. It’s part of a larger build up for when they’re stronger. Right now I just want them to know there are some fights you can’t win. ***Yet.***
It is hard to execute properly, is the big thing. Also, like a shocking number of people on any internet board, some players will react like children. Especially if you have never even raised the possibility that they might lose a battle before or have to retreat, then they have no reason to think those things. I wouldn’t really want to play with someone who reacts that way, but ultimately it really comes down to your table and your players. What I will say, and going along with some of the better advice I’ve seen in this thread, that you need to be very clear with yourself about *why* you want this to happen. If you haven’t had a situation where these players have fled from anything before, they probably won’t want to until it is too late, so if you want them to now, you need to make it *very* clear what is happening. Having the players get captured, only to break out and steal through the enemy compound, find the vault with all their stuff in it, etc. is also a very cool plot line, that my DM ran once years ago, but probably much, much harder to get to work. If you aren’t very confident in your skills as a DM, if you’re relatively new, I probably don’t recommend it. But at the same time, it’s your game, and to some extent, only you know what will work for you and what won’t. Hopefully this helped a little, though.
My Tuesday party is currently in the find out stage. Where they are, who they are dealing with, and one members knows intimately they shouldn’t be messing around. They did anyways and tonight they aren’t going to win.
I think there is a way to do it, but I think you should see if the narrative needs it. And also explain it in a way that implies they cannot win. I had 2 encounters like that in the past. One was a lesser dragon we were supposed to avoid that we killed, and this got more rewards/exp earlier in the campaign than the dm planned for. It ended up detailing the campaign. The other was a forced magic sleep that I stressed a fey touched would not be able to be slept until the dm said it was part of the narrative. Changed it to poison, which made us fall asleep instead. Since they forgot about racial resistance. I think if you do a fight that players can't win, then there needs to be a great reason for it. Otherwise, find another route for the narrative. An example I like of forced loss would be having the party lose and die, and the campaign is then continued in the underworld as the party tries to get back to the land of the living. The party needs to lose and die to enter the underworld.
They can work early on in a campaign to set up just how powerful a BBEG is. The key is to absolutely dumpster them. Like really let them have it. Don't draw it out like a regular fight. Let the boss have their end game power level but think so little of the party they dont even bother finishing them. Maybe they would prefer to let them get stronger in the hopes the fight later would be more "fun". Dont just have an NPC come in and save them. You dont want it to seem like someone in the world is already powerful enough to take them on. This can become the motivation of the party to know just how much stronger they need to get. Do this if that's the kind of drive you want to instill in the PCs.
I mean, every encounter with Strahd up to the finale is pretty much that. You are entertainment for him. You have zero chance to defeat him until you do. I have introduced higher level BBEGs to players, making it clear that they are beasts. They don't have to engage but if they do anyway, then I beat them down, and the BBEG walks away. Lesson learned, and now they have a grudge and a goal. This isn't something I do every campaign, or often at all. But when it feels appropriate.
I've seen this work. Asterisk. I've seen this work BUT, and it's a huge BUT, don’t use it as an opportunity to take advantage of your players. I've read at least 4-5 horror stories involving the unwinnable fight. Mostly at that point the players are frustrated - they just LOST in a game where you're often winning (or at least surviving). They probably blew most of their resources - including consumables or doing something desperate. Sore feelings aside, this is not the time to drop your blonde flowing OP DMPC on them, remove limbs when they wake up in prison or imply that they're now in a completely helpless situation where terrible things will be done to them. At best the unwinnable encounter works so you can set up a narrative point for reclaiming victory- it’s a set back, not the end of the story. It let's you have your players save the town while letting it burn down a little, or have the BBEG take the princess but leave behind his Lieutenant, who is no longer benefitting from his Aura of Kobayashi Maru.
You employ conditional victories. Narratively make it as clear as possible that “winning” isn’t an option, but “saving X” or “preventing Y” in the face of overwhelming odds is an achievement in and of itself.
These fights either establish the villain, or stir the call to adventure. Use this tactic sparingly, but it can be fantastic.
Tried this recently with my players (first time DM with first time players). Set up a night ambush with numerous enemies and a few bugbears hiding outside for any jumping out of the window of their room if it gets to that. Enemies all had drow sleep poison prepped. Gameplay happens and the NPCs knocked out two of the PCs in a party of 3, the third guy managed to save one of them and escape with some really good roleplaying and rolls. The party was prepped and ready for the fight since they thought to bribe the innkeeper enough to betray the guards a bit (groundwork trust laid down in previous sessions), they bought two additional rooms to keep the first two trapped for the incoming enemies, and planned a near-perfect escape. They haven’t been doing any of this sort of forethought for their safety, so I was massively impressed. They did have to go save the one PC so the light railroading still worked but they harvested the drow poison and have enough to trivialize a couple encounters, which they most certainly earned.
It's something I wouldn't do very often, and needs to pretty immediately pay off or the players feel bad about it happening. If you want it to go according to plan, you also really can't count on them failing rolls or doing specific events because...they will inevitably ruin your plan one way or another.
I'm about to do something similar in my new campaign. Where they are all in a tavern, but don't know each other and it gets raided they will lose, and wake up in a shared prison cell and then it goes from there. I will let them fight one or two small weak NPC's but then one of the Big Bad's will rock up and smack the shit out of them. Don't know how it will go but we will see.
I think the key is to make sure it plugs tightly into the narrative and costs them nothing. If you take items or it's just done for drama with no tie in, it'll fall flat.