[GENERAL] Community Chat 2: The Chattening
Again, think of it as an action movie.
We remember John Wick vs Francis, because John Wick lets Francis off the hook and Francis unplugs his ear piece and walks away. We remember John Wick vs Common's character because it was -the one- challenge he had at that particular point. The easy needs to be mixed in with the hard. It makes the hard more memorable. Just like too many easy encounters and lack of challenges is boring. It's also boring when you can't get a reprieve from almost having to make a new character every encounter. Granted. Players are different. Some players have entire notebooks full of characters they can whip out. Dying is just a thing because it's just a game. Replace the character and move on. On the other hand, sometimes players get attached to their characters and are not interested in them dying off.
I just wrapped up playing in a Cyberpunk Red game on Foundry. I made it all the way to the second to last session without suffering any damage. It wasn't because I completely avoided conflict. I literally kept putting myself in danger for our other members. It just so happens that I did things like use the map's terrain. I made cover a thing. I played defensively when needed. I used other options available to me. I occasionally suppressed foes so they couldn't get good shots. I used tear gas grenades and flashbangs. After about the 5th or 6th session, I had realized I was on a streak. Then it became a thing! Then it turned into a goal for me as a player. "How do I get out of this situation without getting hurt?" If you've played Cyberpunk, you know things can 1-shot you. Trauma Teams and the like are real because TPK is extremely common. In a lot of games, the GM has to go out of their way to TPK. In Cyberpunk it can happen over a couple of crap rolls. When I finally did take damage (stupid toxic grenade), it was a pretty big deal (at least for me and the GM) IC, and it sparked my character going a bit psycho on the gonk that did it.
Anyway. Thing to remember is, when you look at encounters and what you should be throwing at your players, the assumption is that the party is at full health, has all their resources available, and is under no pressure from outside forces such as weather or time. Things can be challenging without having to assign a crazy high DC or particularly high level. Stick a bunch of archers behind cover, in an elevated position, at night, and make the PCs have to cross a 6" deep puddle of water in order to cross the field to get to them. They know a wizard that can cast, I dunno, Fireball is in the group so they are spaced out far enough so that a single spell can't 1-shot them all. The difficulty of the encounter isn't the combat itself (not especially). It is that they have to not bust their face crossing the field. Then they have to get up to the archers. And there just happens to be a caster on their side with an electrical spell or too prepared specifically for when one or two of the characters remains in the puddle.
You are, as the DM, fully within your rights to assign various penalties to the PCs for attacking. That whole cover thing makes ranged attacks a bit less effective too.
You are, as the DM, fully within your rights to assign the archers advantages to attack because they are in an elevated position.
You are, as the DM, fully within your rights to assign the caster bonuses to damage or even the characters penalties to their saves (and even deny something like Evasion) for being in water when an electrical spell goes off.
Sure. The rules don't explicitly say you can do that. They don't necessarily have rules for these things written down somewhere. On the other hand, the rules kind of do say you can do that. You're the DM. You can do what you want. Naturally, it works best when you apply logic to it and let the players know why you're doing it instead of just springing it on them after the fact. Most of the time, players will be cool with that sort of thing.