The Nature GM

It is the fate of a game master that, on occasion, you plan an encounter which in your head will be immersive and dramatic, requiring the player characters to fight desperately for their lives. And then when it is played out, it is over in twenty minutes and the players spend the entire time making lighthearted banter.

Here are two encounters from my table that were particularly disappointing. May you learn from my errors.

Killer Scarecrow

Through narrative drama I set up a spooky scenario where something was killing livestock on a farm. The players went to investigate at night, and they figured out that the perpetrator was a haunted scarecrow. I told them there were multiple scarecrows in the field of crops, and they would have to figure out which one was haunted. They asked me what type of crops were in the field. We were playing on a tropical island, so I said watermelons. They said, well, watermelons are short, and we have darkvision, so can we see across the whole field?

[…my dumbfounded silence…]

Next time I will say sugar cane. Or corn. I had slightly modified the 5e scarecrow to be better at hiding and surprising enemies, but it only worked if it could conceal itself in tall crops. Obviously this did not work in a field of watermelons, and the characters quickly destroyed my ‘horror’ monster.

The scarecrow was a flop because it was not in a strategic environment. This is a reminder that predators hunt in the landscape in which they hold the advantage.

Ambushing Sea Hags

Other monster failures have been due to the monsters not dealing enough damage.

In one campaign the characters travelled to the Isle of Babes, from which no sailors ever returned. Upon arrival the characters encountered three beautiful mermaids, which they assumed were sirens but were in fact a sea hag coven. I have detailed notes of the sea hag strategy and how they would frighten the characters and pick them off with their coven spells, with about 4-5 rounds of strategy planned out.

In my notes I marked down that the sea hags used 1 of their 15 communal spell slots before they were slaughtered by my players. They did not live to see the third round of combat.

I propose that Death Glare is a bad feature and a waste of an entire action; DC 11 is simply too low for a Wisdom save. Yes, the consequence of being instantly at 0 HP is dire, but the odds of it happening to a player character are so low as to be negligible.

The one spell the sea hags had a chance to use was Polymorph, in which they turned a character into a fish. That was funny enough that it almost redeemed the encounter.

The sea hag encounter was disappointing because too many features relied on the characters failing a saving throw. I have had the same problem with poison-based damage where the bulk of damage was gated behind a Constitution saving throw; if a character made the save, then they were dealt almost no damage. For saving throws to be effective in monster encounters, the consequence must be significant even if the target character succeeds the save.

This is a reminder that predators only go after prey they can realistically overcome.

In a later post, I will cover examples of monsters effectively using the landscape to their advantage. Until then—remember, O Game Masters, whose side of the combat you are on.