Balance can be the trickiest thing to strike in any RPG campaign. On the one hand, the DM is running monsters and villains who are literally plotting the PC’s destruction. If their plans aren’t good or their combat abilities aren’t challenging, like DM Tony says, it’s like playing the game on baby mode. A game that’s not challenging is unrewarding. On the other, a game that gets too hard can frustrate your players right out of wanting to play it. So where is the balance? How hard is too hard for your style of game and your players?

In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave go deep on what makes things hard. They talk frankly about their own troubles keeping things balanced and times their players were just about ready to turn their vorpal blades on the DM and mutiny. Along the way, we get into the difference between difficult “hard” and time-consuming “hard” (both of which can derail a game), why it’s never just about numbers, and the one thing that really tells you if your encounters have gotten too hard.

2:00 Is it too hard or too long?

11:00 Managing time and difficulty for large groups (7+ players) – should there be less combat?

15:00 How D&D 5E makes this harder by favoring multimonster fights

21:00 How hard is too hard? Learning from our COS Strahd fight and super-powered Santas

29:00 When is a more powerful big bad hounding the players too much?

36:00 Fights that’ve been too hard: When NPCs and homebrew goes wrong

45:00 How players may read hard encounters

56:00 When players get frustrated … and is that a reasonable way to judge your game?

65:00 How much can you frustrate your players before they don’t want to play?

69:00 Why the book Strahd isn’t a fun fight, even if he is technically balanced and challenging

75:00 No number can tell you how hard is too hard, but your players will

81:00 Final thoughts