Greetings gamers from all systems, places and timelines!
How challenging your campaign should be is one of those questions, like alignment, where if you asked ten seasoned DMs, you can expect to get ten entirely different answers. Odds are the players at your table will have vastly different gaming backgrounds and expectations. This can be tricky to balance between the player who really doesn’t understand the rules fully but wants to hang out and have a good time with their friends and the player who’s been gaming for twenty years and thinks Elden Ring isn’t difficult enough.
The obvious solution is just to make sure everyone has fun. But this is easier said than done when your players are looking for different levels of challenges to enjoy themselves. This is why we put together a list of four methods that will help you keep your game challenging without leaving anyone behind.
1. How Easy is the Path, and Where is it ?
When people talk of difficulty in a campaign, the thoughts often go to gauging random encounters or boss battles. However, one aspect to the difficulty of a game can be how clear or unclear the path forward is. While this can pertain to a single character’s goal, it can also require the party to collectively problem solve to discover where they need to go to advance the story.
Case in point, one of the most difficult campaigns I’ve ever played in, we spent an entire session literally trying to discover where to start looking so that we could accomplish our goal. In this game, we were searching for a lost artifact in the desert and our only lead had been missing for ten years… ah, good times. And while everyone hates railroading the players, my character would have paid just about anything to buy a train ticket. So, if your party is just breezing through everything at all of the checkpoints in their missions, consider that they can only get to point B if they know where and what that actually is.
2. Player vs Character Abilities
If you block the party’s path with a monster which also has a stat block, odds are they will shoot it. But what if what blocks the group’s path is a door which is sealed by a magical ward and could only be opened by solving some form of puzzle? This is now an entirely different situation as the party has to deal with a mini game you have created (although, you need to be able to read the room, because my current group absolutely loathes riddles.) And I get it, because if you’re playing a character with a 19 intelligence, you are expecting to have a vast advantage with problem solving. Because as much as we appreciate the realism of the game, I likewise appreciate that no DM ever asked me to deadlift anything to accomplish an Athletics check.
With this said someone’s high mental stats or related skills should allow the character some related checks to gain hints in solving the puzzle. Or when trying to determine if it has been solved correctly before giving the group’s final answer. The goal for this will be to do something both challenging and different without making this mini game too difficult. Like the time, I had the party in our Journey to Ragnarok campaign decode a phrase which was written in Nordic letters, which were out of order. Just have a mechanic ready if they can’t solve the riddle/ puzzle or leave an opportunity for them to come back to it later.
3. Not All Problems Should be Solvable by Rolling Initiative
One campaign back in the day involved gathering allies for an alliance for a massive end all sort of show down with the forces of darkness. Ironically, not too much unlike how it was handled in Dragon Age, for all of you were lucky enough to play this amazing game, but I digress. This was handled by traveling to different domains within an overarching kingdom, and in some cases they leaders could be persuaded, bribed or negotiated with to seal the deal. While at other times, the players had to address the politics of a kingdom which had no ruler, and make both short and long term decisions which ultimately would shape the landscape of the kingdom in the years to come if it survived.
This was a puzzle of sorts which accomplished two things: 1) it tested the players’ understanding of the landscape while, 2) allowing them to make decisions which would allow them to win the upcoming war AND have a kingdom which was worth living in afterwards. This was naturally very open ended and really gave the players as much agency as they could possibly want, unless they said the hell with the BBEG and packed up their things and left the kingdom for good.
Just consider this style of game is best suited for more experienced players. As newer ones may find all of these details overwhelming, and find themselves wishing they could just explore an abandoned copper mine which has been overtaken by a tribe of goblins.
4. Don’t be Afraid to Adjust the Dial as Needed
We all know that the CR system in 5e has issues, so it is not surprising when someone says that a battle was either too easy or too difficult. But after being on both sides of the DM screen on this one, the players should always be challenged or at least have a reasonable level of threat in every battle. Some of which will be blow outs in favor of the party and that’s ok. However, as much as I personally enjoy tactics and creative thinking and the interesting use of spells and abilities during a battle, not every battle should leave us all at five hit points and gasping for air.
This is one of the most difficult balances for a DM to maintain because, if every battle is easy then, they will just be phoning their actions in. However, battles shouldn’t be so tight that if the dice get slightly colder than room temperature, that the group could be staring at the business end of a TPK (even if the DM is incredibly nice and just captures the party instead.)
So if your group is taking a beating then maybe don’t bring in that next round of reinforcements. Or, likewise, if the boss is getting absolutely trashed, then add some hit points and make the party work for that satisfying victory. Just read the room to the best of your ability on how much the party is being challenged and adjust before and during the encounters as needed.
Final Thoughts
If a game is either too difficult or not challenging enough, ultimately your players will become disenchanted. Keep your battles ranging in difficulty so they both appreciate the easy win as well as savor the difficult victory over boss level threats. Just adjust the difficulty in all the challenges which you present, as needed, on a session or even battle to battle basis. Then keep presenting different scenarios which require the characters to solve problems with more than just rolling skill checks and hacking their opponents to pieces.
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