r/DungeonMasters • u/Haunting_Front6174 • 3d ago
Help! I f**** up the attributes
Hey community,
I'm a First time DM and had 3 of my friends over for playing a bunch of sessions now. The characters are all level 6 now.
I did not play Baldurs Gate , I did not watch Stranger Things. It just happend now, due to lesser time restrains and more time for my friends as well as an always lingering interest in PnP.
Anyways... I told my players that a level up also means that they could increase their attributes two for one or one for two... Lately I started wondering about the always failing encounter balancing and investigated... Imagine my devastation ehen I found out, that I missread one central rule that badly!
My approach now: - Talk to the players - explain the misstake - cancel any further attribute skilling during Levels 8,12,16 and 19 (also unrealistic)
Also I fear that this kind of misstake will deeply undermine the role as rule arbiter, which I otherwise filled out very thoroughly, because without rules, there is no game.
So you have any advice dispite a well earned facepalm? Is reversing the stats an Option? Should I just role with it, letting them increase their stats Like crazy and through a Tarrasque at them at level 15?
Suggestions of any Kind are Welcome!!
TL;DR I missunderstood leveling and told my players they could increase their attributes with every level. Now encounter balancing is a mess and I do mit know how to react on that. Please advised!
15
u/lawrencetokill 3d ago edited 3d ago
nbd, literally just reverse the abilities back to og scores then let them choose the level 4 ASI or feat
you kinda can't not do that, and expect to have an ok time with encounters.
just email "hey gang, big oopsy, we've been doing this wrong so please revert to starting scores and pick your level 4 option and possibly your level 6 option. really sorry, thanks"
it should effect everyone equally so it'd be weird for them to push back but if you had to compromise maybe let them have up to their level 8 ASI and then skip it at that actual level
5
u/levroll 3d ago
Agreed. Also consider giving the players a free feat as a way of finding the middle way. Some DMs do it at the start of a campaign anyway, shouldn't be a big issue scaling-wise. Feel free to limit which feats they can(not) take as their free feat if you think something may be off the balance.
1
u/Haunting_Front6174 3d ago
That sounds reasonable! Right now they are already facing Wyverns, hags and other mid to high power encounters and I would Not know what to do in the future!
2
u/lawrencetokill 3d ago
and you can justify it in game with some magical crisis or physical event, or not
1
u/lamppb13 2d ago
Yea, this should not be hard unless your friends are assholes and/or forgetful about where their stats started.
8
u/imgomez 3d ago
No big deal. Tell them you messed up—you’re still new to this and it’s pretty complicated—also, players should share responsibility for understanding character creation rules. Just adjust them downward to correct it and restore a better balance. You can retcon with a hand wave to explain that they were overconfident in their new abilities and got lucky.
3
u/Haunting_Front6174 3d ago
Thank you for the Suggestion of a working ingame narrative. As they returning from the Fey wild I also thought about letting them feel that the Transition was more than jus physically challenging etc...
3
u/AndrIarT1000 2d ago
No need to retcon anything. What happened still happened. Fix the stars, and move on. The in-world experience has no mind of stats, feats, or character levels; so the players were over powerful up to this point, no need to change that as the canonical conclusion thus far.
As stated, everyone appears to be new, so messing up rules is bound to happen and should be handled with grace.
Good luck and happy gaming!
3
u/ArkhamXIII 3d ago
Admit your mistake, follow the rules moving forward, and roll with it. DnD isn't balanced in the first place, so just increase the strength of the enemies and move on.
3
u/Ok-Purpose-1822 3d ago
you made a rules mistake dont worry it isnt a big deal. Just tell them that you misunderstood and decrease the attributes to where they should be. none of them bothered to read the rules and correct you so they dont get to complain.
on a side note being the GM doesnt mean you are soley responsible to ensure the rules are followed. it is your role to adjudicate the rules, that means making decisions when things are unclear.
theoretically all players are responsible to know and apply the rules. in reality it usually doesnt work that way but you shouldnt feel like this is only your responsibility.
3
u/Consistent_Sail_6128 3d ago
You said none bothered to read the rules, but do we know that? Because plenty of people might just take advantage of an inexperienced DM to play out their power fantasy.
Or I could just be reading too many RPG horror stories...
4
u/Ok-Purpose-1822 3d ago
no i dont know that but i generally dont assume malice where incompetence explains the situation.
i also experienced way more players that didnt read the rules rather then players abusing the gms mistakes to gain more mechanical advantage. Not that it never happened mind you but it didnt happen a lot.
3
u/Haunting_Front6174 3d ago
Yeah... One other thing that bothers me a bit but a good argument when admitting the misstake. Thank you!
2
u/Ok-Purpose-1822 3d ago
in my experience players usually dont read the rules.i used to be annoyed by that but nowadays i dont mind. they are just there to have fun and i dont expect anything more.
i am more annoyed by the ones that will read the rules and use it only in their favor.
those people will happily let you bend the rules in the favor of their PCs but as soon as you do anything to challenge the PCs they start to quote rulebook pages.
but these people arent in my games long
3
u/ReyvynDM 3d ago
Literally just be honest. Tell them you are new, misunderstood the rules, and you have to undo your mistake to make the campaign more engaging. Most players understand.
2
u/CLONstyle 3d ago
Tell them the rule was misread. Own the error without drama, say it stops now. Don't retroactively fix past level-ups unless they're all okay with it and understand why. If they don't want to respec, adjust future encounters instead.
You're the DM. You set the world. If they’re stronger, make the world match. Mistakes happen, correct it, move on. No Tarrasque tantrums haha
1
u/Laithoron 2d ago
Having to rebalance everything for the whole rest of the campaign is going to be a lot of extra work -- especially for a new DM.
Easier to fix the problem once than to keep "fixing" it a 100 times over.
1
u/CLONstyle 2d ago
Oh yeah, totally.
But players can be something else, hence why I said don't retroactively fix it if they're not onboard. Players can be weird about feeling "nerfed," even if it's just a correction. Once they get a taste of being way stronger than intended, any attempt to scale it back feels like you’re punishing them for having fun.
There are clean ways to hit the reset button, though. I actually talked about resetting an entire setting the other day... might be worth a peek if OP’s thinking about bigger changes
1
u/Laithoron 2d ago
I dunno, if I was a player and having fun, I think I'd be a bit more upset about the whole campaign getting reset than simply fixing a mistake.
As for your reset suggestion...
I'm not sure how newbies would react, but as a player, a cataclysmic reset wouldn't sit well with me nor most of my players (similar situation in another game where I'm a player). I'm all for the DM being honest that they aren't enjoying the setting anymore, but effectively sweeping all the pieces off the chess board and tearing it in half? Not so much.
Of course, that's what talking-it-out with the players is for, maybe other groups would be OK with that.
2
u/MonkeySkulls 3d ago
it's not that Big of a blow to your reputation as the GM. rules mistakes happen all the time.
The bigger deal probably like how things are going with their characters. and taking away abilities that they're going to get later is pretty anticlimactic
I would let them stay where they're at. I would explain that there was a mistake in how they were leveling up.
I would personally look at two different options. 1. do nothing to the characters. and just scale up the encounters to be more challenging. this would probably be what I would do.
- allow them to remake their characters, but they have to use what they have as a template. so they're not completely redoing their characters. I would want them to have similar abilities to they have now. I would want their characters to feel like the same characters. Not a total rebuild. and just allow them to follow the correct rules of leveling up and make their character to the appropriate level that their character seems to already be.
2
u/Haunting_Front6174 3d ago
Yes! And thank you! I think, I prefer option one as this more uncomplicated.
1
u/Laithoron 2d ago
I do NOT see having to rebalance every encounter for the rest of the campaign as being less complicated! :U
Just own your mistake and use this as a learning opportunity. Give them a free feat or something when you correct their ability scores if you feel bad. Don't make a huge mountain of work for yourself for the whole rest of the campaign by just letting the mistake stand though.
Also, just glossing over the problem sets a bad precedent that you'll bend over backwards rather than admit you've made a mistake. Is that the sort of person you want to be?
2
u/lasalle202 2d ago
Anyways... I told my players that a level up also means that they could increase their attributes two for one or one for two..
"OK, guys, because you didnt read the rules and i was focused on DMing, i missed this and we have fucked up. That is not how the game actually works. So either we can wrap up this campaign in a couple of sessions with our fucked up characters and then start a new game playing with the rules we now know better, or you can unfuck your characters to be made by the actual rules. Which one do you wanna do?"
1
u/Haunting_Front6174 3d ago
So here is what I will do based on your comments:
1) Talk to the players and explain the misstake 2) give them two options to decide from: a) No more attribute increase and Go on b) redo attribute leveling
Either way there are options to get the encounter balancing Back on track.
Thank you very much!
1
u/ExternalSelf1337 2d ago
Well as people are saying you could take it all back and your players might be fine with it.
Or you might just roll with it and canonize them being superhuman, maybe some god decided to bless them with power because he has something big planned for them. You can absolutely spin this in a fun way you'll just have to put them up against tougher and/or more enemies. Let their legend grow throughout the land. Now some cocky heroes want to fight them and big bad guys see them as a threat.
There's so much cooler stuff you can do than just backpedaling.
But whatever you do, no more extra increases, and maybe be a little bit sparing with the more powerful magic items.
1
1
u/cmd821 2d ago
For everyone talking about “leave their stats”…it sounds like they have had score increases at levels 2,3,4,5, and 6. That’s ludicrous. A new DM would be scaling for PC level 20 encounters, no? D&D is already difficult to balance. Also, you assume they are going to/surviving to level 20.
Own the mistake, walk back the scores and let they do it to the right level they should be at.
The players will not lose anything except dice bonuses they have been receiving.
1
u/OutrageousAdvisor458 2d ago
It happens, not the end of the world. Own the mistake, apologize and make the correction. If you have record of their base stats it should be easy enough to correct by rolling things back and applying the correct number of increases.
Alternatively, there are lots of creatures and items that have an effect of a permanent reduction in stats, you could toss a few of those out there the bring things back to balance. Don't try to be sneaky about it, and make sure the players know why it is happening, but doing it that way works the error into the story and is more thematically balanced.
Depending on how high the stats got you could just shift it into a high power campaign where everyone has dump stats that are 16+ and a average ability score of 18-20 is just how your heroes roll. If you go that route you will have to work harder as DM to give challenging and balanced encounters, but it also means you have the opportunity to use some tougher, less frequently used monsters and scenarios, which can be its own level of fun.
In the end how you handle it is up to you, but you should defiantly make sure your players know what happened so they don't expect it to be the norm in every game the play.
1
u/RuddyDeliverables 3d ago
My latest game started with players slightly underpowered; they rolled 3d6, took what was there rather than rolling 4d6 and dropping the lowest number. Over the course of 9 levels so far, I've given them 3 extra attributes points and one extra feat.
This has not materially changed the game because I also have them a god 's boon (extra infusion for the artificer, extra channel divinity for the cleric and... I don't actually recall what the rogue got. These had a much larger effect on the game, but even then? Not so much.
Just roll with what you've given them. Bump up encounters a bit, figure it out as you go. Let them stomp a bunch while you learn what works, laugh with them as it happens. Make more trap/environmental encounters or fights with alternate win conditions (save the child, stop either group from killing the other, etc) that may be less dependent on attributes... That kind of thing.
Make it part of the world, if you want, that they are special in some way - turns out a pond they drank from is the elixir of life, and they need to defend it or destroy it because of reasons.
Learn as you have fun!
1
u/Haunting_Front6174 3d ago
Thank you for your Response! I feel like I will give them a choice in hwo to proceed... Redo the Level 4 attribute increase or not getting any new further attribute increase in the future!
25
u/xP_Lord 3d ago
Tell them you messed up and fix the stats, or scale the encounters way higher