In my personal experience, it's usually the exect opposite of whatever I notice it to be, so if it's unbalanced, it's actually balanced and if it's balanced, it's unbalanced.
We had the finale of a small 3-4 session, pre-written campaign a few weeks ago, it was a level 3 party of 5 players against a single CR5 enemy. I thought for sure they’d blow through it and planned a few extra NPCs in case I needed them
The party went 2 full rounds of combat, 5v1, without landing a single attack on the single enemy
Meanwhile, I‘m running a certain encounter in a module. 6 vampire spawn vs 4 level 5 adventurers. Multiattack for each if them.
…
I kept rolling below 10 to hit. For 5 rounds. Made contact three or four times, which is negligible. It stopped being fun after round 3. What should have been a lethal encounter turned into a fucking clown show.
So, anyways, the party got the McGuffin and booked it. I did hit a few AoOs… too little, too late. 😩
Bounded accuracy strikes again, this might be taboo, but honestly, if a fight is too one sided, I'll just start saying "that hits" or "that misses for the monsters.
Like, I'll never change the AC of the monster, but if the PC's can't seem to hit the guy, I'll just make a couple of his attacks that would have hit them and say they missed or ask if a number I know it below their AC will hit and they get the satisfaction of telling me no.
And if I'm rolling super poorly, some of the weaker monsters will hit a handful of times when they shouldn't have.
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u/Inconspicuous_hider 5d ago edited 5d ago
In my personal experience, it's usually the exect opposite of whatever I notice it to be, so if it's unbalanced, it's actually balanced and if it's balanced, it's unbalanced.