Campaign design: handling failure

Inspired by discussion about the article "Make it BIG!", written by Chris Perkins and hosted by Wizards of the Coast at http://wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4dmxp/20130307

E:
"An interesting read! I think that is what I am missing right now in what I am working on is anything particularly "big", as I've mostly stuck with usual fantasy world tropes. Still, it's a bit harder to think big when you're planning for first level characters. I'll have to think more about this...."

Me:
Yeah, the "big" comes later. It's good to design carefully for the first 4-5 levels as the characters are fairly fragile and don't have many resources. Up to 10th, still somewhat limited. After 10th, take off the kid gloves. Pull out the really big stuff, let the party figure out the rest. If the wizard doesn't have teleport on a scroll to get out of a tight spot, it's their fault.

OH, one secret of campaign/game design that you don't see often: Always have a plan. Figure the party is either going to succeed, OR fail. Plan for both. Sure, you hope they succeed, and you design your main threads around the presumption of success. But what if they don't succeed? 

The secret is to have a general idea of what happens if they fail a quest. Not necessarily a detailed plan, as failures can be very unpredictable, but simply consider a general idea of where events may lead. Once in a while you can use a deus-ex-machina rescue as the cavalry charges in to save the PCs, but try to avoid overuse. The players should deal with the consequences of failure. PCs with a safety net are generally not as fun for the players. Some examples:

• A simple "The End". Roll up a new group of characters to begin anew, or continue where you left off.
• A Feaste of the Beastes, possibly with a Pirates-of-the-Carribean-esque escape before dinner.
• Negotiations for the party's release, conducted by an interested NPC (especially the one for whom they are performing a quest).
• A round of Raise Deads or Resurrections for everyone after they don't communicate with their home temple after a year (hopefully this was pre-arranged by the party). This could tie in with the loss of their main gear-- possibly spurring a quest to get their gear back from the hands of the NPCs that are now ravaging the wildlands with powerful new magicks...
• Failure need not involve the deaths of PCs; if they were trying to prevent the Mad Baroness' flight from town, well, now the Mad Baroness now roams free to the frustration of the party. I'm sure they'll encounter her in the future...

Eric Weberg

D&D Next & Past: History of targets knowing about spells

During a game of D&D Next, the question came up of what a spell's target knows about spells cast upon them. This is not a new question to D&D, and given the nature of D&D Next to admix the previous editions, I wanted to detail some subjective history as I can best recall.

I forget whether it was 3ED or 4ED that clarified that targets are aware of spells cast upon them, who cast the spell, and what the spell was. For SURE within 4ED, 3ED I'm not positive offhand, but I think it was first addressed in mid-3ED in a Sage Advice column. 2ED and 1ED and BECMI had no such clarification, so it was done by house rules. And as you can imagine, it did come up in most games eventually.

This is most troublesome when it's A) not obvious who's casting the spell, for example a silenced and stilled spell or an invisible caster. B) a spell with no noticeable effects upon a successful save, particularly charms and holds, especially when the party is trying to be sneaky. (e.g. Can you re-cast a failed charm on the guard at the door? When the spell wears off, does the guard realize she was charmed or does she simply remember being unusually happy to see you?)

What were popular table rules in the older versions?
1. Since it's quite possible for a target to simply not know about a caster being there at all, most tables ruled that the target does not automatically know who cast the spell that they're saving against.

2. To the question of whether targets notice spells that have no noticeable effect upon failure, there's more variation. If the save was made by a significant margin, or the target made a subsequent ability-based check, they could notice something. Other tables simply had nothing happen; like the spell fizzled.

3. The aspect that probably continues to generate the most debate is whether targets can identify the failed spell. Obviously, non-magic-focused characters are not even going to know the names of most of the spells available to high-level casters. Even if the target saw a spell name printed in bold letters they wouldn't know its effects, even more so in campaigns in which casters create their own custom spells. So it follows that the target wouldn't possibly automatically know what the spell was named. What the effects are, that's a different story.

I think it was 3rd edition that allowed a Spellcraft check to identify a spell- but even that is a little loose, because technically you identify the spell by watching it being cast, not by being the target. Regardless, that's pretty much the way it worked in most of the tables I played. You could use whatever the magical skill of the edition was to identify the spell.  If you had a high skill because you were that class or similar, well, yeah, you'd almost always identify any spell. This was generally based on spell level, so say, 2nd level spell Hold Person might have a particular feel to it that a 5th-level prison guard has probably felt a few times so it makes sense they'd maybe identify it, but 8th level spell Maze? What's that? So as a table rule, you might use the spell level versus target's character level to set a difficulty to determine what the spell effects would have been, or perhaps simply the magic school. (Enchantment/Charm, Evocation, Necromancy, Illusion, etc.)

A search for rules covering this question in D&D Next turned up no official rule as of yet.

Eric Weberg