I forgot to mention the biggest thing, it is not the GM vs the players.
MDC
<siiiiigh> You are so right. If only some GM's would remember that more frequently. I will admit, I've fallen victim to that poor GMing mindset myself. I've gotten frustrated at the players for killing MY creatures. Poor form on my part.
I do try to set up an outline of the story and make the difficulty story driven. Yes, if the party wants to track/hunt/fight a dragon... then that is their folly. If the party goes off script and wants to start a brawl with the town guard, then so be it. The story I have set up is an open outline because more often than not, the players go off on a tangent I never expected and I have to throw some things together on the fly. That won't change the difficulty of the story based enemies. If they pissed off the assassin's guild and an assassin is now tracking them and there is now a bounty on their head because they pissed off a nobleman and the town guard wants to hang them, then shame on them! The Story based creatures don't care and are still going to be the same level.
There were so many great points brought up in so many of these replies that it just isn't feasible for me to quote each person who said it. Please note that these bits of info are not all my own but taken from the previous posts in this thread.
- the singular most important has to be that it is not
GM vs. players. The goal is to have fun and to let the players work through an adventure, not just breeze through it, but sometimes TPKs happen naturally
- there can always be some more orcs coming around the corner if the party just blew through the initial group
- there can always be the spy/assassin/thief/rogue leader who was hiding undetected in the shadows waiting for the party to be weakened before making his presence known
- the players are their own worst enemy at times. Give them many options to get sidetracked and to run into trouble, then let them continue the main quest battered, bruised, and bleeding
- the party almost always has the option to "talk, walk, or fight"
- tactics is superior to strength
- number of creatures is more challenging than a larger one. More creatures = more attacks = more chances to roll a crit that kills a party member. 5 level 1 players vs. 1 level 5 orc. My money is on the players. Unless you go overboard and put them against a Mature Nether Drake
- parry, parry, parry. Wait... that falls under "tactics"
As my own rule of thumb, the story has set levels of creatures based on player HP, OB, magic items, skill of PC. If one player has Orc Slaying Sword of Pain, you can bet your last gold piece I am not sending Orcs against them. The party should be able to handle the quest with challenge, maybe even with difficulty. I have had a 1st round death crit that completely ended the quest 20 minutes into the session. On the fly, I had to throw in something to extend the session past 20 minutes. That ad lib addition to the quest made the session last longer and developed into a well played out campaign and the story line worked. That isn't the same as "adding" more creatures to the story because the GM feels like pounding on the PCs for a while.
The beauty and caveat of being the GM is that it is YOUR world and only you know what is around the corner in the next room, or what level they are. If the party is struggling, lower the HP of the NPCs, lower their OB, lower their DB. Let them live a little before you kill them off! Muwahahahahaha