All very good advice! I think I have two issues that I can immediately fix:
- I’m making encounters too difficult, especially with using high numbers. I appreciate the suggestion to think of ways to make encounters interesting/difficult other than just increasing numbers. I also sometimes forget that players have fun just beating the crap out of easy enemies ( as long as that’s not all the time).
- We’re currently using the alternative bane resist mechanic - mostly because we found it made more narrative sense. But sometimes a well placed bane can take a player out for way too many rounds - which just isn’t fun.
- I also like the idea of just lowering the defenses of enemies. I’ve been using the simple NPC generator, and definitely find the defenses to be a bit high sometimes.
I’ll implement these and see how the complaints go from there! Thanks so much for your useful responses and great suggestions.