Encounter Design

[Anterean]

Meh. I just use it as an example why you shouldn't go just by CR when designing encounters.



But generally CR is something to be ignored by anyone who knows anything about encounter designing, so meh.

Now I am not going to contest these statements in any way, but how would I, or any other relatively inexperienced game master go about this then ?

[RebelRogue]

Experiment and pray... If you're really eager, you can play out a given encounter a few times vs. a copy of your gaming group to gauge how challenging it is. Soon you will get a grasp of what works and what does not. Some CR are way off, but most are not that horribly wrong. Most of the worst offenders you can probably find by doing a forum search.

In short: fear not. Start out on the safe side by using relatively easy encounters and turn up the heat from there - you will get the hang of it pretty quickly.

[BeholderSlayer]

I would say "gain experience," but I doubt that'd be taken as constructive. The CR system is usually "close enough" that it can be used (not in all cases...don't use things from the MMII).

But for the inexperienced game master, you really need to take a look at a monster's stat block and special abilities. Things to note are attack, damage, Su's and spell like abilities (but everything is important in a way). Then, think critically about the abilities of your PC's. Can they do things that trivialize the abilities a monster has? Do they lack any way of dealing with a monster? In each case you need to raise and lower the CR, respectively. It makes encounter building take longer, but it will be more accurate.

[Psyx]

Balancing an encounter is something that comes with experience. You get a feel for what a party can and can't handle.

Although generally, if the entire monster's attacks for the round all hit and do more damage than the party has HP if they do, then it's probably a TPK waiting to happen! If the monster's AOE attack -even if saved against- does more damage than anyone has HP, then it's probably going to rack up a bodycount, too.

All that said: As an inexperienced GM, you should always aim low.
An encounter that's too easy is still more enjoyable for the players than one that leaves half of them dead. If an encounter is too easy then the worst that can happen is that the parry get to flex their muscles and polish their egos by wiping the floor with it. The worst that can happen if it's too hard is that everyone spends 4 hours generating new characters.

You can 'screw up' as many times as you like by making things too easy. You only get to screw up once if you make it too hard.

[Myth]

Depends on your party and players. Are they good at optimizing? Do they know how to best utilize their resources?

A party with a fighter a monk and a healbot cleric can be TPKed by a Frenzied Berzerker 2 levels higher then them with almost no optimization just by going slugfest with his improved PA and great CON score.

A party with lots of Tier1 or 1+ characters who use scry-and-die tactics and are the equivalent of the DnD special forces, who know every trick, have plans, contingencies, and use their wbl and class features to the best of their potential will be able to overcome much higher CR encounters.

Basically you have to know your players and use your head.

[Psyx]

Also: Waves.


Hit the party with a bunch of stuff that you know they can almost certainly take. Then have reinforcements scripted to turn up after 'X' number of rounds.
If the party are getting hosed, then the reinforcements never arrive, and the party never need to know about it!

[Amphetryon]

EXTREMELY BROAD, GENERAL STATEMENT ABOUT CR: CR, especially in the earlier print books for 3.X, assumes the group is 4 people filling the role of S&B Tank, Healbot, Sneak, and Blaster. If you're in a group that's bigger, or has a battlefield control Arcanist, a DMM-Persist Cleric Tank (or Druid), or other typically seen CharOp "improvements" on the default assumption for the party, CR becomes overestimated pretty quickly, because the party's effective power is considerably more than what the designers apparently anticipated as the base line. For inexperienced DMs, incrementally increasing the encounter difficulty based on adding additional monsters (or giving class levels to those monsters you use) is the usual path to better balanced encounters, but the balance point will probably be group and campaign-specific. Adding incrementally to the encounter values should minimize the risk of accidentally causing a party-wipe.

[Tvtyrant]

Rule of thumb: two CR above the party level at low levels is okay, three above is not. I have had three level 1's massacre Grick's and Carrion Crawlers, and fail against a level 5 Kobold :(

[valadil]

CR is an okay baseline. Most groups I play with deviate from it quickly though. It's up to the GM to figure out how far above or below CR they should go.

It's also important to figure out if there are any special cases the players can't handle. In my thieves guild game, there was no healer. This meant I had to be careful with high output enemies. All the thieve relied on sneak attack for damage. This meant that they had a very hard times with the golems I threw at them. It also meant that they were very good at dealing damage when the situation allowed it. Most of the time I ended up doubling the HP of the monsters they fought. But if I used an undead encounter at CR, it would have TPKed the group. I'm not saying that you can't use things they can't deal with, but you need to use them in moderation.

If you're having trouble figuring out how tough your party is, use variables. Come up with basic fight and have reinforcements ready. If they fight is easy, send in 3 reinforcements. If it's already too hard, use none.

[Anterean]

Thanks for the responses, a follow up question, how does you assign an experience "value" to your encounters, or do you skip that part entirely and just assign a value to the scenario instead ?

[Keld Denar]

Don't forget that circumstances can modify an encounter. A Fire Giant might CR10 - EL10, but a Fire Giant in a large pool of lava hurling flaming magma rocks at the PCs who are trapped in the room with no cover might be more like an EL11 or 12 encounter.

Also, things with SLAs a limited amount of times per day get tougher in swarms. A CR3 Kobold Adept with Scorching Ray 2/day might be an ok encounter for a group of level 2 PCs, but 2 of them (EL5) might be a tough encounter for a group of level 4 PCs and 4 of them (EL7) would take out 1 PC/round at APL6 with focused fire. On the other hand, bruiser type monsters en masse tend to fair worse because they tend to be easier to control via spells or simply taking advantage of choke points like doorways or similar fortifications.

[AslanCross]

I still think CR is a good baseline, and I've been able to challenge my party decently without eyeballing CR even though the party is large (5 members) and is semi-optimized. I usually do this by changing the environment so that it favors the monster.


Rule of thumb: two CR above the party level at low levels is okay, three above is not. I have had three level 1's massacre Grick's and Carrion Crawlers, and fail against a level 5 Kobold :(

Considering that they're lacking one party member, that's not surprising. It's entirely possible for a party to massacre something even 5 levels above them, as long as that opponent has no way of countering action economy.



Thanks for the responses, a follow up question, how does you assign an experience "value" to your encounters, or do you skip that part entirely and just assign a value to the scenario instead ?

I generally use this. (http://legionofgeeks.com/encounter_calc.php)

You can simply raise the encounter level depending on the aggravating circumstances. For example, if they're fighting a pyrohydra from a narrow, rickety bridge crossing a lava chasm, they're far more likely to find the battle difficult than if they were fighting a hydra inside a large, plain dungeon chamber.

[big teej]

Now I am not going to contest these statements in any way, but how would I, or any other relatively inexperienced game master go about this then ?

-raises hand-
as somebody who can't figure out the CR system (curse you math!)
I eyeball it everytime I sit down behind the screen.

whenever I feel like throwing something new at the players, I ask myself a few questions.

how often will the characters hit this thing?
if the players can only miss on a natural 1, way to easy, or you need tons of them, but that can get lethal.
if the players can only HIT on a 20, the thing will almost certainly kill the party.
if the party will hit on an 'average' roll (10) it will be "spot on" in the sense that if the same applies to the creature, both sides will deal roughly equal hits.
if it takes a slightly higher than everage role etc etc etc

can they overcome its abilities?
for example: I threw kythons at my party the other night, and when rolling for the kython weapons, one of them got the thing that lets them go incorperal at will, my party (at level 2 with 3 members present) could NOT handle taht in any way. so I rolled again.

use your best judgement from what you've seen your party demolish, been demolished by, and what they can do.

follow your gut, and make the players aware that you're getting a feel for what they can do.

[Crow]

For bruiser monsters, if it's attack is around te same as the party's bruiser, it's good to go. For "magical" monsters, if it's spells or SLA's are comparable to what the party's spellcasters can dish out, it's good to go.

Exceptions apply.

[Kuma Kode]

Like has been said, it's something that comes with experience. Between die rolls, environmental circumstances, the party's array of abilities, and the results of battles that came before it, there's no real way to mechanically determine how easy an encounter is going to be beyond eyeballing it.

Generally, multiple monsters are more dangerous than a single monster of the same EL by virtue of action economy. Multiple monsters simply have more actions and can overwhelm a smaller group.

If the encounter location places the players on the disadvantage, then the battle will be significantly harder. If the players get the enemies surprised and at a poor tactical location.

If you gave us some more information about the party and what you were planning on throwing them up against, we could be more useful.

[Gorilla2038]

-raises hand-
as somebody who can't figure out the CR system (curse you math!)
I eyeball it everytime I sit down behind the screen.


Side note, but as i also hate math, heres a linky for you

http://www.penpaperpixel.org/tools/d20encountercalculator.htm

[Anterean]

If you gave us some more information about the party and what you were planning on throwing them up against, we could be more useful.

This is really more of a theoretical question, I am not running anything anything at the moment (okay I am preparing a wfrp game, but that is really outside the scope of this particular conversation), but I was wondering if the challenge rating system is as worthless as I had got impression it is, then how would I go about making encounters and assigning them a experience value.

[AslanCross]

This is really more of a theoretical question, I am not running anything anything at the moment (okay I am preparing a wfrp game, but that is really outside the scope of this particular conversation), but I was wondering if the challenge rating system is as worthless as I had got impression it is, then how would I go about making encounters and assigning them a experience value.

It's usable if you recognize that even the core Monster Manual says it's not an exact science. It is highly dependent on both the ability of the party and the monster itself.

[kyoryu]

Rule of thumb: two CR above the party level at low levels is okay, three above is not. I have had three level 1's massacre Grick's and Carrion Crawlers, and fail against a level 5 Kobold :(

You needed a level *5* Kobold?

Oblig: http://www.tuckerskobolds.com/