PDA

View Full Version : Customizing adventures for smaller parties



Rainshine
2011-03-17, 09:23 PM
So, most of the homebrew stuff I mix up I balance around figuring the party running it will be four or five bodies. A lot of the preprinted adventures I've seen are for up to six, particularly D&D sort stuff. Now, I have a question for you GMs out there. If you're either running a solo game (game, not a one-off), or only have two players, how do you alter combat encounters to deal with the reduced numbers? The PC party is getting half as many actions as they normally would, don't have as many roles, etc. For shorter stuff, little intros or whatever, I don't mind toning it down, having them only fight small numbers, just making the opponents a little weaker or dumber.
If it's a game in a midweight+ combat system though, they should eventually run into packs. How do you make it something the players can beat, without making it feel too small/easy? I figure if there's a role that is fairly desperately needed (shield, heals) that they can get an NPC companion to fill that role, but that's only one more body. Ideas?

crichelle
2011-03-17, 11:23 PM
I feel your pain trying to DM smaller parties. I usually end up DM'ing groups of 2-3 players (mostly 2). We ran one campaign from lvl 1 till lvl 8 and have just started another at lvl 8 with new players. You already touched on several of the problems you will be facing.

1) Actions - You mentioned the PC's will be having far fewer acitons per round. I haven't really had this as a problem, as animal companions, summons, battlefield control, etc can balance the tables pretty quick. At lower levels this is a bigger problem, as a handful of orcs can overwhelm the party. Once the party gets a couple levels this problem went away.
2) Roles - The prototypical party of 4-6 players will most likely cover all the needed roles for almost any situation. You will need to put alot more thought into the roles your players chose during character creation. Figure what roles they have chosen, and either give them the tools to do extra stuff, or do not load the adventure with things they have no ability to deal with. For example, if there isn't a thief, for the love of pete don't throw trap after trap after trap at them. If they lack a healer, don't punish them for it, just give them easy access to healing items (cheap wands/potions). Once the players get some levels, it can be fun to throw something at them they aren't built to handle, but waiting until level 5-6 would be my suggestion. I would also suggest seeing if the players would be willing to both play as characters with some overlap of abilities; both casters/melees/stealths/etc. With two of the same type, the encounters can be better tailored to challenge both without someone sitting on the sideline. I found it is much easier to tailor the EL difficulty for a druid/warmage group then it is for the cleric/barbarian group.
3) Damage mitigation - This is should be familar to most RTS and Warhammer players. Simply put, in D&D most characters and monsters deal the exact same damage until killed. Normally this is an issue for the monsters, but in this case it is the players you need to be careful with. If one PC in a group of five gets wacked, it is still quite possible for the remaining PC's to finish an encounter as their resources were only cut by 20%. If you have a group of two, killing one during an encounter reduces the effectiveness of the party by 50%! Quite possibly making a level appropriate encounter impossible without TPK.
4) Resource allocation - A CR appropriate fight should eat 25% of a party's consumables (spells, hp, etc). Either give your players plenty of oppurtunity to rest (two encounters tops before recharging) or drop the EL of the encounters. I find that EL's two to three levels below the party average work well for this.
5) XP gain - This one really crept up on us unexpectedly. With only two/three party members even fights with monster's three to four CR levels below the party will rapidly level the group. It got to the point the characters were leveling too quickly and threated to out-level the campaign scope and end the story far too quickly. I would recommend cutting the groups XP by 50% to brake the leveling a little and make up for it by giving them an extra 50% treasure so they keep flush with magic items to cover their weaknesses.

By no means is that all you will have to deal with, but those are some of the bigger issues I can think of off the top of my head and how I ended up dealing with them.

Cyrion
2011-03-18, 09:30 AM
You also have to think about how you structure the adventure and campaigns. A party of two is not going to be doing the epic battle against hordes very often. They're going to be involved in much smaller actions, surgical strikes, sneak in/sneak out, etc. In these cases you simply have to set up the adventures such that smaller encounters where they face reasonable numbers are, indeed, reasonable.

Another option is a liberal sprinkling of friendly NPCs. This will allow you to add skill sets tailored to the adventure and the situations the party has to face. You just have to be careful to always keep the NPCs secondary to the PCs so that the players have to provide the creative and guiding forces. It also allows for easier access to grit 'cause you can kill the NPCs without some of the PC death consequences.

crichelle
2011-03-18, 11:50 AM
The issues of NPCs is another good one to consider as Cyrion mentioned. Before you add NPCs, you should really consider what they are there for and if they can be removed safely by removing a specific obstacle. I try very hard not a attach NPCs to groups as I am always worried they reduce the role of the players in the game, but that is up to you.

My suggestion if you do attach NPC would be to make them several levels of power lower than the players regardless of the role. That way they help, but you avoid situations where the NPCs do all the work while the PCs sit on their rears. For example if you are worried about the groups durability attach a pair of warriors three levels lower then the group (ex:5th level warriors with an 8th level party). That way the NPCs will act as extra targets and soak some hits, but will likely not be able to take out CR 8 monsters on their own.

Tyndmyr
2011-03-18, 03:04 PM
If it's a game in a midweight+ combat system though, they should eventually run into packs. How do you make it something the players can beat, without making it feel too small/easy? I figure if there's a role that is fairly desperately needed (shield, heals) that they can get an NPC companion to fill that role, but that's only one more body. Ideas?

Feh. The PCs all get bigger cuts of the loot. Roles like stealth and what not are also easier with fewer people rolling hide checks. If they want companions, they can hire them or take leadership.

With experienced players, I alter almost nothing.