Do you ever throw low cr monsters at your party?

[Ozreth]

So I've started playing 2e recently and have been comparing and contrasting what I like about both 2e and 3e. It turns out that while I prefer the mechanics of 3e, I prefer the play style that 2e encourages (and have been trying to implement it even before I played 2e).

In 2e it is very common for the party to run into weak monsters, while 3.5 centers around party appropriate encounters scaling with the party. For instance, in 3.5 if a level 6 party is traveling through a mountain pass and come across and orc tribe and en encounter ensues, those orcs are expected to be harder than the orcs they fought at level 1. Sort of like level scaling in Oblivion if you will.

In 2e, an orc is an orc and always will be an orc unless the DM purposefully makes the orc tougher. When a group of level 6 adventurers run into an orc tribe in 2e, they shouldn't really have to think twice about how hard they will be to kill, theyre orcs! And things like this should happen for the sake of "realism" or "immersion" or whatever, if you are going for the fantasy novel feel.

Now, I'm sure a lot of people play their 3e like this. Thoughts?

[Angry Bob]

I find it's usually not worth the time to actually run low CR enemies against a high level party. If they're mentioned at all, it'll be "En route to the next city, you are accosted by orcs/hobgoblins/minor demons/cultists of Yog-Sothoth/wtf ever. You butcher them without effort. You gain no XP."

[Kantolin]

I know somewhere they mention that exactly. I don't recall if it's the DMG or the DMG2 or somewhere.

Anyway, the only intrinsic problem with that is the time investment to create it. Sandbox games tend to have that most of the time (Over there is Ogre hill. If you go up ogre hill, you meet ogres, whether you're level 2 or 80).

It's really a style thing. Making things more locational and less structured can be more fun for certain groups, while less fun for others.

Personally, though, once in awhile it's fun to run into an underwhelming force that's effortless to deal with, and once in awhile it's fun to run into an overwhelming force that you can't just go swing at.

Not as a constant thing of course, but being able to just whomp on a few overeager arrogant kobolds is pleasant once in awhile. ^_^

[ffone]

As a DM I do like to use level-inappropriate enemies sometimes, for:

- verisimilitude...reduces the convenient coincidence of enemies always being the right CR for you, sort of like how in every Final Fantasy / Dragon Quest / whatever RPG ever, the plot just happens to take you through towns and dungeons in the exact order of the cost and power of their gear for sale, and the danger of their monsters. (Primarily I try to explain this by having most quests begin with the PCs having to take some initiative to 'go on the quest', in a manner which gives them a sense that this is a job worthy of their current place in their careers).

- over-CR monsters serve an important strategic purpose of keeping players smart about trying to size up what they can handle, and stay away if not (there's generally some clue that this monster would be out of their league - and since players always metagame like heck, this isn't generally a problem).

- under-CR monsters can be amusing as "sinks" for limited resources of players who like to go nova on everything. I've noticed many inexperienced players tend to always use their top-level spell slots available (even when a lower level spell would be better for the situation, to say nothing of resource conservation) and work their way down.

under-CR monsters can also serve as *very* effective motivators for PCs to o things 'the smart way'. If the PCs see a massive force guarding the frontal way to the BBEG, and decide to brave it rather than finding the 'smart' way (b/c they want to rack up the XP)....it might turn out they have to slog through encounters which are a waste of their time. =P Since this can be sort of cruel and boring to do as a DM, try to set it up in a way where, once they realize what's going on, they can back out of further stupid encounters.

[Flickerdart]

You could run the low-level monsters as smarter - Tucker's Orcs or whatever, essentially. They're not different stat block-wise, but they've gotten careful when dealing with people that match the PC descriptions. So they're low CR, and die like low CR, but they're still a credible threat.

[Angry Bob]

To make minions present a credible threat, you could make them use stuff like arrow barrages or swarmfighting.

Arrow volleys: Since they're reflex half, they're still doing damage if the guy directing the barrage has a decent INT and BaB.

Swarmfighting: Share your square with up to three other swarmfighters. If you completely surrounded your PC with guys like this, you could conceivably have them take 32 swings at once. Probability states that one of those will hit at least. If they're all rogues, they'll do sneak attack as well. Not much, but in those numbers...

[Ozreth]

I guess my point is to not have them be a credible threat at all. Literally just orcs jump off of a mountain cliff to attack PC's and the PC's just plow through them. It's not tedious because it hardly needs to be mapped out but itll make the PC's feel kind of cool and add to the charm of the area.

[Coidzor]

I've been considering a gameworld lately where the majority of things are basically mid-low level, with most established adults being at least 3rd level even amongst NPC commoners and with 6th level being achievable by a good portion of the population before one is old and expected to shuffle off the mortal coil soon or at least be succeeded by the next generation. Sort of a spin on the idea of e6, except that's the baseline of the world rather than the hard cap for the PCs, with truly exceptional creatures like dragons and demons and high-level PCs existing but being, well, rare to run into to go along with their exceptional nature.

So a collection of orcs would mostly be, say, 3rd level, yeah, but whether their leader would be a standard level 6 PC-type or level 8 or 9 or 15 would be an element of mystery. It seems like a bit of a compromise between orcs being orcs and not having levels or anything by default and having auto-scaling EL appropriate encounters.

It seems to offer a bit more flexibility between allowing the players to have an experience of seeing how far they've come without being too tight of a restriction on tying one's hands in regards to monster generation.

[Kingscourt]

So I've started playing 2e recently and have been comparing and contrasting what I like about both 2e and 3e. It turns out that while I prefer the mechanics of 3e, I prefer the play style that 2e encourages (and have been trying to implement it even before I played 2e).

In 2e it is very common for the party to run into weak monsters, while 3.5 centers around party appropriate encounters scaling with the party. For instance, in 3.5 if a level 6 party is traveling through a mountain pass and come across and orc tribe and en encounter ensues, those orcs are expected to be harder than the orcs they fought at level 1. Sort of like level scaling in Oblivion if you will.

In 2e, an orc is an orc and always will be an orc unless the DM purposefully makes the orc tougher. When a group of level 6 adventurers run into an orc tribe in 2e, they shouldn't really have to think twice about how hard they will be to kill, theyre orcs! And things like this should happen for the sake of "realism" or "immersion" or whatever, if you are going for the fantasy novel feel.

Now, I'm sure a lot of people play their 3e like this. Thoughts?

This. I advocate this quite a bit as a DM, especially once my players have reached higher levels for the world they are in, first to make the game feel more like a world and less like a game, and also to let the players know how powerful their characters are in relation to the rest of the world.

For example, I remember when my players were requesting help from a king, who in turn told them to take out a large bandit uprising nearby first. They were about 8-9th level, the highest level bandit was 4th level, I believe. It was a massacre, but! It made a lot more sense than 9th level bandits...

[Taelas]

For the sake of verisimilitude if nothing else, it is a fantastic idea to throw an orc ambush at higher-level PCs while travelling. They were probably ambushed by orcs at low levels, after all, and it would not make sense for them to suddenly stop merely because the PCs are stronger. Such encounters show the PCs how much more powerful they have become when they casually destroy the enemies that were a credible threat at the start of their careers.

Unfortunately, it can also be dreadfully tedious if overdone. God-mode is just not very interesting. Most players like at least a bit of a challenge, and the DM can be just as prone to this.

So to change things up a bit, send in a group of low-CR enemies... that are lead by an opponent of the PCs appropriate CR.

For instance, instead of sending Kingscourt's 9th-level party against a group of bandits below level 4, I might have an ogre with a few Barbarian levels lead the bandits, or perhaps a stone giant. Something which they are not aware of at first, but can prove a challenge when they arrive to mop up the mooks.

[TOZ]

All the time.

I had a party traveling down a river. They were ambushed by gnoll archers. By the time they reached the bank, the gnolls had escaped. A few levels later, they were traveling the same river. I had them encounter the same gnolls. The bard proceeded to dimension door the cleric and fighter right behind the gnolls. Slaughter ensued.

Later on in the game, mid-teens in levels, the party received a call for help from the temple. The enemy theives guild was assaulting the temple and had the friendly NPCs cornered. I used the same rogues and assassins the party had faced in the low levels. The party cleric walked into the temple, cast Mass Inflict, and half the thieves died regardless of saving throw.

The point is, players need to have encounters where they feel badass. If every encounter is hard and grueling, they'll never feel like heroes. And the epic battle against the BBEG at the end won't feel special. Letting them have a battle where they curbstomp the enemy will make them feel powerful, and thus make your real villians seem even more powerful.

The Alexandrian has a good article relevant to this discussion. (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/encounter-design.html)

[Delwugor]

These are the minions in 3.5 which I use for distraction in an important battle. Also not all battles need to be a real challenge, sometimes players just like to easily defeat bad guys to keep that feel of being powerful.

[Essence_of_War]

I have on occasion used something like the 4th ed minions/ SWd20 minion enemies. It simulates a band of orcs led by one or two orc barbarian/warriors of high level. You can give the minion enemies a reasonable BAB and stats to deal damage but if they ever take even 1 point of damage they die.

SWd20 has a similar deal. It is a VP/WP system with VP representing "character shield" and there are NPC classes that gain BAB, saves, skills etc but never gain any VP, they are just stuck with WP. It can make for groups of things like stormtroopers that can be scary as far as hitting and damaging you, but are easy to bring down themselves. I'm pretty sure this was the inspiration for the 4th ed "minion" type enemies.

If you've ever played Dragon Age: Origins, they make good use of these "minion" type enemies in the final battle. The enemy darkspawn can hit you and hurt you, but get instantly killed if you hit them. It's nice to feel powerful every now and then :smallamused:

[true_shinken]

In 2e it is very common for the party to run into weak monsters, while 3.5 centers around party appropriate encounters scaling with the party. For instance, in 3.5 if a level 6 party is traveling through a mountain pass and come across and orc tribe and en encounter ensues, those orcs are expected to be harder than the orcs they fought at level 1. Sort of like level scaling in Oblivion if you will.

What?! No, that's not it. That's not even remotely it. Geez.

[pyroman]

I just started DMing an epic campaign, and the party got into a huge battle (paladins vs. orcs, minotaurs, and an anaxim). Except for the anaxim, the low level infantry did absolutely nothing against the PCs. It may be realistic, but it is worthless in terms of gameplay, and the XP is incredibly low (if any at all).

[Angry Bob]

One thing I have found them useful for is as a screen if there's an ubercharger in the party. Of course, for the encounter I used them for that, the ubercharger couldn't make it, so they served as amusement by running blindly into the Initiate of the Seven Veils' red veil.

[areopagitica]

As a DM I do like to use level-inappropriate enemies sometimes, for:
...
- under-CR monsters can be amusing as "sinks" for limited resources of players who like to go nova on everything. I've noticed many inexperienced players tend to always use their top-level spell slots available (even when a lower level spell would be better for the situation, to say nothing of resource conservation) and work their way down.
...


I like this idea I am normally a player and I normally play blasters...or some other wizard type. If our DM used more of these I could be screwed! Although I'm sure after the first one exploded like a player in minecraft that got blindsided by a creeper i would scale down.

[TOZ]

I just started DMing an epic campaign, and the party got into a huge battle (paladins vs. orcs, minotaurs, and an anaxim). Except for the anaxim, the low level infantry did absolutely nothing against the PCs. It may be realistic, but it is worthless in terms of gameplay, and the XP is incredibly low (if any at all).

You mean the orcs didn't block possible routes of approach? The minotaurs didn't provide flanking? They didn't use Str bonus advantages to trip/disarm/sunder the party? I'm sorry to hear that.

[navar100]

Previous campaign when our party was low level, we faced a pack of distrachans. We won the battle, but it was hard. It took a lot to kill even one. We failed saving throws. Our damage output wasn't a lot. When we were high level we again faced a pack of distrachans. We womped them without a sweat. It was a BLAST! It was great fun to face an enemy that was so tough before but now easy to deal with. We made saving throws even on rolls less than 10. It took one round for any one of us to kill a distrachan.

It's unfortunate my DM rarely does that, but it can make you appreciate how how much your character has grown to be able to defeat in a round or two enemies that once took "forever". Minimal XP is irrelevant. It's just a fun combat - to enjoy the mechanics of it without really having to worry about your character getting killed from it.

[Runestar]

Once in a while, for when they need an opportunity to showcase their prowess. Say, they come across goblins raiding a village, proceed to slaughter them and impress the locals enough to be awarded the quest.

Normally, combat takes long enough as is, so I try not to run "throwaway battles" unless necessary.

[Kol Korran]

in almost any adventure i have some mooks that are quite under CR compared to the group (usually 3-6 CR lower) who may be in groups, which the party can wipe out fairly easily. their roles may be as follows:
- a different fun encounter for the PCs to slaughter easily, feeling mighty powerful. i find the Players like feeling ultra powerful once in a while. like it.
- expend PCs resources. when in large groups i find the caster like to use area spells.
- clever situational battles- activating traps/ snares, sentinels calling for reinforcements (enter the stealthy character), behind heavy defenses, quite unreachable, which makes for a long drawn out fight, users of clever equipment (from alchemist fire to simple wands or scrolls)
- time/ space buffer for tougher enemies- the mooks stand in front of tougher monster, buying them time against the meleers, or get behind the party and harass the casters.

hope this helped.

[TOZ]

Normally, combat takes long enough as is, so I try not to run "throwaway battles" unless necessary.

That's actually the beauty of making low CR battles the 'regular' battles. They take MUCH less time than equal CR battles. Then, when you have the powerful enemies show up, the battle feels epic and the enemies feel powerful.

[ILM]

I guess the logical problem with this is that it swings both ways: if PCs can encounter low CR mobs when they're high-level, then why can't they encounter high CR mobs when they're level 1?

DM - "Ok guys, you're in a tavern. A town guard asked you to join him there, he wants you to help him on a strange murder case... Oh wait, the CR 23 world-destroying lich who's behind the entire plot you'll never hear about is here too. Oh well, you all die. Roll new characters!"

I guess at the end of the day, you're telling a story. You're telling the story of the PCs who had a shot at the BBEG, meaning that they're the ones who encountered enemies that they could conveniently take until hopefully they reach the epic climax of the campaign. Except of course sometimes it doesn't work out, and you end up telling the story of the PCs who got flattened by a kobold sorcerer on their way to the BBEG's tower of evil. There's probably a lot of stories like this. I mean, for every group of adventurers that save the world, how many tried and failed? And whose story would you rather tell? The one of the wannabe heroes that never made it past the dire wolves, or the one of those who lucked out and encountered all their challenges in the perfect order to achieve success?

At any rate, you don't really want to tell the story of the PCs who god-moded through an entire encampment of CR 1/2 orcs, cause nobody really cares. Kinda like in Final Fantasy games, when you go back to the starting areas and you get attacked by those wolves that used to bug you but now struggle to take off a single hp off your 7453 max, while you can throw 15-minute summons at them for about six million points of damage: feels good the first couple of times, and then it gets boring and you wish to god you had an accessory that let you bypass all those stupid, pointless battles that give you no experience nor items you'd ever use.


edit: that said, I once had a DM who liked to throw large units of mooks at us. He just dropped the CR mechanic and resolved every 'squad' as a single foe (i.e. rolling once per team instead of once per character). They only hit on a 20, dealt miserable damage, while we pretty much auto-hit and basically one-shotted them. The whole thing was just to keep up the pretense that we were playing by the rules, but the actual reason was to let us do cool stuff and throw in some cinematic action. Instead of hitting and killing every lame enemy, the fighter 'cut through them like a buzzsaw, his blade flowing in intricate arabesques through the formation'. That sort of stuff. He used that in army vs. army battles and the like.

[Curmudgeon]

Absolutely. I like mobs of things like skeletons to try to surround the PCs, distracting them while the sneaky more challenging enemies try to get away with their own nefarious plans.

[Taelas]

I guess the logical problem with this is that it swings both ways: if PCs can encounter low CR mobs when they're high-level, then why can't they encounter high CR mobs when they're level 1?

DM - "Ok guys, you're in a tavern. A town guard asked you to join him there, he wants you to help him on a strange murder case... Oh wait, the CR 23 world-destroying lich who's behind the entire plot you'll never hear about is here too. Oh well, you all die. Roll new characters!"

Thing is, the high CR mobs (that aren't more or less mindless monsters rampaging through the landscape) generally don't care what the PCs get up to. Why would the world-destroying lich who's behind the entire plot kill them? What reason does he have? Sure, he's world-destroying, but presumably he isn't able to do that quite yet... otherwise, there's really no point to the campaign. If he used Divinations to know the people who'd come to be a bother for him in the future... why did he go himself instead of sending mooks? It's not as if they are a danger. Why, they'd have to destroy ALL of his mooks just to level up before they're a threat! But surely that would never happen...

You have to fudge things a little. Yes, the lich could go destroy them himself. But that's a pretty boring story. "OK, you see an ancient-looking humanoid, clad in rotting robes. Roll Initiative. Oh, he wins. He points at the Fighter, and speaks a word. Do you have less than 100 hp? Oh, you die. Rogue, you're up. Sneak attack? He's undead, what do you think? Oh whatever, he casts Celerity. It's his turn. He casts Meteor Swarm. Roll Reflex saves, DC 32. Can't make it? Guess you die."

[Doug Lampert]

All the time.

I had a party traveling down a river. They were ambushed by gnoll archers. By the time they reached the bank, the gnolls had escaped. A few levels later, they were traveling the same river. I had them encounter the same gnolls. The bard proceeded to dimension door the cleric and fighter right behind the gnolls. Slaughter ensued.

Later on in the game, mid-teens in levels, the party received a call for help from the temple. The enemy theives guild was assaulting the temple and had the friendly NPCs cornered. I used the same rogues and assassins the party had faced in the low levels. The party cleric walked into the temple, cast Mass Inflict, and half the thieves died regardless of saving throw.

Both of the examples above use something I find VERY handy. That is, throwing the PCs against the same BBEG they couldn't beat before and having them curbstomp them because they're now a trivial threat.

There are few better ways of making the PCs realize how much they've advanced.

[Doug Lampert]

I guess the logical problem with this is that it swings both ways: if PCs can encounter low CR mobs when they're high-level, then why can't they encounter high CR mobs when they're level 1?

They can and should. But (A) high CR foes are VERY RARE compared to low CR foes. There are tens of thousands of kobolds out there for every Great Wyrm, so you aren't nearly as likely to meet the great Wyrm unless you are LOOKING for it, which is something only high level types do, and (B) why should the high CR foe CARE about the PCs? Seriously, having things in the gameworld that the PCs CAN'T FIGHT is GOOD. Level 1 PCs shouldn't be able to beat everything they meet, it's fairly trivial to throw in things that are more dangerous and have reasonable behavior avoid a fight.

Good PCs have an inherent advantage over evil monsters in the uneven CR sweepstakes, the good PCs AREN'T just randomly attacking everything they meet, so they can easily avoid combat with the overwhelming foes. The bandit gang is attacking more or less everyone they meet, the vastly higher level PCs fight them BECAUSE the bandits attack.

[Curmudgeon]

I guess the logical problem with this is that it swings both ways: if PCs can encounter low CR mobs when they're high-level, then why can't they encounter high CR mobs when they're level 1?
They can and should. But (A) high CR foes are VERY RARE compared to low CR foes.
They're not that rare in the D&D world, and not just when the party is at a low level. Fully 5% of all encounters should be of "overpowering" difficulty (EL 5+ higher than party level) at all levels; see Dungeon Master's Guide on page 49. If your PCs aren't running away from at least 1 encounter out of 20, they're dead.

[Godskook]

1.Yes, I do throw lower CR monsters at my party. Typically -1 or -2.

2.A PC scales with experience(quantified as xp, but honestly, that represents something), so failing to have monsters who scale with it is, imho, the way that breaks versimilitude. The only TPK I've run had mostly CR 1/3 goblins facing a level 3 party. But these guards were escorted by the tribal chief and 3 of his henchmen who all had class levels.

[Knaight]

I don't use "monsters" often, and when I do there are usually a scant handful of varieties. Sometimes this involves a band of outlaws that jumps the PCs and are dead before they hit the ground, sometimes there are very powerful entities which utterly outclass the PCs and force a retreat. In any case, this applies both to those very few times where I use 3e and to the great many where I use non D&D systems, though the actual term CR may not be applicable.

It can also be fun to have the various CR entities treat the PCs in ways that don't make sense in a perfect information system. A low CR but cocky duelist might deliberately handicap himself and try to deal nonlethal damage, an extremely high CR intelligent monster might act extremely defensively, strike from ambush then flee once a real fight starts, or use other related tactics that really aren't necessary -though they may seem that way to the monster.

[true_shinken]

They're not that rare in the D&D world, and not just when the party is at a low level. Fully 5% of all encounters should be of "overpowering" difficulty (EL 5+ higher than party level) at all levels; see Dungeon Master's Guide on page 49. If your PCs aren't running away from at least 1 encounter out of 20, they're dead.

I think he is talking about world design, not encounter design.
As the demographics guidelines propose, you don't have that many high level characters by default and powerful monsters are all supposed to be rare and recluse (well, on the Material Plane, at least).

[Runestar]

Both of the examples above use something I find VERY handy. That is, throwing the PCs against the same BBEG they couldn't beat before and having them curbstomp them because they're now a trivial threat.

There are few better ways of making the PCs realize how much they've advanced.

I actually have my BBEGs advance in tandem with the PCs. Though not always at a 1:1 ratio. :smalltongue:

What, you think the players are the only one racking in experience?

[erikun]

Yes, I do.

I think my most memorable encounter for my players was when I threw 60+ kobolds at a 6th level party. After dropping two of them to negatives and leaving most of them in the single digits, I don't think any of the players thought that future encounters would be fine "because they are just kobolds".

[Tyndmyr]

Now, I'm sure a lot of people play their 3e like this. Thoughts?

I populate the world with monsters as it makes sense within the context of the setting. Sometimes, this does include advancing monsters. I do use the stats as from the monster manual for a lot of things, though, since it's just faster.

But most orcs will just be orcs, just like most humans are just humans. While the party will tend to have encounters that are about appropriate(less likely to be attacked by low levels when you are literally glowing with magic items), it does vary. Sometimes they'll stumble over low level stuff, and they tend to obliterate that with ease.

I'm ok with that. I feel like if EVERYTHING scales with the party, it feels like improvement no longer matters.

Edit: And yes, I've done the kobold swarm as well. It also ended hilariously.