encounter for a new DM

[Olfgar]

So im a relatively new DM, and Im thinking of having a 2nd level party fight a series of lvl 1 and 2 warriors with perhaps a couple level 1 and 2 barbarians thrown in the mix. The party are again all 2nd level and are made up of a Barbarian, a Druid, a Sorcerer and a Dread Necromancer...yes I know a strange party make up and completley unbalanced in terms of Skills and damage output type.

But I was thinking at the end have them face a level 3 or 4 Barbarian Chieftan(orc) or if they screw up, the Chieftan unchains an Ogre to fight along side him. any thoughts?

[Aegis013]

Seems pretty straight forward. Keep in mind that if this is in rapid succession, and if they're fairly unoptimized, it's very likely some of them will fall unconscious or die from sheer numbers.

But a series of level 1-2 warriors might mean something totally different to me than to you.

[Olfgar]

What im thinking is that they will be clearing out an area in a camp to the leaders large tent. So they will have to fight some groups of the weaker warriors to get there, ranging in size form anywhere between 2-6 enemies a time, but I will give them opprotunities to end up pulling back and reorganizing and coming back the next day if need be, how ever, they do like a challenge and to push them selves so they will probably try and go for it in one straight shot.

[Lonely Tylenol]

So im a relatively new DM, and Im thinking of having a 2nd level party fight a series of lvl 1 and 2 warriors with perhaps a couple level 1 and 2 barbarians thrown in the mix. The party are again all 2nd level and are made up of a Barbarian, a Druid, a Sorcerer and a Dread Necromancer...yes I know a strange party make up and completley unbalanced in terms of Skills and damage output type.

But I was thinking at the end have them face a level 3 or 4 Barbarian Chieftan(orc) or if they screw up, the Chieftan unchains an Ogre to fight along side him. any thoughts?

Whatever you do, be wary of orc barbarians. In the first few levels, they are a HUGE trap.

Here's what I mean:

Assume you take the stock Orc warrior from the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/orc.htm) and change his class from warrior to barbarian. He now has 7 hit points (1d12+1, averaged down). Not bad, not an encounter-ender. It retains its 17 Str (13 base + 4 racial bonus), and swings its falchion with two hands, as is necessary with a falchion (2d4+4). Okay, now we're getting somewhere... The character does an average damage of 9 with that attack, enough to level most 1st-level characters in one hit (and most 2nd-level characters in two).

Now let's throw him into rage.

Suddenly, the barbarian has 21 Str, and gets Str and a half to his weapon damage (5 + 2.5 = 7.5, rounded down to 7). It also gets an extra 2 hit points, but we don't care too much about that.

Here's what the damage outcomes look like now:

{table=head]
Roll|Odds of rolling|Damage
2|1/16|2+7=9
3|2/16|3+7=10
4|3/16|4+7=11
5|4/16|5+7=12
6|3/16|6+7=13
7|2/16|7+7=14
8|1/16|8+7=15[/table]

Your level 1 Orc barbarian is doing 9-15 damage on an attack, but most of the time falls within the 11-13 damage range.

Now, look at the Hit Point totals of your sorcerer, dread necromancer, and druid. Starting to see what I'm getting at here?

Now, remember that the falchion has a critical threat range of 18-20. 18-20! 3 out of 20 times, you'll roll a critical threat (and have the opportunity to confirm a critical) against your characters. In each of those cases, you have the opportunity to double the damage you're doing with your falchion to 18-30, with the bell curve favoring 22-26 damage as your outcome.

Look again at your character sheets... The barbarian may have 30 hit points (maxed rolls plus CON 16, or better, brings us there), but odds aren't tremendously likely. Meanwhile, you're both high-op and lucky if your character is pushing 20 hit points with a d8 or lesser Hit Dice (which the druid, dread necromancer and sorcerer are), so they'll auto-drop on your average critical, and odds are good that the critical could take them to -10 outright.

Giving your orc barbarians greataxes doesn't help, because while there is no probability curve leaning towards average damage, you are now doing 8-19 damage with a successful hit, with odds being just as good that you'll hit highs as lows, and a natural 20 threatens to triple your damage. A battleaxe (1d8, x3 critical) addresses this problem somewhat, as you are now only swinging with one hand (if you're swinging a battleaxe with two hands, ignore this), doing 6-13 damage and tripling on a confirmed threat. You're still dangerous, but not terribly likely to kill everything in your first hit--but an unlucky crit can still change everything.

The thing about low-level play is that it favors any small modifiers to damage that you can grab greatly (because a +1 to damage still represents a reasonably large percentage of PC and enemy hit points alike), so Strength-loaded races, classes, etc. are MUCH more dangerous than they may seem on paper.

As far as your Ogre? Here's the damage curve on that one, using the stock Ogre's damage output of 2d8+7 for a large greatclub:
{table=head]
Roll|Odds of rolling|Damage
2|1/64|2+7=9
3|2/64|3+7=10
4|3/64|4+7=11
5|4/64|5+7=12
6|5/64|6+7=13
7|6/64|7+7=14
8|7/64|8+7=15
9|8/64|9+7=16
10|7/64|10+7=17
11|6/64|11+7=18
12|5/64|12+7=19
13|4/64|13+7=20
14|3/64|14+7=21
15|2/64|15+7=22
16|1/64|16+7=23[/table]

The Ogre does 9-23 damage, with the averages falling heavily in the 14-18 range. As far as damage goes, the falchion is probably more frightening because of the 18-20 x2 threat range (the greatclub only has 20 x2), but both are incredibly dangerous, and likely to knock most level 2s into the negatives outright in a single well-placed hit--and with the Ogre's +8 to hit, those aren't tremendously unlikely, either.

There are ways to mitigate this, of course, but the simplest is to just wait until level 3 or 4 to even bother with Orcs and Ogres, and if you are going to use them, put the party in a situation where they can gain some form of favorable terrain or position advantage against them (yes, this drops the CR somewhat, but that's a necessity here).

Unless your party is high-op enough to reliably incapacitate these characters outright without risking a felling blow, in which case, good on you; this group might get somewhere against baddies like this. But in that case, you might need to up the variance a bit, as Orc barbarian has predictable tactics (and falls predictably easily) and doesn't present much of a thinking-man's challenge to a high-op group.

[Aegis013]

If your party doesn't have one yet, I would consider letting a wand of cure light wounds or a wand of lesser vigor fall into the hands of the druid player, preferably before the combats begin.

Considering the medium HD of most of the classes, and the typically not-so-amazing AC of Barbarians, don't be surprised if a group of 6 level 1 warriors can take down your party, especially if they score a couple of early critical hits. That being said, what level of equipment/tactics will they be using?

Edit: Lonely Tylenol completely outdid me here. Refer to his post, it's good stuff.

[Olfgar]

Ok so scrap the Orc and Ogre. What about just waking its a lvl 2 or 3 Barb at the end, Human or Dwarf. I know my players will appreciate somethting a bit mroe challenging than lvl 1 and 2 Warriors.

[Aegis013]

You can make a 4-6 level 1 warriors be quite challenging by employing intelligent tactics... there's some kobold example (<name>'s kobolds) but I can't for the life of me remember the name. It's a story about how a party of level 8-10ish players struggled to get through the first floor of a dungeon because the measly kobolds fought with incredible tactics and terrain advantage.

[Olfgar]

Lol nice. If anyone is able to remember the name of that Id love to read it.

[Aegis013]

It was Tucker's Kobolds. My google-fu check was successful.

[Lonely Tylenol]

Ok so scrap the Orc and Ogre. What about just waking its a lvl 2 or 3 Barb at the end, Human or Dwarf. I know my players will appreciate somethting a bit mroe challenging than lvl 1 and 2 Warriors.

Barbarians of all stripes can still work, but my suggestion would be to scrap the stock interpretation, which is the two-handed "grip it and rip it" method, in favor of an approach that is clearly suboptimal for low levels, but still represents an element of danger. For instance, if you wanted to have a barbarian of any kind (it can even be Orc), make it a Two-Weapon Fighter; suddenly, it's gone from a to-hit of +6 and a damage output of 2d4+7 (critical 18-20 x2) to a to a to-hit of +4/+4 and a damage output of 1d6+5 (20 x2). Now it does 6-11 damage, is less likely to critical, and is less lethal when it does... But that isn't to say that this is a character that isn't dangerous, nosiree, because while it's unlikely to happen often, two hits from such a character represents a very serious threat to life and limb (comes to 12-22 damage).

You take out the immediate danger of a single confirmed critical auto-killing anything, as well as the to-hit bonuses making single felling blows less likely, but you add a long-term danger of grievous injury or death if single players sustain multiple blows unassisted (which is representative of poor strategy anyway).

Give the warrior mooks javelins and shields, or handaxes, something to that effect, so that they're wielding a one-handed weapon (preferably a light weapon), which is not something you can expect to insta-gib anyone in the party with.

If you want to go with a two-handed fighter, however, best to go with a Human (stock stats means 13 Str, or 17 in rage, which means that an enraged Human barbarian with stock stats is the same as an Orc warrior with stock stats, as Strength is concerned, but is considerably more durable (and less stupid, if the party endeavors to try to reason with them).

Introduce the idea of the charging "grip-and-rip" type a few levels later, say, when a barbarian chieftain is starting to amass a considerable horde of followers from surrounding tribes by either garnering the support of lesser chieftains or cutting them down, and the collective effort of all these tribes is starting to represent a very real, Genghis Khan-like threat to the surrounding towns and cities, if left unchecked (which it is, at present, which is why the PCs need to intervene). Bonus points if you incorporate this current mission into the next one (like, the tribesmen that your party displaces find their way to this new leader, and the combined strength of the tribes allows him to take on smaller, weaker tribes and build up a sizable force through force of strength).

[Olfgar]

So for this 2wep fighter, should I'm assuming the standard Longsword/Shortsword combo? Or did you mean something specific?

[Voyager_I]

If you're really worried about your players dying to freak rolls, you could just roll behind the blind and ignore any critical threats the Orcs get. That would let you design challenging encounters without worrying about the worst-case scenarios.

[Grundy]

If you're really worried about your players dying to freak rolls, you could just roll behind the blind and ignore any critical threats the Orcs get. That would let you design challenging encounters without worrying about the worst-case scenarios.

Cheating is a valid tactic (if not entirely honorable), and I've used it on occasion, but it's best not to overuse it. I've been on the playing end of a DM who did that, and it makes the game less fun if you know disaster isn't lurking around every corner.
That said, my current DM rolls behind a screen and I believe every roll. I have no idea if he cheats.

[Lonely Tylenol]

So for this 2wep fighter, should I'm assuming the standard Longsword/Shortsword combo? Or did you mean something specific?

Long and short swords work. Light and heavy maces work, too. If you went with an axe equivalent, however, I'd go with two handaxes (as a battleaxe's x3 crit multiplier means certain instant death for the poor soul that falls prey to the unlucky 20 roll). Really, any combination of one-handed and light weapons that has a x2 critical threat modifier (save the x3 and up weapons for characters with low Strength, or for levels 4 and on, when being insta-gibbed by a scythe or a heavy pick is less likely to happen, and your players will feel less cheated by having entire characters ended by a single unlucky crit).

You could even go with a scimitar/short sword combination, if you wanted to stay close to the falchion of the stock warrior/barbarians and you wanted to stay orc (this allows you to keep the wide threat range and allow critical hits to happen, and to be dangerous and even life-threatening without being an instant kill, no-save-just-dead).

[Olfgar]

Thanks, I appreciate all your imput and advice on how to not horribly mutilate and kills my players instantly lol ;)

[Zaranthan]

When I'm designing fighter-type encounters for players below level 4, I think of two words: Simple. Weapons.

Spears are the peon's standby. Putting them in the hands of Orc Barbarians proves how deadly they COULD be without making your players feel like you just out-Opt-Fu'd them. You're not throwing a ton of dice, but you ARE dealing a scary amount of damage. Mix up a few guys with longspears (the ones with reach) if you've got a battle map to demonstrate how reach weapons work. Still won't kill them, but you'll have fun trying to keep the longspears back and they'll have fun trying to avoid the shortspears to get to them.

[Voyager_I]

Cheating is a valid tactic (if not entirely honorable), and I've used it on occasion, but it's best not to overuse it. I've been on the playing end of a DM who did that, and it makes the game less fun if you know disaster isn't lurking around every corner.
That said, my current DM rolls behind a screen and I believe every roll. I have no idea if he cheats.

I certainly wouldn't tell the players I was doing it. They probably aren't counting on taking critical hits, so as long as you didn't draw attention to it it's unlikely it would even occur to them that you were fudging the rolls.

This would also only be at low levels, when one roll can take someone from full health to -10 without them doing anything wrong.