Going to be DMing soon

[Rahdjan]

Hey all,

I'm going to be runningn 1 night adventures to give the GM of my on going group a break once in awhile. I don't have much experience DMing and I'm horrible at determining good challenges. The group is going to consist of 3 lv 5 characters. I will be limiting character selection to PHB, PHBII and the following Complete books. Arcane, Divine, Scoundrel and Warrior. As of yet, I do not know what the characters will be. I'm trying to come up with an adventure before I know so I'm not using challenges designed to beat or be beaten by a specific group. for example, I will have a few traps and hidden things even though I don't know if they'll have a rogue. There will be a few magic oriented things and they could all be fighters.

I'm trying to design this so that there will be 5 encounters and that there will be a way to move on to the next one no matter how the one prior turns out. I want to have a decent boss fight and I guess that will be the crux of this post. I know that I want my BBG to be a dragon shamen (PHBII) but I'd like to give him some 2 liutenants. Not knowing what classes my players would be, what lvl should I make my BBG and what lvl and classes should I make his minions? Any help and advice is greatly appriciated

[Kaeso]

Concerning your BBEG and his minions: don't stat them out already. I like to DM on the fly so make some very vague, abstract concepts of your BBEG and his minions. Throw some lower mooks at the party once the game begins and test their strength. Once you have a good idea of their strength, adapt the BBEG and his minions accordingly.

[Rahdjan]

In this case I want to stat them now, because I don't want to fall into the trap of I build him a certain way because of the players. Say my players are very fire heavy, then I could say make him resistant to fire but that would just be building a paper rock scissors game. I don't know if I'm be idealistic or not but I invision a world that is running and working without the players. They then come into this world and given a task that they may or may not complete.

I'm not looking for a full stating, I'll do that. I am more interested in what lvls I should make them to offer and generic party of 3 lvl 5 adventures.

[Toy Killer]

Typically, I round robin encounters to the players that haven't had a good opportunity to be relevant to the party. For example, In my current group I have a diplomancer bard, A fire heavy sorcerer, a healbot, a ranged ranger, and a grapple barbarian.

If I want to let the barbarian to shine, I throw down some spell casters that need to be shut down.

If I want the bard to shine, I bring in more social situations.

If I want the Sorcerer to shine, I bring in some webs and fire vulnerable foes

If I want the Ranger to shine, I bring in some distance required foes (Good grapple, or great melee capabilities)

If I want the Cleric to shine, I bring in piety and drop AoE damage.

Now, these are not self exclusive. Sometimes I need to bring things that makes the barbarian, the Bard and the Cleric up a notch. So I would have an Evoker dropping fireballs and lightning bolts from a small distance (letting the barbarian use his phenomenal climb/jump skill to use, preferably) and a few innocent bystanders to be escorted away (so the bard isn't just sitting in the back giving everyone a bonus to their attack rolls and damage)

I like to keep on hand when I'm designing a write out of everyone's AC and Saves, so If I need particular thing to be challenging, I'm challenging the right folks the right way. I set DCs for hard, Need to happen for sake of fun (Not save/die spells, but things like Save/Suck) to require a roll of 14 on a d20. Higher then that becomes impossible, lower becomes chancy and much lower is just a joke.

So when I make a BBEG, I like to bring everyone's strengths together, while swinging hard at their appropriate weaknesses. The Sorcerer is going to get into close combat, the Bard is going to get hit with Fort Saves, the Barbarian needs to worry about his Will power. The BBEG shouldn't be weak to fire, but should send fire vulnerable minions out to get toasty.

just my two cents.