Low Lvl Encounters, Making Them Meaningful

[nakedonmyfoldin]

So we all know the drill, to start a campaign, you either start your PCs at an intermediate level right off the bat, or more often than not, they start at level one. I prefer to start from level one for a variety of reasons, but mainly, because I want the PCs to feel like they've earned every skill and talent that they possess. ex) Wizards learn and appreciate their lower level spells more when they are forced to make due with them for a while.

However, I was just curious about making encounters for these fresh-faced neophytes and how to make them feel important. No doubt, the characters can't be of much help with large, pressing matters. Who would trust them? In this case, is there initial quest performed to earn the town/camp/faction's trust? Is this too cliché? Probably, the players do some quest that the questgiver could easily perform, but they just don't feel like it. Or the questgiver is a farmer, mother, or child or someone without the means to kill their own nuisances.

So what all these little questions are kind of building to that I'd like to ask you guys... Is how do I make these encounters feel important in the scheme of things. I understand saving a farmer's daughter from Orc rape is pretty great and things like that, but there's a limit to how many quests like this we can do. And how can we vary the combat from the classical demi-human enemies to something more interesting. Something that doesn't feel like a lvl 1 mission.

Thanks as always, I'm looking forward to the advice/ideas.

[Segev]

The cliche is that adventurers, while not common, are a known profession that has a presence about as prevalent as other specialists (doctors, carnivals, traveling merchants), and sometimes as well-received. Thus, the "adventurers get recruited in a tavern" cliche arises because they go there to find job postings on boards or to meet quest-givers.

Low-level adventurers are really just trouble-shooters and mercenaries for specialized difficulties. Their jobs are meaningful to those who need the work done. Commonly, things for which adventurers are sought are things which are hazardous to life and limb, and which can and will ruin somebody's livelihood or cost them or their loved ones their lives if not resolved. Even low-level adventurers are heroes to their clients. Sometimes unappreciated heroes, in the case of clients almost as afraid of the adventurers as of the threat, or in the case of snooty clients who think anybody who works for them is beneath their contempt (despite needing them to do the job/being unable to do the job themselves). But heroes nonetheless.

Often, the conceit is that the story of the game is following those who are likely destined for greater things. Thus, the missions they undertake start to lead to threads which pull on greater and greater threats, commensurate in importance to the power the adventurers accumulate through leveling.

So, you have a few options as you plan your game. You can have them do some troubleshooting for grateful people (sometimes as many as a large but poor village) which is unconnected to any greater plot. You could have them hired for minor tasks which introduce them to a few people, but wherein they're small fish in a medium-sized pond to start with, and their reputation slowly grows as they do. You can have them stumble onto or be hired for a minor job which has strings tied to your major plot so they get roped in and find themselves initially attacking the periphery of something with which they'd be in over their head. That last could be done by having them not realize what it is they face at first, and slowly discover it as they grow in power, or by having them come to realize swiftly how dangerous it is, but be the only ones who can handle it (whether by destiny, special power, or simply nobody believing them), so they have to work to get stronger and thwart the threats where they can until they can push for victory.

[Gwendol]

Agreed. There are a multitude of situations/missions low level adventurers can take on to start building their path to fame and fortune: caravan guards, messengers, vermin hunters, investigators, etc.

Also, take a look at modules designed for low-level adventurers, such as the Sunless Citadel for inspiration.

[Aergoth]

Characters from level 1, the important thing is less about what monsters you're throwing at them as to how you frame the monster encounters.
The very first encounter in the Kingmaker (Pathfinder) path that I've been running is a rush to defend the trading post that you've just arrived at because the proprietor had sent for armed guards and a group of (armed) surveyors have showed up instead. So you're fighting level 1 warriors and one guy with class levels, but the opportunity to lay an ambush in order to gain the upper hand really made that game for my players. These bandits had been preying on a defenseless merchant and had threatened his family. By the time they got through another lieutenant and made their way to his boss in the finale of the first section of the campaign they were ready to wreck ****. But that first ambush had set the tone for encounters with these bandits. They preferred sneaking and ambushing to a straight fight. They disguised themselves, poisoned wine and then let an angry owlbear loose in the bandit fort.

What you might want to do then, is frame your enemies as being a bigger threat, or possibly even make some of them that little bit tougher than usual. Throw a CR 2 in with those CR 1/2. Deliberately cherry pick a tricky monster or tactic to mess with them. You know the characters and the builds, challenge them. Fudge a few numbers on one side.
My personal preference is mixing the young/advanced templates by cherry picking stats from one or the other to balance a character while changing the stats up a little. Like, grab the to-hit from advanced, but use part of its damage from young (since it usually changes the size). They hit more often which can panic a few people, but they don't do mesurably more damage (other than by virtue of sheer probability).

[Tragak]

Maybe you could mix up what the fights are about? Instead of PCs dealing X amount of damage to NPCs (killing them) before NPCs are able to deal Y amount of damage to PCs (killing them)" maybe the PCs or NPCs are trying to do something specific?

Remember when Luke Skywalker needed to navigate the Death Star trench to deliver a precision strike, Darth Vader was trying to shoot him down, but Luke couldn't afford to turn around and fight back? Maybe you could reverse that and have your NPCs be so close to making something important happen that they can't afford to fight the PCs directly.

[Undee]

However, I was just curious about making encounters for these fresh-faced neophytes and how to make them feel important. No doubt, the characters can't be of much help with large, pressing matters. Who would trust them? In this case, is there initial quest performed to earn the town/camp/faction's trust? Is this too cliché? Probably, the players do some quest that the questgiver could easily perform, but they just don't feel like it. Or the questgiver is a farmer, mother, or child or someone without the means to kill their own nuisances.





One thing to remember is that NPCs in the world aren't necessarily aware of their own power level in relation to the task at hand.

The captain of the town guard (4th level fighter) could easily clear that den of goblins on his own if he took a healing potion or two with him, but aside from the odd goblin raid on his settlement, where he was backed by the entire militia, he has no experience fighting goblins. All he knows is he has seen too many people die at the hands of those bastards and he wants them gone, preferably without sacrificing his own men in the process.

Or take a renowned craftsman (expert 8) who wants you to take his work of art to a nobleman buyer in the next town. Usually he would just hire a courier, but the mountain pass that leads to the town has been overrun by orcs recently. In "reality" the craftsman has medium BAB progression (by then even a second attack) and a decent hit dice. He could easily go by himself and take on a group of orcs if he got into some armor, but from his point of view, he doesn't know the first thing about fighting.

How exactly these people rise in levels without fighting things is another matter for discussion though




So what all these little questions are kind of building to that I'd like to ask you guys... Is how do I make these encounters feel important in the scheme of things. I understand saving a farmer's daughter from Orc rape is pretty great and things like that, but there's a limit to how many quests like this we can do. And how can we vary the combat from the classical demi-human enemies to something more interesting. Something that doesn't feel like a lvl 1 mission.

Thanks as always, I'm looking forward to the advice/ideas.


Avoiding demi-humans is easy enough, there's plenty different monster to choose from at low CR. One of my favorite BBEGs for a 1st level group is the classic Imp who's laying out the groundwork for his infernal master's nefarious plans (the Imps at-will invisibility SLA usually lets him flee the encounter to warn his master and make him aware of the party). In addition to that, while it's a low level encounter there's devils involved and that's serious business. They're organized evil incarnate. If you don't want to go the infernal route, the imp might also be the familiar of a powerful wizard or maybe it's just in league with a power-hungry nobleman.

Other ideas for non demi-human encounters would be

- Undeads. Skeletons/zombies can be made from pretty much anything, you just need some necromancer at the end which could also be any creature of sufficient intelligence

- Aberrations: Aboleths/Mindflayers/Beholders and the like are always plotting something horrible anyway. They're pretty high level, but there's also some low level around like the thought eater at CR2. They could be hiding in the sewers and terrorizing the town with horribly mutated vermin creatures.

- Fey. Evil fey backed up by magical beasts, plants and even normal animals threatening your town of choice. Or nonevil fey just angry because nearby settlement encroaches upon the territory.

- Any mad wizard experimenting with oozes, vermin or any of the above to have an excuse of sending said creatures against he party.

The cherry on top of using creatures of the above types, outside of variety, is that they're otherworldy and terrifying, especially to the common folk. Commoners are afraid of orcs because they're cruel and savage, but a writhing mass of tentacles crawling from the sewer hole will probably drive half the town into a panic.


As to the question of how to make them important in the grand scheme of things: It comes down to designing the overall adventure. Once you have a story arc or at least a theme you can just fill in the encounters. I usually start out with the big boss at the end and what he likes to accomplish and take it from there. Also, the players won't be aware of what they just did when beating a "scripted" encounter until you tell them, so you have to make them aware of it every now and then. Maybe leave a note (orders from the big guy) on one of the bad dudes explaining what they were trying to accomplish here. Just don't overdo it, not every encounter should have a special meaning.

[draken50]

In my mind, it's a matter of making the successes matter to the players, and for a lot of them, that will be less about the Challenge rating and how it's perceived in the world. A basic combat encounter with wolves or the like isn't going to set up much in the way of imagination, but with some minor tweaks you can really improve on it.

Players are hired to kill wolves... to stop them from eating sheep or the like.
vs.
A farmer's wife is distraught as her child hasn't come home, and the guards aren't any help, as they haven't seen him. She worries he's lost and alone in the woods with just his dog. The players need to track him or find out where he was going from his friends. Once the player's find him he's cowering against a cliff face, fearfully clutching a large stick, his loyal dog growling and trying to stay between him and a pack of wolves encircling him.

For a bit of added flair set it in winter, or have a storm pass through. The adventures should work to protect themselves and the awed boy from the elements. Plenty of interaction potential with the boy and the dog. (For instance the kid may be trying to get to a ruin/cave/thing and wants the players to take him there before he goes home or he'll be made fun of by his friends.) Something like this can give the players the feeling that their characters made a difference where no-one else would.

Basically, the more effort you put into creating situations where NPCs are invested in the characters and their actions, as opposed to just. Hey, here's money, kill the thing. The less the players will feel it as a grind. In my experience anyway.

[awa]

investigations and environmental hazards also work well at low level because pc often lack powers to just win them like a higher level pc might.

zombies can be boring to fight but they can be fun to trick, put the pc in a position to control the encounters pace either with traps or ambushes

[nakedonmyfoldin]

Great suggestions everyone, how about noncombat encounters? Outside of stealth infiltrations and the like, I can't think of many fun noncombat scenarios for low level individuals. Although, most players seem to be really eager for combat right out of the gate.

[awa]

I did a mystery for my level 1 game just a week ago they were trapped by a supernatural blizzard inside a small fort with a murderer the blizzard forced a bunch of low level npcs into the fort which was mysteriously abandoned then had to figure out which one of the npcs was the killer as he picked off people one by one.

It gave the party time to get to know all the npcs so they actually cared when one of them died holding off a swarm of zombies.