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Dayvig
2015-05-05, 03:42 PM
Hey, I've got a question about encounters and party size.

My PCs happen to have gotten themselves quite the warband. We have a Monk, Fighter, Samurai, Summoner, Bard, Two Orc fighter companions and possibly a Ranger. They also have acquired a powerful artifact (+2 Homebrew drill item that bypasses damage reduction) on loan for a month. The problem is that they're all around 2nd-3rd level and I've been regularly throwing CR5s at them with little difficulty. How should I adjust the power levels of my encounters for this group? I fear that if I go too high that one of their characters will get killed in a single hit, but they're so numerous that lower encounters seem kind of trivial. As a sidenote, they're about to sneak into a heavily defended fortress with sophisticated nonmagical defenses, so this may end up thinning their numbers.

Also, what kinds of encounters should I try for? Squads of skilled archers? Powerful wizards? Just straight up huge CR 6-8 monsters? Tucker's Kobolds?

JNAProductions
2015-05-05, 03:54 PM
Well, first off, since 5E toned down the magic items, you should probably get rid of the artifact. Plus Samurai is definitely homebrew, so that might be OP...

In seriousness, this should be moved to the 3.P thread. I came on here hoping to help, but I'm a 5E guy so I don't know where to begin.

Good luck getting an answer, though.

nedz
2015-05-05, 04:03 PM
A variety — and this is true for any edition.

ExLibrisMortis
2015-05-05, 04:16 PM
You could try something very tough, able to stand up to many attacks. Say a party of warforged crusader 4s, with adamantine plating, combat/evasive reflexes, and glaives.

Dayvig
2015-05-05, 07:26 PM
If someone could move this to the 3.x forums I'd be fine with that.

I'm not talking raw ECL here, I know that it isn't an exact science, just general encounters that you think could be a test of their skills. Something like Exlibris mortis sounds like a good idea.

As a follow-up question, should I contrive some way to split them up?

Solaris
2015-05-05, 07:44 PM
As a follow-up question, should I contrive some way to split them up?

No. Splitting the party leads to half the group being bored while the other half does something.

Strigon
2015-05-05, 08:05 PM
Probably best not to split them up, especially if it feels contrived.
It sounds like this group would get absolutely destroyed if they were forced into ranged combat (Though without knowing their preferred weapons, I can't say for sure.) If so, flying enemies shut them down pretty hard (In a spectacularly dull fashion, but that's their fault.)
If not, use terrain. Make them go through a chokepoint, so their numbers don't count for anything, or rough terrain, so the enemy can soften them up before engaging. Or go for a wizard with lots of AoE. Tucker's Kobolds work, if you really hate them.

Just look at their strengths, and say "Okay, when are these things rendered less effective?"

Legato Endless
2015-05-05, 08:11 PM
If someone could move this to the 3.x forums I'd be fine with that.

I'm not talking raw ECL here, I know that it isn't an exact science, just general encounters that you think could be a test of their skills. Something like Exlibris mortis sounds like a good idea.

As a follow-up question, should I contrive some way to split them up?

Depends on what you mean by split up. Do you mean, separate them within a battlefield in what's explicitly intended to be a singular encounter? That can be done, have an enemy throw up a wall or something. But you need to leave whichever half of the party finishes first a way to quickly rejoin their compatriots. Also note that this may drastically crank up the difficulty, as even a party with poor synergy still benefits being in the same place.

Anything more than that however...then no. Breaking up the party is only something you can really afford if you have multiple DMs handling a campaign who can keep all players engaged.

JAL_1138
2015-05-05, 08:44 PM
Also, what kinds of encounters should I try for? Squads of skilled archers? Powerful wizards? Just straight up huge CR 6-8 monsters? Tucker's Kobolds?

...yes. As much of the above as possible while leaving enough room not to TPK them if they play smart. Heavy on the Tucker's. Any fortress assault on a well-equipped, well-led, and well-trained enemy force worth a darn should be brutal. This is the enemies' prepared, fortified, defensible home turf. It was designed to repel invaders. They will have a variety of defenses, from barricades to traps to boiling oil to murderholes to hallways and entryways and courtyards all designed to funnel intruders into a killbox in each, and they'll have some rooms with lead in the walls and might have lead in the roof tiles if the architect knew how scrying worked. And they'll have mixed units and/or multiple single-type units of infantry, archers, mages, bruisers, and the like. If the fortress is constructed properly to withstand it, boiling oil can also be set on fire. And anyone not badly scalded by the oil itself will note that the ground has become very slippery (and is on fire). They might use nets, archers, ballistae, scattershot, and such to deal with flying opponents.

Attacking a (well-equipped, -led, and -trained) enemy's fortress should be Hades on Oerth.


Keep in mind that I'm an AD&D grognard before taking my advice. 3.PF fights in my limited experience with it tend to drag on much longer than the same fights in AD&D. And they're almost always harder to stat up, so throwing all of these at them in at once and/or sequentially could require more prep than is reasonable.

Jay R
2015-05-05, 09:24 PM
Reduce the CR of the attackers, but increase their numbers. 50 goblins, who might or might not have more behind them, will give them a longer fight, but no one hit will kill them.

Dayvig
2015-05-05, 11:33 PM
Depends on what you mean by split up. Do you mean, separate them within a battlefield in what's explicitly intended to be a singular encounter? That can be done, have an enemy throw up a wall or something. But you need to leave whichever half of the party finishes first a way to quickly rejoin their compatriots. Also note that this may drastically crank up the difficulty, as even a party with poor synergy still benefits being in the same place.

Anything more than that however...then no. Breaking up the party is only something you can really afford if you have multiple DMs handling a campaign who can keep all players engaged.

Yes, this is what I had intended. I would never split the party intentionally, oh god no

Also thanks for the responses, it's been quite helpful.

Sith_Happens
2015-05-05, 11:48 PM
Reduce the CR of the attackers, but increase their numbers. 50 goblins, who might or might not have more behind them, will give them a longer fight, but no one hit will kill them.

This. Don't focus on having tougher enemies so much as on having more enemies. Any battle between a party of eight and a single opponent is effectively going to begin and end with the initiative roll.

VoxRationis
2015-05-06, 12:30 AM
Mixed unit tactics. Don't just throw one sort of enemy at a time. Incorporate foes whose "counters" are diverse, in particular, because the counter is what makes demands of the PCs, more than anything else. Have melee foes who are weak to air? Mix in air elementals or other foes who grow more powerful against the airborne. Suddenly you either mitigate a strategy completely or you split up the PCs so that they can't concentrate too many of their efforts on one opponent.

nedz
2015-05-06, 05:18 AM
Keep in mind that I'm an AD&D grognard before taking my advice. 3.PF fights in my limited experience with it tend to drag on much longer than the same fights in AD&D. And they're almost always harder to stat up, so throwing all of these at them in at once and/or sequentially could require more prep than is reasonable.

Well you can use the same kind of encounters, but yes - they do take longer to stat up.

I used to be able to eyeball AD&D non-casters in minutes, because there weren't too many options — when I tried doing that early in my 3.5 career it was a dismal failure. Best approach I've found is to prepare some common builds and then realise them at different levels; so say you want some Kobold Sorcerers: make one character at level X, and then de-tune to levels X-2, X-4, etc. — now you have a group of adversaries with a common theme. Eventually you will have a library of builds and you can throw together a complex encounter quickly. Running the encounters will speed up with practice - as your group learn the new system.

GreatDane
2015-05-06, 10:41 AM
I definitely agree that increasing the number of enemies is the way to go. Personally, I've always felt that bigger encounters are more fun because you can have different kinds of enemies working together. Bad guys with strategy are fun to run and brutal for the PCs.

For example, my PCs recently went up against an elf archer and two elf rangers in a large wooden lodge containing a desk, a table, and a bed. The archer had the Ranged Pin feat and plenty of support for it (wooden walls/objects, Improved Grapple). Their strategy was for the archer to pin the PCs to the walls/furniture with arrows while the dual-wielding rangers got to full-round their poor, flat-footed enemies.

Geddy2112
2015-05-06, 11:02 AM
+1 to more enemies over a single BBEG. Without enough concentration and surges, the party could probably take a CR 9-10 if it was a single enemy. 8 (effectively 9 because the summoner is almost always call a monster or their eidolon) on 1 is going to greatly stack the odds in the PC's favor, particularly if that is the only fight of the day and they can use all of their fancy X per day abilities.

Another thing to consider is weaning them off the NPC's, which would take them down to 5 making encounters more reasonable. Also, give them multiple rounds of garbage enemies to grind down their special powers. The party will start hitting a lot less hard once the summoner and bard are out of spells, bardic performance and summons.