I need some encounter advice

[MustacheManny]

So I'm a new DM running my first little campaign. My players (4 or 5 total) are all good friends of mine so I'm not worried about a revolt or anything, but I'd like to do my best. So the opening incident is the players being sent on a little quest to retrieve a minor artifact from a loca tribe of orcs (in this world orcs aren't necessarily evil, just a race of natives who have lived in the area longer than humans) but wouldn't you know it the artifact has been stolen. The orcs agree to sell it to the party cheap if they can punish the group who stole it from them in the first place. Now here's my issue, all my players are level one so the encounter needs to surviveable but I don't want to rely on the 'a cave of goblins' trope. My first idea was a small group (3) of dwarves that they could either kill, trick, or bargain with. Could something like this work? Should they resort to violence would 3 dwarfs overpower 4 or 5 level one PCs?

[BurgerBeast]

Three dwarfs are fine (assuming CR 1/8 or 1/4) - use NPC stats.

The concern at low levels is swingyness. Your party could probably handle six of these encounters in a row; on the other hand, a few unfortunate rolls and they could get TPK'd, but I would say it's highly unlikely.

General Advice:

Watch action economy - make sure it is in the PCs favour and that it is fairly unlikely to shift in one round. You've done that here.

Don't use high CR enemies at level 1 (use CR 1 and below).

Provide opportunities for rests between multiple encounters.

Give them the opportunity to decide if they want to fight or not.

TLDR: I think you've got it right.

[The Cats]

Depends on what stat block you give the dwarfs. you don't have to build a brand new character for each dwarf or anything: Just use the NPC stat blocks in the back of the MM and add poison resistance and beards.

I use Kobold Fight Club (https://kobold.club/fight/#/encounter-builder) to determine how difficult an encounter will be for my players. It's a handy tool. If the dwarfs are the penultimate encounter of the session I'd suggest not making it easy. It's a lot more fun and exciting when the players feel like there's real risk of defeat that they have to overcome.

[Regius]

So I'm a new DM running my first little campaign. My players (4 or 5 total) are all good friends of mine so I'm not worried about a revolt or anything, but I'd like to do my best. So the opening incident is the players being sent on a little quest to retrieve a minor artifact from a loca tribe of orcs (in this world orcs aren't necessarily evil, just a race of natives who have lived in the area longer than humans) but wouldn't you know it the artifact has been stolen. The orcs agree to sell it to the party cheap if they can punish the group who stole it from them in the first place. Now here's my issue, all my players are level one so the encounter needs to surviveable but I don't want to rely on the 'a cave of goblins' trope. My first idea was a small group (3) of dwarves that they could either kill, trick, or bargain with. Could something like this work? Should they resort to violence would 3 dwarfs overpower 4 or 5 level one PCs?

It most certainly could, in theory making three level 1 dwarf PC's would be a perfectly adequate way of going about it, otherwise, you could easily take a couple of CR 1/4 creatures and reskin them (as I am currently AFB I can't suggest specifics). Even then you could go one step further with the NPC's in Appendix C (correct me if i'm wrong) aslong as you don't excede the deadly encounter XP you can't go wrong.

Alternately stretch it out into a series of encounters, each with A single CR 1 dwarf (any reskin from the MM) as this will take more time and resources for the players, thus challenging them more but not being anymore difficult

[HidesHisEyes]

Yeah I agree with others here. It's perfectly feasible. I would probably use bandits from the MM, give them axes and hammers instead of swords maybe (same damage). And I'd say no more than one dwarf per PC. You could make one a bit tougher than the others by giving them the maximum hit points their hit die would allow.

[MustacheManny]

Thanks for the help guys, it's much appreciated!

[Decstarr]

Since you are starting a want the whole thing to be entertaining for the party, I'd suggest some more things. The first couple of sessions I threw at my guys were pretty straight forward "walk in an kill" missions and it quickly got boring. Turns out as soon as I changed the pattern, they almost died since they weren't expecting something "different". To avoid this situation, here's a few general hints.

- Have a backup plan and maybe give them the chance to bargain with the thieves as well, maybe there's a whole "different" story here - the artifact belonged to one of our folk heroes and the orcs were unwilling to trade it in, but we need it to ensure our position in our clan so we had to steal it - and put them in some kind of "dilemma" and give them another choice but to flat out "retrieve item by killing baddies". Could be a nice way to introduce Insight checks to find out who's lying here - if anyone is. In reality, it's seldom as easy as "they're the baddies, we're the goodies, kill them!" and I think reflecting this in a game is pretty awesome!

- Create the encounters in a different way than a flat out "run in and fight" style. Maybe have a low amount of even weaker enemies - hello, guard duty/watch dogs - be the first enemies and have new enemies emerge after a few rounds, being alerted by the fighting noise.

- Maybe the last surviving guard runs away and lures them into some kind of trap. If the guys stole the artifact from the orcs they should expect someone to show up and take it back, so they should be prepared.

If you stick to the general CR advice, you should be fine with low CR enemies and a level 1 party. Be sure to roll behind your screen in case their rolls go horribly wrong, you might want to fudge yours a little bit since a TPK in the very first session could be really frustrating.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

Are there any easy monsters to throw at them? What were the easy ones on Baldur's gate?