How are CR set for an encounter?

[Lou Diamond]

In several high tier PFS games that I have run the most recent Our Lady of Silver I found two of the encounters to be far from chalanging for my players.

Spoiler:

The Boss encounter at the end of the senario had 4 ogre body guards that could not hit 3/4 of the party except on a 20 because of the
fact that the orges were far below the 8-9 level of the party the orges shold have been el 6 fighter in addition to being orges to match up and thier feats sucked. the boss was killed in the first round of combat becaues of poor initiative player ran up to him and croaked him with two hits. Then the orgers tried to beat the stuffing out of him and only one hit because I rilled a 19 on the die because the orgers were not fit for a 8-9 tier encounter poor design on the writers part.

Somthing needs to be done to beef up the encouters when you have more than 5 players on a table.

I will say all my players had fun in Our lady of Sliver

[spalding]

you put a } instead of ] at the end of your spoiler.

[Cpt_kirstov]

The issue here is that PFS needs to run even more strictly than home games by the WBL table. Not sure which one your spoiler is about off the top of my head, but I'm guessing that there wouldn't have been enough wealth left to equip ogres with 6 levels of fighter.

[Arnim Thayer]

This is an interesting question, one I suspect is answered partly in the Submitting a Scenario area (can't find the link here). I am also curious on what Point Buy for Ability Scores are used for NPCs, if they are consistent.

[godsDMit]

Michael VonHasseln wrote:

This is an interesting question, one I suspect is answered partly in the Submitting a Scenario area (can't find the link here). I am also curious on what Point Buy for Ability Scores are used for NPCs, if they are consistent.

Monsters just use their normal scores, generally.

If it has NPC and no class levels, it uses the NPC array (13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8 or something like that).
If it has class levels (least up through subtier 4-5) it uses the 15pt stat array: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8, or something like that.

Basically, the bad guys are at a disadvantage from the start, let alone once you add in the equipment needing to be managed closely like kirstov says.

[Arnim Thayer]

And yet, this is considered a fair challenge? Seems like those who say some combats are too easy might have something there...

[godsDMit]

Considering the thread is about how the CR is decided for the encounter, I forgot to add the sometimes-so-subpar-tactics-that-it-lowers-the-CR-of-the-fight modifier.

Also, for the stats, I only looked at Shades of Ice 1 for reference, but I would imagine it should be the same for all scenarios.

[Mark Moreland]

NPCs are generated using the rules in the Core Rulebook, so their ability arrays are calculated as listed above. Keep in mind that "fair challenge" is perhaps a misnomer, as the PCs are supposed to succeed at any challenge within three of their APL. What varies from encounter to encounter is the percentage of the party's daily resources that is assumed to be used up.

[DarkWhite]

Run the same scenario for different groups of players, and you'll soon find that what one party thinks is a walk-over, another finds a TPK.

Mark Moreland wrote:

What varies from encounter to encounter is the percentage of the party's daily resources that is assumed to be used up.

I can point to a number of scenarios where the purpose of one encounter is to deplete a party's resources, whether that healing, fire damage etc, prior to the next encounter, leaving the party exposed to that need. This artificially increases the difficulty of an encounter beyond it's CR. Fair challenge or dirty tricks? Again, that depends on your group.

[Arnim Thayer]

All good points to consider.