GM's Guide to Creating Challenging Encounters


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This would be a challenging encounter for 4 6th level PCs but there are many ways to deal with it. I am pretty sure that a 6th level party could enact several of these.

If indoors the sorcs will be clustered and 1 fireball might get half of them.

Obscuring mist will block LOS and give the party time to prepare.

Unseen servants can hold sheet in front of you to ruin targeting.

If the sorcs win init then they might very well force a retreat after they kill one PC but if not then AoEs plus things to block LoE will favor the party. I do not think this would be overboard for an encounter.

Contributor

demontroll wrote:

Spend all encounter XP on level 1 Sorcerers at 200 XP each. Each should have four 1st level spells, all of them cast magic missile each round. Have all of them shoot at the same target (who doesn't have the Shield buff).

So a CR 8 encounter would have 4800 XP to spend, and you could get 24 first level sorcerers. They would do 24 * (1d4+1) = 84 average damage a round with no saving throw, 110 foot range, and an automatic hit. That should easily kill one 6th level character each round.

This would be a perfect example of what I would call a "punishing" encounter, not a challenging encounter. Yes, there is *much* more pressure on the PCs to take care of those spellcasting minions, but the PCs won't realize this until they've had to weather an entire round of magic missiles spamming. Which means someone is dead on round 1. Plus you're starting to wear on my suspension of disbelief that said dragon managed to find 24 sorcerers to guard itself with, although there are plenty of great flavor reasons as to why a dragon would attract so many sorcerers.

The only real way to make sure this isn't crazy punishing is to split the spellcasters into separate initiative groups and pray they all don't go before the PCs so they "catch the drift" about how dangerous these sorcerers are.


Fantastic work Alexander. I am a first time PF GM I am struggling to find good balance to encounters. This guide is much appreciated. Thank you!

-MD


So a thought on the boggard + dragon encounter.

Besides this encounter getting singled out for the back and forth of boggards being too week vs 20 boggards still being effective, here is something I think is worth mentioning.

Monster playability: As a GM, your time and resources are stretched. You have to understand the adventure, the monsters, and the characters, know all the rules, and a billion other things. One of the draws of having a challenging CR +4 encounter be a single BBEG is that it is quick. It's just one monster, one stat block, one thing to debuff, one slot on initiative, and one list of hit points to subtract from. Adding 20 boggards makes for two stat blocks and 21 different creatures to keep track of. That is a possible game-sinking amount of work and the DM turn may end up taking longer than the entire rest of the party combined.

So here is my food for thought for the guide: Greater than CR-4 minions should probably be avoided in an encounter, not because of their inherent worth, but because of the workload they create. Also, keeping the enemy similar helps cut down on stat block confusion. A single boggard can threaten both melee and ranged, which should be good enough since they're all fodder anyway. Give them all the same weapons and armor too. Adding sergeants and casters with different stat arrays is just compounding the complexity as well.

Since following this guide will make more work for the GM by re-balancing encounters to up the action economy (primarily by adding enemies), maybe a section on speeding the process up may help novice GMs. You have a bit on what to look for in a monster already with your blood swarm example. Maybe some other pointers on how to keep it simple on the back end. I would personally not apply complicated templates, class levels, or variety packs of monster types on mooks if I could get away with it. I don't want that many stat blocks out for one encounter behind the GM screen. Maybe no more than 3, and would prefer to keep the enemy count to no more than twice the party size as a guideline for sanity.


So are most people using the +4 For all encounters or only Boss encounters and extra challenging encounters. Or are you going through and using each of the different level of encounters through out?


I run campaigns in a fashion similar to the APs. Generally there is a mix of encounter challenge levels throughout each "adventure" (I prefer to call them Plot Points, but that's the screenwriter in me I suppose). I always end most of the adventures on a +4 encounter for the "boss fight" style encounter. For the adventure at the very end of the campaign, it isn't unusual for me to end with a +5-6 encounter. Especially if player's have time to prepare well for it. That said, usually if there are any encounters directly before the campaign ending encounter, they're at -2 or -1 to make sure the party has resources for a decent chance of survival at the end.

All that in mind, I tend to run games differently than a lot of GMs I know. I borrowed this style guide from the shadowrun forums:

God Mode: PCs rarely get scratched, they are practically gods.
Feather Duster (Oh that tickles): PCs will occasionally take damage, but never more than a quarter of their health or they are considered seriously injured.
Action Movie: PCs will get shot up and hurt on a regular basis, but they don't die. When they hit 1/4 of their wound track left, they're horribly hurt.
Die Hard: PCs rarely die without a good dramatic reason, but they're used to walking away with one box of health and two rounds left in the gun.
Who's Intestines am I Tripping In: PCs die so often they're required to have multiple back up characters in case they "burn" through several in a session.

Obviously shadowrun uses a different health system, but the concepts are still valid for Pathfinder. I'm usually in the Die Hard camp of GMs when it comes to style. Most GMs I play under prefer a more Action Movie style, but I refuse to play in God Mode or Feather Duster games. They just don't jive with me (I'd rather be tripping in intestines than tickled).

Contributor

Joey Virtue wrote:
So are most people using the +4 For all encounters or only Boss encounters and extra challenging encounters. Or are you going through and using each of the different level of encounters through out?

The game assumes you're using some variety. The most successful dungeon I've run to date had 6 encounters, where 2 of them were CR +4, 2 of them were CR +0–1, and the last two were CR +2–3. But I also play with a (generally) high-powered group of PCs who also have the support of a GMPC.

It really depends on your players, their skill, their PC's abilities, and the type of game you want to run. Making *all* encounters you run CR +4 would be too brutal for all but the most experienced players, and even then you're likely to be scrapping gooey chunks of their PCs off the walls after several encounters.

Contributor

Muad'Dib wrote:

Fantastic work Alexander. I am a first time PF GM I am struggling to find good balance to encounters. This guide is much appreciated. Thank you!

-MD

No problem!

I wanted to make this guide specifically for new GMs. I'm thrilled that its helped as many veteran GMs as it has, though!


Great guide and thank you for sharing. One point which is missed, and is partially picked up in some of the discussion comments is encounter variety.

Some players will be good at certain things and bad at others. Some parties will be focused in certain areas and others more well rounded. Both scenarios have strengths and weaknesses. An average encounter against a party that is focused on the party's strengths will be easy, whilst an average encounter focused away from the party's strengths will be hard. Repeating similar encounters against a well-rounded party will drain the useful resources more quickly than different types of encounter e.g. a 5th level wizard only has one fireball, two encounters involving large numbers of weak humanoids in quick succession could be very challenging indeed.

Having encounter variety also combats the munchkin problem, some encounters will be breezed through as the character's strengths are optimized for the conditions. Others will be incredibly tough, directly targeting the character's weaknesses.

I try and design encounter series involving a series of weaker, resource sapping encounters and two tough encounters. Overall the combined challenge ratings are higher than APL+4, say +6 or +7 but include a few as low as APL-3. The end result is that if the PCs want to succeed they have to think about what they are doing and pick and choose their encounters. I tend not to go for the single APL+4 encounter, but assume the boss+minions is more powerful but split across multiple encounters.


One thing I've found useful lately is to pre-gen a bunch of mooks of various levels following the NPC rules (roughly), so that I have CR 6, CR 7, CR 8, CR 9, CR 10, CR 11, and so forth mooks (my players just hit 11th level). This way, it's rather easy to just use the same mook over and over again and reskin them each combat.

This combat it's 4 tengu archers, 4 tengu swordsmen, and 2 tengu samurai.

Next combat, it's 6 human archers, 4 human polearm fighters, and 1 suli magus.

Really the archers are just the same archers of whatever race, same with the swordsmen or polearm fighters. There's honestly not enough difference for one fight between races to really matter (+1 here, -1 there). But then I only have to keep a dozen or so printouts. I've been using PCGen, it's not perfect, but for most NPCs it works great.

Then I can work up a few BBEGs to go with them all when needed. Awhile back, had a fight that was 8 mooks ambushing people, and then almost immediately afterward (5 minutes later) another attack by a BBEG. The PCs almost got killed lowering their guard and splitting up before the BBEG showed up.

Contributor

mdt wrote:

One thing I've found useful lately is to pre-gen a bunch of mooks of various levels following the NPC rules (roughly), so that I have CR 6, CR 7, CR 8, CR 9, CR 10, CR 11, and so forth mooks (my players just hit 11th level). This way, it's rather easy to just use the same mook over and over again and reskin them each combat.

This combat it's 4 tengu archers, 4 tengu swordsmen, and 2 tengu samurai.

Next combat, it's 6 human archers, 4 human polearm fighters, and 1 suli magus.

That's an awesome strategy and its one that I commonly employ as well. The only trouble is when you start getting to high levels and the "mooks" are expected to have some decent wealth on them. Dropping the same equipment over and over again can be a bit repetitive.


I enjoy optimizing but because I am the DM I don't get to optimize PCs. Instead I come up with mooks and BBEGs. One thing I do with mooks is make sure that they are more then a small chance of some damage. I want then to use poison or trip or daze or shake or something so that they not quite so easy to ignore. Combat maneuvers work well for this. Another mook I like is the vampiric enslaved spawn. They can dominate with thier action and despite a low will save they have shot at it so they are scary in numbers.

I love this guide. Thanks for writing it.


Alexander Augunas wrote:
mdt wrote:

One thing I've found useful lately is to pre-gen a bunch of mooks of various levels following the NPC rules (roughly), so that I have CR 6, CR 7, CR 8, CR 9, CR 10, CR 11, and so forth mooks (my players just hit 11th level). This way, it's rather easy to just use the same mook over and over again and reskin them each combat.

This combat it's 4 tengu archers, 4 tengu swordsmen, and 2 tengu samurai.

Next combat, it's 6 human archers, 4 human polearm fighters, and 1 suli magus.

That's an awesome strategy and its one that I commonly employ as well. The only trouble is when you start getting to high levels and the "mooks" are expected to have some decent wealth on them. Dropping the same equipment over and over again can be a bit repetitive.

Some of the equipment will be repetitive (rings of sustenance, deflection, belts, headbands, cloaks, weapons, armor) and is expected, because everyone has them. Plus you can switch up the weapons to some extent, and armor easily in the same level (light, medium, etc).

What I usually do is make a sidelist of 'other equipment' to switch out that wouldn't affect combat. So, they'll ahve X GP worth of 'other' equipment


Reskinning is a fantastic idea. I had a homebrew adventure where the party ended up fighting about 30 gnolls through a small dungeon according to the stat block, but they saw freaky monster animal men of all kinds, and all I changed up were descriptions, weapons, and movement types. (some eagle headed fliers, some gorilla looking climbers running up the walls, some fish headed ones swimming quickly, etc. I gave a few the effect of enlarge person to make them bigger too.) But it was just gnoll stats.

Liberty's Edge

so just a question about the math (my worst subject) so if my party is composed of 6 level 5 characters their apl would be 6 correct? and if so a challenging encounter for them would be 14,400xp worth since on the chart a CR +4 fight for a single cr 6 creature would be 2400 and then you multiply that by the number of characters in the group to get the 14,400xp right? you then use this to buy monsters correct? so if i throw a young nightskitter at my party which is a cr11 (12,800xp) i would then have 1,600xp left over to buy zombie giant spiders to round out the encounter correct? did i do this right or is my math off because of the larger number of player?

Liberty's Edge

Dotting for later reading.

Contributor

Terokai wrote:
so just a question about the math (my worst subject) so if my party is composed of 6 level 5 characters their apl would be 6 correct? and if so a challenging encounter for them would be 14,400xp worth since on the chart a CR +4 fight for a single cr 6 creature would be 2400 and then you multiply that by the number of characters in the group to get the 14,400xp right? you then use this to buy monsters correct? so if i throw a young nightskitter at my party which is a cr11 (12,800xp) i would then have 1,600xp left over to buy zombie giant spiders to round out the encounter correct? did i do this right or is my math off because of the larger number of player?

Instead of saying "Yes" or "No," I am going to walk you step by step through the XP allotment process.

Step One: Determine how difficult you want the encounter to be. You said you want an encounter of CR +4, so that's what we'll use.

Step Two: Go to the Table listed in the Guide and find the value that you need. For your case, every PC in your party is Level 5, so using the table find the XP value for a Level 5 encounter at +4 difficulty. If you're looking at the table, the value that you want is 1,600 XP.

Step Three: Add up the combined XP values for every player in your party. For you, you have six players, all of whom are Level 5. That's 1,600 + 1,600 + 1,600 + 1,600 + 1,600 + 1,600. For short, we can say 1,600 x 6. This gives us a total of 9,600 XP for the encounter.

Your Mathematical Error is that you picked the value for a CR +5 encounter. Under the table, CR +5 is 2,400 XP, in which case your mathematics would be correct.

Liberty's Edge

does not having 6 party members not increase the APL by 1 in your calculations?

Contributor

Terokai wrote:
does not having 6 party members not increase the APL by 1 in your calculations?

If you compare your new XP total (9,600) to the Core Rulebook, you'll find that a CR 10 encounter is worth 9,600 XP. That is a +5 encounter for a group of four 5th level characters, but because you have six players it balances out, effectively accounting for that extra +1 that the Core Rulebook tells you to add. If you follow the steps I present here, you'll never need to add that extra +1 for large groups.

Liberty's Edge

excellent thank you very much


Thank you very much for this guide Alex, can't express just how helpful this is.

If I'm understanding things, say I want to make a boss level encounter for my group of 8 3rd level characters. I decide boss level=cr+4...so I have a budget of 6,400 ex to spend on bad guys correct?

Contributor

Fraust wrote:

Thank you very much for this guide Alex, can't express just how helpful this is.

If I'm understanding things, say I want to make a boss level encounter for my group of 8 3rd level characters. I decide boss level=cr+4...so I have a budget of 6,400 ex to spend on bad guys correct?

Correct.

Contributor

Terokai wrote:

excellent thank you very much

You're quite welcome!


Sorry to pester...

When adding up the xp worth of monsters you go by the number given in the monster description, for example a yeth hound is cr3, so worth 800 xp?

Contributor

Fraust wrote:

Sorry to pester...

When adding up the xp worth of monsters you go by the number given in the monster description, for example a yeth hound is cr3, so worth 800 xp?

Yup!


This made me add to my guide for making encounters.
It is now:

Taku Ooka Nin wrote:

"titles" explained:

Use these for normal sections, and use them a lot!
Standard (Paizo): Average, easy to win.
Difficult (Paizo): A little harder, but not by much.
Hard (Paizo): Chance of death is starting to appear, but only with bad tactics.
Epic (Paizo): High chance of death, but only with bad tactics.

Use these for highlights, and only a handful per campaign.
Equals (Unofficial): The PCs are evenly matched to their opponents. Possibly great to end a section of a campaign.
BOSS (Unofficial): The PCs are weaker than their opponenets, possibly great for the end of a campaign.

4 monsters per player (4 players = 16 monsters)
CR (APL-8), CR (APL-7), CR (APL-6), CR (APL-5), CR (APL-4), or CR (APL-3) monsters; (Standard), (Difficult), (Hard), (Epic), (Equals), (BOSS)

3 monsters per player (4 players = 12 monsters)
CR (APL-7), CR (APL-6), CR (APL-5), CR (APL-4), CR (APL-3), or CR (APL-2) monsters; (Standard), (Difficult), (Hard), (Epic), (Equals), (BOSS)

2 monsters per player (4 players = 8 monsters)
CR (APL-6), CR (APL-5), CR (APL-4), CR (APL-3), CR (APL-2), or CR (APL-1) monsters; (Standard), (Difficult), (Hard), (Epic), (Equals), (BOSS)

1 monster per player (4 players = 4 monsters)
CR (APL-4), CR (APL-3), CR (APL-2), CR (APL-1), CR (APL-0), or CR (APL+1) monsters; (Standard), (Difficult), (Hard), (Epic), (Equals), (BOSS)

I also have a question for Alexander Augunas, how would you go about balancing PC templates? I tend to allow PCs to play them in my games.

Right now it is Expert/Aristocrat for average templates, and Commoner for powerful templates that give a lot of abilities.


I only made it to the ex/cr table and had to comment.

That system is a great way to think of building encounters and I'm disappointed in myself for not thinking of it.

Contributor

Taku Ooka Nin wrote:

I also have a question for Alexander Augunas, how would you go about balancing PC templates? I tend to allow PCs to play them in my games.

Right now it is Expert/Aristocrat for average templates, and Commoner for powerful templates that give a lot of abilities.

I'm not sure what you mean by PC templates. Do you mean applying monster templates to PCs at the cost of restricting them to NPC classes for that level?

Honestly, I wouldn't do it for most templates. Not so much for a balance reason, but because the flavor is off. How do you take levels in Fungal Creature, for example? At best it feels weird and at worst it feels cheesy to me.

That said, my opinion would be that the best way to balance out PC templates would be to give everyone a template for free and then adjust the party's APL accordingly. Trying to balance templates against class features will leave you frustrated.

Liberty's Edge

It looks like a good guide...but...and this may be in there, or it may be mentioned even multiple times in the thread, nothing beats knowing your players and their characters.

Regardless of how many times people cry that great cleave is ineffective, it easily counters swarms of lesser things...and I have a player who loves it. I've had wizards in my games that would never cast a fireball...even off a scroll. (OK, one wizard. )

There are ways to build even single bosses that are challenging... I do it often. Steal action economy from the party. Have preset conditional effects that don't require actions. Make sure the boss has ways to get extra, often unexpected attacks... feats like combat reflexes can seriously help in that. More than anything, make it hard for the party to steal his actions. A stunned bbeg isn't worth half his CR.


Great guide. Even though I've previously seen many of these points separately your guide ties them together into a coherent progression. I'll definitely keep this one on hand for referencing.

Plus bonus points for using Order of the Stick as an example.

Contributor

mkenner wrote:

Great guide. Even though I've previously seen many of these points separately your guide ties them together into a coherent progression. I'll definitely keep this one on hand for referencing.

Plus bonus points for using Order of the Stick as an example.

I'm all about bonus points!


Double A battery: do you intend to cover adding traps to encounters to increase danger? Do you think this is an advisable tactic?

Contributor

Mark Hoover wrote:
Double A battery: do you intend to cover adding traps to encounters to increase danger? Do you think this is an advisable tactic?

Probably not; that sort of tactic requires much more campaign / dungeon flavor than I plan on presenting in this guide.

Basically, its not worth doing unless you're using a trap with an automatic (immediate) reset action that doesn't adversely affect the creatures in the chamber. At that point, we're looking at such specific details that I feel that I can't give tips without writing the entire encounter.


Thanks for the great guide.

In my last story arc I attempted to really tried put your action economy advice to use without going the length and crunching numbers.

So I wanted to crunch the numbers to see how things fell out. The 3 member lvl 4 party attacked the bandit camp, I intended this to be a quite challenging fight (APL +3, 2400xp). Of the bandits there was a infected lycanthrope lvl 3 (800xp) fighter and 10 lvl 2 warriors (10 x 200xp), there was also a disinterested party present including a natural lycanthrope doomsayer (600xp) and a lvl 5 rogue (1200xp).

In summary:
Budget: 2400 xp
Hostiles: 2800 xp
Unfriendly: 1800 xp

And I was amazed by how well the fight went. I didn't quite trust the action economy so added the the disinterested parties as a bonus objective should they blow through the fodder, but just them against the bandits was a hard fight for the group that left them licking their wounds. Thanks again for this guide!

Edit, removed situational/environmental CR comment. The text has been updated since my last visit.


I especially appreciated your commentary on providing encounters with objectives beyond hack n slash. I often attempt to challenge my players with these adding villains with hostages or adding background elements like gems that need to be broken to end a rite instead of just interrupting with battle.

Contributor

Mark Hoover wrote:
I especially appreciated your commentary on providing encounters with objectives beyond hack n slash. I often attempt to challenge my players with these adding villains with hostages or adding background elements like gems that need to be broken to end a rite instead of just interrupting with battle.

Bonus objectives can be a lot of fun like that; your party feels rewarded when something awesome happens, but you might end up drawing out the fight a little longer without your party realizing it ....

DM Livhin wrote:


And I was amazed by how well the fight went. I didn't quite trust the action economy so added the the disinterested parties as a bonus objective should they blow through the fodder, but just them against the bandits was a hard fight for the group that left them licking their wounds. Thanks again for this guide!

You're quite welcome!


Nice guide, but it would be nice to see a part about AOE spells.

Because a sorcerer throwing maximized fireball is destroying the action economy violently and is actually even more efficient against 20 boggards instead of a couple stronger enemy.

Also, class that are hard to deal with: Paladin, Smite Evil is so powerful that it can just turn a challenging encounter into a walk in the park. Don't even get me started on the group smite evil they get at level 11.

Sure you can add non-evil enemies, but often it might feel weird.

Overall I also find that the monsters HP are too low especially at high level, if I don't tweak monsters HP, especially bosses they die in 2-3 rounds MAX, adds or not (AOE!)


I've a question for you, Alex. First, I'd like to say that this guide is excellent, and I'll be referencing it often.

My question is: How well does this guide hold up to a party of eight PCs? The math appears to hold up when you adjust it for eight players instead of four players, but I'd like your comments on it.

As the guide says, an average fight for a party of 4 1st level PCs is a CR 1 encounter. For 8 1st level PCs, that would instead be a CR 3 encounter, because 100 x 8 = 800, which is CR 3, aye?

Obviously, such a system would be rather insane due to the action economy system, as the players now have eight rounds worth of actions per round instead of four. I have my reasons for having eight players, and thus far I'm not regreting it - but of the three encounters my players have faced, they have not been sufficiently challenged - part of this was due to the action economy for one fight, another fight was a severe tactical advantage on their part.

For their next encounter, I'd like to change it up a little bit and start ramping up the threat.

For my campaign, we're not using experience - I DM-fiat Level them up at certain intervals. From level 2 to 3, they had three fights - the first was roughly CR 6 (2600 experience), and featured 10 enemies vs the 8 PCs and their 1 animal companion. Of the three fights so far, this one seemed the most 'balanced' in my eyes. The second fight was against a single CR 5 monster - although it nearly butchered the animal companion, it died swiftly in two rounds. The first round they were mostly getting into position. The third and most recent encounter consisted of no less than sixteen enemies - 15 CR 2 gnolls (Four of which were shaken and heavily injured, the 11 others were minorly injured and Enraged as per the Rage Spell), while the last one was a CR 3 Gnoll with class levels that died during the surprise round. The players were the one ambushing the gnolls from a rocky cliff and thoroughly butchered the gnolls before they could reach them. That encounter was roughly a CR 8 encounter if you include the -1 CR from a terrain advantage, though it was likely more of a CR 6-7 due to the extreme tactical advantage.

Anyways, I realize the issue from the latter two fights - the first fight was interesting enough, though. This next fight will be somewhat of a mini-boss fight, but it will be their only encounter in the day.

I plan on using your guide more heavily for this next fight, but your thoughts on how well it holds up vs an 8-player party would be appreciated.

Contributor

Lauraliane wrote:
Because a sorcerer throwing maximized fireball is destroying the action economy violently and is actually even more efficient against 20 boggards instead of a couple stronger enemy.

You're ignoring several other tips from the guide.

1) Don't swarm your mooks unless you're swarming a PC. This means that your maximized fireball is going to be hitting a PC too. Likely, you're going to hit a beefy martial-type who will be considerably less beefy when he takes a whooping 70-ish damage to the face from your maximized fireball.

Also, as a sixth level spell, the sorcerer needs to be at least 14th level to cast maximized fireball. Meaning the encounter you are referring to wouldn't be challenging, and therefore the tactic isn't applicable.

Quote:
Also, class that are hard to deal with: Paladin, Smite Evil is so powerful that it can just turn a challenging encounter into a walk in the park. Don't even get me started on the group smite evil they get at level 11.

Going back to before, this is why the "boss monster" is a poor idea encounter-wise. For a challenging encounter, you don't want to give your PCs one target that they can nuke-to-win.

Quote:
Sure you can add non-evil enemies, but often it might feel weird.

If you're not comfortable exploiting a very noticeable weakness in your player's tool kit, I don't know how to help you.

Quote:
Overall I also find that the monsters HP are too low especially at high level, if I don't tweak monsters HP, especially bosses they die in 2-3 rounds MAX, adds or not (AOE!)

Then maximize their hit points. It doesn't affect their CR and takes a few seconds to calculate. I didn't think that was something that warranted being in The Guide.

Contributor

Crustypeanut wrote:
My question is: How well does this guide hold up to a party of eight PCs? The math appears to hold up when you adjust it for eight players instead of four players, but I'd like your comments on it.

Mathematically, it doesn't matter whether you use my tables for eight PCs or eight hundred PCs; things are going to be more difficult. The bigger question is, "What is this massive party composition going to look like," because the things that challenge a group with four extra wizards/sorcerers/clerics/oracles/druids are going to be very different than the things that challenge a party that consists of a fighter/wizard/rogue/cleric/bard/magus/inquisitor/alchemist. In such a large group, identifying the flaws in your PCs' builds is just as important so you can essentially set up a chess match against them. Or you could always have massive amounts of monsters, but you'll find that combats will drag on forever.


Luckily, my group consists of only a few primary casters (A sorcerer, a melee-oriented druid w/ armored spinosaurus animal companion, and a polearm-oriented oracle of battle, currently DMPC'd due to player absence) - the rest are either non casters (The Archer Ranger, Pistolero Gunslinger, Invulnerable Rager Barbarian, and defensive-oriented Fighter), or the firearm-wielding bard.

As a result, the group is heavy on both melee and ranged damage output in particular. The sorcerer focuses more on control and AoE, being a sneaky ambush type (He's a kobold), and is very fond of his clever usage of his wand of Silent Image.

Healing is primarily through items right now (They all chipped in for a wand or two of Cure Light Wounds, and they just found a rod that also can cast CLW, though nauseates the user for 2d4 rounds afterwards) as the players have few magical resources they're willing to spend on healing, preferring instead to use their spells for buffs or support, and we're in the middle of a desert. Water isn't an issue (They rely on Create Water from the druid), though heat is. Though they haven't had much issue with the heat yet due to ample preparation through hot weather outfits and Endure Elements, they also haven't been ambushed after having been traveling in the heat. Most of them strip their armor off during the later part of the day when heat becomes an issue. The Druid uses Endure Elements, while the Fighter toughs it out in his Full Plate. (Poor bastard)

During the fight with the gnolls, the group had time to prepare themselves before ambushing, thus allowing them to heal up from nonlethal damage (Removing the fatigue associated with it) and grabbing their armor.

Using advice from the guide though, I think I've got a relatively good solution planned..


Lauraliane wrote:

Also, class that are hard to deal with: Paladin, Smite Evil is so powerful that it can just turn a challenging encounter into a walk in the park. Don't even get me started on the group smite evil they get at level 11.

Sure you can add non-evil enemies, but often it might feel weird.

Overall I also find that the monsters HP are too low especially at high level, if I don't tweak monsters HP, especially bosses they die in 2-3 rounds MAX, adds or not (AOE!)

I know this wasn't directed at me, but I want to say on the paladin thing: there are plenty of non-evil enemies that can be added to an encounter fairly easily. Mindless oozes come to mind. Gibbering mouthers are CR 5, neutral (I know that's weird) and get a free action acid attack every round which will no doubt add up over time.

Until you get to group smite, an evil enemy can do plenty to hold back a paladin. Send a good number of evil (or neutral) goons at the paladin to keep her from getting into melee range. Use magic on 'im.

Fun fact for people: attaching a single level of witch onto any creature with 11+ int will give it access to a hex. The -2 from evil eye can make a difference in a fight. More importantly, though, is that one level of witch gives a minion the spell "Mudball". Yes they get a reflex save to shake it off each turn, but they're blind until then as long as the minion makes a ranged touch attack, which is very rarely very difficult. This hardly changes the exp that a monster is worth, and PCs will never expect the mooks they're fighting to have such an ability. I highly recommend it.

Alexander Augunas, I actually have my own question for you: I've been setting encounters in the way you suggested (many enemies vs few enemies), but also with the "boss" type enemy amongst the whole thing, and I've noticed a trend. A trend that it's really hard for my mooks to really cause enough of a problem for my PCs to spend actions on them. They tend to gravitate towards the boss, and it seems like the CR calculations aren't quite accurate if the PCs don't really end up fighting all the enemies. Is there a way to design an encounter in such a way that this doesn't end up happening?

I have noticed that encounters seem to run best when in real "order of the stick" fashion: With a (roughly) 1-1 ratio of NPCs to PCs, and a relatively stable CR amongst them all. I can't help but feel like the game was designed for a particular type of party balance, and it seems to me like it's not enough to assign a BUNCH of enemies or even equally powerful enemies; without that balance, what's it worth?


FLite wrote:
No, but at least in home games I do let PC's make perception checks / other skill checks (depending on system) to judge approximately how competent an enemy is.

Late to the party, but I've allowed the players to compare relative base attack bonuses with other humanoids. Eg. Rogue:"he is just a spoiled aristocrat, i'll slap him around if need be" DM: "No question that he is a spoiled aristocrat, but the sword calluses on his hands and the way he carries the jeweled longsword scream formal training by experts, you don't think you could guarantee success in toe to toe fair fight.


This looks awesome. Can't wait to read it!


Dot. I need a longer lunch break. This thread has really gotten good.

Scarab Sages

/derail on

tonyz wrote:
Mooks can get in the way, but they can also pile up and use their numbers -- flanking, aid another, low-level bard for +1, low-level cleric for +1, and suddenly an APL-5 minion is swinging like an APL-1 who might well hit. Poisoned weapons (at least for some foes) might also make life more difficult for the players. Nets, reach weapons, and a few other simple tools and tricks can improve chances of achieving something enormously.

I have used this tactic before, but reading your post here made me think of the Ur-viles from the Thomas Covenant books, where they fought in wedges, focusing their combat strength into their lead fighter. I am thinking I might just send some kobold wedges at my PCs in the future and see what they make of them :)

/derail off

Excellent guide, and one I used to show my PCs why I often have encounters I want to challenge them start with a potential surprise round for the monsters. I gave them this guide and pointed out some of the challenges for a GM to make tough encounters without causing a TPK (I have a 9 man group!). Thanks for all the hard work and I was really impressed by the running updates you seem to be doing based on feedback!

Contributor

Shimnimnim wrote:

Alexander Augunas, I actually have my own question for you: I've been setting encounters in the way you suggested (many enemies vs few enemies), but also with the "boss" type enemy amongst the whole thing, and I've noticed a trend. A trend that it's really hard for my mooks to really cause enough of a problem for my PCs to spend actions on them. They tend to gravitate towards the boss, and it seems like the CR calculations aren't quite accurate if the PCs don't really end up fighting all the enemies. Is there a way to design an encounter in such a way that this doesn't end up happening?

I have noticed that encounters seem to run best when in real "order of the stick" fashion: With a (roughly) 1-1 ratio of NPCs to PCs, and a relatively stable CR amongst them all. I can't help but feel like the game was designed for a particular type of party balance, and it seems to me like it's not enough to assign a BUNCH of enemies or even equally powerful enemies; without that balance, what's it worth?

Mooks are only as valuable as you make them in your encounter. Specifically, are you choosing mooks that are truly dangerous to your PCs? For example, a shadow is relatively easy to deal with, but can spell certain death for even a high-level PC. Generally speaking, you want mooks who can do bad stuff to your PCs (or good stuff to the boss) that doesn't require high save DCs or levels. For example, even a 1st level bard can be helpful to a boss monster, but a 1st level fighter is going to have limited use.

To that end, killing your mooks needs to be valuable. Picking bogards for mooks in my example might not have been my best choice for a CR 2 mook (and its admittedly not something I'd be likely to do in my own game). With access to spells like prayer, bless, and cure serious wounds and the ability to channel energy, however, even a 3rd level cleric (CR 2) can be an enticing enough target to distract your PCs for a round or two.

Contributor

redcelt32 wrote:
Excellent guide, and one I used to show my PCs why I often have encounters I want to challenge them start with a potential surprise round for the monsters. I gave them this guide and pointed out some of the challenges for a GM to make tough encounters without causing a TPK (I have a 9 man group!). Thanks for all the hard work and I was really impressed by the running updates you seem to be doing based on feedback!

I really don't do as much as I wish I could, sadly. 2014 has been busy for me; I've been struggling to get the print version of one of my print products printed, writing a new class for an ongoing kickstarter, finishing my second Village Backdrop for Raging Swan Press, and partnering with Rogue Genius Games for not one but two new products that'll hopefully see the light of day sooner rather than later. In short, its been a busy life!

One thing that I've been thinking about is taking this guide and evolving it into a blog; it would allow me to dissect each section piece by piece. Plus having a rigid schedule for something like a blog would help keep me motivated to continue answering questions in a more timely fashion. Plus as far as I can tell, there are a surprisingly few number of blogs that do anything remotely like this.

What do y'all think of something like that?

Silver Crusade

A blog would probably be a better format than the google doc guide. I think it's a great idea.

A couple things I noticed in the document: you refer to the "previous" dragon encounter before you describe it. And you don't have the article on countering zen archer's up yet--you just describe why zen archers might need countering.

Some suggestions:
For archery in general there are hard counters and soft counters. Zen archers are just as vulnerable to most of them as other archers are.
1. Windwall or fickle winds are hard counters. The zen archer needs to find a new strategy (such as melee attacks) or at least move around the wind wall in order to do anything useful.
2. Wall of fog, Solid fog, and acid fog are somewhere between a hard and a soft counter. A zen archer stuck in the middle of a fog can't see any targets to attack and will probably take a while to get to somewhere that he can see something.
3. Obscuring mist is also somewhere between a hard and a soft counter.
4. Deflect arrows (or the shield equivalent) are soft counters. A zen archer gets enough attacks that deflecting one per round won't shut him down, but it will significantly reduce his effectiveness.
5. Obscuring mist is also a soft counter and can be cast by a minion.
6. Depending upon the race and visual ability of the zen archer, darkness (either underground or night) can seriously hamper the zen archer's ability to choose targets.
7. Inside or underground, narrow corridors with lots of turns will also hinder the zen archer. A narrow corridor means that monsters will almost always be able to find cover (if only from the zen archer's front-line allies) for an extra +4 AC and a narrow turning corridor means that the zen archer may not even be able to get line of sight in order to attack the monsters.
8. Until an archer finds a way to fire without provoking, the step up line of feats will provide another soft counter to archery. The archer can five foot step away from the monster, but the monster will use an immediate action (through the feat) to follow and will still get an AoO (which could be used to trip or sunder and prevent the archer from attacking altogether). If the monster is far enough along the feat chain, they can make an extra attack as a part of the immediate action.
9. Sunder and Disarm are both highly effective against archers who tend to wield fragile wooden bows. For extra cruel points, have the monster pick spend a move action to pick the bow up or kick it away from the archer after disarming it. These are good tactics to keep archers who have found a way to use their bows without provoking AoOs honest. They may not provoke, but they would still rather not have their bows sundered or disarmed, so they will still try to keep out of melee.

Another suggestion I would include is ways to make minions effective. The classic complaint is that swarms of low level creatures are not effective because they can't hit PCs and don't significantly damage them when they do. That is not necessarily true.

For example, a 1st level human fighter who maybe starts out with +4 to hit (+2 strength, +1 BAB, +1 weapon focus), can still hit PCs with an AC of 24 if properly supported. Imagine that they are the foot soldiers of a devil priest's warband. You could have 8 1st level fighters to support the evil high priest or you could have 6 1st level fighters, a 1st level bard, and a 1st level cleric acolyte. If the bard inspires courage (which I'm told is a competence bonus to hit and damage), the acolyte casts bless (+1 morale bonus to hit), and the high priest casts prayer (+1 to hit and damage), now the fighters are at +7 to hit. That's a lot better but they still need a 17 to hit that AC 24. So, let's give a couple of them tanglefoot bags. They're pretty easy to hit with and now the PCs are entangled dropping that AC to 22. Let one bad guy move adjacent to the PC and ready an action to attack when he has a flank and the other bad guy charges into a flank. Now one is attacking at +9 and the other at +11 against AC 22. If the evil high priest has access to Cornugon Strike or Blistering invective, he can give the PC the shaken status and push the AC down to 20. If someone in the cult can knock PCs prone, the minions who needed a 20 to hit before we started buffing them with spells and tactics will instead have trouble missing. If they're going for the wizard or barbarian who didn't start out with AC 24, they may even be able to get some mileage out of their human bonus feat of Power Attack.

Now imagine that instead of an evil human death cult, it is cannabalistic tribe of death-worshipping half-orcs. The bard is a primitive skald but he can still inspire courage. The low level cleric is a witch doctor's apprentice but he can still cast bless. The fighters keep their Weapon Focus but they all become barbarians. Now they can rage for an additional +2 to hit and use their ferocity ability to get an attack in even if the PCs manage to reduce them to -8 or -9 hp with a single attack. They probably won't use the same equipment or tactics as the previous example, but the rage and ferocity will make up for it and they too can threaten PCs with a good AC.

Sometimes the use of consumable items to buff up minions prior to fights will strike a lot of players as cheesy and unfair (I don't know how many encounters I played where every monster had just drank their life's savings in potions of bull's strength, cat's grace, bear's endurance, haste, fly, and false life on the mere suspicion that my PC was about to kick in the door to their 10x10 room. However, there are legitimate ways to do it. In general, using consumables during the fight is less cheesy than doing so immediately beforehand. And scrolls can enable minions to punch far above their weight. An apprentice wizard could read a scroll of haste to buff the three fiendish dire wolves his master just summoned. Sure, the first level apprentice will need to roll a caster level check but it's not that hard to roll a 5 on 1d20+1. In some cases, it can even give the minion effective offense. A scroll of ice storm is pretty easy for a low-level wizard to read and since it has no save, it will still hurt the party noticeably. If the minion dies before he gets another action, that one action was still worth every XP point you spent on him.

Scarab Sages

Elder Basilisk wrote:

A blog would probably be a better format than the google doc guide. I think it's a great idea.

A couple things I noticed in the document: you refer to the "previous" dragon encounter before you describe it. And you don't have the article on countering zen archer's up yet--you just describe why zen archers might need countering.

Some suggestions:
For archery in general there are hard counters and soft counters. Zen archers are just as vulnerable to most of them as other archers are.
1. Windwall or fickle winds are hard counters. The zen archer needs to find a new strategy (such as melee attacks) or at least move around the wind wall in order to do anything useful.
2. Wall of fog, Solid fog, and acid fog are somewhere between a hard and a soft counter. A zen archer stuck in the middle of a fog can't see any targets to attack and will probably take a while to get to somewhere that he can see something.
3. Obscuring mist is also somewhere between a hard and a soft counter.
4. Deflect arrows (or the shield equivalent) are soft counters. A zen archer gets enough attacks that deflecting one per round won't shut him down, but it will significantly reduce his effectiveness.
5. Obscuring mist is also a soft counter and can be cast by a minion.
6. Depending upon the race and visual ability of the zen archer, darkness (either underground or night) can seriously hamper the zen archer's ability to choose targets.
7. Inside or underground, narrow corridors with lots of turns will also hinder the zen archer. A narrow corridor means that monsters will almost always be able to find cover (if only from the zen archer's front-line allies) for an extra +4 AC and a narrow turning corridor means that the zen archer may not even be able to get line of sight in order to attack the monsters.
8. Until an archer finds a way to fire without provoking, the step up line of feats will provide another soft counter to archery. The archer can five foot step away from the monster, but the monster will use an immediate action...

Very good points about mist and fog hampering Zen archers. However note that after 3rd level, they don't provoke from shooting while threatened, so 7 and 8 are less effective.

Also true that multiple low level mooks gang tackling the zen archer can make life difficult. It also seems that the class does not deal well solo with swarms, and those were very effective at hampering in my game.

In our games, several players were zen archers and several enemies they fought were as well (figured they should feel the pain as well). The best impediment to a zen archer seems to be either to target his bow with a sunder or grease, or just plain grapple him. He still gets some unarmed strikes in on you, but zen archers are incredibly weak if they are not firing their bow as far as offensive output. Not that grappling monks is a piece of cake, its sort of the lesser of two evils. Jumping on an enemy zen archer is sort of like falling on a grenade to save the rest of your group, you get messed up some but no one else does.

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