Help GM


Advice


So basically i'm a new GM and i made the mistake to accept 5 people in the group, i'm having problems for giving a challenge, their APL is 3...and i think this is just going to be worse when levels go up, i'm currently sending them CR 5, and they don't use even half their resources. what do you guys reccomend me, i try to use intelligent tactics, i am not just attacking with monsters, i Sunder the barbarian sword, try to flank them, Debuff them, etc...and put traps, but no use, pls halp D:


The first question I would ask is: How many encounters are they facing in a day?

If they are just facing one or two encounters, then yeah, the party is going to tear through them unless you up the difficulty noticeably. Typically, I would say that you should be looking at having at least 4 or 5 encounters in a day if you want to really stretch the party. That will cause spells to run low -- especially curative spells -- and will also increase the chances of simply causing problems from a sheer numbers standpoints (i.e. the more attacks the party faces, the more likely they are to have to expend resources.

The second question I would have is: How many foes do you typically include in a given encounter? If you are just throwing 1 CR 5 monster at the party, then yeah, odds are the party will rip it a new one. The problem you run into is action economy. From your description, you are not doing this in every encounter, but you still need to look at action economy. Typically, I have found running greater numbers of "weaker" opponents works better than simply beefing up a smaller number of monsters. This also tends to make the game more entertaining (imho) because by beefing up just one or two monsters and thus throwing a much higher level foe at the party, you'll frequently run into situations where either the party has extreme difficulty hitting the monster, or only one or two characters are really effective (i.e. you need to throw fireballs at the big bad to really have a chance). This is fine occasionally as it will give certain PCs a chance to shine, but if it occurs too often, the rest of the PCs will just get bored.

Aside from that, just remember that just because the barbarian charges to the front doesn't mean the monsters need to engage the crazy big weapon wielder. They can run around him and go for the softer foes first (assuming of course the monsters are intelligent enough to realize this). Otherwise, just try to slowly increase the challenge level until you find your sweet spot. You want to be careful because at low levels like you are at, PCs can still die really quick.

Finally, it's possible I am in the minority here, but I'm not a big fan of using combat maneuvers a lot as a GM. Especially against the high strength foes. Odds are that your barbarian probably has a pretty good CMD, which makes sundering an iffy proposition unless you really build a monster around it. Now, grappling/tripping the wizard (or other low CMD PC) on the other hand can be pretty effective at low levels. Even there though, most parties will be able to handle most maneuvers fairly easily by the time you reach the 5-8 level range.


I find it almost impossible to drain a party of resources using less than 3 encounters per day. If it is going to be a serious threat to a rested party it has to have a chance of killing characters outright. So rather than trying to find the sweet spot between moderately challenging them and TPK just hit them with weaker fights more often. Variety is the key here, don't despair if something is easy, by throwing all kinds of problems at the group you will find out where they are strong and where they are weak.

Once they feel harried by fights they will try to find better ways of camping. Let them. Resist the urge to negate their actions to get those 3 fights in. Let them feel the power of being level 4 instead of level 1. Just adjust the adventure style. As the characters level things like travel, scarcity and commoners cease to be problems. So try to save your time sensitive and escort missions for the mid to high levels when these controls are important to the flow of the game. Your players will resent the lack of agency in those kinds of missions, even if they do like the challenge, so try not to over do these things.


Also look into throwing other obstacles/objectives at the party during the fight that might force them to change their tactics a bit. Perhaps the evil cleric is performing a ritual that will involve the sacrifice of a virgin, and he just so happens to have a wall of blockers in front of him. Give it a timer (i.e. X number of rounds) and use a die a prominently placed where all the players can see it to track your rounds.

Or, have the trap that is continuously firing on the party during the combat, requiring somebody to go and take care of it.

Maybe the Big Bad orders one of the flunkies (who's no slouch himself) to start executing the prisoners during the fight. This will entice your party to at least partially ignore the Big Bad while they try to save the prisoners.

Or maybe the whole dungeon is just collapsing, threatening to bury the Fantastical MacGuffin such that not only does the party have to fight through the defenders and steal . . . errr . . . liberate the MacGuffin, they also have to do so quickly and then high tail it out of Dodge (probably while being pursued by said defenders. Plus this gives you a legitimate reason to say "Rocks fall. You die." :p

Naturally, you don't want to do this for every fight, but throwing occasional wrinkles into a combat not only ups the difficulty, but also spices up the game. Keep your players on their toes and they'll almost assuredly have more fun.


Zilfrel Findadur wrote:
So basically i'm a new GM and i made the mistake to accept 5 people in the group, i'm having problems for giving a challenge, their APL is 3...and i think this is just going to be worse when levels go up, i'm currently sending them CR 5, and they don't use even half their resources. what do you guys reccomend me, i try to use intelligent tactics, i am not just attacking with monsters, i Sunder the barbarian sword, try to flank them, Debuff them, etc...and put traps, but no use, pls halp D:

First thing to note, is not all parties or characters are created equal. The CR system is a useful tool, but it isnt a perfect one. You need to know and understand your players capabilities to challenge them. 5 people isnt likely the problem. The game functions fine with 5 pcs as long as you account for them all.

So first off, can you give us a rundown on the characters? What classes/feats/spells/abilities do the use. Also what do their stats look like? Especially at low levels, the game (which is balanced around a 15 point buy) is going to have trouble if the party has high stats.


Also, do the players have more PF experience than you? If so, that can make things tougher for you.

Might do a search on Tucker's Kobolds. I don't suggest going to that extreme, but it can give you some ideas.

Make things not always as they seem.

Not to long ago I used a combination of both. Party (level 7) sees a couple of camp on a low hill in the middle of a big field. There were 1/2 a dozen large humanoid creatures sitting around the camp fire. There was a ballista and catapult on carts. Party cast some fog or mist spell (don't remember which) on the hill top. A couple of fireballs, sleet storm, and summoned monsters into the mist. While that was happening the cavalier charged up the hill on his really fast horse (magic horseshoes) to finish them off.
.
.
.
Everything on the hill top was an illusion by some goblin shamans behind the hill (they knew the very non-stealthy party was coming). The rest of the field had scattered teams of goblins with poisoned cross bow bolts, alchemist fire, nets, etc...
If the PC's approached any of them they just fled. If the PC's fired on or cast at them they hid in the 3' grass. If the PC's ignored them they fired or threw things at the PC's (and their horses) or tried to stealth closer.
The cavalier charged through 2 or 3 damaging traps into his allies fog cloud. Then couldn't find anything to stick a lance into.

It was pretty hilarious all around. None of them were ever really in danger of dying. They only lost a couple of horses but they burned through a lot more spells than they would have expected for a bunch of goblins.

If the party is level 3 and whips your level 5 opposition, don't make him level 7+. It won't make much difference until all of a sudden you are wiping out the whole party.

Give that level 5 opponent, 2 level 3 associates, and have them call for assistance from 8 level 1 guards down the hall. Have 3 of the guards arrive in 2 rounds and the other 5 that were sleeping arrive in 4 rounds but don't have on their armor.

I also like using waves of reinforcements arriving like this because it is very forgiving of you the GM making a mistake. Is the party wining too easy? Have the wave arrive sooner and there are more of them than you had originally planned. Is the party in danger of getting trounced? The sounds of the next wave was actually them panicking and running away.

Last time I ran a BBEG final fight I had 4 waves of reinforcements planned. The party was having a hard time of it (some bad rolls, misunderstanding of the situation, etc...), so I just didn't have the last 2 waves activate. Worked out very well.

Scarab Sages

I'll second what Greg Connolly said: throw a variety of challenges at them with a variety of difficulties. It's okay for them to breeze past some encounters on the way to the larger, more challenging ones.


Action economy is a huge thing, and so I strongly second people who talked about that. (The other nice thing about larger groups of enemies, is that they can gain from the abilities of their allies -- an evil cavalier can grant them all teamwork feats via tactician or the orcish warchanter can inspire courage on them -- multiplicative effects are good).

Part of it, too, depends on the point-buy and treasure your group has as well. The "default" position seems to be 15 points at WBL. So, really, a party of 5 guys with 25 points (or even 20) with a bit of extra gear *will* be tougher -- probably enough that you can treat a 5-member party as being at +1APL (instead of needing a 6th)


Yeah, I've discovered the action economy is a big factor. Also, pay attention to ALL monsters' abilities. I had an encounter go too much my players' way recently because I'd forgotten about the baddies' feral savagery ability.


All characters are 20 point buy, i got:

human Dervish Dancer bard.
Human Unbreakable Barbarian (currently the one that gives more problems)
Human Sword and board Paladin
Elf Conjuration Wizard
Aasimar Ragathiel Cleric

yes you are probably right about the encounter thing, perhaps i would add some random encounters when they are resting, since they are resting in a demon-infested place (the worldwound)

can you explain me exactly what is action economy?


Zilfrel Findadur wrote:

All characters are 20 point buy, i got:

human Dervish Dancer bard.
Human Unbreakable Barbarian (currently the one that gives more problems)
Human Sword and board Paladin
Elf Conjuration Wizard
Aasimar Ragathiel Cleric

yes you are probably right about the encounter thing, perhaps i would add some random encounters when they are resting, since they are resting in a demon-infested place (the worldwound)

can you explain me exactly what is action economy?

Action economy is the idea that the most important currency in an encounter is actions. The most powerful character still gets 1 set of actions. So 5 pcs, have a distinct advantage over a single enemy, because even if the enemy is more powerful then any one pc they still only get to act once vs 5 times from the pcs.

In regards to your specific party. First off the 20pt buy is a bit of an advantage at low levels. Its not huge but it makes a difference. The thing that definately makes a different is the fact that you have 3 melee capable fighters in the party.

The game is generally balanced around having one guy good at fighting, 1 or 2 others that sort of fight well in the party, and the others who do other stuff. You have a paladin and a barbarian, both capable of laying out alot of damage, and the bard is likely fairly competant as well. The cleric could possibly also be able to fight well.

What this means is that your party is going to dish out alot more damage then the game expects.

What I would do in your place (besides making sure they get at least 3-4 encounters each day), is treat their APL as 2 higher then normal (1 for the 20 point buy and 1 for the 5th person). I would then up the encounters accordingly but not buy increasing the strength of enemies, but instead by adding more enemies. So if they are level 3 and I wanted to challenge them, I'd throw something like a CR 7 encounter at them, but one that is made up of 4 CR 3 monsters, not a single CR 7. Doing stuff like that will mean that no matter how much damage the barbarian does in one hit, he cant end the encounter in a turn. The paladin, the bard and probably the cleric will all have to hold off a bad guy while the barbarian hacks up one or two.

The key is for each monster to be a significant threat (CR at or around their level) but to have multiple monsters per encounter.


I would start throwing hordes of dretch at them until they either leave the Worldwound or start using magic to camp safely.


The action economy is a concept which basically shows the value of actions. A large party has a number of actions available to them, which is extremely useful, whereas a single villain has a more limited number -- so, effectively, the party can "out-spend" the villain in terms of actions, and will eventually win (unless the villain is so powerful he can crush the party in single actions).

Basically, all things being equal, the side with the most actions wins -- because the additional actions are: (a) more versatile [eg - you can do a bunch of different things]; (b) more tactical [eg - you can set up flanking, block escapes, etc.].

Also, some actions effectively take away your opponent's actions (or reduce their effectiveness) -- such as trips [need to stand, can't full-round attack], and, of course, spells. (Even just doing damage, eventually, creates a need for the bad guy to heal, and healing generally takes an action...)

As such, your party is going to have a harder time with a CR 7 encounter that is 4 x CR 3 than one that is 1 x CR 7.

Heck, even "underpowered" opponents benefit from the action economy, because you end up having so many actions available (as a group), that you can afford to "spend" some chasing the 20s it takes to hit (or aiding another to help them hit).... and this is especially true when group-buffs (like bardsong and teamwork feats) are available.

Incidentally, this is one of the reasons that summon spells are considered to be so powerful -- especially when you can bring in things like Archons that you can talk to and make plans with.

Edit: Ninja'ed. I know I got distracted and had to come back, but didn't realize it'd be 20 mintues later..


Kolokotroni wrote:
What I would do in your place (besides making sure they get at least 3-4 encounters each day), is treat their APL as 2 higher then normal (1 for the 20 point buy and 1 for the 5th person). I would then up the encounters accordingly but not buy increasing the strength of enemies, but instead by adding more enemies. So if they are level 3 and I wanted to challenge them, I'd throw something like a CR 7 encounter at them, but one that is made up of 4 CR 3 monsters, not a single CR 7.

First of all, I agree with this, though (persoanlly), I'd probably only give them =+.5 on the CR for the 20 vs. 15 point build -- (another thing that's easier to do when you're building encounters with multiple monsters, because you can just add an extra 500-600XP, for instance, to your budget).

However, to take this concept farther, what I often do when you want to have a "challenging" encounter is this to use half my XP budget on one guy (eg - "the boss") -- so at CR 8, that would be CR 6 -- so, staying with the demon theme, a Babau . That leaves half the budget (another CR 6) -- to make his "minions" -- so, in this case, you could do 4 dretch 4 x CR 2 = CR 6, or mix and match a little (a cleric/antipaladin 5 (CR 4), and 2 dretch (CR 2), for instance). I find having a "boss" guy tends to keep the combat monsters distracted somewhat, letting the lesser folk get out there and mix it up too. (Whereas 4 Shiv, the barbarian and paladin get through theirs right away and then go clean up...)

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice / Help GM All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.