I'm trying to design a series of tables of Hard encounters (APL+2) for each level. However, I've already hit a brick wall in the playtesting of some of the encounters I've already made.
Some of you may have seen my questions about encounter design before, involving positioning having a non-negligible impact on an encounter.
Further, the combinations of what goes into an encounter tend to be so drastically unwieldy compared to the individual enemies by themselves.
For example, let's consider one of the Level 1 encounters I threw together for testing:
Player Party of Level 1s consisted of Wizard, Fighter, Archer, Cleric
Below is the play-by-play of how devastating the encounter was. I honestly can't say what the players could have done better.
Spoiler:
In testing, the Acolyte used Touch of Law on the Gladiator and the Gladiator charged and one-shot the party Cleric with only having needed to roll damage. Cleric bled out eventually. The party had a longspear fighter braced against the barbarian, but he missed. He then proceeded to miss on his next turn with his spear.
Since the fighter was now in melee with the Gladiator, the party archer couldn't reliably hit the biggest threat with the penalty for combatants in melee, so he aimed for the Acolyte. It was then that we noticed the Acolyte had 17 AC. The Archer missed.
The enemy bandit didn't actually contribute much. It held its turn until after the cleric, received a touch of law, but still couldn't hit on a 11+4 against anyone in the party. After this, the bandit just tried relentlessly to drop arrows from afar, to no success.
But before that, the party Wizard had a to inhibit the Barbarian. Had Grease and Color Spray prepared. Barbarian was still Touch of Law'd and would automatically succeed the will save without rolling. With a range of 25 ft., he couldn't target the Acolyte and the Bandit. Wizard actually forwent Grease because the Gladiator only needed to beat a DC 14 Reflex and that meant a 35% chance to do nothing and it was unlikely the barbarian could be tricked into walking through the same square a second time if it failed the first. Wizard used crossbow to hit Bandit, except didn't hit the Bandit. We then realized that the Bandit also had 17 AC. Wizard did not contribute anything that turn.
Wizard had backed up out of the Gladiator's reach ending well-behind the fighter, forcing the Barbarian to charge through the Fighter's threatened squares to reach him. The fighter backed up and braced against the Gladiator, ending right in front of the Wizard. Gladiator moved up to next to the fighter instead of charging, proc'ing AoOs which it ignored and CLEAVED. The Wizard went down instantly. The fighter was brutally injured.
The Archer then focused on damaging the Gladiator while inching closer to the enemy group. Managing to land the first damage against the Gladiator all game.
The Bandit shot an inconsequential arrow.
The Acolyte moved in to try and Touch of Law the Gladiator again, but was too far. Instead, charges at the fighter. The fighter manages to take down the Cleric with a non-brace AoO.
Fighter steps back to attack the Gladiator and manages to hit. Deals max damage to the Gladiator, a whopping 14.
It was around here that the Cleric bled out, but I forgot exactly where in the turn order they were, given that they never got a turn.
Gladiator ices the Fighter with a Power Attack.
Party archer keeps back-peddling and shooting until the Barbarian lands a final blow.
Bandit does nothing important but becomes the only survivor. Acolyte bled out. Gladiator's rage ended and they bled out. None of the party managed to stabilize. That inconsequential bandit got all the loot and is living it up somewhere in Absalom.
Clearly, I need to be more careful when constructing synergy for my encounters, pushing a CR+2 to CR+2+. Looking at the raw numbers and the flow of battle, there was absolutely nothing my players could have done without knowing exactly what each unit had at their disposal. Even when recognizing Touch of Law, they were incapable of doing anything at level 1 against this group.
It's what me and a few friends are using as our new benchmark encounter for Level 1 players. We've put playtesting on pause until we can figure if there's a reasonable expectation that a newly-formed group should have the ability to defeat these guys. Clearly, the Classical Group failed spectacularly.
I'd like some better guidelines for encounter designing. There's this huge leap between what I see available and what I'm looking for. I want to design fair encounters but I want the players to feel like their choices matter.
If a player chose to cast Sleep on a group of goblins and another player decided to start coup de gracing them during combat instead of dealing with other more pressing foes, I want that to be a point of failure in the strategy of the party that will naturally be exploited by the encounter. They should be on the ball, rolling with the punches, and pushing for victory, each and every time.
However, this is going to be a table, designed for posing such a threat to nearly every group that faces it (barring overly optimized murderhobos). I can't design these encounters on the fly to aptly push these buttons against the party. Generally At-APL encounters are definitely possible on the fly, but with APL+2 (the Pathfinder "Hard"), I risk wiping the group with an unfair encounter.
The goal is to eventually run a Hard Mode Campaign where XP will only be granted for quality RP and life-threatening battles and anything else you'd see in an action movie from the 80's and later.
Also, as a separate point from my request for guidelines, I think I see where things may have failed against the Pathfinder CR metric:
When the Cleric was killed before the first player turn (not counting Fighter bracing), the party consisted only of 3 Level 1 players. This means the remaining group was APL was 0 and that this was an APL+3 encounter of Epic for the remaining players.
Would it make sense to consider excluding encounters that have a real chance depending on initiative to immediately alter APL before players' first turn?
Generally, I don't want such an encounter to exist as this means a player is immediately removed from the combat and does nothing for the remainder of the time.
Also, as a separate point from my request for guidelines, I think I see where things may have failed against the Pathfinder CR metric:
When the Cleric was killed before the first player turn (not counting Fighter bracing), the party consisted only of 3 Level 1 players. This means the remaining group was APL was 0 and that this was an APL+3 encounter of Epic for the remaining players.
Would it make sense to consider excluding encounters that have a real chance depending on initiative to immediately alter APL before players' first turn?
Generally, I don't want such an encounter to exist as this means a player is immediately removed from the combat and does nothing for the remainder of the time.
In that encounter, if the fighter had hit with his braced attack, or the follow-up, that could've been a very different battle. Sometimes the dice just kill people. In those instances, when GMing, I fudge the numbers a bit.
Example: I recently ran a home brew where the PCs started as commoners, and had to use improvised weapons to face off against a goblin armed with a Shortsword. The goblin was staggered by a broken leg, flatfooted, and had the sickened condition.
First player moves in to strike with an oar and misses. Other players stay at distance and attempt to throw rocks unsuccessfully. Goblin nat 20s and confirms on the player in melee range. It would've been character death on round one, but I just 86'd the crit and had the weapon hit normally.
In that encounter, if the fighter had hit with his braced attack, or the follow-up, that could've been a very different battle. Sometimes the dice just kill people. In those instances, when GMing, I fudge the numbers a bit.
For the kind of game I'm hoping to run, I want player death to still be a very real threat. In the past, I'd rewound space-time to prevent stupid deaths like a flask of Alchemical Fire dealing a full 7 damage to a downed player because that's where the miss-1d8-roll landed.
But I generally don't feel like a deadly encounter should have it's deadly dice rolls fiatted away just because they would kill the player.
Now, I've been thinking about the brace, you're right, the 50/50 chance the Fighter had to deal double damage (with an extra chance to AoO that missed, if I remember correctly). The expectation was that the fighter would deal 1.5 of their weapon damage in response to that charge. Up to 3 times weapon damage without crits (up to 6 times with) on a 25% chance.
However, the Gladiator wouldn't have gone down in the average case and a player would still be down in the first turn of combat. This much would have been a guarantee.
We've yet to run more play tests of this encounter due to some life events getting in the way. However, unless the Fighter could kill the Gladiator in the first bit of combat, I don't know well the remaining players would be able to deal with the Gladiator retreating to his healer just to rinse and repeat.
In that encounter, if the fighter had hit with his braced attack, or the follow-up, that could've been a very different battle. Sometimes the dice just kill people. In those instances, when GMing, I fudge the numbers a bit.
For the kind of game I'm hoping to run, I want player death to still be a very real threat. In the past, I'd rewound space-time to prevent stupid deaths like a flask of Alchemical Fire dealing a full 7 damage to a downed player because that's where the miss-1d8-roll landed.
But I generally don't feel like a deadly encounter should have it's deadly dice rolls fiatted away just because they would kill the player.
Now, I've been thinking about the brace, you're right, the 50/50 chance the Fighter had to deal double damage (with an extra chance to AoO that missed, if I remember correctly). The expectation was that the fighter would deal 1.5 of their weapon damage in response to that charge. Up to 3 times weapon damage without crits (up to 6 times with) on a 25% chance.
However, the Gladiator wouldn't have gone down in the average case and a player would still be down in the first turn of combat. This much would have been a guarantee.
We've yet to run more play tests of this encounter due to some life events getting in the way. However, unless the Fighter could kill the Gladiator in the first bit of combat, I don't know well the remaining players would be able to deal with the Gladiator retreating to his healer just to rinse and repeat.
I read through your scenario again - My best suggestions is the wizard could've greased the Gladiator's Earthbreaker. His +1 reflex save likely wouldn't overcome the DC and he would've had his big threat weapon disarmed, then required an additional reflex save to even pick it up again. I'm not sure what your initiative order was, so that may not have helped prevent the cleric getting smashed, but any time you're dealing with level 1 characters there's always a chance they could get one-shotted. Heck a commoner farmer with a light crossbow could hit a lucky crit, max damage 16, and down pretty much any level 1 PC.
Part of the problem you are seeing is the variability that the dice bring. This has a greater impact at lower levels, especially level 1, where the fighter and wizard differ in hit percentage by 25% or so. At higher levels, the wizard is laughable in melee/ranged when compared to a full BAB character. But at 1st level, the wizard may be the reliable damage dealer with his crossbow due to a bit of dice variability and luck.
The other confounding factor is that you are using NPCs rather than monsters. NPCs follow the PC power curve which is very different from the monster power curve. Basically, the game is "rigged" so that PCs have a distinct advantage over monsters. NPCs tend to have higher AC, higher to hits, and dish out more damage than monsters (they mimic PCs). That is because NPCs use class levels made for PCs. You can offset this with poor stats (the NPC stat blocks are inferior) and less equipment. But even then, and especially at low levels, NPCs will wipe out PCs where monsters don't stand a chance.
The CR 2 NPC is a big red flag. Even a CR 1 NPC is risking a TPK aganst a level 1 party. Add in a few mooks, and it is all over, as you have seen. Levels 1-3 is where the encounters have to be pushovers or you risk luck dictating the outcome. At higher levels, the PCs are strong enough to take on NPCs of higher CR.
The best way to challenge your players is with attrition - long strings of encounters that wear them down. Luck becomes a non-issue over the span of several lower CR encounters. But resources get used up making low CR encounters deadly after a while.
Well CR isn't an exact science, and it gets especially wonky at extremes; extremes being levels lower than 3 or higher than 9. Below 3 the party is highly reliant on rolling well; they just don't have enough resources (hp, ac, consumables, class features) to stabilize the randomization a d20 can throw at them. A similar party, under the effects of touch of law negates this variability, which means they'll perform significantly better. Starting at level 3 the party generally has enough resources that things stabilize more. At higher levels you start running into the opposite problem where PCs can be so hyper specialized into one thing that they're essentially immune to that thing, but die to the remaining 99% of things in-game, because they start getting balanced around the idea of some specialization (and certain classes, particularly those with only 1 good save, simply can't compete mathematically with what's thrown at them). This makes them extremely dependent upon the existing environment and overall situation, which throws CR off considerably (since whether something is difficult or not now doesn't depend at all upon what you throw at them, simply where and how you throw it at them). The core rogue is probably the best example of this; if you give it shadows to sneak in (and enemies without darkvision), allies to flank with (and room to maneuver, and enemies with low enough CMD to acrobatics past), and enemies not immune to precision damage/flanking, they're pretty useful to have in the party. Mess with the things which give them strength and their resource pool quickly drops back to what was available at level 1, and so unsurprisingly suffers the same balance problems (except compounded by DR, regeneration, resistances, and triple-digit hp).
So now lets look to your example; the gladiator has a +12 to hit when charging, or +10 normally; the highest AC possible at level 1 is around 24 (+4 from tower shield, +5/+6 armor (depending on gp), +2 dex, +1/+2 from feats, maybe +1 nat from race), which is actually high enough to give an absolutely AC optimized first level PC a 55% miss chance (60% if the gladiator uses power attack, and 100% miss chance vs touch of law). Literally anything less than that and your gladiator is auto-hitting; I usually see 'high' level 1 ACs of 17-21 in parties. Now lets look at damage: with the earth breaker he hits on average for 13 damage without rage or power attack. An average first level PC has 6, 8, 10, or 12 base hp; that's more than their maximum starting hp on average, not even factoring in variable bonuses like rage, feats, and crits. And then, adding to that the gladiator has cleave, so he can auto-kill up to two PCs per round. So, by himself I'd expect the gladiator to TPK the party in 2-6 rounds. Your party cleric can't do anything about that (even if he hadn't been one-shot first), and trying to is just going to burn his meagre first level repertoire. The bandit and acolyte by comparison aren't much to look at; most parties are going to be able to tank them (+3, and +1 modifiers to attack, compared to +12); they'll need to do things like flank the party if they want to hit consistently, which in turn gives the party more options to maneuver around them. Also they have very low static modifiers on their damage rolls, and roll only 1d6 (3.5 avg damage; ~1/2 of the lowest base hp available to a level 1 pc) or 1d8 (4.5 avg damage; ~3/4 the minimum base hp available to a level 1 pc), not 2d8 (7 base damage; ~1.1x the minimum base hp available to a level 1 pc) on a successful hit. The bottom line is if you throw a level 1 party against a CR 2-3 encounter with a bunch of bandits and acolytes then their resources are adequate to manage that; the cleric can manage his heals to keep people up, the wizard has his AoE spells to section off opponents, and buy time while the front line dispatches people, and the front line can take at least 1 (more likely 4-5) hits (and more misses) before going down. It will result in a much more enjoyable fight from both sides of the screen.
You do a pretty good job summarizing the problem here:
Axoren wrote:
However, unless the Fighter could kill the Gladiator in the first bit of combat, I don't know well the remaining players would be able to deal with the Gladiator retreating to his healer just to rinse and repeat.
You can design hard encounters which don't come down to 'I have to kill him instantly, or he'll kill me instantly.' Go with your gut here; anything which boils down to 'kill instantly, or die instantly' is not a hard encounter, it's a poorly designed one, that's the guideline you want to take away from this playtest.
TLDR: You didn't account for the resources available to a level 1 party, and threw a TPK at them instead of an encounter.
Extended Notes: The following monster creation guidelines are a good reference when determining the CR of a given encounter. If you look at the barbarian's stats, and compare them to this table he's a CR 4 encounter by himself, 4+ with the acolyte and bandit to help. NOTE: These guidelines remain just that, guidelines; you still have to design to the encounter, and to your party when determining final CR.
The real issue you ran into here wasn't a CR problem, it was a problem with low-level fights in general. In low level fights, the dice matter way more than anyone's stats. The highest to-hit you can manage at 1st level is somewhere around +8, and that's on a very niche build (a Barbarian with Weapon Focus). With that as the max, the dice definitionally matter way more than your bonus does on any one roll, and one roll can knock out a PC...which makes fights really swingy, with luck having more to do with who wins than anything else.
And as others note, the Fighter missed three attacks in a row against AC 15...that's just straight-up bad luck (unless his attack was terrible). Also, the players apparently lost initiative vs. the enemy (always really bad). I mean, the Wizard could have Color Sprayed them all and likely taken some out (especially since the Barbarian wouldn't have Raged yet) if he'd gone first.
Your party also had less than optimal stats (the Wizard apparently had Int 16...that's not a very optimal Wizard, and speaks to a low optimization level in the party)...which should be taken into account in determining what a 'tough' encounter is for them.
And, again as others note, some creatures are harder for their CR than others. The Gladiator is a really tough CR 2 (though I'll note that the Monster Creation Guidelines put him in CR 3, not CR 4, territory). The Gladiator isn't alone in that by any means (poltergeists and vargouille are also really nasty for CR 2, for example), but it's something to watch out for.
Mike J wrote:
The other confounding factor is that you are using NPCs rather than monsters. NPCs follow the PC power curve which is very different from the monster power curve. Basically, the game is "rigged" so that PCs have a distinct advantage over monsters. NPCs tend to have higher AC, higher to hits, and dish out more damage than monsters (they mimic PCs). That is because NPCs use class levels made for PCs. You can offset this with poor stats (the NPC stat blocks are inferior) and less equipment. But even then, and especially at low levels, NPCs will wipe out PCs where monsters don't stand a chance.
This isn't quite true. Or at least kinda misleading. It's definitely true at low levels, but much less so at high ones (where NPCs need to be pretty optimized to be worthy of their CR), especially due to the difference in equipment between PCs and NPCs.
I didn't read it all, but this is what I picked out:
Your play-test was with 1st level characters. This is by far the most lethal level in Pathfinder, since they have so little hp. It's ~half the amount they have at level 2.
I would probably classify your encounter as a boss-battle at such an early level (and I wouldn't do boss-battles at such early levels, because of the lethality at that level).
You also mentioned positioning and that it isn't negligible. It sure isn't. And that's how you can turn a CR=APL-3 encounter into a TPK or turn a CR=APL+5 into a joke. But remember that positioning changes over time.
Positioning is probably also the best way to create diverse and challenging encounters without breaking balance of the math (CR2 Gladiator (a CR=APL+1 alone) could 1-hit the cleric).
And lastly, you goal:
The Pathfinder RPG system assumes that players can succeed at 4 CR appropriate encounters with the given resources of 1 day. Bumping this up to 4 CR appropriate +2 per day can result in 2 cases:
-They die.
-They min-max to bridge the gap between them and the APL+2.
One of these are just not fun. The second one is a middle ground between using CR appropriate encounters and death (the first one). So you'll need to down the numbers of encounters per day if you want to keep all encounters at CR=APL+2.
That is, if you want to keep all encounters at CR=APL+2. I would advice you to play around with positioning instead.
Ah, I see, the rage is already factored into his stats (used to making my own NPCs, whose sheets don't factor in temporary buffs :P); that does adjust the numbers a bit, accuracy goes down 10%, and drops the non-power attack damage into the high-reasonable for a CR 3.
I will add that any class with a lot of self/ally buff ability significantly skew CR; take a group of CR 1/3-1/2 NPCs, throw in a first level bard, and suddenly they become a very serious threat.
My personal rule is kid gloves at 1-6 gloves come off for 7-12 brace knuckles go on for 13-17 then at 18+ I break out the +5 vorpal spiked gauntlets (and yes I know vorpal can't go on those that is how much I escalate.)
Luck at low levels can be all it takes sometimes. The right tactics can also shred them at low levels too.
1) You roll with the high impact of chance at first level. But consider hero points to make it more fair. They are a limited resource which means players have to use them carefully.
2) You postpone the idea of a hard campaign till level 2 or 3, and start off with rather easy encounters. APs often do that, to get around the 'wonky level 1' issue. Such encounters can still help to introduce the campaign world.
3) You control danger as tightly as possible. Some ideas:
* Avoid most things that take out a PC (sleep, color spray, grapple etc.). These things not only can be quite random in their impact but also make retreat more difficult.
* Aim for less randomized damage. Two weapons instead of a big one, 19-20/x2 crits instead of x3 (or, Desna forbid, x4!) and no surprise round for the entire group of bad guys.
* Don't throw the whole encounter at them at once, but use noticable reinforcements as soon as the PCs are about to win.
If you think the encounter becomes too easy because of this, spice it up, but focus on raising the average difficulty, not the ceiling one.
My design philosophy is never have the party fight anything that can down a player in 1 turn. Whether that be a full attack or a charge or anything.
That doesn't mean that the entire combined effort of the encounter can't down a pc. Instead of 1 gladiator at CR 2 (3 actual) chuck in a couple CR 1/2 orc warriors.
At higher levels you can start chucking individual crs higher than party level.
But never make a single enemy in the encounter capable of 1 rounding a pc. Or if he is capable of it, stipulate he splits his attacks.
Ex: if the giant octopus you want to use as part of an encounter can kill a pc with its 8 tentacle attacks, stipulate it attacks each enemy in reach once if there are more than one, otherwise it moves to the largest grouping of enemies to do so.
That way no 1 pc gets hit by 8 attacks but instead you have multiple pcs being threatened at a time.
Not only does this reduce tpk potential, but also makes everyone feel included in the fight and can create a sense of urgency. "OMG! This thing is so strong it only needs to try hit us each once. It isn't even trying to pick us off one at a time."
Had a cleric at half-health charge a rehmoraz before anyone else (won init with the rem right behind) got in melee got his attack hit damage it stung and then we promptly full attacked and down. Dead. This cleric deserved it but what can be frustrating is doing everything perfectly and still dieing to a superior foe or to luck. That sucks and I try to avoid it for my players cause I know I would hate it.
Since my overall goal is to design a table of encounters that can be randomly pulled from as needed, I was hoping there were some better guidelines than "don't do this" and "try not to do this".
I'm well-aware that it's not good practice to put encounters out that contain "kill now or die now" elements. But it's not necessarily clear what the reasonable expectations are of a level 1 party?
In regards to the balanced day vs. balanced encounter discussion (4-5 encounters per day, resource expenses, etc), I can't safely say I know what resources the average slightly-optimized group is capable of. The first table I'm working on is for satisfying traveling random encounters. The players are traveling between cities and have a chance of running into a variety of different bands and packs.
If I expect the players to have the classical group, that means I'm expecting them to have about 5 spells to cast, a fighter and archer for damage output, and some sort of emergency healing which they should not expect to be using in battle.
This means that I can push them to use the spell casters' best spell (singular) in the first round, and potentially run clean-up the next in an at-APL encounter. But in a Hard encounter, does this necessarily mean that I need them to spend more resources?
Is there a way to make an encounter scarier/deadlier without necessarily forcing the resource-dependent characters to blow their load?
How do I make an encounter scarier/deadlier so that I don't accidentally give it a "kill now or die now" element while not making the encounter trounceable.
If the Barbarian goes first, he goes into rage, and some character dies (Touch of Law or not). Then next round his 34 hp and 2d6+6 for damage then start working the other characters into dust.
If the party Wizard goes first, then 2/3 of the opponents are likely asleep (or 2/3 of the time the Barbarian gets charmed), and the fight goes to the party.
'Reasonable expectations of a level 1 party' is very hard to define for a few reasons, the ones I can think of right now include:
1) Character creation guidelines can vary widely between games, and between GMS.
2) Optimization level of the PCs can fluctuate widely, particularly at levels 1-2.
3) Optimization level of the party (how they fit-in with each other) can vary considerably with group, and campaign focus.
4) Dice rolls can be 'swingy.'
As such, I really can't speak to that. What I can suggest is looking at their base statistics; it's reasonable to assume they have 6-14 hp on average, an AC of 16-20, and a to-hit bonus around +3. There will always be the 'lucky' crit which one-shots someone at level 1, you can't design around that. What you can do is design the encounters so that enemy base stats can do ~1/4-1/3 PC stats in one hit, and that w/o flanking and other situational effects they have a similar 25-40% hit chance.
Then, to make things challenging and engaging you can throw in variable bonuses; things like traps, ambushes, and quick-movement to get flanking or other positional advantages early on before the PCs can react. That makes things a lot harder on the party, but should not get into the 'kill or die now' territory.
Since my overall goal is to design a table of encounters that can be randomly pulled from as needed, I was hoping there were some better guidelines than "don't do this" and "try not to do this".
Sadly, encounter design is more art than science.
Axoren wrote:
I'm well-aware that it's not good practice to put encounters out that contain "kill now or die now" elements. But it's not necessarily clear what the reasonable expectations are of a level 1 party?
There are none. As noted, level 1 is really swingy. Luck of the rolls matters more than stats by quite a bit at that point.
Axoren wrote:
In regards to the balanced day vs. balanced encounter discussion (4-5 encounters per day, resource expenses, etc), I can't safely say I know what resources the average slightly-optimized group is capable of. The first table I'm working on is for satisfying traveling random encounters. The players are traveling between cities and have a chance of running into a variety of different bands and packs.
Okay. Good to know what goal you're aiming for.
Axoren wrote:
If I expect the players to have the classical group, that means I'm expecting them to have about 5 spells to cast, a fighter and archer for damage output, and some sort of emergency healing which they should not expect to be using in battle.
Okay. Those are relatively reasonable assumptions.
Axoren wrote:
This means that I can push them to use the spell casters' best spell (singular) in the first round, and potentially run clean-up the next in an at-APL encounter. But in a Hard encounter, does this necessarily mean that I need them to spend more resources?
Yes. Or more accurately a hard encounter will almost always cause them to do so.
Axoren wrote:
Is there a way to make an encounter scarier/deadlier without necessarily forcing the resource-dependent characters to blow their load?
Not really, no. When you're fighting for your life against bad odds, you pretty much use your most effective tactics.
Axoren wrote:
How do I make an encounter scarier/deadlier so that I don't accidentally give it a "kill now or die now" element while not making the encounter trounceable.
The closest you get to this is large numbers of relatively weak foes. Action economy is a heck of an advantage (especially combined with flanking), they can't all be taken out by one spell if they're spread out, and no individual attack is likely to take PCs out.
I don't have any advice for you -- far from it, you've had me glued to the edge of my chair reading what you had to say, and everyone's responses to it. I'm a newb Pathfinder GM. Not novice PF player, but I haven't built encounters for Pathfinder before. It's scary!
Party run-down:
One of my players optimizes any character he does, and is now playing a bladebound magus. At 3rd, so she just got her blade.
One is playing a 3rd-level hunter, complete with (still medium-sized) big cat.
Due to circs, that player just acquired a 1st-level NPC commoner who became a Heavens shaman worshiping Desna for her 2nd level.
The third main PC, a 3rd-level druid, hasn't really come into his own yet.
I'm letting that player bring another PC in, a 2nd-level Life oracle worshiping Sarenrae.
I'm running an AP, so when it was only 3 PCs at 1st or 2nd level, I worried about the CR enough that I threw in a much higher-level NPC to go with them. I needn't have; I ended up having the NPC hang back to "watch behind them" or some such thing, while the party creamed my theoretically At-APL bad-guys. Often without taking a hit. Even after I started routinely maxing out the NPCs' HP.
So now they've got five PCs -- I believe an APL-3 party on the face of it ((3+3+3+2+2)/5), but I'm thinking it's more like APL-5 because of player abilities, the animal companion, and now, a significant healing presence. No more NPCs helping out, I assure you! :)
So my first question is: Am I right in planning for them as if they're APL-5? (As corroborating evidence, the three 3rd-level PCs just faced a max-HP cyclops (CR-5). They won--the bladebound critted and did 75 pts of damage in one round! But they got scared, first. The tiger got taken down to 1 HP, still in the black.)
My second question is how to design an encounter that will stress them without breaking them.
Example encounter:
I want a hobgoblin-led troupe of goblins to attack them on the road.
The encounter starts when the PCs spot an enlarged hobgoblin off to the side, up a hill, away from "the main goblin attack" (proceeding off-stage). I looked at the Monster Codex's hobgoblin battlefield zealot for major inspiration, but made improvements. He should still be CR-2.
He's with the troupe's warchanter, a 1st-level goblin bard. Core says a goblin w/ a 1st-level PC class is CR-1/2.
Six goblin warriors are theoretically CR-3 (how, I don't know!), but I believe that it would take dozens to challenge my party in even the slightest way. Granted, that warchanter might help them out -- if he survives the first round, that is. (I wrote him for a previous bout, back when it was just a party of 3 2nd-level PCs; he didn't.) I could be shocked, but my current plan calls them CR-1/2 together. (They're really there for color.)
They are led by a Hobgoblin sergeant, which I pretty much took from the Monster Codex as is, at CR-2.
My plan as I wrote it was to have all of them there off to the side. Is this too much? If I just add up the CR's, I get the APL-5 I'm picturing. But... I'm concerned it'll be overwhelming.
What if I advance the zealot, and then have the sergeant come running up with the goblin warriors after the PCs defeat the zealot & warchanter? That strings out the encounter, turning it into two separate CR-3ish ones, but eliminates any possibility of synergy in the NPC party as a whole. My fear is that my PCs would defeat each encounter handily, but I could be wrong...
Decisions, decisions. Help, please!
ETA: By "advance the zealot" I mean, "apply the advanced template to the zealot," not "have the zealot advance on the party." LOL!
So my first question is: Am I right in planning for them as if they're APL-5?
My second question is how to design an encounter that will stress them without breaking them.
Your first question might deserve its own thread, as the context (your party) seems really important in answering it, but your second question is in-between my goals and the standard CR guidelines pathfinder sets out.
My goal is to break the players if they falter. I want them to be on edge the whole time with serious stakes at each turn.
What you seem to have is party imbalance, as well. Your optimized player is likely doing a Spell Crit build, if I'm guessing correctly. This has the opportunity to output significant single-target damage. I recommend you through more smaller level creatures at the party so that this player is not spotlight hogging while still being able to wreck to their heart's content.
In regards to the rest of the group, they each seem to have been given additional action economy through extra characters. Definitely factor these into your new APL (before, you were getting a -1 from having 3 players, now you have 5, even though only 3 human beings are involved. APL should be increased by 1 in this case).
More creatures of lower CR is the expected method for Pathfinder encounters, otherwise you end up with a boss monster that may resist and evade most abilities and attacks of your less optimized players. This could mean only the Bladebound Magus will be contributing to at-APL encounters of single creatures (and maybe not even he can handle it). If you've noticed this type of thing happening, then APL-5 CR creatures are not the way to go. You want more creatures that add up to APL+0 CR, but not so many that each creature involved is CR 1/3 or that they have too much more action economy than the party.
Again, that's the Pathfinder expectation for fair encounters (where players win 75%[?] of the time).
If you want more perspectives on your situation, it's likely this thread may give you insight to the more brutal flavor of your problem, but it may not contain the right insight into your specific case. I recommend you make another thread but keep reading this one.
I'm well-aware that it's not good practice to put encounters out that contain "kill now or die now" elements. But it's not necessarily clear what the reasonable expectations are of a level 1 party?
There are none. As noted, level 1 is really swingy. Luck of the rolls matters more than stats by quite a bit at that point.
At what level would you consider there to be a reasonable expectation of party strength? Some people have recommended somewhere between 3-6 as the moment when it's reasonable to expect players to handle harder than average encounters.
If I can't expect players at low levels to be capable of handling the hard encounters, then it may not be even worth pursuing difficulty at this stage in their progression.
However, I would love to find a way to really put lower level characters to the test, even at these nebulous levels, but I do not just want to be an unrighteous murder-crazed GM.
I've been in games where every encounter is life or death its exciting for awhile but its nice to also have a few push overs and few fights for them to showcase abilities and have fun. they don't all have to be life or death it gets exhausting and frustrating.
At low levels its hard not to have a fight that could be life or death kobolds come out get a crit knock the fighter out and now its suddenly life or death. Iv'e had a group of goblins turn into a last man encounter through a series of bad roles on players part and good roles on the dm's part.
The higher level you go the less luck controls the encounters.
At what level would you consider there to be a reasonable expectation of party strength? Some people have recommended somewhere between 3-6 as the moment when it's reasonable to expect players to handle harder than average encounters.
I'd actually say that even 2nd level goes a long way toward making it possible, though 3rd level is better.
And it's not exactly about handling harder than average encounters, it's true of encounters in general...which makes adding particularly tough monsters always a little risky.
Axoren wrote:
If I can't expect players at low levels to be capable of handling the hard encounters, then it may not be even worth pursuing difficulty at this stage in their progression.
Possibly not. As noted, first level is a bit swingy. You could maybe start ramping it up at 2nd and then go with what you plan on from then on at 3rd.
Axoren wrote:
However, I would love to find a way to really put lower level characters to the test, even at these nebulous levels, but I do not just want to be an unrighteous murder-crazed GM.
Like I said, your best bet is an over APL encounter involving solely large numbers of weak opponents. Six goblins is a CR 3 encounter, for example.
Sounds like a fun party; they have a lot of complementary abilities for the crowd control, and healing. For the most part the party should have enough bodies to deal with large enemy crowds, and a couple misdirections, which will help against the hobgoblin-led troupe and probably lead to a fun encounter. I suspect you won’t want to ever put them up against a single powerful enemy, like in the OP’s scenario, because any similar such scenario is likely to devolve to ‘kill-or-die instantly’ (especially with magus crits) although maximizing enemy HP is a good first step to adjust for that.
Regarding what APL to plan for: if you’ve been treating them as APL 5, and they’ve been dealing with encounters based around that then keep doing what works. I’d think about what sort of challenge the Cyclops fight was for them; how much did they have to throw at it to bring it down? An APL 3 party should be able to beat it, but in doing so I’d expect it to consume most of their daily abilities and leave at least a couple party members low on HP, if that was the case then probably they’re lower than APL 5. If it was more of a bump in the road, then they might be higher than APL 5. It’s always a judgment call based around how tough you want fights to be, and what you think the party can handle.
They certainly have a strong party composition, so I’d tend to assume you’re right in treating them as APL 5 for combat purposes (keep in mind that traps, weird arcane hazards, and social situations might be different for them). As they advance in level the impact of the animal companions on APL is going to go down since they advance slower than PCs, and cap out around 15 HD. Also, the bladebound’s damage should start to stabilize around level 10 or 15, so as you go into the higher levels (~8+) you might want to start keeping a closer eye on ‘effective APL’ and adjust as needed.
The big wonky stick as far as encounter design goes is the magus (a 75 damage crit at level 3 seems high to me, even given the crazy crits the class gets). Most classes start to stabilize in damage output around level 3, magus tend to keep fluctuating until level 10-15. The big wonky bits for a bladebound magus are weapon crit-range, energy resistance/immunity, critical resistance/immunity, all/mostly-low dice rolls, all/mostly-high dice rolls, spells per day, and magus/blackblade pool.
Offtopic ramble about magus unpredictablility:
Typically a magus can move through a single encounter and one-shot anything, particularly if the dice are hot for them that night, but then they’re out of spells; this can be managed pretty easily by an experienced player, but it does mean the more encounters they have per session/rest the harder things will be for the party.
Once she’s out of spells per day her damage is going to tank like it fell off a cliff. Magus pool is not usually a huge issue, even with the bladebound archetype, it’s pretty easy to manage even if you’re new to the class; there are only a few archetypes which really require careful managing of this to prevent problems.
The blackblade pool on the other hand is incredibly swingy since it’s small enough to not be available more than a couple times per day, but is useful for anything from static bonuses to changing the weapon damage type (which amongst other options includes force damage) which means it requires really efficient managing in order to use optimally and if you were banking on them having certain energy options to bypass a later danger and they end up blowing the pool early then the party can be in for a rough time if they have some consistent back-up damage/plan.
Regarding your second question: To keep the magus from feeling left out I’d keep encounters per day relatively few (~2-3) at low levels, and then as they gain access to magic items and more spells per day start gradually ramping up. Since the magus is a big wonky stick as far as one-shotting things go, I’d probably have a small horde of enemies for the party to deal with, and give them a variety of ‘mini-boss’ type characters, one obvious leader and either a ‘demi-boss,’ or a ‘body-guard’ type, with maybe a separate support character (like a bard/shaman) for controlling the minions and your casters. I’d keep the boss manageable enough that the party can deal with it without the crit, use the demi-boss/bodyguard to occupy the magus for a couple rounds, and have the support-type as a logical first target for the party to down in order to weaken the mob.
Regarding your specific example encounter:
I like your idea of stringing the fight out, and giving the zealot the advanced template to create two back-to-back mini-encounters. That should be plenty to give them a challenging, but winnable fight.
For a more challenging approach, implementing my suggestions from above, I’d retool the sergeant as an archer/switch hitter type, and position him up in a tree somewhere near but behind the enlarged ‘bodyguard’ decoy (I suppose this could remain the warchanter). I’d retool the warchanter, whose channel negative energy is going to kill the 6 goblin warriors unless they’re kept in mostly separate instances, to be a bard or skald which buffs their individual capabilities to more reasonable levels. I’d give the hidden goblinoids the stealth synergy teamwork feat to help pull off the ambush. Give the party a couple rounds to get up to the decoy, then have the horde come charging at them from a little ways away, and use the archer to deal with threats/discourage anyone from running away from the horde.
What you seem to have is party imbalance, as well. Your optimized player is likely doing a Spell Crit build, if I'm guessing correctly. This has the opportunity to output significant single-target damage. I recommend you through more smaller level creatures at the party so that this player is not spotlight hogging while still being able to wreck to their heart's content.
In regards to the rest of the group, they each seem to have been given additional action economy through extra characters. Definitely factor these into your new APL (before, you were getting a -1 from having 3 players, now you have 5, even though only 3 human beings are involved. APL should be increased by 1 in this case).
More creatures of lower CR is the expected method for Pathfinder encounters, otherwise you end up with a boss monster that may resist and evade most abilities and attacks of your less optimized players. This could mean only the Bladebound Magus will be contributing to at-APL encounters of single creatures (and maybe not even he can handle it). If you've noticed this type of thing happening, then APL-5 CR creatures are not the way to go. You want more creatures that add up to APL+0 CR, but not so many that each creature involved is CR 1/3 or that they have too much more action economy than the party.
Again, that's the Pathfinder expectation for fair encounters (where players win 75%[?] of the time).
If you want more perspectives on your situation, it's likely this thread may give you insight to the more brutal flavor of your problem, but it may not contain the right insight into your specific case. I recommend you make another thread but keep reading this one.
I noted your advice -- thank-you! Hmmm, just in terms of this example encounter, it sounds like I need to advance that zealot (or other baddie, another time), just to be sure I can keep the bladebound busy for several rounds. But I also need enough low-CR critters around that my other players can feel important.
I'm definitely going to keep reading this thread, and will be interested in hearing about the encounters you design in the future. And yes, I'll copy my post to a new thread. Thank you for the suggestion.
I don't know if this was mentioned, butbut lower level characters are really fragile. I would hold off on APL+2 as the standard until level 5. At the earliest level 3.
I noticed you linked the NPCs, but provided no insight on the PCs side of things. As mentioned upthread, the NPCs were pretty synergistic in design and apparently all managed to go before any of the PCs. In addition to the general "swingyness" of low-level combat, optimization on PCs can also make a huge difference, especially when combating encounters which are very challenging for their CR.
How optimized were the PCs for this encounter?
I don't know if this was mentioned, butbut lower level characters are really fragile. I would hold off on APL+2 as the standard until level 5. At the earliest level 3.
This is exactly what I was going to say. At 1st level, and even to an extent 2nd level, any fight that is expected to be challenging to a PC group could very easily be a TPK.
Basically an 'easy' fight can range from no effort at all to challenging, a moderate fight can range from easy to very challenging and a fight that is designed to be be challenging can be anything from a moderate effort to deadly just depending on how a few die rolls go, especially the first ones in the encounter.
If you make all the fights easy or moderate difficulty, you will likely end up with a few encounters that are challenging, although you won't know which ones will be the difficult ones in advance.
I will also add that you have to consider the current PC's when doing this. I would tell them in advance so they can build for it, and be more likely to survive.
The problem here is also, that you try to do it for level 1, which is impossible. At hat level combat hinges on who gets lucky with the dice, as the damage dice are almost the same as the HD and one swing can finish a character.
The whole CR thing works only past level 3, when chance is starting to become less important. It is also very much guesswork or art, as the same encounter does not work the same way for different parties. A group of 3 main casters (lets say wizard, oracle and druid) plus two melees is way different to one with a magus, a monk, a bard, a barbarian and a rogue. What is merely a speedbump to one group can be certain TPK for others.
Any suggestions, recommendations, or rules of thumb in this vein?
The easiest way to make an encounter hard but survivable is to fake dice rolls. Just be subtle about it so players don't find out.
I would avoid doing this whenever possible, it's really off-putting from the player's perspective.
Personally, I'm most tempted to 'fudge' rolls when the dice are just really against the party. If they're just rolling nothing but 1s (which happens from time to time), or if I went too hard on them at level one I'll generally back off and swap the encounter for a lower CR one, or--rarely--offer to just roll-play the scene based on how everyone thinks things should have gone with 'fair' dice.
