Encounter Building in Burnt Offerings


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As I am preparing to run Rise of the Runelords, using Pathfinder, I thought I would use the Encounter Design tools in the Beta to check the balance of the initial encounters. I was curious to see how easy they would be to use as an analysis and balancing tool.

Since this is a spoiler for the adventure...

Spoiler:

The PCs will be level 1 at the start of the game, so the APL is 1 for a group of 4. This goes to 0 for only 3 PCs, and 2 for a group of 5 PCs.

Initial Assault

Three goblins (CR 1/3) are the opponents. For balancing purposes, we compare a CR 1 to the APL 1 and see that an average encounter would be 1 creature. Thus, 3 goblins is an average encounter for a party of 4 (challenging for 3, easy for 5).

Pyros!

This is where things get tricky. Four goblins (CR 1/3) and a Warchanter (Bard 1) are the opponents. By the Pathfinder method, though, the Warchanter CR is -2, since its an NPC without racial hit dice. Not sure how we reflect that, but at a guess, I'll move it down two ticks on the usual CR chart (which I think is 1->1/2->1/3->1/4); thus, the warchanter is also CR 1/3.

This gives us 5 x CR 1/3 creatures, so roughly 2 slots of CR 1 creatures filled. This reflects a challenging encounter (hard for 3, average for 5).

Die, Dog, Die

The last encounter of the sequence: 4 goblins (CR 1/3), 1 goblin commando (CR 1/3, but Pathfinder accounting) and 1 goblin dog (CR 1). This works out to 3 slots worth of CR 1 creatures, so is a epic encounter (beyond epic for 3, only hard for 5).

What I find interesting is how fast that last encounter seems to ramp up in difficulty - especially since the PCs will have face the two previous encounters before it. Clearly the general difficulty of the encounters is intended to skew down by having the goblins use sub-par tactics.

Thoughts

The tools seem to work, at least from an encounter building/analysis perspective. Using them to analyze the Burnt Offerings encounters actually makes it pretty easy to see how to balance for more or less people in the party.

Thumbs up from me.


I've been continuing to analyze Burnt Offerings using the Pathfinder Encounter Building rules.

Spoiler:

I've been impressed with how easy they make rebalancing the encounters, really. The encounter in the Glass Factory with Tsuto rates out as Epic against a party of 1st level characters, which makes sense, since its pretty much the only fight in the factory, for example. However, there's a chance I may be running for only 3 players and now I know to strip 3 goblins out of the encounter to balance it.

Based on reading the forums, the encounters seem to come out as they should. The incredibly hard fights are marked as Epic in the Pathfinder method, which is a better flag for difficulty, I think, than a reported EL.


One thing -- the "regular" goblins are actually 1st level goblin warriors (i.e. they have one level in an NPC class). So by Pathfinder CR rules they have a CR equal to 1 - 3; in my game, I figured that equated to CR 1/4, not CR 1/3. Of course, the CR rules don't specify how "negative" CRs are supposed to be interpreted so I could be wrong.


Yeah, I was a bit curious about that. I think the approach that each "negative" level moves down on the fractional CR chart works, which would make the goblin warriors CR 1/4. However, that is something that should be laid out and explained in the rules, so we're not guessing.


But doesn't that make the goblin a CR1/3 and the goblin warrior a CR1/4? Shouldn't a goblin with an NPC class at least be the same CR as the goblin without the class? Am I missing something?


master0fdungeons wrote:
But doesn't that make the goblin a CR1/3 and the goblin warrior a CR1/4? Shouldn't a goblin with an NPC class at least be the same CR as the goblin without the class? Am I missing something?

There's no such thing as a goblin without any class levels, just like there's no such thing as a human without any class levels. Quoth the SRD under "Goblin":

"Most goblins encountered outside their homes are warriors; the information in the statistics block is for one of 1st level."


The new encounter building guidelines do push down most CRs on the NPCs with only class levels. Which, I think, better matches their actually challenge. A single 4th level Fighter is not an average challenge for four 4th (and isn't that a lot of fours?) level PCs, for example.

Basically, Goblin Warriors would be CR 1/4, instead of CR 1/3. A 3rd level rogue would be a CR 1 encounter. A 5th level Adept is now CR 2.

However, if the class levels are an enhancement on a creature (reflected, I think, by it having racial hit dice), then the CR is the same or better, from what I can tell.


Ah, yes. That makes sense.

And I totally agree that NPCs with a CR equal to their class level is too easy and should be a lower CR.

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