Hi all,
Quick question about adding environmental hazards to an encounter:
Do the hazards add to the CR of the encounter, or are they treated as separate, mini-CR's within the overall encounter?
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It's really a GM call. I've tried throwing "hazards" in encounters before to make things more difficult for the party and they end up turning it to their advantage, making the encounter easier.
Typically, yes, it adds to the CR. Especially if the hazards are part of the natural environment of whatever you have the party fighting and the enemy can use the terrain against the party. E.g., Fighting a black dragon in it's acidic swamps instead of defending a town against a black dragon.
Well seeing as they have their own CR's just factor the XP or difficulty accordingly as you would any encounter with multple CR creatures or traps.
The problem with that is the other side may be dealing with the hazards as well. If you fight an ogre and a cave in kills him as he advances... well, I'm sure you shouldn't get the XP for the ogre and the cave in!
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Well seeing as they have their own CR's just factor the XP or difficulty accordingly as you would any encounter with multple CR creatures or traps.The problem with that is the other side may be dealing with the hazards as well. If you fight an ogre and a cave in kills him as he advances... well, I'm sure you shouldn't get the XP for the ogre and the cave in!
A hazard may be indiscriminate that way yes, but it isn't a problem if the GM doesn't want it to be. He has a lot of control over his own adventures and designs.
There are examples of adding traps and hazards to encounters that will adjust the CR of a creature.
Obviously an acid bath trap, or acid swamp pit, and a black dragon encounter should increase the overall CR worth of that dragon considerably. Where as that same black dragon taking cave in hazard damage each round as it chases PCs out of it's collapsing cave would factor down the dragons CR rating, as well as give the pcs some XP for surviving I'd rule.
That aspect is all up to the GM to design and factor. There's wiggle room there. If it hurts the monster and the PCs I give full hazard CR xp, but drop the monsters CR accordingly. Seems fair. There is even a sub section called ad-hod CR adjustment that deals with this type of design quite well.
Personally this is why I ignore the CR system when designing encounters.
Encounter design is much more an art form then a mathematical exercise. Or at least it used to be back in 2nd edition before the computerization of the game started to take place.
What the CR system has tried to do is formulate the entire process into static numbers and if-then-else statements (if kobold + rough terrain then CR=X). But all this really does in my experience is put limits on creativity and like the best laid battle plans, collapses after the first round of combat/exposure to the players.
As a GM, stressing over what CR an encounter should be just because the kobolds are on a raised ledge using their slings instead of engaging in melee with their spears is a waste of time. In the end the players don't know what CR the encounter was. All the math you did to make sure the encounter was the "proper" CR isn't really necessary. In the end it is the story you are trying to tell that the players will remember, not how many xp they got from encounter X.
The ability to adjust the difficulty of encounters on the fly without breaking verisimilitude is a far better skill to work on and develop, and one I wish the develops would spend more time addressing.
So what's my point... Denim-n-leather asked if a hazard should boost the CR of an encounter. To that I say, don't worry about it. Who cares. If the kobolds are on a rock ledge or a floating rock in the middle of a stream of lava then so be it. Chances are high the hazard is going to hinder the creatures in some way as well. The players do not have to be rewarded with XP for every single minor challenge/increase in difficulty.
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A significant CR hazard should totally factor into an encounter design.
You're cheating your players out of hard fought XP if you hinder them and offer no additional rewards.
I'd feel a little bummed if I had to do twice the work, fighting a dragon AND avoiding acid pit traps, as opposed to just a straight up open field dragon fight, and then getting the same XP regardless.
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Winter is right. If the hazard hinders both your opponent and you then there may be no CR alteration. If the hazard is a hindrance to your party and a boon to your enemy you'd best be awarding heightened experience to your players. If you start holding out on your party there's a good possibility they'll start looking up the monsters they've fought and they'll realize they're being shortchanged. Best case scenario they'll bring it up and call you out on it. Most likely they'll say screw it and won't play anymore.
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Right on Corren28.
You can lower or raise the CR of other elements in your encounter based on if it helps or hinders your party too.
Throw a troll at a lower level party if you give them tools to fight it more effectively. They could stumble into an old dwarven mine and get attacked by one, but discover that theres some dynamite nearby in a cache and maybe they can use that to literally blow it up.
The levels of fear for a group of first level guys with hardly any magic items to deal with such a high level threat, and doing so, is kinda cool. Just make sure to crop the CR in a case like that, you don't want to give them full xp for a fight thats engineered to be easy like that.
As the GM you can swing that either way, but at least should have a rough idea of whether a hazard helps, hinders, or just flat out threatens the pcs and have a decent idea of how it effects other set pieces in your encounter design.
Corren, my 20 years playing various forms of Dungeons and Dragons says you're wrong. In actual play (not sandbox theorycraft) The players would have no reason to suspect they are getting, what you consider less then they deserve, Xp.
Besides you don't adjust encounter rewards for how easy or difficult the player's choices or dice rolls might have made them. In the actual course of play there will be encounters the pcs make a mockery of. Would you reduce the xp awarded because of that?
At the end of the night, they get Xp for progress they made. Which encounter got them how much, they don't know. And frankly i've never had a player who cared.
This notion that the DM had better hand out every last xp point or the players will walk is disgusting. How self entitled can a player get?
It's the same thing as being a slave to the wealth by level tables. All that does is suppress creativity.
An individual Gm is gong to be able to gauge, for his players, what is an appropriately challenging encounter far better then any formulaic table.
The CR of a creature is, at best, a very rough guide.
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Corren, my 20 years playing various forms of Dungeons and Dragons says you're wrong. In actual play (not sandbox theorycraft) The players would have no reason to suspect they are getting, what you consider less then they deserve, Xp.
Trying to one up someone this way is petty. I could easily counter that I have been playing longer than you have, therefore my vast years (been playing since I was 7, my friends dad was cool that way) Doesn't validate my opinion. (I started in 1981.)
It validates it far better then simply stating the second part.
If I had done that you would be asking for what proof I had instead.
So I'm telling you, after playing this game in some form or another for 20+ years I have never had a player crack open the monster manual/bestiary and say "HEY, that monster was supposed to be worth X amount of XP and you only gave us Y."
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An individual Gm is gong to be able to gauge, for his players, what is an appropriately challenging encounter far better then any formulaic table.
It isn't about challenging encounters. It's about the obstacles the PCs need to overcome. You can throw the exact same encounter at two different groups, one very experienced as yourself and the other relatively new. The experienced group will have a much easier time of it because they have a better understanding of the rules and feat selections, skill allocations, and gear that work well in tandem. The newer group can still overcome the encounter but probably not without a few injuries. This doesn't change the CR or the experience awarded, both groups get the same reward. Just because you, as a GM, know the capabilities of your players doesn't mean you get to throw tougher fights at them without better rewards. It has nothing to do with dice rolls or player choices.
This notion that the DM had better hand out every last xp point or the players will walk is disgusting. How self entitled can a player get?
A lot more entitled actually. Expecting the rewards you've rightly earned isn't entitlement. After playing for so long you start to get a feel for how much experience you should be gaining in relation to the difficulty in encounters. When you send your players up against something that nearly kills the party and you hand out what amounts to a drop of water in the ocean, players are going to start calling their GM out.
Besides you don't adjust encounter rewards for how easy or difficult the player's choices or dice rolls might have made them.
Nobody is suggesting encounter rewards should be adjusted based on dice rolls or player choices. The encounter rewards are set before the players ever sit down to play. The discussion here is if environmental hazards alter the CR of an encounter and the answer is "It depends".
Fighting a red dragon in a cave where it's restricted and can't fly about is CR X-1. Fighting the same dragon on an open field where everyone can move, cast, see, etc. is CR X. Fighting the same red dragon at the peak of a volcano while it's flying around breathing fire and the PCs have to stay on a ledge and can't move freely and they're taking heat damage every round because of the lava, it's more of a CR X+2 or 3.
Thanks for the spirited responses thus far!
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Are you saying that, in your experience, players keep track of the CR of each encounter and calculate how much xp they should earn? I also go with a very rough method of XP calculation and have never had players complain.Corren, my 20 years playing various forms of Dungeons and Dragons says you're wrong. In actual play (not sandbox theorycraft) The players would have no reason to suspect they are getting, what you consider less then they deserve, Xp.
Trying to one up someone this way is petty. I could easily counter that I have been playing longer than you have, therefore my vast years (been playing since I was 7, my friends dad was cool that way) Doesn't validate my opinion. (I started in 1981.)
Yes they do. It isn't a magic trick, so no need to hide it from the audience if they want to know how it works, what a monster was worth and how much XP they get divided up.
Our games usually end, or begin, with this as an example:
Carrion Crown
Broken Moon - Game 25 – The winds of wrath
The Players
Thera: Half-giant that worships the aspect of fire, its wisdom burning fiercely within his vein.
Page: Rumored long-distance cousin of the Gunny family and summoner of ancient beings.
Khrashik: Master of the vial and beaker.
The Silent One: A mysterious woman who does not speak but commands strange powers.
Rescued NPCs
Rumblestone: A dwarven chanter who seems to have forged a stone golem ally!
Del: An attractive female elf that seems obsessed with recovering her missing sword.
Morpheus: An older human who does nothing but drink buff potions and seems to have green blood!
Mellori Corvus: Some sort of shapeshifter that has eyes for Page alone.
What has transpired
The party decides to explore the ruins of the town of Feldgrau. They discover some sort of weird vision or entity that invades their minds, causing burns to appear on their body as they believe their faces where thrust into scalding water! The party also discovers a ghost-like apparition of a glassblower who relives the act of hanging himself. Thanks to Page's skill in diplomacy they are able to gather information from the glassblower and put his soul at ease. Not before he uses his powers of undeath to rip the thoughts from the corpse of Vrood.
As the party travels to the city of Thrushmoor they encounter the final remaining clan leader, that of an ancient female werewolf who is the leader of the Silverpine clan. Not only is she angered by the party's actions but she is insulted that they provided the whereabouts of her lair to the prince of the Demon Wolves and his kin, after having parlayed with the party a few nights before. There is an intense battle as she is able to single-handedly hold her own against the onslaught of the full party! Her powers over the winds and air elements were strong and powerful indeed and throughout the battle the anger in her voice seemed to echo in the wind itself with all being able to hear her voice despite all around them the sound of the howling winds blocked their hearing and speech. She is forced to flee but not before reducing Thera to the form of a small werewolf pup for his insolence of approaching her to engage in melee.
How it was ended
The party has decided to head to the Ascanor lodge before heading out to the town of xx as shown in the visions of the mind of Vrood. They hope to drop of any NPCs to safety that do not wish to travel with them (which will give XP once it happens), to pick up any new NPCs or travellers (ALA Pat's new character), and then to see if Page can fashion some sort of item to dispel the effects of Thera's baleful polymorph. If the spell proves to powerful to be dispelled and none of the current guests at the lodge can assist they plan to travel all the way to the city of Lepidstadt which is a large enough city to find magics to help Thera's cause.
The party is aware through the vision of Vrood's corpse that the Whispering Way is trying to assemble some sort of `crown' and that time may be a factor.
What was learned
Storm druids and druids in general in the Pathfinder system are no longer anything to laugh at! Baleful polymorph should be a staple spell for any spellcaster.
Knowledge Awards
None this session
Story Awards
'Weathered werewolves' mini-encounter: 100xp
Giving Ulcris (the glassblower ghost) and the townfolks a proper burial: 3,200xp
I did not give full XP for this as technical you did not give them a proper burial. You reduced their remains to cinder and ash. Granted this released them from the undeath curse of the Whispering way and did set them at ease but their earthly remains were not given a proper `rest'. Not all of the townsfolk wanted to be cremated. You did consecrate the ground which gave you bonus XP as the taint of the Whispering's Way desecrate because their earthy remains pain and never ending torment.
XP Awards
Werewolf Afflicted Cublings x7: 400xp each
Duristan (afflicted werewolf): 4,800xp
`The Burnt Chandler' Haunt: 2,400xp
Moonwind Bloodmoon: 9,400xp
Total XP awards
Thera: 4,540xp
Page: 4,540xp
Khrashik: 4,540xp
Silent One: 4,540xp
The NPCs: You do not need to know their total XP.
Now do you need to play like that? Heck no. As players we do enjoy record keeping, stats, charts, spreadsheets. We're kinda geeky that way.
The bottom line here is hazards 'should' play into an encounters overall CR. Like creatures and traps, they have a CR to begin with. If you ignore that, then by RAW you are home-brewing it out, which is fine, the game is designed to allow such things. But your opinion in the RAW forum that it doesn't matter would be incorrect.
The RAW does provide examples of how hazards can modify an encounter, either for or against the party, or even for or against a creature or challenge.
While I wouldn't leverage my venerable 31 years of gaming against anyone as a linchpin to an argument, I can safely say people do like to keep track of monsters defeated and challenges overcome, and in my previous examples if they fought a creature in a challenging way -- then YES they would expect (rightfully so in my opinion) a better reward. It is not entitlement, sheesh that's rather extreme to call them that, it's just fair.
Hi all,
Quick question about adding environmental hazards to an encounter:
Do the hazards add to the CR of the encounter, or are they treated as separate, mini-CR's within the overall encounter?
There is no overall CR for an encounter except to judge whether or not it is appropriate to a given party. You always give the XP for the individual CRs of all the things in the challenge.
For example, when fighting two CR 10 dragons in terrain with a CR 10 hazard, you don't give XP as per a CR 13 encounter (25,600) you give XP for the individual CRs (or 28,800 for three CR 10s). The CR 13 is only calculated to let you know that this is an appropriate challenge for a 13th-level party.
In short, everything that adds to the challenge of the encounter has its CR (and its XP) added to the encounter, be it character, monster, hazard, or obstacle.