Gamemastering: Designing Adventure for 2

[nogoodscallywag]

How would GMs go about designing an adventure using the core rules for 2 players instead of 4-6?

Usually I just take their avg party level and subtract 2 or 3.

[james maissen]

nogoodscallywag wrote:

How would GMs go about designing an adventure using the core rules for 2 players instead of 4-6?

Usually I just take their avg party level and subtract 2 or 3.

Let them make their own decisions, including finding others to adventure with (i.e. NPCs).

Seriously just give your players a world, and then let them play within it.

-James

[Lacan]

Or did you mean encounter math?

I think your method seems about right to me. Maybe you could create an Encounter for party of 4, using standard math and cut it in 1/2.

Action economy will start to matter as well. 2 characters only have 2 sets of actions.

[laarddrym]

action economy will hurt more than monster CRs. if an encounter normally has 5 monsters of a given CR, you'd want to reduce the number of those monsters to just 2 or 3.

NPC hirelings may not be a bad idea, or giving the players access to the Leadership feat prior to level 7.