Baby's First GM

[Clockwerk009]

Hello! As you probably read the subject line above, I'm a very new GM... or I'm going to teach a baby how to GM! Either way, I'm very confused on a couple of things; mainly, dealing with how to do encounters, challenge rating, APL, and those intimidating things in the Gamemastering chapter of the Core Rule book.

The party consists of 4-5 players at lvl 1 with standard fantasy stats.

1.) How do I start the first encounter? Since all the players are lvl 1, that would mean the CR is 1. I understand that much but what loses me is adding class levels to monsters. Ex. Does a Goblin become a CR of 1/4 if I make him a Barbarian for the PCs to fight or does he remain a 1/3?

2.) If wanted the PCs to fight a bigger version of a goblin, goblin boss of sorts, how do I go on about doing that? How do I "level up" a preset monster?

3.) Since this is very first campaign I'm doing, is it a better idea to nab one of the modules instead? I've only been playing for a while now but if given a rating from 1 to 10 (1 being the lowest and 10 the highest) on knowledge of tabletop games, I'd give myself a low 6 or high 5.

Sorry if this thread is really wordy but I really could use the help! Any and all help is always appreciated! Even if it's just a "Go read the book again on this page."

[Strannik]

This might help w/ the CR/APL questions.

The easiest way to "upgrade" a monster is to add class levels or to give it a template (like advance, etc) which will alter the CR of the monster.

I would strongly recommend trying out an AP. You can see how the books build encounters and then alter them a bit to see how the CR changes, etc. Any of the APs that don't have "special" rules would be best, avoiding Jade Regent or Kingmaker, etc. No need to deal w/ more rules than you have to yet.

More than anything, have fun!

Hope that helps. At work at the moment, so just a bit of help and maybe someone else will give you more details. :)

[Abadar]

Pathfinder is setup so that all creatures are built around the same rules and assumptions. That means you can take any creature and start leveling it up as you would a hero, improving their saves, HD, etc. Not saying it will make sense or be balanced, but you can.

A good way to pump up a Goblin to be a boss is to give it a lvl in something, or give it the advanced simple template.

Templates have an inherent CR. leveling them up is a bit more complicated I think when determining CR but the rules are there.

[anthonydido]

1) If you buff a goblin his CR doesn't drop. CR 1/3 means it's 1/3 of 1 (a fraction). 1/4 would be a lesser CR.

2) The easiest way, especially since goblins are humanoid, would be to level it up just like you would a PC. I don't have a whole lot of GM experience myself but that's probably what I would do.

3) The best thing would probably be to run an Adventure Path. Rise of the Runelords is a very good starting AP. If you're looking for something more short-term then maybe a module.

[Grick]

Clockwerk009 wrote:

1.) How do I start the first encounter? Since all the players are lvl 1, that would mean the CR is 1.

Step 1—Determine APL: Determine the average level of your player characters—this is their Average Party Level (APL for short).

Since you have 4-5 players, you don't need to modify this. So your APL is 1.

Step 2—Determine CR: Challenge Rating

Look at Table: Encounter Design.

If you want an Easy encounter, then Challenge Rating Equals APL –1.

If you want an Average difficulty encounter, then Challenge Rating Equals APL.

If you want a Challenging difficulty encounter, then Challenge Rating Equals APL +1.

And so on.

So lets assume you want an Average difficulty encounter for your group which is APL 1. This means you want a CR 1 encounter.

Step 3—Build the Encounter: Determine the total XP award for the encounter by looking it up by its CR on Table: Experience Point Awards. This gives you an “XP budget” for the encounter.

Check out Table: Experience Point Awards. A CR 1 encounter should grant 400 XP.

So you have a budget of 400 XP to spend on monsters.

Check out the Kobold. It's a CR 1/4 creature that has 100 XP.

So if you have four kobolds, that's 400 XP, which matches your budget for a CR 1 encounter.

Clockwerk009 wrote:

what loses me is adding class levels to monsters. Ex. Does a Goblin become a CR of 1/4 if I make him a Barbarian for the PCs to fight or does he remain a 1/3?

Adding NPCs: Creatures whose Hit Dice are solely a factor of their class levels and not a feature of their race, such as all of the PC races detailed in Races, are factored into combats a little differently than normal monsters or monsters with class levels. A creature that possesses class levels, but does not have any racial Hit Dice, is factored in as a creature with a CR equal to its class levels –1. A creature that only possesses non-player class levels (such as a warrior or adept) is factored in as a creature with a CR equal to its class levels –2.

Note that this does not answer your question, which involved a creature with racial hit dice given PC class levels.

Check out the Monster Advancement section of the bestiary, under Adding Class Levels.

Step 3: Determine CR
Determining the final CR for a creature with class levels requires careful consideration. While adding a class level to a monster that stacks with its existing abilities and role generally adds 1 to its CR for each level taken, adding classes that do not stack is more complicated.

Adding a level of Barbarian is Key to the Combat role. Assuming that's the role your goblin is supposed to fill, that makes him CR 1 & 1/3rd. Which would be worth about 535 XP. (Adding CR 1 and CR 1/3)

Clockwerk009 wrote:

2.) If wanted the PCs to fight a bigger version of a goblin, goblin boss of sorts, how do I go on about doing that? How do I "level up" a preset monster?

If you don't want to do class levels (which are kind of hard), you could do Adding Racial Hit Dice or apply a Template.

Clockwerk009 wrote:

3.) Since this is very first campaign I'm doing, is it a better idea to nab one of the modules instead?

Modules are good, but they're probably more useful for you to learn the rules, rather than the design side. There's plenty of room to modify them, but they're generally just a few sessions long and kind of limited.

Another option is to run an Adventure Path. These are sets of six volumes, and generally run a party from level 1 into the teens. They follow general themes (There's a pirate one, a jungle one, a horror one, etc.) and they have plenty of room for GM creativity in modifying the plot or the encounters.

Both of them will have the encounters pretty much all planned out (or provide random encounter tables) but don't assume you won't have to do any work, there's plenty of tweaking that should happen to tailor things to your groups playstyle, including relative power level and party composition.

[Clockwerk009]

Cool! I was looking at Rise of the Runelords first for while now. But, I'm going to lie, I was scared that if I picked up AP first and not make my own story first, my friends wouldn't be interested in playing my campaign later on down the line.

As for the link Strannik, I'm reading it over a bit more and I thought the Encounter Design was more meant as a "if you have more players, use this" rather than to spice things up.

That's good to know Abadar! So I could give an Ooze a couple levels in cleric because he had ate one earlier? Joking aside, you mean something to that extent?

I guess what was confusing me anthony was Step 3-Building the Encounter in the book!

Thanks again for the information guys! It really does help a lot!!