I find most adventures I have to add "spice" to the encounters to keep the challenge level up to par, the higher up in level you go the more this is true. This is what works for me:
1) give everything in the encounter a +2 hit, damage, ac, saving throws... without increasing the CR. I only do this for a few battles per adventure though. Generally the fun looking ones you want to be memorable.
2) Add more low level badguys. 2 ogres and a boss ogre? Woops now thats 4 ogres and a boss ogre. I do award extra xp for the extra monsters of course.
3) throw in an a trap or environmental hazard. Most of these are already written in but you can add your own traps or hazard here and there to spice up the combat. I generally do this maybe only once an adventure, again to one of the fights that looks like it would need it. Never overdo traps but adding in one or two more per adventure can be fun. Try to keep the traps and hazards at a relative CR to the monsters.
4) Least often (because its the most work lol) give the enemys a couple levels of something. An encounter with two Ghasts might not elicit fear in your party. Give them three or four barbarian levels each and a couple nice magic items though and got something scary.
I also tend to add in about 25 - 35% more treasure in an adventure to make up for my meanness (lol) this is generally a few extra handpicked items and a few thousand extra gold.
Generally use option 1 and 2 together and you will have hard battles. Use either or for "slighty" harder. Option 3 and 4 should be used more sparingly.
Hope some of this helps.
Actually, I'm having the exact same issue as you, and have a similar DMing issues (forgetting powers), and I'm actually at the exact same place in RotRL as your group as well.
Weird.
We have a Dwarf Inquisitor (optimzed), Wizard-Conjuration - optimized in terms of spell and int 20) Fighter/Cleric (non-optimized, I had to hook him up with some magic items to bring him in line with the optimized characters) and Magus (not optimized).
I was thinking Mythic Adventures was a blessing in disguise for GMs, and as it stands, I would not open it up for players to scour for new abilities. It may be a way for GMs to expand current monsters while while being able to roughly calculate encounter strength. And a good way to spice up old monsters for experienced players who basically know the bestiary monsters inside and out.
Completely rewriting encounters seems like a complete waste of an AP and not a good option for me. If I wanted (had time) to write my own stuff, I would. I ran an AP to have prepackaged encounters and a good story to go along with them.
Not remember powers is not an uncommon problem for GMs who don't have hours and hours to memorize this stuff. I think it has to do with how stat blocks are written/designed. Something I may try is highlighting (I know it ruins the book) or highlighting in your PDF, important powers that should come into play during an encounter to help remember them.
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I also have 6 players in RothRL. We're currently wrapping up Chapter 4. Here are some things I've done to "spice things up."
Add 50% more minions to most fights.
Add a class level or 2 to the bosses.
No single bosses (always have bosses attended by a couple minions).
I keep the players about 1 level behind the advnacement track at the beginning of each chapter (I also don't use XP, so that makes this much easier).
I keep my players from having access to TOO much fancy equipment (or the wealth to buy it).
1. Start giving my bosses mythic levels-While I have considered this heavily I feel it is really unfair to use a rulesystem I don't want my players using. Being that 3 of my players are new I don't want to throw mythic rules at them when some of them are still struggeling a little with the basics.
I wouldn't use this just because Mythic is new and I don't know exactly how it will work when added to RotRL. Also, most of the bosses don't really "feel" Mythic (I am considering adding some Mythic to Big K though).
2. Start writing out creature/boss abilities on note cards so I remember what everything does. I'm psuto new to DMing and I don't have all the affects memorized yet and I fell this is a large portion of why challenge is lacking.
This is a good idea. Also, pay attention to the tactics section of the stat blocks for additional hints.
This kind of stuff comes up a lot, so here are some threads that you might find useful:
Scaling the Adventure
Running RotRL soon need advices
Mythic Campaigns and Runelords
Any advice for a first time DM running Rise
playing with 6 players a different point of view
-Skeld
I have 5 players with rolled ability scores that ended up quite high.
Your idea (2) of writing things out on cards I highly recommend. I just write the abilities down with enough detail not to have to look them up. When an NPC / monster is using their abilities to their full potential it makes an enormous difference.
On hitpoints, I 'fudge' things a bit sometimes, based on how the fight is going and what state the party is in going into the fight (max hit points / spells or depleted).
I also mix my rolls up visible / not visible to the players. The 'not visible' enables me to go for dramatic effect rather than just random result.
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Hello DM Mathpro,
I understand fairly well what you're going through, so I figured I'd stop by and give some advice.
First, as MikeJ pointed out the APs are bult to be challenging for 4 PCs using 15-pt buy creation method. I'm running RotRL for 5 very experienced players who have a rather balanced group, have PCs built with 20-pt buy method, and using hero points. Surprisingly, I've put them in very tight positions on many occasions due to the following factors:
1) Preparation is paramount. Read the scenario at least three times: a first time when you read the whole AP back to back, a second time before starting the scenario, and a third time by reading bits the day/morning before the actual game session. Look up abilities and spells in the manuals, read the monsters' tactics, figure out when every ability would be best used, what your monster is going to do from what he knows about the party's tactics. Every ability, every spell is like a toy you have to understand how to use efficiently. Use a separate sheet of paper for each important encounter, and write things you must remember on it. Ultimately, you will become a better GM (as in "monster resource manager") by doing this on a regular basis, and you'll see that you'll remember more and more stuff everytime.
You can also gain experience as a GM by taking some time to analyse how a given fight went down, and how you could have improved it. In your case, you could do it for the Xanesha fight, if you're willing.
2) An adventure is organic, not static. People often assume that whatever happens in room Y of the dungeon, stays in room Y. It's an assumption that will make things much easier for the PCs. If you did your preparation well, you should be able to tell what's in the room next to the one the PCs are in, and how it could have an influence on the situation. Is there a caster who heard them beat the troll to pulp? He's probably casting buff spells to be prepared when the PCs come for him! Or maybe he's raising the alarm, leaving his spot to look for reinforcements.
An interesting example of this happened when my RotRL party cleaned Fort Rannick:
Basically, the party cleaned the fort with great efficiency, facing Jaagrath, Dorella, Hookmaw and two ogres at the same time (they began casting spells in the hall between rooms B29, B30 and B31). A tough fight, but they still won. At that time, only Lucrecia and the shocker lizards in the basement remained. Lucrecia came up to them to taunt them, and teleported away, eventually getting back to Hook mountain, joining Barl in room D9.
When the PCs faced Barl, they were low on resources, and chose to flee, seeing that Lucrecia and a stone giant were with the necromancer. Barl and Lucrecia pushed hard on them, forcing them to run separately, and almost killing the party's fighter. That fight was incredible because they knew that Barl (being a necromancer) would animate the corpse and thusly make the fighter unable to be raised (or so they thought). In the end, they were able to retreat to Fort Rannick to spend the night.
What did Barl do? He used his memorized Animate Dead to turn two slain ogres into gasburst zombies, and pushed his attack onto Fort Rannick! He attacked in the morning, with full spells and henchemen (as well as Lucrecia), and forced the PCs to abandon Rannick.
So basically the tactics provided for the monsters are more like guidelines, and aren't set in stone. They're here to help you if you have no idea how to run a given situation, but don't feel bound by them. Use your creativity!
3) Limiting the PCs' power. To be honest, this can only really be done preemptively, like enforcing 15-pt buy or a limited number of players, forbidding an archetype you're not comfortable with, etc. Don't do it in the middle of the AP, because your players will feel the tacit "contract" of balance to be broken, and will lose faith in you. The only way I'd consider doing it is exactly what you did, asking the players if they'd mind being a level lower than normal. Communication and agreement with your players are very important elements of keeping a campaign healthy, I think.
4) Boosting your monsters artificially. I'm not a big fan of this one, to be honest. Of course you can give your monsters Max Hp, or add mooks (low-level henchemen for single monsters that are going to lose against your players due to action economy imbalance). I think it's more of a circumstantial remedy than a universal solution. That said, I think it can make things more interesting in some fights:
As for Mythic rules, I wouldn't use them in your situation. The rules are still young, and you should probably focus on the base rules (enforce little things that are often overlooked, like light & darkness, what they have in their hands and the actions they need to get other items - remember, they need a free hand to cast!) before adding more rules into the equation. That said, it can be fun to give Mr.K a couple mythic tiers, but it should be the exception rather than the general rule.
5) Remembering the important things Your goal is for the PCs (and you) to have fun. Challenging them is an important part of it, but don't fall in the opposite stance either (GM vs. PCs mentality). And don't worry, I still don't remember everything for every fight, and I often say to myself that I could have done it differently!
I hope this helps!
This was brought up in a Reign of Winter thread. What it comes down to is this: Action Economy.
You have two extra players and at least two extra characters on the field. This gives them a minimum of two additional actions a turn. While you can maximize the hit points of your monsters and the like (and I recommend that!) it's not enough.
So increase the number of foes. Add one or two (or more if they're weak or easily killed) underlings to every encounter. Have Boss creatures retreat so they are fighting with their minions, not alone, if possible.
And use tactics! For instance, consider having a small tribe of goblins helping the ogres or giants! The goblins are cannon fodder. They exist for only two reasons: to tie up actions, and to give the bigger guys flanking bonuses.
This guide came up in a different thread and I find it really useful.
That's an excellent guide. It does make one mistake however in dismissing somewhat the potency of Mythic characters.
Mythic characters can get an additional action by burning a Mythic point. This can be an attack or a spell... or an additional action in the case of Mythic Improved Initiative. This will increase their action economy; the best way to compensate for this is additional foes, as mentioned in the guide.
I should point out that with your current party they should really be encountering battles worth +3CR (counting the Eidelon as another player)), so if they're level 6 then the fights they encounter should be around 9CR.
I'm only completed session 2 of this book but it's pretty obvious that my players are waaay stronger than the book thinks they should be. Additionally after doing the Glassworks I'm pretty disappointed by the amount of wasted space in scenarios. Also for some reason this book has way too many single monsters or small encounters that a full party will finish in round 1.
After much talking with an experienced GM I'm going to reduce the amount of encounters a dungeon but combine rooms and mobs together (not to mention max hp them).
A pair of goblins is no challenge to a player and even a tough boss is rarely strong enough to subdue a full party. Adding 2 separate encounters together bumps up the difficultly without increasing the CR too much. Not to mention it reduces the amount of time it takes to clear a dungeon if there's a few large battles instead of many short battles.
My own GM throws encounters that are +4 around +6 CR higher than us and it has epic tense battles where we have to fight smart to survive.
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Good, sound advice. My group consists of 6 players, far above average stats, plus boosts from dragonmarks. (My RotRL campaign is set in Eberron. And I've made considerable changes.)
I've started maxing HPs for most every foe, as well as either increasing the number of minions, or advancing them. No BBEG stands alone. With 6 players, it's far too easy to just gang up.
I too often forget abilities. I work with using both Combat Manager (which is also great for advancing monsters), as well as a printed version of the stats. Combat Manager can make all the rolls for me, while I use the printed copy to highlight and make notes for combat strategy. I'm getting better, and being prepared like this, really helps.
Because I'm running my game online, I've trimmed and/or streamlined encounters (otherwise, we'd still be crawling through book 1, instead of finishing book 2). To make up for this, the encounters need to pack more XP, anyway.
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My advice would be two-fold: add more hazards and combine encounters.
Especially if you're using tactical combat, the encounters in the AE can be kind of bland. I've actually been rewriting monsters entirely, but just adding a few hazards or potential action areas (cliffs, loose rocks, braziers of coals, whatever) on the battlefield can really spice things up.
And your party being too large gives you the opportunity to play the foes smarter. As they attract attention, you can bring a (more or less realistic) wave after wave of enemies down on them. It ups the difficulty of the fights, helps combat the 15 minute adventuring day, rewards the players if they can come up with a way to split things, and makes them feel like big damned heroes when they stand in a room filled with piles of dead stone giants.
Cheers!
Landon
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One thing to mention, too, is that all your 'vet' players have picked some powerful options.
Summoner, especially in a party larger than 4, is just downright ridiculous. Having a skilled wizard (regardless of specialization) can trivialize a lot of encounters. And paladins are pretty big damage dealers at boss time.
Also to echo one of the above sentiments to have it hit home, with 6 players they should be 1-2 levels BEHIND where the book says, because of power level + action economy.
Never forgetthe psychology either. it sounds like increasing the EL is necessary..as an additional thought if the players are getting a bit jaded or casual its time to scare them
One thing you can do is make the encounters SOUND more dangerous. Describing people being thrown across the room by impacts (etc) can really help the players feel theres more of a challenge.
Also, maybr introduce an npc badass who they know is tougher than they are. Then have them turn up killed(in fact ,easily stomped i/wiped in a spectacularly grisly way) by an encounter that they know they have to face next. That should give them something to worry about.
Check out some horror rpgs for ideas based around this. One of the reason Call of acthulhu is scary is not JUST that the monsters are tough, its also that the setup of theadventures makes players/characters are scared of them...and that really spices things up.
It cam really work well with practice; My RotR players are still terrified of bugbears, and we're just about to start Fortress, so they're waaaay above the level where bulk standard bugbears are usually dangerous...
I'm in the same situation, i plan to fix it by adding swarms every now and then... everyone hates swarms ;)
I'm kidding......mostly
A very simple but interesting mechanic is to change the terrain so players need to think more tactically in fights.
Icey floors are hilarious.
Just throwing this out there as an idea if you have access to a part-time player. In the past I've had irregular players come 'sit-in' and run the monsters in various battles. A brief chat ahead of time to make sure there's no meta-gaming and that the player will run the encounters appropriately (dumb is dumb, smart is smart, fore-warned is fore-warned, surprised is surprised, etc.) and it takes a load off of my shoulders while making combat suddenly very real for the PC's.