A single wolf is a CR 1 encounter (400XP). That's a fairly easy battle for a level 1 group.
Two wolves are a CR 3 encounter (800XP) - a dangerous encounter for a level 1 group.
Four wolves would be a CR 5 encounter (1600XP). That should be enough to have around a 50-50 chance of wiping out our four level 1 PCs entirely.
A single dire wolf (CR 3) on its own is a tough encounter for a level 1 group.
I'm not sure what you mean by basement dweller. Let's say you were using Dire Rats. These are CR 1/3 (135XP). Three of them are roughly equivalent to one wolf. Six Dire Rats at once (CR 3) would, in theory, be a tough encounter for a level 1 group.
You can certainly invent a zombie rat swarm - maybe they just move slower than a regular rat swarm, but have more hit points, are hurt by positive energy, etc.
If you're an inexperienced GM, it's OK to use a certain amount of fudging until you know what you're doing. For example, the PCs are in the middle of a battle, and maybe new wolves / rats turn up out of the dark forest / hole in the basement wall, and maybe they don't, depending on how much trouble they're having. And maybe there's a delay of a round or two before the creatures return in zombie form, depending on how much time the PCs need to recover.
Check out page 397 of the Core Rule Book under the section "Designing Encounters." There is an excellent three step process listed on that page that will lead you to building encounters.
When adding enemies to the encounter you should refer to tables 12-2 and 12-3 on page 398 for your exp budget and High CR Equivalencies, respectively. I keep a bookmark on that page, as well as many other pages, and come back to it often when crafting adventures. Really, all of chapter 12 is great.
Understanding CR, Character Wealth by Level, and Treasure Values Per Encounter are essential. It may seem daunting at first, but once you read it and put it in practice, it will click and make total sense.
You are welcome, and welcome to the wonderful world of GMing, my favorite hobby. Below is the link I keep bookmarked on my GM computer at our game table. You will have to scroll down a bit to find the encounter building.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering
Pick up the Core Rule Book when you can. Additionally, the Gamemaster's Guide is arguably the best book Paizo has given us.
thank you guys for your quick response and yes this my first time creating a few encounters for a campaign and as such if i can create something up to snuff i will dm for the first time as well.
can you give me a link to where that stuff is on the net goat lord i don't have the books i mostly use d20pfsrd.
also links to traps and puzzles would be very helpful. but those should come in at a later time after i create a few encounters and maps so they wander about in.
my rambling is do to it being very late >.<
Puzzles are hard to find, several published modules have some, but they are module specific.
The D20 listed traps are generally not for 1st level parties, even with a trapfinder. If you do want to use some i recommend reducing DC's attack and damage, and not having many, a few well placed, logical traps are better than many or sneaky traps. You don't want your players slowing things to a crawl for perception checks every 5ft. Treat them as additional enemies for your designed encounter budget.
also links to traps and puzzles would be very helpful. but those should come in at a later time after i create a few encounters and maps so they wander about in.
Interjection Games has a couple of free books on puzzles:
Perplexing Puzzles #1: A Crystal Puzzle is Forever
Perplexing Puzzles #2: Puzzle Chests
That's over 70 pages of content on the topic. Check the reviews on them also, for a very detailed analysis.
If you're thinking of using monsters with higher CRs, look at how much damage they might do on a critical hit and compare it with the HPs of the PCs. You probably don't want a high risk of a 1-hit kill, especially if the players are beginners. A higher numberof low CR creatures is safer in this sense.
It really depends on the party and the monsters.
1. Some monsters, like orcs and will-o-wisps, are strong for their CR. Others are quite weak for their supposed rating.
2. Some monsters, like ghosts, fliers and golems, affect different parties differently. A single shadow has the potential to kick a low-level martial party's butt, and the danger grows exponentially with each additional shadow. Flying enemies are very effective against melee martials, meanwhile, and golems can throw a wrench into tactics a mage relies upon (though most mages, especially buffers or battlefield-managers, can roll with it). A party that leans on enchantments will suffer a lot from fighting undead and oozes, but a party that leans on transmutations will be pretty much unaffected.
3. A lone monster generally has a major disadvantage against a full party, as the CR system is not great at managing action economy (4 actions vs. 1). I would generally avoid the "lone boss" entirely for now.
4. PC builds, obviously, make a big difference. Is it a strong party? Are your players experienced (and using that experience), or still experimenting with their builds?/
Essentially, consider how a monster will interact. How much damage does your party generally deal? How much does the monster deal? Can they hit its AC? Stuff like that.
CR's a good guideline, but it's not perfect.
i have only ever been on the player side of the GM screen. as for these people i play with i don't know their play style all that well. but god how i am hating the current campaign. -tons of stuff redacted-
i am pretty much thinking that i can come up with a game that is much more fun.
only person i can talk to in our group is not much -redacted- help.
any of you mind if i throw some of my encounters into the chat to see if they are survivable?
like Kobold Cleaver said, if we do not know your party composition and style, it is hard to determine what is a well balanced encounter. A Horde of true strike readied, greataxe wielding, raging Orc barbarians are instant death for melees, but in a party of 4 enchanters, suddenly those Orcs are a one round fight, dead before they know which buddy hit them.
Go ahead and drop some encounters down. We can at least give pointers on how those monsters tend to operate.
One handy thread on this forum might be this by Alexander Augunas. It's a good guide to understanding CRs, action economy and how to put interesting encounters together.
The basic concepts are that individual PCs can handle individual amounts of XP worth of monsters. For example, if 4 level 1 PCs are supposed to be able to handle a CR 1 fight as an average fight (400 xp), a single PC can be expected to handle 1/4 of that. Therefore any 1 level 1 PC can take on a CR 1/4 monster on their lonesome as an average fight.
Secondly the guide suggests giving yourself a budget of XP, based on how tough you want the fight. Let's say you want an average fight for 5 level 1 PCs: that's a 500 XP budget. Then you use that budget to "buy" monsters for the fight.
So imagine clearing a basement: think of it as a 5 room dungeon. Room 1: the bottom of the steps/CR 1 fight; Room 2: a crack in the wall/CR 1 trap (crumbling masonry, acidic slime behind a stone, etc.); Room 3: the sewer below/CR 1 fight but made more difficult since the PCs are on a narrow ledge with sewer muck flowing by quickly and slime making everything slippery; Room 4: the big boss/CR 3 fight; finally Room 5: treasure/only revealed after the boss is defeated and a secret door opened.
Room 1/CR 1 fight: 400 XP budget for 4 level 1 PCs; an average fight. The party comes down to the bottom of the steps, hears some noises, and BAM! They're attacked. Now... by what?
Well, with 400 XP you could buy 3 rats. You could also buy
- 3 skeletons
- 2 fire beetles and a mite
- 4 kobolds
- a phlegmatic ooze swarm and an evil gnome alchemist 1
Mix and match, try to get a feel for how this encounter ties into the rest of your dungeon. If you're going truly old school you probably don't need a theme; 3 dire rats, then the hole in the wall, then some stirges, and finally a bugbear and 2 goblins and you're done.
If you want a theme though you could go kobolds.
Kobolds usually use dire rats to protect their lairs. Room 1 could be 3 dire rats that wandered up here from the sewers below. They have a Climb speed so they can come and go as they wish. The kobolds however know this basement and have been raiding it in preparation for using it to infiltrate businesses above.
Room 1: x3 dire rats
Room 2: a despicable kobold trap meant to not only injure trespassers snooping around the basement but also something to alert their trained sewer rats
Room 3: x3 dire rats but they're climbing on the walls or swimming in the sewage while the PCs are making Acrobatics checks all over the place
Room 4: x4 kobold warrior 1 helping a kobold adept 3 make Acid Flasks for raiding the surface
Room 5: roughly 520 GP worth of treasure, maybe protected by a trap
Strength of these encounters depends on how you space them out. If you have 3 PCs walk into a graveyard and immediately face 10 goblins, regardless of health, that's a challenging fight. Following that with a group that works out to:
- 1 Small zombie/CR 1/3/135 XP
- 1 Infected dire wolf/CR 3/800 XP
- 2-3 wolves/CR 1 each/CR 3-4/800-1200 XP
That's a total party kill waiting to happen. The dire wolf alone could move 50' on it's initiative, attack a low AC character with a +7 bite which then triggers a trip of +8, and through that one attack deliver 10 damage and inflict Prone which is a nasty condition. If the rest of the dire wolf's "pack" then charges over they've got solid chances of hitting the same dude 2 more times delivering another, say, 8 points of damage and putting that one PC on life support.
In one round.
Pace yourself. Perhaps, something a bit moodier:
"You leave the horde of goblins, the shaman spitting out something about the 'Breath of the wolf' being the end of all things. Seeing as the goblin shaman is hissing that through his last bloody breaths you take it for what it's worth. Then, a thin ground fog begins to settle and the place falls eerily quiet.
Suddenly: the baying of a wolf. No... WOLVES. They are answered by a deep, hoarse howl mingling with a sickening gurgle. Something stirs beyond the gravestones ahead. Something inhuman..."
Encounter 1: the undead wolf/CR 1/2
As your eyes adjust to the shallow moonlit mist a loping form comes staggering out of the headstones. The canine before you was once a wolf but its body looks mangled, its fur matted with glistening slime and gore. Its eyes are a dull, lifeless glaze. Obvious wounds and rot are visible on the creature's side and neck. Despite its condition the shambling thing comes on, baring its teeth as it advances.
1. Monster: medium zombie/CR 1/2
2. Before combat: the creature begins 30' from the party
3. During combat: the wolf gets to melee with a partial charge and delivers as much damage as possible. Note: after the first hit by anyone in the combat that deals lethal damage more howls can be heard, except closer.
4. Ending combat: the zombie wolf fights to the death
Encounter 2: the pack/CR 3
No sooner does the unnatural corpse drop do you spot your next foes. 2 fresh, hearty wolves seemingly untouched by whatever profane fate befell their mutilated kin. They snarl at you motivated by some preternatural urge. They are not attacking for food or territory but something far more terrible.
1. Monster: x2 wolves/CR 1 each
2. Before combat: the wolves follow the scent of battle to arrive just after the zombie is slain
3. During combat: after 2 rounds a huge, loping canine appears. Any fallen wolves are immediately reanimated by the infected dire wolf
4. Ending combat: the wolves fight to the death only to be reanimated
Encounter 3: the alpha/CR 3+
Moments after you've made your second attack the shadows once more vomit forth a canine form. This one is huge, heavy and menacing. The beast's feral and fearsome form stinks of rot. The fur around it's muzzle and neck are stained with slime and blood.
1. Note: this encounter interrupts Encounter 2; PCs may need to resolve that combat before dealing with this one
2. Monsters: x1 Infected Dire Wolf (as Dire Wolf but can reanimate canine corpses as zombies through regurgitation)/CR3; as many zombies as the creature can make, up to 3/CR 1/2 - CR3
3. Before combat: the Infected Dire Wolf reanimates the previous zombie putting it back into the fight unless interrupted
4. During combat: the Infected Dire Wolf uses its animation process as often as it can until the PCs engage it in a way where it can't use that ability.
5. Ending combat: all wolves fight to the death
This breaks the fights up into bite-sized nuggets of gore that the players can deal with. It however slowly builds toward a crescendo of ultra-violence. The first fight is a pushover, probably done in one round or less. The second fight may prove a bit challenging. When the dire wolf appears and begins throwing up all over the place, suddenly the players recognize that they're in for a grind and have to pull out all the stops.
This also provides some foreshadowing from one fight to the next. This way the players aren't fighting in a vacuum. It might still be so brutal that the entire party dies but they might also choose to run away.
Bear in mind: 3 level PCs versus all the above may run out of all the cool stuff they can do in a day. These battles may not leave enough resources in the party to actually invade any basements.
Figure most level 1 parties are composed of 4 PCs. Said parties can generally handle about 4-6 fights of their own level, so 4-6 CR1 fights in a day before running out of steam. Upping the CR of fights higher than that will generally weaken and drain the PCs much faster.
The first couple of fights in a campaign should be softballs. One major reason is to get the characters to 2nd level so that one or two bad damage rolls will not kill them outright. Another is that the first couple of encounters are a test drive. The players do not really know their characters yet and certainly do not know how well they will mesh with the other characters. Even if the party was designed by the players in concert reality does not always match theory.
so i am going to be building a few encounters for my group of friends and i was thinking of going old school and for their first mission is to clean some basements. and i was wondering how many basement dweller should i have so it will make the encounter hard for the group of 3-4 maybe 5 lvl ones or 2.
another would be how many wolves can i throw at said group? can i also toss a couple dire wolves at them? i was also thinking about making these wolves come back as zombie wolves right after being killed or something. so yea putting that out there.
third how exactly do i figure out the cr rating?
can you have zombie rat swarms?
I often find encounters to be a stressful and enjoyable time for me as the DM.
What I have found out that REALLY works, is try using a paper cut style sort of approach.
I like to have a bunch of creatures each doing small-normal amount of damage. With an OK attack bonus. And depending on the situation, I often boost up the HP for most encounters.
so what does this equate to?
This means PC's taking more attacks to the face. Which slowly whittles at their HP.
Creatures with more HP, and easy to hit AC, means that monsters will take more damage, and killing creatures will feel like a group effort instead of a "let the fighter/wizard take care of it".
Most of my encounters get pretty exciting at the end, As always A cure light wound wand is a gift/curse for a DM. Allow them access at "some" point.
Goblins at lvl 1 are deadly because of 2 things, numbers, and terrain advantages. Health is not a factor in their combat effectiveness, at 6hp, they tend to fall to 2 acid orbs or 1 longsword swing. But in that time they can deal up to 4 damage (2 goblin shortbow hits will K.O. a wizard).
A better indication of interruption might be them not having weapons/armor at hand, instead picking up whatever is near (for fragile, -4 improvised) as weapons, not having their bolt hole readied for escape, not having obvious terrain advantages like cover or partial concealment readied, plus giving the party a chance at a surprise round. If you do this, you can up the number of Goblins in an encounter (letting the ones at the back equip and do no damage for a full round).
This will keep the party feeling like they are having an effect, give plenty of targets to hit without drastically increasing their chance to BE hit.
This would also reward the trap-finder for disabling alarm traps, thus improving how many Goblins can be caught unawares.
Some do (like this one with 'DR 15/—'), but most don't. If the stat block doesn't say it has damage reduction, it doesn't.
Some, like the Ochre Jelly are immune to slashing and piercing damage - not technically Damage Reduction - and if you try they'll split in two and become more dangerous.
Note that all oozes have ooze traits which make them immune to sneak damage, critical hits and flanking.
There are very few things called Slime in Pathfinder. There's Green Slime but that isn't treated as a monster at all - it's a Hazard.