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APL is a starting point anyway, at least to me. This is because of how some enemies are assigned CR. Like someone showed that according to the math, a type of Hag would be totally acceptable to fling at a level 3, 4 man team. Hint, that encounter would NOT go over well.
I'm of the opinion that if you go below 1, you should round it back up to 1.
The ambush sounds okay but you'll have to maybe switch some things up depending on what class he plays. A Sorcerer is going to have a very different run through than say a Fighter or Barbarian.
This is a rough idea. Do the ambush, 4 raiders vs 4 defenders; your son, cleric NPC, and 2 guards. Then split the battle. Have your son and the cleirc take on 2 on one side of the caravan, while the guards take on the other 2.
Don't even roll combat for the other side of the caravan just see how your son is handling combat. If he's breezing through it or the cleric still has plenty of spells, bring the other 2 raiders over after he's won the first fight(Just remove the guards from the board, they got killed off screen or knocked out, depending on how you want to handle death/killing for your son).
If your son's character is wounded or the cleric is low on healing, just have the guards drive off or kill their raiders. Heck if it looks bad for your son's character, have a guard win his fight and come over to help.
If he rolled his stats and has more gear than wealth by level, then you'd probably need to adjust the APL up by +1 anyway, which brings you back to 1. Pathfinder adventures are generally designed for four players with characters built from a 15 point build following wealth by level. So once you start to go above the 15 point build and wealth by level paradigm, your APL increases.
When you build your encounters, you just pick your target CR and then build your encounter by adding the XP of each monster together until you hit your target CR.
As a rule of thumb, if I'm not sure how well I've determined the party's APL, I will generally give them a simple encounter first to see how they do. If the APL is correct, they should blow right through it. Then I'll run them through a very difficult encounter to see how they handle that. If the encounter winds up being very difficult, then I know I'm on the right track. If at any point, the easy encounter is hard or the hard encounter is easy, then I know that I need to start moving my APL up or down by +1.
Note: If I run a hard encounter as a test, I will have a deus ex machina of some sort handy to help the PCs out if needed. Now, I only like to do this if I'm unsure of my APL, otherwise, I just let the encounters unfold naturally.
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I have run games for oversized and undersized parties and gave up on the APL concept. I apply the CR (challenge rating) system to the player characters themselves to determine their power level. Warning: I am a mathematician and consider logarithms simple.
The CR of a well-built player character with PC-quality gear (see the Wealth part of Table: Character Advancement and Level-Dependent Bonuses) has CR equal to their level. For example, a 4th-level character is CR 4. A PC with great gear and great stats would have CR one higher than his level. My own highly experienced players use clever planning and teamwork to operate at CR two higher than their level.
Next, go to Table: Experience Point Awards and look up the experience point equivalent for each CR in the party. Sum up those XPs over all the PCs in the party. For example, a party with one 4th-level character (1,200 xp) and two 3rd-level characters (800 xp each) would have a total of 2,800 xp.
If you don't like looking up the xp in the Experience Points Awards Table, I can explain how to use logarithms for the calculations, instead.
An average encounter for a party has one quarter the xp of the party itself. So for an average encounter for that 2,800-xp party, you need 700 xp of opponents. A single CR-2 monster has 600 xp, so it is a little weak, but if it has terrain that favors it, it would be upgraded to average. An orc berserker has 400 xp, so two of them would be 800 xp, slightly tougher than average.
The encounter levels are:
Easy (party barely breaks into a sweat): 18% of party xp
Average (party guaranteed to win): 25% of party xp
Challenging (feels like a fight): 35% of party xp
Hard (boss battle): 50% of party xp
Epic (final boss battle): 70% of party xp
Mirror Match (50% chance of Total Party Kill): 100% of party xp
However, CR is only an approximation. Some characters are strong against undead. Other characters are weak against undead. Some characters can handle flying monsters with archery or spells. Others cannot. Large groups of opponents behave differently from a single opponent even if both have the same total xp. And so on. The encounter needs to consider the particular strengths and weaknesses of the party characters.
Let's get specific: sladerlmc77 son's 1st-level fighter accompanied by 1st-level cleric Kyra. The party xp is 800, so an average encounter would have 200 xp, the xp of a CR 1/2 monster. Monsters by CR suggests a Hobgoblin or Giant Centipede or Giant Crab Spider or Medium Humanoid Zombie as CR 1/2. Or a pair of CR 1/4 common rats--the undersized party is really at the level where they would have trouble clearing out a rats' nest.
A GM doesn't need to create all opponents. The online resources are plentiful. d20pfsrd.com has a Bestiary section. The Gamemastery Guide's NPC gallery offers humanoid foes.
Let's say the fighter character and Kyra are guarding a merchant's wagon on a caravan in order to pay for traveling with the caravan. A bunch of bandits charge the caravan from a hiding spot and two rush toward the merchant's wagon. The fighter and Kyra need stop only those two bandits, who hope they will run away but will fight them if they don't. This ought to be a challenging encounter, so 300 xp. We can get 300 xp by adding the 100 xp of a CR 1/4 opponent and the 200 xp of a CR 1/2 opponent. The NPC Gallery provides a CR 1/2 bandit. That gallery does not go down to CR 1/4, so let's look at its CR 1/3 Village Idiot. That makes 335 xp, a little tougher. To make the challenge easier, the bandit will run away if the village idiot is knocked out. He hates being outnumbered. The player earns full xp even if the bandit runs away, since his job is protecting the wagon instead of killing bandits.
As for the rest of the bandits and caravan guards, I usually tell my players that the other guards perform as well as the party does. If the party wins, they win. If the party wins and is badly hurt, they win and are badly hurt. If the party runs away, they run away and abandon the caravan to the bandits. If sladerlmc77 son's fighter is knocked out, he wakes up to find that the caravan guards ran away but returned after the looting and tended his injuries. Just focus on the little fight with the main characters.
dot - for Mathmuse's method
- too bad my favourite maths jokes aren't in English, it is about a log^^ -
This seems to be to be 2/2 = 1 -1 (for 3 or fewer characters) for an APL of 1/2. An average encounter in this scenario would be CR 1/2 with an XP budget of 200.
However, I've seen someone else argue that due the advice about rounding, the APL should be 1, not 1/2.
Ignore advice about rounding. Rounding makes things worse. It's like the recommendation to round a 5 character party down to 4 for APL purposes to keep things simple, when 5 characters are actually significantly more powerful than 4.
A better system:
Four Level 1 PCs = base XP budget of 400 (eg a CR 1 encounter.)
Four Level 2 PCs = base XP budget of 600 (eg a CR 2 encounter.)
One Level 1 PC = base XP budget of 100.
One Level 2 PC = base XP budget of 150.
A Level 1 PC and a Level 2 PC = base XP budget of 250.
Two Level 1 PCs = base XP budget of 200.
Etc.
(The Mathmuse system is good too.)
The problem with calling my first post "Mathmuse's method" is that I have many methods.
For example, balancing encounters is much easier when every party member has the same level. Then party size is the only modifier to CR.
Treat a 1-person party as 4 levels lower.
Treat a 2-person party as 2 levels lower.
Treat a 3-person party as 1 level lower.
Treat a 4-person party as their level.
Treat a 5-person party as 0.6 levels higher.
Treat a 6-person party as 1 level higher.
Treat a 7-person party as 1.6 levels higher.
Treat an 8-person party as 2 levels higher.
Okay, the Experience Point Awards table is not set up for levels X.6, but I can generate new values.
Level -3 is 100 xp, the same as CR 1/4.
Level -2 is 150 xp, close to CR 1/3.
Level -1 is 200 xp, the same as CR 1/2.
Level 0 is 300 xp.
Level 0.6 is 350 xp.
Level 1 is 400 xp.
Level 1.6 is 500 xp.
Level 2 is 600 xp.
Level 2.6 is 700 xp.
Level 3 is 800 xp.
Level 3.6 is 1,000 xp.
Level 4 is 1,200 xp.
Level 4.6 is 1,400 xp.
Level 5 is 1,600 xp.
Hm, my rounding makes level X.6 come out as the average between level X and level X+1. Okay, use that.
By the way, CR 1 and higher follows a logarithmic scale. +1 to CR makes the encounter 1.41 times as hard, +2 to CR makes the encounter twice as hard, +3 to CR is 2.8 times as hard, +4 to CR makes the encounter 4 times as hard, etc. The fractional CR uses a different scale. The XP for CR X is 283×2^{level/2), rounded to the nearest multiple of 100. In contrast, the XP for CR 1/N is 400/N. So CR 1/2 is half as hard as CR 1, CR 1/3 is one third as hard as CR 1, and CR 1/4 is one quarter as hard as CR 1. My levels 0, -1, -2, and -3 are on the logarithmic scale, so they wildly off scale compared to CR 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4.
Thus, suppose we have a 5-person party at 4th level. That is as powerful as a 4-person party at 4.6th level, if such a thing as 4.6th level existed. An average challenge for that party would have 1,400 xp; for example, two CR 1 bandits (400 xp each) led by a CR 2 bandit (600 xp). Against a regular-sized 4-person party at 4th level, the bandit leader would be CR 1, too, but the 5-person party needs a little extra challenge.
Pathfinder adventures are generally designed for four players with characters built from a 15 point build following wealth by level.More recent ones (I think Skulls and Shackles onward) are made for 20 point buy. PFS used it for even longer.
That's incorrect. They are designed for 15 point buys. If you have something stating otherwise, I'd be happy to hear it, but it's been said on these boards time and again that they are made for 15 point builds.
It was exactly what I needed to stop second-guessing myself and dive into building some encounters.
Remember that you know your son better than any of us. The most important thing is that he have fun. Some kids like the challenge of biting off more than they can chew; some want to slice through enemies like a hot knife through butter.
APLs are a guideline, and because not all classes have power that scale linearly with level, APL+1 from 1 to 2 is different than APL+1 from 10 to 11.
I think it's actually more important for the enemies to fit your son's character's strengths than for the APL to match exactly. It will probably be less fun to be charmed by a CR 1 monster targeting the fighter's weak will save than to out-smash a CR 2 melee brute with AC 20.
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That's incorrect. They are designed for 15 point buys. If you have something stating otherwise, I'd be happy to hear it, but it's been said on these boards time and again that they are made for 15 point builds.Pathfinder adventures are generally designed for four players with characters built from a 15 point build following wealth by level.More recent ones (I think Skulls and Shackles onward) are made for 20 point buy. PFS used it for even longer.
I think PFS went for a 20 point buy to compensate for the lack of coordination in building PCs for a PFS session. A well synergized party of PCs built on 15 point buy is probably stronger than a randomly thrown together group of 20 point buy PCs.