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1 year ago ::
May 23, 2012 - 10:00AM
#1
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It's possible that I'm looking at a single table of seven players this season. I'm only paging through right now, to see if I've forgotten a mention, but I haven't seen guidelines for scaling the combats.
Any advice for this mod specifically? My general impressions stands as, "Add one more of the lowest-level enemy for each player over six. Two to three, if the lowest level creature is a minion."
As a DM, I find it easier to just punish the players no matter what they pick, as I assume they will pick stuff that is broken. I mean, fight after fight they kill all the monsters without getting killed themselves! What sort of a game is this, anyway?
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1 year ago ::
May 23, 2012 - 10:15AM
#2
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Date Joined:
Apr 14, 2011
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The standard rules have been to add one extra of the lowest level non-minion monster for each encounter for tables of 6. Subtract one of the same for tables of 4. For 7 you might consider adding two.
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1 year ago ::
May 23, 2012 - 10:28AM
#3
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Date Joined:
Oct 20, 2010
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If your table has a controller, add 2-3 minions instead of a second additional non-minion. It'll give the controller something to do, and provide an excellent way for players to get renown, if your shop uses that part of the program.
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1 year ago ::
May 23, 2012 - 12:50PM
#4
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Date Joined:
Dec 21, 2009
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You also need to scale this against the experience level of your players. My players will run through the encounters as written without breaking a sweat whereas times I've run the same encounters for less experienced players they can struggle. And also don't be afraid to modify the difficulty up or down on the fly. Maybe there is one more guy hiding in the shadows, or maybe one of the guys wasn't quite as tough as he first seemed. Not to punish the players and their PCs for being successful but you only get one encounter per session and if your players mow through it in 15 minutes people are going to go home unsatisfied.
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1 year ago ::
May 23, 2012 - 2:31PM
#5
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Date Joined:
Oct 20, 2010
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With 7 players, no round of combat lasts less than 15 minutes.
But you are correct that scaling the encounter is a balance of # of players, experience level of characters and players, and tactics used.
Usually the tactics described in the module are not the most ideal tactics at the lower levels. It took me a long time to realize that that was deliberate-- one way to "delevel" a threat is to make it tactically less challenging, without adjusting its hit points, attacks, or defenses in the slightest.
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1 year ago ::
Jun 01, 2012 - 2:21PM
#6
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- Dragon Slayer
- If only he would apply himself
- Dammit Jim, this is Star Trek, not D&D!
Date Joined:
Jan 31, 2006
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I haven't seen guidelines for scaling the combats.
Any advice for this mod specifically? My general impressions stands as, "Add one more of the lowest-level enemy for each player over six. Two to three, if the lowest level creature is a minion."
That's an ok rule-of-thumb when you have a standard encounter with a set of monsters that are close in level. It is harder to deal with when you have just a few monsters, or a wide disparity in levels, or a solo. The easiest way to tell is this: look at the level of the fight. Is there a standard monster that is of that level? If so, adding them will usually work ok.
Mathematically, you can look up the XP level of the fight and compare to how it should look for one more player. An encounter by default is 5 PCs and 5 standard monsters of that level. To scale it, you would add 1 more monster. Either the DMG or the Rules Compendium will show you the value for 5 players (DMG handles 6) at that level. So, at level 1, a standard monster is 100 XP. For five PCs, the total XP should be 500. For 6, 600. For 7, 700. That means that a level 1 fight would need to get about 100XP more of monsters.
However, 7 PCs breaks the normal balance a bit. The above should work for average players. It tends to fall short for strong players. I advocate having a few ideas in your back pocket that you can roll out on the fly in addition to the above.
Consider:
- If a foe is killed far too quickly, and you aren't running over time-wise, have another enter the scene at the top of the round.
- Give foes +2 to all attacks. And/or, give them a bonus too damage. You can use a static boost (+2 to all damage) or increase the die size for a more random effect. (So, 1d6+4 might become 1d6+6, or it could be 1d8+4).
- Lower the recharge rate on cool monster powers (example, a 4-6 becomes 3-6). You can turn an Encounter power into "recharge when bloodied".
- Widen the area of effect of an aura or burst/blast power. More targets = more pressure.
- Give a monster an action point.
- Before play, thumb through the available monster theme powers (DMG2, DSCC, etc.) and pick 1-2 you like and print them out. If and when needed, use one. Honestly, you can just have cool ones on a piece of paper and use this whenever you want.
- When a foe is bloodied, and if PCs are having too low a challenge for enjoyment, boost their damage. You can reduce HPs in exchange if you want, to keep the battle brutal but fast. For example, drop HPs by 5 and add a die of damage on the next attack.
It is always critical to think about what would be fun. Sometimes players just want to blow away some monsters. Some encounters should be challenging and some should be easy. Try to get a read for your players as to what they want on a given night. You can even ask them. Don't use these ideas to create a challenge that the players will not enjoy. ..."window.parent.tinyMCE.get('post_content').onLoad.dispatch();" class="mceContentBody " id="tinymce" contenteditable="true">
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1 year ago ::
Jun 04, 2012 - 7:39PM
#7
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Date Joined:
Nov 27, 2011
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7 or more players definitely breaks the challenge, so some tweaking is in order. I'd avoid the following, for the reasons stated below:
- If you add hit points to the enemies, you'll drag the encounter out too long.
- If you raise the defenses of the enemies, 1st level characters will have an even harder time hitting them.
- Increasing the damage output of the enemies will burn through the party's healing surges faster than intended.
- Adding minions or additional 1st level enemies can work, unless they have the capability of ganging up on (and thus quickly eliminating) defenders.
Alphasream1 mentioned adding theme powers. What I've done to deal with a group of 7 highly experienced players (or which I was one, until this season), was to add powers to the enemies from the DMG2 "Lolth's Chosen" entry:
- "Blessing of the Spider Queen" allows enemies to see through darkness created by other drow. Because I didn't want to negate a PC drow player's tactics, I nerfed it a bit, stipulating that these enemies can see only through darkness created by allies. This was the only addition to session 1 and it kept the players scrambling the whole time.
- "Spider Scuttle" is a cool utility power that allows the user and allies in a radius to shift as a free action. I gave this power to the doppleganger in Session 2, which kept 3 of the 5 drow alive long enough to escape the PCs at the end of the encounter.
- "Spider Climb" allows enemies to use their movement along any surface. Giving this power to the Inforemants in the last session made them twice as scary, as they would drop from the cieling to make their attacks.
- "Poison Weapon" and "Virulent Poison" should be used very cautiously against 1st level characters, as the former grants the characteristic drow poison (recharging on a 6) and the latter dishes out an ongoing 5 poison damage. I'll consider it if I think the number of enemies is just too low for the group.
- "Lolth's Authority" throws up an aura for leaders and controllers, granting +1 attack and +1 damage. I suppose you can nerf it by making the bonus only applicable to drow and spider allies.
Overall, look to powers that allow the enemies to move about more freely, so as to escape a phalanx or barrage from the PCs. Additionally, anything that can pin the PCs down will also be helpful, so I'm thinking of way to design spiderweb-themed powers that will hinder movement or temporarily restrain the PCs if need be.
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1 year ago ::
Jun 05, 2012 - 7:55AM
#8
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Date Joined:
Oct 20, 2010
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I've discovered that I will need to scale quite heavily in this entire season, due to the optimized nature of my PCs, and the fact that I really am trying to kill them (evil campaign, not what Encounters is meant for, but the players are having fun). I'll be using a lot of the suggestions from NinjaDog, cause those are great. In addition: Spoiler:
Show
One thing I'm doing this week is giving the drow archers some poisoned bolts. 3 bolts each, with bloodstinger poison (gives ongoing 5 poison). If the PCs defeat these drow, they will get any remaining bolts, which will still be valid through Chapter 2. A successful thievery check will transfer the poison over to a different weapon or ammo. Since these are evil, back-stabbing characters, I'm almost hoping they will use them on each other, but I suspect that's too much to ask for.
It bothers me that the drow don't have any resistances to poison in 4e. I remember having a blessed hard time with drow in 2nd edition because you just couldn't use their own stuff against them. As a result, all drow for the rest of the season have resist 3 poison, which means the bloodstinger poison will harm them, but not as badly as it might have otherwise. It's fully effective against the goblins and such, of course.
The smoke cloud in Session 3 will grant partial concealment (as well as do ongoing 2 poison while in the cloud, doesn't stack with the other poisons in the encounter), and I'm going to add a lurker or two (perhaps with that spider climb) to the combat. I have two "back rank" squishies that haven't been successfully targeted yet, and I need to send something back there to make their bowels run cold with fear.
It's probably "too much," and I'll have to keep that in mind when I run it tomorow if they run into trouble. I have no problem if this encounter kills PCs-- last night in our "DM prep game," we had a TPK.
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1 year ago ::
Jun 05, 2012 - 1:14PM
#9
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Date Joined:
Nov 27, 2011
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Wow. I think your addition will certainly bring down the running total of healing surges, if nothing else! That in and of itself will have a huge impact before the PCs get their first extended rest.
During the first game, I allowed the PCs to recover an intact vial bandolier from one of the drow minions, but no poison was left over. I wanted to put the idea into their heads that they may be able to scavenge some in the future.
I'll be very careful, however, about when I drop it, as the players I'm running with are very much used to cake walks. They have already been rather taken aback by the damage output of the last session, but the main enemy's trick to separate the group worked not once, but twice! Thus, the wizard and one of the clerics were the first to fall under the skirmishers' attacks. Technically, two of them died, but I allowed them to stay alive if somehow "healed" by the end of their next turn. I'll likely keep this rule going, as I'm running these encounters with the notion that 6 to 7 players will always be up and active at all times.
While I recommended against adding monsters in general, this next encounter is a good example of adding minions to scale diffuculty.
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1 year ago ::
Jun 13, 2012 - 5:39AM
#10
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Date Joined:
Nov 27, 2011
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Since two of the three monster types appeared earlier in the season with slightly tougher stats, I'm using those "old" stats in this week's session. Also, the new monster type is a little weaker than how it appears in the MM write-up, so I'm going with the "original" stats.
I'm also including 4 vials if drow poison this time. It'll either end up in the party's possession or as a crossbow bolt in thier butts.
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