D&D 5E LMoP Adjustment Calculator

J

janosicek

First Post

• Dec 23, 2014

• #1

I am trying to run LMoP for a party of level 2-3 and the book as written has only level 1 characters. The encounters are all over the board from easy to deadly, and it is not straightforward how to adjust it for a different party.
Therefore I have written a small PHP app, which will recalculate all encounters in LMoP according to the published rules, so that the final difficulty will be the same as the difficulty for recommended party.
You will find it here: http://haluz.org/lmop/index.php
I apologize for errors, and welcome feedback.

 

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J

janosicek

First Post

• Dec 23, 2014

• #2

I have added few more monsters.

What my app is doing:
1. Adjusting HP of monsters
2. Adjusting number of monsters
3. Changing monsters into similar ones (Wolf/Worg, Ghoul/Ghast)
And tries to do minimal changes that will cause same encounter difficulty for given party.

 

B

Blackwarder

Adventurer

• Dec 23, 2014

• #3

Firstly, well done.

Having said that I don't realy see the point, LMoP is a sandbox adventure, as such it should be "balanced" to the extreme. IMO, running into deadly encounters is part of the charm of sandbox adventures.

Warder

 

J

janosicek

First Post

• Dec 23, 2014

• #4

My script makes the encounters easier only if you have party with fewer than 4 players.
But main use is, when you have a party of higher level (2+) or more than 5 players. If you'd use the adventure as written, there would be no deadly encounters for such party, and they would waltz through without challenge. If you use my script, it will scale the monsters so that every encounter that was INTENDED to be DEADLY, will stay DEADLY for your party, no matter what level it is.

(e.g. 1 bugbear can change into 2 bugbear chiefs, or 3 skeletons into 4 ghasts...)

 

C

Cernor

Explorer

• Dec 23, 2014

• #5

The real question is how the changes work from a narrative point of view: If the goblins go on and on about "King Klarg" and then it turns out there are two Bugbear Chiefs, I'd wonder who the second one is and why we hadn't heard about them before. In any case, playing the monsters intelligently according to their strengths is a far better way to increase difficulty than making the encounter XP higher (such as hit-and-run tactics for goblins: they shoot an arrow from hiding, use the Hide action, and move away from their previous location).

 

J

janosicek

First Post

• Dec 23, 2014

• #6

Narrative POV is very important and is something that no script can compute.
My script outputs up to 10 variants for each encounter, and then you are free to choose one that will match the narrative.
Maybe the one with two Bugbear Chiefs does not work, but then there will be one with single Half-Ogre...

 

J

janosicek

First Post

• Dec 24, 2014

• #7

Today I have added some extra explanation of the values in parenthesis, and am also displaying the percentage by which the HP were adjusted...

 

N

Nemio

First Post

• Dec 24, 2014

• #8

Thanks for your effort, I'll have a look at this for sure

 

J

janosicek

First Post

• Dec 25, 2014

• #9

You're welcome!

Changelog:
I have changed the output so that it is more readable. Now it says Goblin (7,7,8) instead of Goblin (7) Goblin (7) Goblin (8)
I have changed logic so that it picks 10 best solutions (according to my script) and displays them in decreasing order of quality. Lazy people can just take first line.
I added wyrmlings as possible 'minions' to the dragons. I believe that Green Dragon + Green Wyrmling is better match than Blue Dragon or two White Dragons.
Changed the XP value of monsters with nonstandard HP. Now the XP is proportional to the HP value (If goblin with 7 has 50 XP, then one with 9 HP will be worth 64 XP). Minimum HP value is half of default value.

 

Nebulous

Legend

• Dec 25, 2014

• #10

Cernor said:

The real question is how the changes work from a narrative point of view: If the goblins go on and on about "King Klarg" and then it turns out there are two Bugbear Chiefs, I'd wonder who the second one is and why we hadn't heard about them before. In any case, playing the monsters intelligently according to their strengths is a far better way to increase difficulty than making the encounter XP higher (such as hit-and-run tactics for goblins: they shoot an arrow from hiding, use the Hide action, and move away from their previous location).

Click to expand...

Nah, that's easy from a narrative POV, you have King Klarg and then sub-chieftan Blarg. They look similar, and mechanically function similar, but you can just say the King is bigger and meaner.

I like what the OP did, although it is not something i would actively use. I guess many many years of gaming has conditioned me to just eyeball an encounter and adjust it on the fly. More importantly, if i realize i messed something up, i fudge it by lowering hit points or having a monster retreat.