Now That's a Can of Worms!

So I missed this exchange when it first happened on Twitter, but noticed it when it came up on the Sage Advice EU site that compiles various WotC Twitter streams.

A poster lamented that a min-maxer was making combat balance difficult, so the poster was simply halving the min-maxers damage. (I was tickled, because this was basically the same as my 'resistance to munchkin damage' rule that I came up with for my non-AL games.)

Mike Mearls then responded as follows:

" talk to the player about the issue. One thing - add a tough monster for that player in some fights"

The poster replied, sensibly:

"Problem is, it's Adventures League. Don't know him that well, but he crushes combat before anyone else can move."

Mearls then responded:

"AL or not, one person's fun doesn't override group. You can change AL mods to suit group."

Normally I'd dismiss this, just as I typically dismiss Jeremy Crawford's Twitter rulings. Except there's one complication -- when Chris Tulach left the AL team to work on the Magic side of the WotC business, Mike Mearls was named as his replacement to the Wizard's AL team. In other words, Mearls is an admin, and one who represents the mothership in this discussion. If Mearls, as a member of the AL team , expresses that AL DMs can make modifications to AL adventures to balance tables, then it's hard for me to continue to tell AL DMs in my local area that they can't do that.

--
Pauper

But anyone can buy and play AL mods now, so anyone playing in one now is not also automatically a member of the Adventurer's League. So I think he is referring to using the module in general and not specifically in OP.

Actually - it is Chris Lindsey which is Chris Tulac's direct replacement. With that being said, Mike Mearles and Chris Lindsey are both involved with the AL these days although (as with the ruleset itself), Mikes role is more administrative and is several-steps removed from the program and may not have all the details.

You can always adjust combat difficulty within an AL game. As of this season as well, it has been clarified that DMs can also adjust combat difficulty beyond what is listed in a DDAL module and that regardless of the parties APL or difficulty level, they can always add more monsters to an encounter if it is needed to create the right encounter difficulty.

Caveat: While Mike is 100% correct that you can add extra monsters, those monsters should only be drawn from the monsters already present in the encounter. You should not for example, add a troll to an encounter involving bugbears - but you can always add more bugbears. As far as adding a strong monster for a PC to fight - that too should only be done if there are already strong monsters in the encounter.

DMs can also combine two encounters together if it makes logical sense. For example, two encounters that occur in adjacent rooms could easily be combined into a super encounter should the characters make sufficient noise to attract both groups attention.

I myself recently participated in a super encounter in which our party fought an entire Fire Giant Garrison as a single encounter (instead of as six separate encounters). We botched our approach to the garrison and drew attention to ourselves as there was 200' of open space between us and the garrison and we forgot to make our shield guardians invisible. It was a glorious encounter however (30 enemies vs. 5 PCs and 2 shield guardians), and we almost won despite the overwhelming odds (61,000XP worth of monsters @ 4x difficulty = 244,000XP in difficulty or 2.75x the deadly difficulty for a party of 7 L20 characters).

In any case, the DM should not be adding monsters that are not present in an encounter.

kalani said:

In any case, the DM should not be adding monsters that are not present in an encounter.

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What about "upgrading" monsters to those that aren't in the encounter, but are of the same type? Using your hypothetical bugbear scenario, would it be okay to add a bugbear chief to an encounter that had no chief present. This same logic would apply to turning derros into derro savants or thugs into veterans.

The intent is for monsters to be identical. Replacing a bugbear with a chief will result in a creature with different (yet similar) abilities. It also changes the CR and XP granted by the foe. You could however add a second chief to an encounter that has one already (and refer to the second chief as the Chiefs personal bodyguard or something).

.You could also increase a monsters HP up to its maximum or adjust spell lists slightly (replacing 1-3 spells for example).

These methods do have diminishing returns after a point. It is for this reason why DDAL modules are restricted to a single tier and why the DM is encouraged to keep party members within 2 levels of the party APL when mixing character tiers in a hardcover; and why starting a hardcover with higher-level characters is not recommended (as there is a saturation point where adding additional monsters/increasing HPS doesn't increase difficulty and only increases encounter duration)

ALs encounter suggestions are a bit of a mess.

You can add monsters, but they should be the same -type- gnoll => gnoll packlord => champion of Yhenoghu

You arent supposed to change stat blocks, but in several cases you are told to change stat blocks. Also DM trick #1 is pretty much always 'adjust monster HP'. Buying monsters an extra action is usually all it takes to go from a cakewalk to a resource-costing fight.

You arent supposed to subtract encounters or add them...but its pretty common for encounters to bleed into each other.


With a table of 7 I am pretty happy if I get to spoonfeed the players some of the great campaign info, go through a few of the major NPC interactions, and get through about 2 combat scenes. In season 2 for example, the PCs talked their way into Feathergale spire and impressed the boss. I gave them the full XP for 'overcoming' the obstacle, even though they never had to swing a sword. Likewise if they go through a dungeon and manage to kill the boss and cause the other mobs to route, I give it to them because it's their victory. Also I feel like they appreciate not having to comb over every single detail and turn over every rock for fear of getting their xps taken away. Even with my 'bonuses' they are still getting less than intended XP because of the group size.

Season 4 has a LOT of focus on NPCs, which makes me think the PCs will focus on mainly the quest targets and not want to interact much otherwise. ootA was similar...so many NPCs the players eventually just had a 'ghost caravan' trailing along behind them with almost no interaction.

Why not just ask Mearls to clarify what he was talking about?

Also, in the new ALDMG
"You can adjust the adventure beyond the guidelines
given in the adventure, or make other changes as you
see fit. For example, if you’re playing with a group
of inexperienced players, you might want to make
the adventure a little easier; for very experienced
players, you might want to make it harder. As such, five
categories of party strength have been created for you
to use as a guideline. Always feel free to use a different
adjustment during the adventure if the recommended
party strength feels off for the group."

Sounds like more what's in line with what Mearls is saying.

Those guidelines apply primarily to the DDAL modules though, as they give fairly clear guidelines as to what changes to make for each difficulty level. Hardcovers lack the difficulty tables and so are left more to DM interpretation as to how difficult the encounter was intended to be - and how best to adjust the encounter to keep it at that difficulty.

Keep in mind, the goal is not to make every encounter deadly. If it was designed as an easy encounter, it should still be an easy encounter (relative to party strength) after adjustments. If an encounter is designed to be deadly, it should remain deadly (relative to the party) even if you reduce the difficulty due to player inexperience.

One advantage of the Hardcovers however is the Random Encounter tables
Since you can always combine encounters into a super-encounter when it makes sense, there is nothing stopping an AL DM from adding a random encounter, and then combining it with a published encounter. This would give DMs more flexibility to "adding creatures" to an encounter. I wouldn't recommend this tactic except with experienced DMs however - and I would inform players that the encounter was combined with a random encounter (if asked). Last thing I want, is for DMs to be accused of adding creatures to an encounter that wasn't included in the adventure.

Alternatively, you could have a random encounter occur just before/after a published encounter (which would deplete the party resources, making the published encounter / random encounter more difficult as a result). This of course assumes that both encounters happen within several minutes of each other (game time), meaning that the party lacks the opportunity to take a short rest between encounters. This secondary option has the added benefits of having two separate encounters (preventing issues of the DM being accused of adding creatures to an encounter), and also reducing the number of creatures in a single encounter (as encounters become increasingly more difficult as more creatures are added, as indicated on p82? of the DMG).

kalani said:

Those guidelines apply primarily to the DDAL modules though, as they give fairly clear guidelines as to what changes to make for each difficulty level.

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Not sure if you are addressing me or not. But it sounds as if the new ALDMG (and possibly WotC's stance) is being more lenient in terms of adjust encounters. "You can adjust the adventure beyond the guidelines given in the adventure, or make other changes as you see fit." Not saying go wild, free reign, and all that. But at least more than just identical monsters in an encounter.