In a Solo-Campaign, would making a Solo PC equal to 4 PCs be unbalanced?

dreaded_beast · Mar 4, 2004

If I am correct, Encounter Levels and CRs are based on a party of adventurers consisting of 4 PCs who are properly equipped for their level.

That being the case, would it be "balanced" or "unbalanced" to make a Solo PC the equivalent of an adventuring party of 4 PCs?

My thinking is that by making the Solo PC equivalent to a party of 4 PCs, then the Encounter Levels and CRs might match up better.

I was thinking about using the Bloodlines variant rule for Unearthed Arcana; giving my player the abilities, but not charging XP for them. I was also looking at some of the other variant rules to see if they would make things a little bit "easier" for my player.

Or, instead, I would just give more magic items, heh.

Umbran · Mar 4, 2004

Okay, as far as I'm concerned, normally "balance" refers to balance among the PCs. Keeping a game balanced is the art of making sure all the PCs have an equal chance to be effective, in the long run. This becomes irrelevant for a solo character.

The real question is - is it reasonable to try to pump up this solo PC to the point where he's as buff as four normal PCs of his level? I'm not sure about that. For one thing, the CR system assumes more than just level and equipment. It assumes a certain breadth of abilities - your standard party has a fighter, a wizard, a cleric, and a rogue, and this one guy won't be able to duplicate all the attendant abilities. It also assumes a number of "hands" - four PCs get more actions per round than one. Trying to pump up this one character so that he can regularly take on what a group of 4 normal PCs of his level can take is not likely to be easy.

There's a pretty simple alternative - just pick encounters a couple CR lower than you'd pick for the group of four. After a relatively short while, you'll get the hang of what the solo PC can take and what he cannot.

Parlan · Mar 4, 2004

dreaded_beast said:
That being the case, would it be "balanced" or "unbalanced" to make a Solo PC the equivalent of an adventuring party of 4 PCs?

My thinking is that by making the Solo PC equivalent to a party of 4 PCs, then the Encounter Levels and CRs might match up better.

I m not sure what the Bloodlines do, but I think the biggest thing to worry about is not abilities so much as actions. A party of four adventures gets four actions a round to help themselves or hurt their enemies. With only one adventurer, even if he can cast spells and swing a sword well, he can only do one of these a round.

So if it takes an average of 3 rounds for a 4-man party to deal with a threat, it should take a single adventurer 12.

But that doesn’t tell the whole story because in the latter case the bad guys will have more actions to heal themselves or buff each other or whatever. Further, ALL of their actions will be focused on that single adventurer, making it easy to swamp him.

So I think it would be hard to make one character equivalent to four, regardless of what abilities you give him.

I d test potential encounters before throwing them at the PC. Still, if there s only one adventurer, why not give him a few more special abilities/magic items? He doesn’t have any companions to fall back on, (and you don’t have to worry about the other players getting jealous!)

FireLance · Mar 4, 2004

CRs and ELs are based on a party of 4 PCs properly equipped for their level and (this is important) having a good mix of abilities. The "traditional" four capabilities in a D&D party are: front-line combatant, skill-user, divine spellcaster and arcane spellcaster. Parties (and solo adventurers in particular) missing one of these capabilities may have a harder time in certain encounters. The most recent Dragon magazine has an article on how to run adventures for parties missing front-line combatants and skill-users. The next one will have another on how to run adventures for parties missing arcane and divine spellcasters. They might be worth a read if you're running a solo campaign.

In addition, CRs and ELs are only a guideline. DM judgement is still necessary to determine whether a particular creature may be "too tough" for a party or a solo PC. For example, a 3rd-level paladin is immune to fear and would find it easy to defeat a vargouille, whose main ability is to paralyze its opponents with fear. A party adventuring with a 3rd-level paladin would also have an easier time of defeating such creatures as the paladin's Aura of Courage grants a bonus to saves against fear. However, a 3rd-level bard, rogue, sorcerer or wizard adventuring solo might fail the save (Fortitude - a poor save for these classes), be paralyzed and killed.

Generally, adding abilities and equipment to a character can make her more powerful and better able to handle challenges. However, a solo adventurer's biggest weakness is still the save or die (or paralyze, or dominated, etc.) effect. A single unlucky roll can derail a solo campaign. To mitigate, you can introduce the Action Points system in UA and allow the expenditure of an action point to re-roll or even automatically succed at an important saving throw.

As for balance, the advantage to a solo campaign is that you don't have to balance your single PC against any others, so you can make her one-of-a-kind and give her any special equipment or abilities you want, even faster XP gain than normally allowed by the rules, ignoring XP penalties for level adjustments, etc. You might want to make it clear that this is special treatment, though, so that she doesn't expect this when she plays with other PCs.

That said, my personal preference is to play by the book and just pit the PC against carefully selected (not "too tough") opponents with CRs 2 to 4 less than the PC's level, or opponents that the PC is particularly well-equipped to deal with, such as vargouilles for a 3rd-level paladin character.

In a Solo-Campaign, would making a Solo PC equal to 4 PCs be unbalanced?

dreaded_beast

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