DM Encounter Flexibility for Published Adventures

[Koren n'Rhys]

My experiences with the Expeditions guidelines have not been good. They have a number of significant flaws, especially for Tier 1 adventures. (For example, a group of six level 1 adventurers in a APL 3 adventure is not an average party...) They are a good starting point, but they don't substitute for DM experience.

You should start by looking at the guidelines for encounter creation in the DMG. They'll give you an idea of what appropriate threats are for a party - although, again, DM experience helps more than just the guidelines.

I'll see if I can write an article about modifying and balancing encounters. I think it'd be useful...

Cheers!

Thanks for the observations, Merric. I'm still getting my footing with 5E, so judging encounter levels on the fly is tricky. I'd love to see you do an article on this - your stuff is always informative.
Thanks!

 

[MerricB]

You should feel free to adjust to your table.

Absolutely. They're an excellent starting point, but they're not perfect.

Unfortunately, not everyone is as skilled as we are at DMing, so they interpret them as law and get into trouble.

Cheers!

 

[DocSharpe]

I'm late to the game here, but I've found two things to be helpful when making encounters more challenging for players...especially when you have a table of 6-7 players who are 3-5 levels above the module's recommended party level. (We do need a rating or three *above* Very Strong)

1) If you have a player who dishes out a ton of damage, giving the enemies 75% or 100% of potential hit points (instead of ~50%)
2) Taking the time to pick spells for villains which actually make sense, and which challenge the players specific strengths. Especially if the players have become known to the baddies.

Neither is inappropriate for AL rules, and make for more challenging fights. You can also up the difficulty regardless of the party's level.

I've also tried to take advantage of situations when the party does dumb things. For example, I had all the melee character run around a particularly nasty monster to get at a caster. The monster decided to eat the wizard, who was completely outmatched

 

[Tyranthraxus]

I have no issues with adding more of the same, but repicking spells ? No. Thats definetly not within the purview of AL.

I have a 7 player table almost consistently for Encounters. It presents problems sure, and its also led me to have to modify almost every encounter in Out of the Abyss because of the curse of additional actions. So Ive simply added monsters.

I created a 'random' encounter for my group that just escaped the Prison. Keep in mind they did NOT retrieve their stuff.. they simply escaped their cell and jumped off. into the lake below. One person wanted to get his stuff back but everyone else jumped. So the party has a few daggers and clubs between them (but is already melee heavy).

There were 4 orcs and an eye of grumnsh. Ive made that out to be 6 Orcs and one eye. If the orcs are getting too good, ill let team npc in on the actions.

The issue here being is that its not an exact science by any stretch.

 

[kalani]

Another detail that most people overlook, is the fact that many of the NPCs list their race as (any). As such, feel free to add racial stats to their base stat block. In an effort to save time, I simply add the racial traits without worrying about their racial stat modifiers, and frequently choose variant humans and whatever feat takes my fancy at the time, but have also surprised the party with relentless half-orcs, cantrip-wielding high elves and the like (esp. those wielding the new cantrips).

 

[Coredump]

I have no issues with adding more of the same, but repicking spells ? No. Thats definetly not within the purview of AL.

What makes you say that is not AL-legal?

 

[kalani]

Altering spells is a grey area, as modifying a creature (eg. equipment) is found in the DM Workshop section of the DMG (a chapter devoted exclusively to optional/variant rules).

With that being said however, altering spells is briefly touched upon in the MM as well. When it comes to altering spell lists, I do not recommend it (there are other tricks you can use that are perfectly AL legal, see below). If you are going to alter spell lists however, always exchange like for like (so if you swap out a 1st level spell, replace it with another 1st level spell from the same list). If an enemy spellcaster has a spellbook, I see no reason not to swap out spells prepared for those in their spellbook (again swapping like for like).

AL-Legal Tricks to Increase/Decrease Difficulty

• Increase/decrease the number of monsters in the encounter (add/remove creatures of the same type)
• Tactical starting positioning (most encounters do not state the explicit starting locations of the enemies, giving DMs flexibility)
• Improve/alter enemy tactics (make liberal use of grapples, shoves, readied actions, terrain, superior positioning etc).
• Roll damage (creates uncertainty)

Grey Areas

• Modifying a creature's HPs, equipment, or spell lists to other options in the PHB (as modifying a creature appears to be an optional rule, which would therefore be illegal).

Illegal Options

• Substituting different creatures
• Adding houseruled abilities to a creature

 

[Koren n'Rhys]

Simply modifying the number of HP is a grey area? That seems to be the simplest method of altering encounter difficulty without adding or subtracting anything else at all.

 

[kalani]

I don't see an issue with modifying HPs (up to their maximum for the creature) - but by RAW, yes it is a grey area afaik