Not the biggest problem, but still.
I don't like having an XP budget to fill from various monsters, who are each also listed with a level.
It's mostly because I can't easily do the math in my head -- there's no quick "5 players of level 7 means 350 points worth of monster" equivalence I can do, or at least if there is, I haven't seen it yet and the numbers are nonobvious.
To a degree, I suppose this is inevitable: power levels don't necessarily scale linearly, so it takes more than 10 times as much monster to challenge a 10th level party than a 1st level party.
And if the required experience points are nonlinear (make sure everyone levels after their first session, and again after not-too-long has passed! But thereafter, make it heavily quadratic), there's that, too.
But still.
So here's my idea.
Keep monster level. Monster level is good; it's how we can tell the difference between a kobold and a lizardman. Monsters that are a 1:1 challenge for characters of level X are probably around level X in difficulty. This is a measure of the monster's per-character damage dealing abilities and a rough measure of its damage taking abilities.
It also describes what kinds of powers this monster taps into; invisibility before level 3 (see invisibility) is a bit cruel, for instance.
Then, bring back a measure like 4e's solo/elite/normal/minion -- figure out how many heads-worth of characters this monster is worth, and list them with that number, too. So a hydra might be something we see our middle-to-high tier characters fighting (level... 7?) and just one of them for the whole party (party of... 5?).
Things like extra-hit-points-to-make-the-fight-longer, applies-to-everything defenses or stunning abilities, or breath-weapons-that-spread-the-hurt-out encourage larger numbers here.
A good name for this metric: party size? band? ratio? Heads (confusing with a hydra, but the size-of-party-this-is-a-challenge-for)?
Then come up with a way to trade one for the other (half the level = twice the band? something like that).
Give advice about how far you can exceed these things -- don't use levels more than 8 above or below the average party level! Don't use fewer than one-half the head values or more than three times it! Here's where things get appreciably easier/harder!
Anyway, it depends on the math exactly, but these together let us be done with this part.
This lets DMs like me design/tweak encounters on the fly with some insight into what we're doing. Yay.
Now, on to turning these into XP numbers: Some tweaked mathematical function. It could be something like "look at the XP chart for a character of this level. Divide it by 13.333. Multiply it by the "heads" this monster was worth. Add this up for all the monsters".
I'm a little less concerned with this part, because I tend to use pacing-based and quest-based XP rewards; for DMs that use this heavily, would this work for you?
Heck, we could even include this number as well (since it's all just derived information) -- I just want better encounter-building advice!
Thoughts?
I don't like having an XP budget to fill from various monsters, who are each also listed with a level.
It's mostly because I can't easily do the math in my head -- there's no quick "5 players of level 7 means 350 points worth of monster" equivalence I can do, or at least if there is, I haven't seen it yet and the numbers are nonobvious.
To a degree, I suppose this is inevitable: power levels don't necessarily scale linearly, so it takes more than 10 times as much monster to challenge a 10th level party than a 1st level party.
And if the required experience points are nonlinear (make sure everyone levels after their first session, and again after not-too-long has passed! But thereafter, make it heavily quadratic), there's that, too.
But still.
So here's my idea.
Keep monster level. Monster level is good; it's how we can tell the difference between a kobold and a lizardman. Monsters that are a 1:1 challenge for characters of level X are probably around level X in difficulty. This is a measure of the monster's per-character damage dealing abilities and a rough measure of its damage taking abilities.
It also describes what kinds of powers this monster taps into; invisibility before level 3 (see invisibility) is a bit cruel, for instance.
Then, bring back a measure like 4e's solo/elite/normal/minion -- figure out how many heads-worth of characters this monster is worth, and list them with that number, too. So a hydra might be something we see our middle-to-high tier characters fighting (level... 7?) and just one of them for the whole party (party of... 5?).
Things like extra-hit-points-to-make-the-fight-longer, applies-to-everything defenses or stunning abilities, or breath-weapons-that-spread-the-hurt-out encourage larger numbers here.
A good name for this metric: party size? band? ratio? Heads (confusing with a hydra, but the size-of-party-this-is-a-challenge-for)?
Then come up with a way to trade one for the other (half the level = twice the band? something like that).
Give advice about how far you can exceed these things -- don't use levels more than 8 above or below the average party level! Don't use fewer than one-half the head values or more than three times it! Here's where things get appreciably easier/harder!
Anyway, it depends on the math exactly, but these together let us be done with this part.
This lets DMs like me design/tweak encounters on the fly with some insight into what we're doing. Yay.
Now, on to turning these into XP numbers: Some tweaked mathematical function. It could be something like "look at the XP chart for a character of this level. Divide it by 13.333. Multiply it by the "heads" this monster was worth. Add this up for all the monsters".
I'm a little less concerned with this part, because I tend to use pacing-based and quest-based XP rewards; for DMs that use this heavily, would this work for you?
Heck, we could even include this number as well (since it's all just derived information) -- I just want better encounter-building advice!
Thoughts?
