Daniel Runge
First Post
Hello Enworld
I'm a DM in a game using the Pathfinder rules, and I've been doing fairly well for the first few levels, but designing encounters is getting quite tough. Specifically it's about stat blocks and NPC generation.
Small summary: The players are settlers in a new realm that is to serve as a prison for a "personification of calamity" as the gods have called it. They are low on resources, and are the acting leaders for about 90 random NPC's. They are in dire need of a port, as there are 2 other settlements on the realm, and these have, according to the player's ambassadors, already started building ports. There are 2 potential spots for building a port in the player's general area, and so they most likely go and investigate these areas. These areas are on the east-coast, on either side of a swamp. Northern area is really close to the swamp, the southern is about 1 mile away.
I have no trouble coming up with ideas for encounters, but the fleshing out is getting really painful, let's take an example:
I have dubbed the session "The eye of the Storm" in my journals.
For our next session 3 weeks(game time) have passed since the last session, and a storm has been brewing in the west and has finally started to reach the area the players are settled.
Storm: -4 penalty on ranged attacks and perception. Visibility halved. 1/100 Chance for lighning to strike near the players, additional 1/10 chance to strike a random player. 1 check each hour and at the start of each encounter. After 2 hours, constitution checks against exhaustion like forced march.
I prepared 3 specific encounters for them, most likely they will get all of them over the course of the next few sessions.
#1 Grippli Guard: A party of Gripplis protecting their northern borders. The players have no clue these Grippli exist.
#2 Hearth Sparrows: Phoenix-related songbirds. These birds only nest in a specific kind of tree known for it's ash-grey bark and fire-red leaves, resembling a sort of red-maple.
#3 Comozant Wyrd: This creature arrives in the player's settlement.
#1 is the only directly hostile encounter, #2 are just song-birds and an intelligent tree, but a tree nonetheless, so the players would have no trouble killing the birds and felling the tree if they should so choose, and #3 has it's stats neatly netted out already, leaving me only with some RPing to do.
So I have to flesh out #1, and I decided it should be a party of 4 gripplis, and they needed some Class levels to make it interesting, and so I went with the following combination:
1 lvl 5 ranger with a Giant Toad companion, favored enemy plants and merfolk
1 lvl 3 Cavalier with a Giant Frog mount
1 lvl 3 Alchemist
1 lvl 3 Monk
All but the monk have access to Darts, and the ranger uses mainly such darts.
These Grippli use an abundance of special materials that the players have not had any interaction with: Eel-hide, Darkwood, Wyroot, and Mithral. This should keep the players interested, and opens a bunch of plot-hooks - the Mithral in particular: "Where did these Grippli get this".
My problem: Writing stat-blocks for these bastards took ages. In particular the Alchemist took awhile, cause I had never played one, and so I had no idea how one such would play, even remotely xD.
Tactics, stats, equipment and class features; then calculating it all and double-checking to make sure I didn't miss the small-sized bonus's and penalties, then tripple checking to make sure that something i intended to be the opening act for a lot of RP, wasn't way too much for my PC's to handle (4 lvl 4's)...
Now, I'm sure someone with more experience could have done it faster than me, but designing this encounter alone took me several hours, and if my players should choose to enter the swamp, they are bound to run into more Grippli, and I have no clue how to quickly generate characters. The encounter itself should be memorable enough, with some swallow whole, a monk focused on not letting them go, and some hard-to-notice-in-the-storm rangers raining bombardment down upon them (ranged is difficult in the storm though), but the Grippli they would potentially encounter in the swamp does not need to be memorable if the players choose to fight.
I really need a hand on quickly generating random NPC's and stat blocks, it seems to be one of the things I'm struggling with the most.
Thanks in advance
Runge
I'm a DM in a game using the Pathfinder rules, and I've been doing fairly well for the first few levels, but designing encounters is getting quite tough. Specifically it's about stat blocks and NPC generation.
Small summary: The players are settlers in a new realm that is to serve as a prison for a "personification of calamity" as the gods have called it. They are low on resources, and are the acting leaders for about 90 random NPC's. They are in dire need of a port, as there are 2 other settlements on the realm, and these have, according to the player's ambassadors, already started building ports. There are 2 potential spots for building a port in the player's general area, and so they most likely go and investigate these areas. These areas are on the east-coast, on either side of a swamp. Northern area is really close to the swamp, the southern is about 1 mile away.
I have no trouble coming up with ideas for encounters, but the fleshing out is getting really painful, let's take an example:
I have dubbed the session "The eye of the Storm" in my journals.
For our next session 3 weeks(game time) have passed since the last session, and a storm has been brewing in the west and has finally started to reach the area the players are settled.
Storm: -4 penalty on ranged attacks and perception. Visibility halved. 1/100 Chance for lighning to strike near the players, additional 1/10 chance to strike a random player. 1 check each hour and at the start of each encounter. After 2 hours, constitution checks against exhaustion like forced march.
I prepared 3 specific encounters for them, most likely they will get all of them over the course of the next few sessions.
#1 Grippli Guard: A party of Gripplis protecting their northern borders. The players have no clue these Grippli exist.
#2 Hearth Sparrows: Phoenix-related songbirds. These birds only nest in a specific kind of tree known for it's ash-grey bark and fire-red leaves, resembling a sort of red-maple.
#3 Comozant Wyrd: This creature arrives in the player's settlement.
#1 is the only directly hostile encounter, #2 are just song-birds and an intelligent tree, but a tree nonetheless, so the players would have no trouble killing the birds and felling the tree if they should so choose, and #3 has it's stats neatly netted out already, leaving me only with some RPing to do.
So I have to flesh out #1, and I decided it should be a party of 4 gripplis, and they needed some Class levels to make it interesting, and so I went with the following combination:
1 lvl 5 ranger with a Giant Toad companion, favored enemy plants and merfolk
1 lvl 3 Cavalier with a Giant Frog mount
1 lvl 3 Alchemist
1 lvl 3 Monk
All but the monk have access to Darts, and the ranger uses mainly such darts.
These Grippli use an abundance of special materials that the players have not had any interaction with: Eel-hide, Darkwood, Wyroot, and Mithral. This should keep the players interested, and opens a bunch of plot-hooks - the Mithral in particular: "Where did these Grippli get this".
My problem: Writing stat-blocks for these bastards took ages. In particular the Alchemist took awhile, cause I had never played one, and so I had no idea how one such would play, even remotely xD.
Tactics, stats, equipment and class features; then calculating it all and double-checking to make sure I didn't miss the small-sized bonus's and penalties, then tripple checking to make sure that something i intended to be the opening act for a lot of RP, wasn't way too much for my PC's to handle (4 lvl 4's)...
Now, I'm sure someone with more experience could have done it faster than me, but designing this encounter alone took me several hours, and if my players should choose to enter the swamp, they are bound to run into more Grippli, and I have no clue how to quickly generate characters. The encounter itself should be memorable enough, with some swallow whole, a monk focused on not letting them go, and some hard-to-notice-in-the-storm rangers raining bombardment down upon them (ranged is difficult in the storm though), but the Grippli they would potentially encounter in the swamp does not need to be memorable if the players choose to fight.
I really need a hand on quickly generating random NPC's and stat blocks, it seems to be one of the things I'm struggling with the most.
Thanks in advance
Runge
