Tweaks to make the game work better with fewer players

Garthanos · Nov 22, 2017

D'karr said:
You could make all skills class skills and let the players select what they have training on. Then give them each 2 or 3 skill focus feats for free. If they ever take a feat that gives them training in one of the skills they focused on they can reassign the skill focus to something else.

As far as encounters go I would stick with encounters of LEVEL-1 (at most) until they are more survivable, then you can take it to LEVEL. Never have encounters with more than 4 creatures.

Change Second Wind to be a minor or move action rather than Standard if they do not have leaders with them. After every 2 milestones they may recover 1-2 healing surges on a roll of 5+ on a D6 (5=1HS, 6=2HS), they can exchange 2 healing surges gained this way for recovery of one Daily.

I like some of those ideas and making Second Wind a better tool for recovery seems intriguing.

I like minion clearing on occasion and also have some fleeing adversaries cutting down on the challenge (my players aren't the hunt em down and slaughter everything types) .

D'karr · Nov 22, 2017

Mandrakon said:
I feel like encounter levels should be kept vanilla - the same level for easy ones, 2-3 lvls higher for tougher ones. Especially at early levels, I found that same-level encounters don't even necessary need for healers to burn their encounter heals.

I guess this is a case of "different strokes for different folks", but I couldn't disagree more.

The base assumption in 4e is 4 PCs. Everything in the game is geared to support and interact within this assumption. When you have less PCs the party is gimped. If you have 2 PCs, as an example, they have half of the assumed actions in a round - be they attacks, moves or recovery. Missing on attacks becomes even more mathematically significant with less players. I'll use levels 1-3, IMO the most vulnerable levels, to illustrate.

The base XP budget for 1st level is 400 XP, which would equal, as a baseline, 4 standard 1st level monsters, or up to 16 minions. These can be exchanged for 2 elites or 1 Solo. At first level you cannot use LEVEL-anything monsters because they do not exist. XP budget for 2nd level is 500 - 5 standard 1st level monsters or up to 20 minions. XP budget for 3rd level is 600 - 6 standard 1st level monsters of up to 24 minions. You can also replace these for elites and solos based on XP budget.

Based on these numbers you start to see the disadvantage of keeping encounter levels "vanilla" when you have small parties. At first level budget your action economy would be at a ratio of 1:2 for standard or 1:8 for minions, only being at 1:1 if you use elites. At second level budget the action economy worsens to 1:2.5, 1:10, and still possibly 1:1 only for elites. Third Level budget 1:6, 1:12 or 1:1.5 if elites.

Detractors of 4e used to say that it was impossible to kill PCs in 4e. From levels 1-5, I have TPKd more PC parties in 4e than all other editions combined.

If you mean keeping LEVELs vanilla, but are decreasing XP budgets to match, then you are pretty much doing what I'm advocating but from a different angle.

2 player XP budgets become:
1st-200XP
2nd-250XP
3rd-300XP

As for changing Second Wind mechanics - your proposed rules would make Dwarves almost obsolete in that regard, since that is considered an ability special just to them as of PHB1

You are right in assuming it would take away the specialness of dwarves. You can simply make the dwarves racial ability a free action instead of a minor. Same effect, same balance.

All of these are some of the examples that showcase how powerful 4e can be in the hands of an experienced DM that works within the framework. The game is extremely malleable.

Garthanos · Nov 22, 2017

D'karr said:
I guess this is a case of "different strokes for different folks", but I couldn't disagree more.

The base assumption in 4e is 4 PCs. Everything in the game is geared to support and interact within this assumption. When you have less PCs the party is gimped. If you have 2 PCs, as an example, they have half of the assumed actions in a round - be they attacks, moves or recovery. Missing on attacks becomes even more mathematically significant with less players. I'll use levels 1-3, IMO the most vulnerable levels, to illustrate.

One of my motivations for making "controllerish" multi-target (minion clearing) like monkish flurries (and maybe barbarian cleavings) more common is because of that, the other is I just like the tropes and find it impressive when the martial type does an awesome. Heck its not always damage A rogue who can do a controller move like a multi-hamstring on the run.

D'karr said:
You are right in assuming it would take away the specialness of dwarves. You can simply make the dwarves racial ability a free action instead of a minor. Same effect, same balance.

Perfect

Mandrakon · Nov 23, 2017

D'karr, I think You misunderstood me a little

By saying I would keep encounter levels vanilla, I meant that I would still scale them to party size - so 2 PCS + 1 NPC would equal 3 normal enemies, 1 normal and 1 elite or 1 elite and 4 minions for that matter. Wouldn't really try to use other mixes - but treating 3-man or 2-man team as 4-man team is not what I had in mind at all

I assumed that when in DMG1 there is a written rule for adjusting exp budgets to pary sizes, weall are talking about equal encounters in terms of levels (as i said - 3 heroes = 3 enemies), so I wanted to clarify that

AbdulAlhazred · Nov 23, 2017

Mandrakon said:
D'karr, I think You misunderstood me a little By saying I would keep encounter levels vanilla, I meant that I would still scale them to party size - so 2 PCS + 1 NPC would equal 3 normal enemies, 1 normal and 1 elite or 1 elite and 4 minions for that matter. Wouldn't really try to use other mixes - but treating 3-man or 2-man team as 4-man team is not what I had in mind at all I assumed that when in DMG1 there is a written rule for adjusting exp budgets to pary sizes, weall are talking about equal encounters in terms of levels (as i said - 3 heroes = 3 enemies), so I wanted to clarify that

Well, DMG1 considers the 'standard' party to be 5 PCs. The XP budget chart thus shows 500XP as the budget for a level 1 encounter (5 standard level 1 monsters). It also shows XP budgets for 4 and 6 PC parties. The XP budget roughly doubles every 4 levels from then on. That means a level 5 monster is worth 2 level 1s, and a level 5 encounter is 2x the XP of a level 1 encounter. I think you could bend the curve a little for small parties based on their lesser synergies. This is probably why they don't list XP budgets for 3 or fewer, or 7 or more, PCs. The scaling just isn't all that linear with party size.

In other words, at higher levels, you might want to include a fraction less XP in the budget, maybe replacing a standard with a minion of a couple levels higher, or reducing an elite to a Level+2 Standard. I think at levels 1-5 you can just go with the standard budget though.

Overall I think the key is going to be to provide scenarios that make sense for a couple of characters working together as a two-being team to handle. Perhaps most combats are telegraphed more and happen in less out-of-the-way places. Or you focus a little more on a type of challenges the PCs are well-suited for. If you have a pair of rangers that scout for the army, well, then let them take on wilderness survival, tracking, and trapping sorts of missions. You can always throw in 'off' elements here and there that push outside their core skill set. As with combat encounters, the complexity of challenges for this group to face should be a bit lower, so that they are likely to have enough skills to pull off the number of secondary checks that will usually bring success.