DM Needs Help!

[AbdulAlhazred]

Genius! That answers my questions thoroughly and completely! Thank you SOOOO much! Now, my next question: I've only recently gotten into 4E. I understand there've been MULTIPLE rule changes, additions, and errata published. Is there a single source where I can get the most up to date information? Sadly, I cannot afford DDi and my only internet access is here at work. So that's out.

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Official D&D Updates Archive)

and just grab the version you want of the Compiled Updates. They are free to everyone. Even without DDI you can access a decent amount of content. You can even search the Compendium, it just won't show you the details of an entry. It WILL tell you what book to go to though, which is a big help.

 

[Robtheman]

No crunch here, just fluff and RP opportunities that I have liked in the past.

With a small party at low level:
- Use artillery minions that are protected by terrain. Minions are just as dangerous as other strikers if you can't reach them easily.
- Use a controller that is protected by soldier minions. Grant various ways to get to them.
- Have the party face a larger enemy force but have the opportunity to whittle the numbers down with clever skill use (skill challenge?)
- Encourage the use of allies to resolve a conflict - enabling you to bump up the difficulty.
- Present ways of using terrain to their advantage.
- Let them plan an ambush encounter of their own using traps, etc, to get some of the foes down before combat starts, split the enemy forces in to managable chunks or delay reinforcements.
- Have them fight the environment as much as the enemy.
- A pair of players will probably spend more time plotting, so give them opportunities to do so that don't require "metagame" pauses in combat.
- Introduce a skill challenge in the middle of a fight. Perhaps when the boss is bloodied.
- Let them use skills to learn about the enemy before the fight, granting them an advantage or negating the enemies..
- Incorporate more role playing into the combat encounters to make it feel more dynamic. This works better with fewer players because combat will already be moving fast so the added dialogue won't drag out the encounters too much.

May your dice roll hot and your accents never fail you.

 

[CovertOps]

A normal 5-member level 1 party would have an encounter target xp of 500xp. That's 5 level 1 monsters, or 2 level 2 monsters and 1 level 1 monster. You have a lot of options. PCs can fight monsters of n+1 or n+2 level very easily. An easy encounter would be 2-300xp, so 2-3 level 1 monsters.

I just want to correct a small math error presented here. Monster XP (and hence your XP budget) for the first few levels looks like this (use the "standard" column of the XP chart printed in the DMG to determine the "value" of each PC):

1 100
2 125
3 150
4 175
5 200

So for the normal 5-member level 1 party your encounter budget of 500xp is correct. What is not correct is that 2 level 2 monsters and 1 level 1 monster totals to 500. 4e works just fine even if your PCs are not all the same level. It just gets a bit harder to do your encounter budget. If you have 2 level 1 PCs and a level 3 PC then your budget (for a level n encounter) would be 100 + 100 + 150. If you wanted to do a level n + 2 encounter it would be 150 + 150 + 200.

 

[ourchair]

Ahhh! I'm smashing my face against my desk in exasperation. Having a hard time discovering the information I need.

1.) How do you determine "party level" as it relates to building encounters (i.e. what XP budget am I shooting for, what is my Target Encounter XP based on my party level, etc)? Is it like 3.x where it's the average of all the levels?

Take the levels of each one of your characters and take the XP of that and add that up as your base budget. (e.g. "1 Level 1 = 100", 3 Level 2 = 375 and 1 Level 3 = 150" ergo 375+150+100=625XP for the encounter)

Keep in mind that a standard encounter is not challenging at all (DMG errs on the side of easy) and this would yield 5 Level 2 Monsters, so adjust accordingly. (My personal rule would be to make things like 25-50% higher in budget)

2.) Is it just me, or are level one encounters not done very well? It seems that the encounter balance mentioned in the DMG p. 56 (Step 1. Choose an encounter level) is IMPOSSIBLE at level one unless you're using straight MINIONS. How do you make an "easy" encounter (one or two levels lower than partly level) when level one is as low as monsters go??

You put the monsters at a disadvantage or you simply go with a lower budget or play to the parties strengths (i.e. strong control, lots of minions; many strikers? two less than mobile key targets)

But at Level 1, PCs are pretty resilient against monsters to begin with, so it shouldn't be a worry.