Encounter difficulty with 3 players

[Flipguarder]

Int/wis Artificer
Str/Con Fighter with a relatively high con
Cha/Dex Sorcerer With low secondary stat and a relatively high con.

Leader with bonuses to attack
Lots of healing surges and the artificer can distribute them
Powerful defender, fantastic striker. Seems like a solid party to me.

 

[Cheesepie]

Really easy solution: give them a companion character for one of the players to control. Make it cover a role they're lacking. A lot easier to make encounters for 4 "PCs" than three!

 

[Calzone]

I've found that with a small group (~2-3), you really don't have a large enough XP budget to make really interesting encounters at first level without a good chance of TPK.

I run a game for two players, and I started them out at level two to give me a bit more XP to play with and give them a bit beefier characters. They are both strikers (1 barb, 1 sorc/bard MC), so I watch out for controllers and soldiers. Controllers because they can easily shred what little party dynamic there is, and soldiers because, well, they live forever and aren't fun to kill. I've found that brutes, artillery, and minions are good though, because they are easy to hit, go down pretty fast, but pack a whallop.

That said, I'm leery of throwing much over level+2 at the party. Higher level enemies mean harder to hit ones, which can be devestating if a daily or couple of encounter powers miss. Also, largish groups (5+) of non-minion monsters can wreak havoc even if the individual monsters are the same level or slightly lower than the PCs, due to action economy. For their most recent adventure, I've paired them with an NPC swordmage and given them a couple of healing potions each so they can tackle bigger fish, so we'll see how that goes.

Lastly, remember that encounters can be challenging even if there aren't a lot of monsters or high level ones. Add a time limit or environmental hurdles (tight spaces, a cunning trap, maybe "don't let them raise the alarm"). Send several small waves back-to-back, or maybe deny them a short rest here and there, too; With stuff like this, even level or level-1 encounters can bring some tension to the table.

 

[Wonderland666]

We play a lot of time with 3 Player or even 2 Players on low levels (up to Level 5). We had a lot of TPKs at the beginning.
We startet with level 1:
1 Protector shaman, 1 Bow-Ranger ; 1 Beastranger. (TPK in 3. Encounter)
1 Swarm druid, 1 Sorcerer, 1 Fighter (TPK in first encounter Vs a Bear, with using all dailypowers)
1 Protector Shaman, 1 Paladin , 1 Cleric/Paladin-Hybrid ) thats still running (After 12-15 encounters, we are Level 4 now.)

With 2 Players the only combo that we found working: Leader+Controller(with good defenses)
Bard + Swarm druid (TPK in Encounter 10 but on level 4 )
Next time we will try Cleric +swarm druid, but i hope we will be 3 Players then )

You always need a Leader in small groups. Then you need a Defender and controller/Defender (Swarm druid or Staff wizard with Leather armor).
And don't Take a striker! they suck.

 

[Destil]

I've found that with a small group (~2-3), you really don't have a large enough XP budget to make really interesting encounters at first level without a good chance of TPK.

Having run a 3 person group for a while, I can tell you creating / using interesting minions is the answer.

At higher level I believe you can do more with n-1 to n-4 opponents, though it depends a bit on party defenses...

 

[Blackbrrd]

Maybe using an houseruled "underling" can solve your problem? It's a mob that gets bloodied the first time it takes damage and dies the second time it takes damage. It should be worth about 2x a minion or 50% of a normal mob.

In other words, you can setup an encounter like this:
Hobgoblin Warcaster (normal mob) 150xp
Hobgoblin Soldier (underling variant) 75xp
2x Hobgoblin Grunts (underling variant) 150xp
Total 375xp

Minions are really swingy because of their huge front-loaded damage (24 potential damage from 150 xp the first round). Underlings are a bit less swingy, with about 12 potential damage from 150 xp the first round. Underlings do more damage later in the encounter though.

Comparison of 4 minions vs 2 underlings with the exact same stats and a 50% hit rate, with one hit against the minion/underlings each round:
............Minion.....Underling
Round1..12dmg.....6dmg
Round2...9dmg......6dmg
Round3...6dmg......3dmg
Round4...3dmg......3dmg
Round5...0dmg......0dmg
------------------------
Total.....30dmg....18dmg
===================

One thing to note here is that melee underlings have a much easier time flanking and actually doing ANYTHING compared to a minion. A ton of Minions can be wiped out from a single AoE, something that isn't true about Underlings.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Use a little bit higher stat build or let them roll their scores... it makes playing with a 3 player party quite easy.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Higher stat builds might actually make quite a difference. Better to-hit, damage, defenses and hp. The only downside is if you get a couple of extra players and get back up to a 5-player game.

 

[eamon]

Higher stat builds might actually make quite a difference. Better to-hit, damage, defenses and hp. The only downside is if you get a couple of extra players and get back up to a 5-player game.

I'd disagree: higher point buy makes surprisingly little difference. An 18/14/11 array is achievable with the default point buy, and for most classes, having a 20 primary is going to be the best to-hit+defenses there are. The extra hitpoints hardly matter as levels rise (though 1st level they're still slightly noticeable). Extra point-buy do help a little - particularly by making players more flexible in terms of feat prereq's - but there's no noticeable raw power difference IME. Also, MAD builds become more competitive (but these aren't generally better - it's rather that they're no longer generally weaker). An extra feat or two tend to help a lot more than extra point buy (in other news, humans are quite good, particularly at low levels).

Still, and particularly if players aren't into optimization, extra point buy points will raise power simply by raising primary ability scores (which matter most).

 

[keterys]

The Hobgoblin Warcaster is actually extremely (too) good at that level. With just a smidge of bad luck (initiative and a recharge roll in round 2, frex), it can potentially take out 3 1st level characters on its own.

It's no pre-errata needlefang drake swarm, but it's actually closer than you'd think.

That particular party doesn't have a lot of ways to deal with a sudden bad turn, so things likely started to fall apart as soon as one of them dropped.