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<blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 5079110" data-attributes="member: 15470">First level parties are easy to TPK; I've found it useful to &quot;test run&quot; most of my challenging low-level encounters against my party before I play them out. Its a lot easier to balance &quot;challenge&quot; vs &quot;TPK chance&quot;, in my experience. Sometimes the TPK is easier with certain combinations of monsters and/or starting squares due to synergies, etc. Sometimes the &quot;fix&quot; is simple. For example, I had an encounter set up against a pack of wolves (literally, the L2 Skirmisher &quot;Gray Wolf&quot;), and found that they TPK'ed the L1 party easily despite being level-appropriate in encounter XP. The reason? The &quot;pull prone&quot; and &quot;double damage vs prone&quot; synergised really well, and I had the wolves all rolling a single initiative. You'd wind up with one wolf pulling somebody down, then all the other wolves &quot;savaging&quot; the prone one before the party could react. Putting the wolves each on their own initiative broke that combat into a fun win for the party: they were able to move around to prevent the worst combat-advantage, and they did a lot of good work to screen the person who was down until they could get back to their feet.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Amaroq, post: 5079110, member: 15470"] First level parties are easy to TPK; I've found it useful to "test run" most of my challenging low-level encounters against my party before I play them out. Its a lot easier to balance "challenge" vs "TPK chance", in my experience. Sometimes the TPK is easier with certain combinations of monsters and/or starting squares due to synergies, etc. Sometimes the "fix" is simple. For example, I had an encounter set up against a pack of wolves (literally, the L2 Skirmisher "Gray Wolf"), and found that they TPK'ed the L1 party easily despite being level-appropriate in encounter XP. The reason? The "pull prone" and "double damage vs prone" synergised really well, and I had the wolves all rolling a single initiative. You'd wind up with one wolf pulling somebody down, then all the other wolves "savaging" the prone one before the party could react. Putting the wolves each on their own initiative broke that combat into a fun win for the party: they were able to move around to prevent the worst combat-advantage, and they did a lot of good work to screen the person who was down until they could get back to their feet. [/QUOTE]

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