Encounter planning wackiness?

[Plane Sailing]

I just got worlds and monsters today and something in one of the early pages stunned me a bit.

James Wyatt says (p10)

The baseline encounter for a group of five PCs of level X is four monsters of level X

Now I'm sorry, but why on earth did they settle on such a stupidly difficult model to scale for different party sizes?

Why didn't they say a baseline encounter for a group of five PCs of level X is five monsters of level X?

That would mean that if you have a party of 3 or a party of 7 it is dead easy to assess an appropriate baseline encounter. But if their baseline is four monsters per five PCs, how many monsters to do you give for a 2 PC party? a 7 PC party?

At the moment I'm hoping it was a typo or something that was changed since Sept 07 when someone said "Hey guys, that doesn't make sense!"

Cheers

 

[Stormtalon]

Yeah, I'm hoping that's changed. Or at least it has as an unstated corollary: "3 normal and 1 elite," which would make sense and still work out to "one per character."

 

[rkanodia]

Wow. I really hope Stormtalon is right. '4 normal monster slots per 5 PCs' would be a terrible, terrible way to do it. 1 normal monster slot per PC would make encounter design very easy to scale for module writers.

 

[IanB]

It may just be that the recommended baseline encounter for 4 -OR- 5 pcs is 4 normal monsters. Without seeing the whole chart or whatever, we have no way to know.

 

[HeinorNY]

how many monsters to do you give for a 2 PC party? a 7 PC party?

1 and 6?

 

[Knight Otu]

Oy, W&M actually says that? :\
I'm pretty sure all other material on encounter creation has stated that this:

Why didn't they say a baseline encounter for a group of five PCs of level X is five monsters of level X?

is in fact the baseline. Didn't the podcast on monsters use that measure, for instance? I would assume that either the five vs four setup is an old rule, or someone wasn't paying close enough attention (It may have slipped through if the assumed party size changed from four to five at some time, for example).

 

[tomBitonti]

Odd baseline anyways

What I thought was odd was the earlier statement that assumed 4 PC's against 1 monster. Every single encounter that I've designed has varied the number of monsters, anywhere from 1 seriously bad dude to literally hundreds of actors, in neatly organized squads. Having just 1 monster is seriously limiting. (And is it true, anyways? Was the 3E assumption just 1 monster?)

 

[frankthedm]

Remeber worlds and Monsters, like races and classes were typeset back before gencon. Several things have changed since the books being finalized.

I am quite confident that we have heard 5 vs. 5 being the default assumption after the books had been finalized.

What I thought was odd was the earlier statement that assumed 4 PC's against 1 monster. Every single encounter that I've designed has varied the number of monsters, anywhere from 1 seriously bad dude to literally hundreds of actors, in neatly organized squads. Having just 1 monster is seriously limiting. (And is it true, anyways? Was the 3E assumption just 1 monster?)

That was the way CR's had thier numbers run.

Challenge Rating
This shows the average level of a party of adventurers for which one creature would make an encounter of moderate difficulty.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I am quite confident that we have heard 5 vs. 5 being the default assumption after the books had been finalized.

I'm not confident, but have the feeling that I've heard that too.

As I said in my initial post, I'm hoping that it is something that has changed since Sept 07 when the book was sent for printing.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey all!

Sounds like a typo.

However, on the subject of Encounter Planning, I am still having trouble wrapping my head around how the different power distinctions (solo, elite, standard and minion) will work within a relative span of levels unless WotC have enough monsters of every power distinction of every type at every level.

For instance say you wanted to run (your five 30th-level PCs in) a scenario culminating in a battle with Level 30 (Solo) Orcus. Unless there are 30th level (or thereabouts) demon elite, demon brutes, demon skirmishers, demon artillery, demon minions etc. (or undead equivalents since its Orcus) then your scenario is going to be somewhat spartan or filled to the brim with NPC levels (the latter seems somewhat self defeating).

The only way it would work if there is some sort of conversion process between power distinctions. For instance:

A Level 25 solo could = a Level 30 elite
A Level 20 solo brute OR Level 25 Elite Brute could = a Level 30 Standard Brute
A Level 10 solo, Level 15 elite or Level 20 standard monster could all = Level 30 Minions

The Level 6 Skirmisher Spined Devil could therefore be a Level 16 Minion.

Not sure how this idea would scale retroactively (downwards as it is).