Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 5098591" data-attributes="member: 15470">You're welcome!Trying to read between the lines, it feels like you're focused on this because you really want to DM a one-on-one situation.If you want some practical advice, I've DM'ed exactly that - and ironically, as orc-vs-ranger. The first thing to consider is, "What is the rest of the party doing during this fight?", because, honestly, the one-on-one fight is going to feel appropriately epic to the player involved and to the DM, but the rest of the party may feel a little let down.The second thing to consider is, "Do you want the player to be able to win without help?"For me, the answer to the second was "no": the orc didn't want to pick a fair fight, so he wound up picking on somebody exhausted (2 surges remaining) and weaker than himself, playing to his "honor" by "challenging" him.So the answer to the first became "they better do something" - so, for example, I had each of them roll Initiative when the single-combat began, and creatively tell me what they were doing. Somebody made an Insight check fairly early on, and got the information "Ashtuk does seem to intend this to be an honest one-on-one combat, but you can also tell that it isn't a fair fight: you don't think the ranger has a chance."We wound up with the paladin shifting to strategically position herself, the bard creating a distraction so that she could try to heal the ranger (with stealth and/or thievery checks required to pull it off without tipping her hand), and the wizard trying to take advantage of the distraction to hide herself in the surrounding foliage.That lasted a couple rounds, but when the bard failed a stealth check, it degenerated into a melee free-for-all as the orc's friends jumped in .. oddly, one which circled around the two combatants without anybody ever jumping in on them.For that, the "challenging" orc was an Elite of Level+1, and the ranger seriously had no chance one-on-one ... but wound up winning without any of the other PC's intervening beyond a couple of things - two healing surges, getting adjacent for a combat advantage +2, and the paladin's "mark" causing a -2 to hit and some radiant damage when the Elite ignored it.The rest of the encounter totaled about a Level+1 encounter, which led to the other three PC's easily being able to handle the minions and soldiers which had accompanied the Elite.Had the answers been "Nothing" and "Yes", I'd have had to develop the encounter completely differently. The opponent would probably have been a non-elite of Level, possibly "gifted" an action point or a healing surge power to keep the PC's guessing about his true strength.I think there were three keys, though, for running it successfully:1. There's a lot of trust between players and DMs in the group; I could toss out a single combat challenge and know that the players would embrace it and make it more epic than it had been when I imagined it .. the players had enough trust to toss out some non-combat actions with their first-round initiatives, leading to Perception checks, Insight checks, etc, which let them realize that the ranger was in trouble .. and they read from my Insight description that it wasn't "supposed" to be a one-on-one fight.2. I do hand-design my major villains; I may use printed monsters almost verbatim for soldiers, minions, etc, but even then I think them through and make minor adjustments to suit the situation, encounter, flavor, etc. For this encounter, I'd hand-built Ashtuk from the ground up, but he was basically an orc skirmisher with the Ranger template over the top, and hit points adjusted based on point 3:3. Because of that, I try to play-test key encounters ahead of time to ensure that they are balanced. For example, I'd tried Ashtuk as a level-equivalent Elite first, but found him a little too "easy" if the party didn't help the ranger out.Hope that helps ... if not, mind sharing with us what your goal is?How did you come to be thinking about this?</blockquote>

Verification