My encounters in 13th Age are too easy

[Retreater]

I don't have all the details with me right now about party composition, etc, but this is just a general question anyway.

I'm running a mini campaign: 10 sessions, 10 levels as described in the rulebook. This means that each game session has two double strength fights, characters are restricted to only three recoveries per session, and that they get a full rest and level at the end of each evening.

We're currently at 4th level. I'll throw basically two 4th level fights at them simultaneously, and they'll walk away more or less unscathed. It's so bad that I've stopped giving out potions and other magic items because there's never a need for them.

Has anyone else found that the monsters are just way underpowered?

 

[heretic888]

4th level is at the zenith of Adventurer Tier. At Champion Tier, the difficulty level ramps up and players are expected to be facing an equal number of monsters of their level + 1. In a "fair fight", anyway.

Note the designers don't expect most encounters to be "fair fights".

I have to say, though, I have a hard time believing five 4th level PCs go against the equivalent of ten 4th level monsters and leave the battle "unscathed". Are you sure you're calculating the encounter difficulty correctly?

 

[Retreater]

I think I am calculating it correctly.

I typically have 4 players, so I'll run the equivalent of 8 4th level monsters. We're just starting 4th level of play this Sunday, so I haven't tested those encounters yet. But for example, I threw an owlbear (4th level large) against them, along with a large number of 4th level mooks and several 4th level troops. Adding up, it should have equalled 8 3rd level characters. The owlbear got in a few lucky swipes, so maybe "unscathed" isn't a correct term, but at the end of two double strength fights, the characters felt they had used less than 30% of their daily resources - and didn't even uncork a portion.

I don't think my tactics are bad. I've been GMing for well over 20 years and have recently been running 4E and Pathfinder, so I know I can handle tactical combat. Part of it is dice curse, where in a given evening it seems I just can't crack a 3 on a 1d20 to hit. But bad luck accounts only for part of it. Maybe I'm not getting enough attacks, or chances to hit on a miss, or when I do hit - the damage is negligible (which is the case with most "solo" monsters with multiattack like dragons).

We're all loving the feel of the system, it just isn't challenging. The players are getting bored because of the lack of challenge.

 

[heretic888]

​Personally, I have found magic items make a huge difference in 13th Age. Giving only a few of them to each PC will produce a noticeable difference in their ability to handle same-level battles. After running my first 13A campaign (from 1st to 6th level PCs), my advice is to hand them out very sparingly or, at least, have them come with some kind of complication.​

I found that when the majority of the characters have a magic weapon/implement and magic armor, that they can handle roughly 1.5 to 2 times as many same-level for a "moderately" challenging battle. The baseline assumption seems to be that PCs will steamroll the so-called "fair fights" and that such battles should be few and far between. The designers seem to assume the GM will "cheat" to make battles interesting (i.e., monsters call on reinforcements as needed or the environment is deliberately designed to place the characters at a disadvantage).


My suggestion is to the stack the deck against the PCs, but not through the monsters themselves, but elements of the scene that the monsters can exploit to give them a huge advantage. This will also make battles jore interesting than "kill them all dead asap", too.

 

[Retreater]

Yeah, I gave out the initial recommended amount of treasure of potions and runes during the first session. When none of it was ever used, I did not give out anything more (no magic weapons, armor, potions, scrolls, rings, NOTHING), and no one ever complained about it.

So I will need to think of ways to make combats more exciting. To start with, for next session I'm planning on a group of Sahuagin raiders and their hydra beast attacking the group's ship. Ripping off pieces of the boat each round that the hyda continues to attack, and the party may be lost at sea [well actually, exhausted and enter the next combat down resources.]

I really want this session to have a feel that maybe they can't beat *everything* and that survival and escape to fight another day is a valuable lesson - and a great transition of maturing into Champion tier. [I'm thinking of Luke's fight with Vader in Cloud City.]

 

[keterys]

I haven't had that experience at all, but I'm not sure there's enough data points. We haven't seen many deaths, for example, except against enemies that confuse.

As a DM, I can say that I threatened people, but not too seriously (enough they wished for more healing even with a healer, begged for potions, etc), with normal strength fights, and threatened people quite seriously with double strength fights (second winds and potions abound).

As a player, it varied a bit wildly from fight to fight (initiative, resource use, etc), but double strength fights tended to be quite serious indeed unless we got a good drop on the enemies with blasts.

 

[Evilhalfling]

Like Keterys the one death in my campaign (7 sessions, 4 levels)
was to a pair of creatures with confusion abilities. The battle was 4pcs vs 9 levels, a bit harder than 1:2 but it was the party thief who crit, against a character, used a power to reroll, then still confused, crit again the next round.

The Sorcerer went down on the first regular round in a combat, taking a crit from a large @level (dire wolf) and at the same time a normal hit from its mate. I rolled the dice together, but decided that the crit happened first and the second attack hit someone else. Avoiding his instant death.

the fight after the wolves was almost a double strength fight, but the sorc got lucky with a lighting fork and cleared the entire field in round 2.