Pathfinder 1E New DM Needs Help

[Andrew Ridenour]

So, I know how to build an encounter, and I know the basics of building caves and dungeons, but what I am having trouble with is the layout of said caves and dungeons. I don't know how "dense" they should be... if that makes sense.

Here, let me explain what I'm trying to do.

My players have to go into a cave, and rescue a group of people who were captured by some hobgoblins. Now, the party is level 2 (and this is there first real step into the world around them...) and I don't know how big to make this cave, and how heavily populated it should be for them to handle. (Mind you, they will be coming off of a town wide battle with the Hobgoblin raiding party who came and captured the NPCs, and one PC.)

Does anyone have any advice they can give me for this?

 

[Stormonu]

"Realistically", natural caves are often cramped. Fewer rooms make things easier to protect, and unless the race loves to mine, living will probably be communal. Central cave for gather and socializing, perhaps a room or two to store goods/food/prisoners and the well-to/important individuals having perhaps an area for themselves for private time. Practically no hallways between rooms and generally large enough for one individual to squeeze through.

But this is D&D, and it's well-known for it mazes of rooms and corridors inhabited my monsters. It also makes it easier for the party to isolate their enemies and take them out (whereas above, they'd generally be clumped together).

As for numbers, depending on the system, I'd break the hobbies up into at least enough groups to make four significant encounters. Rooms should be within hearing distance and quick rallying - say no more than 50 feet apart, allowing for reinforcements in 1d3 rounds.

Say, two hob guards at the door with some sort of guard animal (a wolf or CR1 equivilant). Inside, perhaps a barracks with 7 hobs (3 who are asleep and unarmed), a communal area with 5 hobs and a 2nd level liuetenant. Finally a throne room with the head hob (a 4th level opponent w/ two 2nd level bodyguards).

 

[Andrew Ridenour]

Thanks. That is quite a specific layout. I'll use it for this cave, but maybe some tips on future caves/dungeons. Like, how to determine what kind of level the creatures/monsters/NPCs should be for an encounter, or how to determine how hard/challenging a specific place should be. Because, I know that certain places should be harder then others. Like the guards on the first floor of a Dark Lords castle should be relatively easy, but the Dark Lord himself, should be difficult, and he should have his own personal guards/or ways to summon guards to him...

However, I'm not sure exactly how to implement that. (I new to GMing... this is my first campaign... and I've only done a few low-level one-shots before this, like "We Be Goblins", and a custom one that I designed (which didn't go very well for me...)

 

[gamerprinter]

While CR or Challenge Rating is by no means an exact science, it works as a loose guide on presenting appropriately empowered monsters and NPCs vs. a PC party. A CR 3 creature is the rough equivalent of a 3rd or 4th level PC. So face a party of 4 3rd level PCs is roughly equivalent to CR 12, thus a CR 8 boss and 2 CR 2 opponents, or 6 each CR 2 make an equivalent force to face your PCs against. Since some adventuring parties are more or less successful than other parties, you should discover in play whether a given and appropriately CR'd monster party is too tough, too easy or just right for your PC party. Tweak your encounters to be more or less challenging based on the success of a given encounter vs. the PC party.

Again, nothing like hard science, but this should serve as a guide to create appropriately challenging encounters for your gaming group.

For designing a dungeon/cavern layout create cavern chambers for each specific encounter you want your party to face in a given adventuring session. Say you want 4 combat encounters, this means you'll want at least 4 separate chambers to provide, one for each encounter. Also place a few extra chambers with no encounters so your party won't automatically expect an encounter for every available chamber. Also you probably want to create some skill challenge chambers that may or may not include a combat encounter... like having to cross a bottomless pit chamber or an underground canyon. Perhaps a water filled chamber will force the PCs to fly across, clammer along the walls or force a swim. A good guide would be one chamber for each encounter, one non-combat/non-encounter chamber for each encounter chamber, a couple skill challenge chambers and any required connecting hallways - so 10 chambers plus connecting passages makes a typical dungeon/cavern for a given night's worth of gaming.

 

[Zaukrie]

Re: Layouts of Caves/Dungeons

Dming is hard work. The 4e DMG2 has some advice in this. There are some older books from previous editions that might help, let me look tonight to see what PDF I would recommend. Hopefully more people will answer. You may want to change your thread title to something like New DM looking for help.....you will get replies for sure.

 

[Andrew Ridenour]

Thanks for your replies guys. I thought CR a party could take was equal to the APL of the group (varying on the group of course.) I'd assume that a party of 3rd level characters couldn't take down a single green dragon (adult CR 12), or a Lich... that seems just a bit beyond them...

I'm also reading the Paizo Gamemastery Guide that a friend lent me. (I'm only 120 or so pages in at the moment.)

 

[gamerprinter]

Thanks for your replies guys. I thought CR a party could take was equal to the APL of the group (varying on the group of course.) I'd assume that a party of 3rd level characters couldn't take down a single green dragon (adult CR 12), or a Lich... that seems just a bit beyond them...

Definitely not, that's why I suggested a CR 8 boss and 2 CR 2 supporting monsters makes for CR 12. A party of 4 CR 3 PCs cannot normally defeat a single CR 12 monster. I would never include a monster that is more than twice the levels of a given adventuring party. Consider a single boss with 50% more CR than a PC party as a good measure, than appropriate support monsters to add up to the CR total of the encounter. A really tough encounter might be 50% more to double the total CR of the adventuring party (a party of 4 3rd level PCs vs. a CR 6 boss, a CR 4 lieutenant, and 4 CR 2 grunts, makes for as tough a challenge as you'd ever want to be...)

 

[Andrew Ridenour]

Alright. (CR is confusing...) Anyways. Thanks for your help. I'll keep that in mind as I continue with this campaign. I'm sure that I'll have more questions as the need arises, but hopefully this will be good for now. (Now the only thing I have to figure out is how to get my single floor cavern to fit on my battle-mat, which I'm starting to notice is a bit smaller then I had thought it was. It's 24x30in, which is the basic Gamemastery flip-mat and most maps I look at for caves, or even simple dungeons (like mansions, and the like) seem to be bigger than 24x30in.

 

[Stormonu]

Don't try to fit the whole map on the battle mat at once. You really only need to worry about the current area the party is in; as they move from area to area, clear off your mat and put the new area on. You may fit a couple areas on at once, but certainly don't limit yourself to the area of the battlemat.

Personally, I never found CR difficult to understand, but I think 3E may have expained it better than PF.

Something to keep in mind: opponents of a CR totalling the party's level is not much more than a speedbump (such as a CR 4 encounter against a group of 4th level PCs). Such encounters are designed to wear PCs down over multiple encounters (3-4 such encounters). Basically, the game is designed so that it's expected characters will win a battle against opponents of their CR.

When running games, I often set the opening encounter at party's level - 1 (PL-1) or at the party's level (PL). The next few encounters range between PL to PL+1 (generally I find encounters that the total CR is below the party aren't interesting at all). The final encounter is usually PL+2 (an interesting, but beatable encounter) to a PL+4 (flip a coin for who's likely to win, expect PC deaths).

The big thing is to consider how many encounters the PCs are likely to face in a row. If the party is going to be doing a lot of adventuring, you can use lower CRs (at or a level below the party). Fewer encounters between rests, and you may need higher CRs (usually above the PCs level) to be challenging.

 

[Libramarian]

These 2 links should be helpful
http://deltasdnd.blogspot.ca/2012/10/random-dungeon-stocking.html
http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress...ght-of-the-day-prep-tips-for-the-beginning-dm

The first is nice synthesis of the rules for random and semirandom dungeon stocking in the pre-2e editions, the second is some of Justin Alexander's better articles arranged specifically for beginning DMs.