Sandbox style: How to handle challenge levels

[Stormborn]

In other words, all that "wasted" worldbuilding? In a sandbox, it is not only not wasted, it is necessary to give players the clues they need to survive.

RC

Who said worldbuilding was wasted? Not me.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Who said worldbuilding was wasted? Not me.

I was referring to several threads of late, not to any comments of yours, my good poster!

RC

 

[Doug McCrae]

My one experience with a sandbox style game was a nightmare. To start the DM did not inform us this was the style of the game. We stumbled into something that was WAYYYY beyond our 2nd level characters (he started us out at 2nd level). We managed to flee, but soon discovered that everywhere we looked, things were more than we could handle. When we finally thought we found an adventure we could actually take on, we discovered that the information we got was wrong.

This is something I will have to watch out for. It seems to me it's closely related to the CR range of the world and the PC starting level. If the campaign is going to go up to 20th and the PCs start at 1st then there are going to be challenges up to CR 20 out there, such as balor and the Tarrasque. It could well be that the starting PCs can only handle 5% of the available challenges.

Otoh if the game is only going up to 8th level and the PCs start at 4th, it will be much easier for them to cope with all comers. In fact a 4th level party would have a decent shot at beating a CR 8 foe.

 

[Raven Crowking]

This is something I will have to watch out for. It seems to me it's closely related to the CR range of the world and the PC starting level. If the campaign is going to go up to 20th and the PCs start at 1st then there are going to be challenges up to CR 20 out there, such as balor and the Tarrasque. It could well be that the starting PCs can only handle 5% of the available challenges.

Any world should be more heavily weighted toward the lower-CR challenges, as the aforementioned "Pyramid" structure demonstrated. For every CR 20 challenge, say, there are 4 CR 18-19 challenges, 16 CR 16-17 challenges, 64 CR 14-15 challenges, 256 CR 12-13 challenges, 1,024 CR 10-11 challenges, and so on, down to 1,048,576 CR 1-2 challenges. Now, of course, the PCs will have little to do with the vast majority of low-level challenges, but in any given area it should be easier to find something for low-level characters to find appropriate things to interest them, whereas high-level characters must span continents and oceans....possibly other planes of existence....to find the adventures they crave. Of course, by this point they should have both the knowledge of where these things are, and the means to seek them out.

RC

 

[Melan]

Among other things, divination spells.

Most certainly. Augury is only 2nd level, in 3.* your cleric can memorise (ahh... prepare? ) multiple copies, and it answers most of your "should we go in there?" questions. It is very, very useful.

Any world should be more heavily weighted toward the lower-CR challenges, as the aforementioned "Pyramid" structure demonstrated.

It has to be noted that if you populate most of your world with a set of random tables, challenge levels will more or less cluster around a certain threat level (which could be differentiated by terrain type, of course). If we are going by the ones in the 1st edition AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, a grop of 4th to 6th level PCs can expect to do fairly well if they aren't foolhardy.

I use my own tables, where there is a separate column for "ruins"; among ruins, there is a higher variance between monster levels... so there is always a chance for a Type VI. Demon, a Mynxlmynx or what have you. This is where Augury comes in.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Oh yeah, and if you are looking for a resource for setting up a Sandbox campaign area, you could do worse than to browse through Wilderlands of High Fantasy for ideas & the random ruins generator.

 

[RFisher]

If the campaign is going to go up to 20th and the PCs start at 1st then there are going to be challenges up to CR 20 out there, such as balor and the Tarrasque. It could well be that the starting PCs can only handle 5% of the available challenges.

Generally a party is going to have to consciously bypass a bunch of lower CR challenges on their way to the CR 20 ones.

Generally.

 

[robertsconley]

Any world should be more heavily weighted toward the lower-CR challenges, as the aforementioned "Pyramid" structure demonstrated. For every CR 20 challenge, say, there are 4 CR 18-19 challenges, 16 CR 16-17 challenges, 64 CR 14-15 challenges, 256 CR 12-13 challenges, 1,024 CR 10-11 challenges,

I caution getting hung up on specific numbers in the pyramid scheme it just just about scaling it is also about doing it in a way that is natural so that if you missed telling them something the player can still figure it out based the fact your structure mirrors a real world situation (somewhat).

Also you can have pyramid of groups as well. Say what going on in your world is that demons are trying to take it over. In this way you still have a big bad CR 20+ somewhere in the scheme of things but not have the party stumble over him in the first location that is part of the group.

Example

So you have a whole bunch of cults that start out at CR 1 with say a CR 8 as the big bad.

Then a smaller number of temples supported said cults. Where it starts at CR 4 and the big bad is 10 or 12.

Then fewer still demonic outposts going from 8 to 16

finally the nexus itself where it starts at 10 and the big bad is CR 20+

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Finally doing multiple ecologies, network of networks for multiple groups and overlaying the who thing will result in a rich campaign environment that has lots of adventure at all levels of play allowing for a nice "sandbox" experience.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I caution getting hung up on specific numbers in the pyramid scheme

Me too. I just put those numbers out there to show that the 1st level PCs shouldn't really have to worry about accidently running into a 20th level challenge. It isn't that there are an equal number of challenges of all levels out there.

 

[Raven Crowking]

BTW, Doug, the mega-dungeon/mega-adventuring area came out of sandbox-style play, and you really should consider including one such structure in your game. This should not be a place to be explored all at once; it should be a setting that the PCs can dip into when they want to. Because the sandbox-style game puts more pressure on the players to decide what they want to do, a place that they can default to, without having to make that sort of decision, can make for a welcome break at times.

To be successful, such a complex should be interesting to map (in case the players do map) with multiple entrances and exits, and many ways to change levels (so that 10th level PCs don't have to slog through the 1st level areas repeatedly). If the players do not map, you should have them find incomplete maps from time to time.

Essentially, you are creating a ruined city/dungeon/whatever where the players know that they can always go if they have no obvious hooks that they feel like following up, or if they feel like just playing "beer & pretzels" tonight.


RC