Scaling Solo Adventures

[Odhanan]

Here's the situation: at the end of this school year, most of our teacher friends will be leaving the area. This will leave me and a single player to go on with our Praemal Tales (barring any new recruits, which is always possible).

I'm not the kind of guy to get desperate over that kind of situation. I rather take it as an opportunity to focus on the PC's background and design adventures that will perfectly mesh with it. For the record, her character is (develops into) a Monk/Cleric/Sacred Fist of the Old Man in the city of Ptolus who wants to create a shrine/temple to the Old Man apart of the Temple of the Watcher in the Skies. That's probably going to be a focus of the future games.

Now comes the problem of scaling adventures for solo games. We all know the D&D game assumes the party is made of 4 player characters as far as the Challenge Ratings and Encounter Levels and subsequent XP rewards are concerned.

How would you scale the adventures? What CR-equivalent for a solo player as opposed to four players' CRs? What kind of thing should I take care of before running such games? What does a solo Monk game mean to you in terms of challenges, in particular? Any idea on the challenges on doing such a thing? Any idea on how to manage it?

Do you have some particular experience with solo games? Please share them with me.

 

[Crothian]

It is not just about the CR. You really have to know the abilities and weaknesses of the character as it would be easy to have a lower CR monster just be near unbeatable for the PC.

In your case creatures with a high Ac could very well be a problem. She might be able to buff herself to compensate for that. The heali9ng will be useful. Traps though could be a huge problem though once again if she has a good spell selection she should be able to handle that. Large numbers of opponents I imagine will be the biggest problem.

I'd be tempted to try a module that is for three to four levels lower then her character. It might turn out to be too easy but if you shape the adventure to her background and place some cool campaign specific items in there it will be fun.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I've done this in the past for solo games. Sometimes I also have to cut the encounter sizes, too, but it generally works.

The one thing to watch for are those parts that a group could only get past with a class ability that is in no ways present in the solo character.

I'd be tempted to try a module that is for three to four levels lower then her character. It might turn out to be too easy but if you shape the adventure to her background and place some cool campaign specific items in there it will be fun.

 

[Klaus]

I'll usually go with EL 4 or 5 lower than the PC's level.

Here's a tip: Look at the XP chart. Check out the ammount given for a CR that is equal to the party level (say, 10th). Divide that by 4 and you get what a PC would earn out of such an encounter. Now go down the CRs until you find a value that is close (or equal) to that XP ammount (it'll probably be 6 CRs down the line).

So a single 10th-level character should adequatedly handle a CR 4 encounter.