So help me be a better GM....

[Destil]

Does anyone else think I am giving the goblins too much advantage here? I was wanting to portray the goblins this time as being more cunning and less cannon-fodder (which is their usual role). Two of my players are old-hands at the game and I wanted to surprise them. It would be a regular thing, goblins with tactics. Still, I am willing to admit I may have gone too far. The second encounter bothers me too, and that is why I included it, to get an idea of what's good and what isnt, to see if I was just being paranoid.

Nope. Everyything should have good tacticts, unless it's a "Kill something and eat it" style creature. I'd worry about going insanily overboard, though... typicaly I have places over defended and I give the defenders too many advantages, and I know it's given me at least one TPK. (Though really the PCs should have camped and regaied spells and hit points much earlier than they apperantaly intended to, and their main front-line fighter dancing with a rust monster didn't help too much, eaither....)

 

[Tolen Mar]

2) When I design an adventure, I work in terms of "encounter units", where a single EL +0 encounter is 1 encounter unit.
Theoretically :
EL -4 = 1/4 eu
EL -3 = 1/3 eu
EL -2 = 1/2 eu
EL -1 = 2/3 eu
EL +0 = 1 eu
EL +1 = 1.5 eu
EL +2 = 2
EL +3 = 3
EL +4 = 4
(EL +5 = 6)

Any particular reason why the table ends by jumping from 4 eu to 6?

 

[Xarlen]

If the party is too close to getting killed by either encounter, have the goblins run out of ammo.

 

[Emongnome]

When creating encounter ideas, the hardest part for me was trying not to "force" the players into a particular situation, no matter how much you work on it. The players should have a chance to "tip the scales" and circumvent a particular trap, like your Encounter 1. If they approach carefully, allow them the opportunity (as easy or difficult as you want) to bypass it in some way. Simplifying the encounter with good planning or role-playing is as rewarding to the players as running blindly into a difficult situation and barely scraping out of it.

As for Encounter 2, it's perfectly fine to have traps in an area far beyond the abilities of the creatures living there. Maybe it was traps from long ago, that the goblins eventually found a way to get around, after suffering losses and learning better. "The Forge of Fury" WotC module is an example of that: though creatures call the caves their home, there are still areas in there that they learned never to go into, and some traps to avoid. So long as there is a history behind the traps and situations, then have at it.

 

[Rel]

First of all, Tolen Mar, I admire your attitude. This place is a fantastic resource for GMing ideas and my skills as a GM have improved more in the last 2 years of being on the ENWorld boards than any time in the last 20 years that I've been doing it.

I've never been in the situation of running a 3E campaign with a large party, but a few things seem obvious to me. At low level, putting in a few extra goblins, orcs or kobolds (or other creatures who are primarily a threat because of their melee or missile combat capabilities) will balance things out fine. After that, you are just going to have to look hard at the creatures that you use as opposition because it depends a great deal on the capabilities of the party.

For example, a trio of Ogres might cause serious damage to a group of three 2nd level Fighters and three 2nd level Rogues. But replace one of the Fighters with a Sorcerer with Sleep and a couple of failed Will saves later, the Rogues are coup de gracing the sleeping Ogres.

Regarding your specific planned encounters, I would say the same thing. Does the party have a means of taking out several of the goblins at one time from range? Low level arcane magic is good for this and if your party arcane caster (assuming there is one) could take out most or all of the goblins guarding the bridge with a Sleep or Color Spray. Toss in a few bow shots from the Fighters and Rogues in the group and no goblins may survive to retreat to the cave.

On the other hand, lacking that capability and if the party isn't well equipped with ranged weapons, the goblins will be in a good position to defend themselves with their bows. If they roll well and the party isn't in "defensive mode" yet (shields readied or AC enhancing spells in place), they could easily take down one or two party members on the first round. Things could get real ugly after that.

My personal philosophy for starting a campaign is to begin with a few very small encounters that are heavily in the favor of the party. It lets the group try out the characters when a few tactical errors are unlikely to cost them their lives and it gives them a chance to figure out their role in the party dynamic. Then I move to a more serious encounter to put the group to the test but make sure they have the possibility of retreat if things go badly. Sprinkle in a few traps or roleplaying encounters and by then they have probably reached 2nd level.

Once the group is 2nd level, they should have enough cushion in terms of hit points and healing capabilities that one small bad decision or one round of bad rolls is probably not going to spell total disaster (although several bad decisions and lots of bad luck will probably result in some deaths).

So I guess what I'm saying is that part of being a good GM is paying close attention to the abilities of the party and designing encounters that will sometimes be easy, usually test them and occasionally push them to (or perhaps beyond) their limits.

 

[Dr. NRG]

NDA

It's been rumored that there is actually only one NDA out there, and that everyone since Adam has just swiped his and used it. I'd do the same; in fact, I did

Excellent DMing suggestions in this thread, btw. If only my DM.... oh, wait, he does read these boards... hehe.

 

[GuardianLurker]

Any particular reason why the table ends by jumping from 4 eu to 6?

Yeah.

Each 2 EL jump up is a doubling (and a 2 EL jump down is a halving). So EL +5 is double the eu of EL +3. A 1 EL jump is an increase of 1.5.

There's a little gurf from EL -1 to EL +1, which isn't an exact doubling, but that's because EL -1 the inverse. You could also argue that EL -1 could equal 3/4 (i.e. 3/2*1/2), but then you end up changing both numerator and denominator increasing your chance for error. It also doesn't appear to match the CR/XP chart.

Or another way of saying it:
EL -1 = 2/3 eu
EL 0 = 1 eu
EL +1 = 1.5 eu
and aside from the EL -1 to EL +1 jump, every 2 EL jump up is a doubling, and every 2 EL jump down is a halving.

Or
if EL is even, eu = 2^(EL/2)
if EL is odd and positive, eu = 1.5* (2 ^ ((EL/2)-1))
if EL is odd and negative, eu = 2/3 * ((2 ^ ((EL/2)+1))

 

[AuraSeer]

Large Parties

PC parties are basically the same as monster groups: each time the group doubles in number, add +2 to its effective level. (A party of 8 10th-level PCs is about as powerful as one of 4 12th-level PCs.) If the group size increases by 50%, add +1 to its effective level.

This seems to work best above 5th level or so. Lower than that, I haven't found any good way to predict an encounter's strength, other than actually play-testing it by myself.

 

[Tolen Mar]

Re: Large Parties

PC parties are basically the same as monster groups: each time the group doubles in number, add +2 to its effective level. (A party of 8 10th-level PCs is about as powerful as one of 4 12th-level PCs.) If the group size increases by 50%, add +1 to its effective level.

This seems to work best above 5th level or so. Lower than that, I haven't found any good way to predict an encounter's strength, other than actually play-testing it by myself.

I did some testing on my own and found that does work pretty well (using a bunch of premade characters I have in my box...)

The problem came at even lower levels than that. It seems things can still get pretty hairy at level 1 and 2. (And playing solo, I had the benefit of knowing what was about to happen...)

Okay, so that is out of the way, but I still havent gotten any clues about the EL of those I listed earlier. The one with the net I guessed at EL 3. It is a lot easier if they find the path past it (maybe EL 1). Do you think Im wrong?

How do you handle encounters that are pretty much all RP? do they get EL's too? and XP? (I usually give ad hocs for good RP, but I wondered what everyone else does).

 

[GuardianLurker]

Next campaign I run, for *critical* RP scenes, I'm going to use the following:
1) Assume the player's *don't* RP it, but just use the relevant skills.
2) DC of *base* bonus (i.e. raw skill bonus without standard buffs, etc) +15 = EL -2
3) DC of *normal* bonus (i.e. all buffs, etc.) + 15 = EL -1
4) DC of normal bonus +20 = EL 0


Non-critical ones are strictly ad-hoc, and will have to be impressive to earn XP.

As for your earlier scenarios, my *gut* feel is that the first probably has a +2 EL bonus for being a particularly tough ambush. The other is probably only a +1 bonus, as I can think of a number of tactics the party could use.

Off-hand, I'd use the same scaling to judge EL bonuses/penalties for tough/easy situations; an EL 0 encounter uses 20% of the party's total resources (which is pretty heavy, really). Once you establish the baseline of what 20% is, then just double/halve like normal.

Of course, establishing that baseline is tricky.