Encounter Levels and Random Encounters

[geordie racer]

When you're designing the modules do you use ELs to set the opponent's power level ?

Is there a range of random encounters ?

[goodmangames]

Let me put it this way: I was not a big fan of the 3E or 4E "encounter building systems." I think the players should just run sometimes, and have cakewalks other times. And there should be encounters that are extremely simple if properly thought through, and nigh-impossible if not approached intelligently. (My short adventure in this year's Free RPG Day module has such an encounter: a party of 0-level PCs versus 70 living statues. Sounds impossible but there's a trick that makes it easily conquerable for the players if they're clever. I've run this adventure 10+ times and about half the parties figure it out, and the other ones get it after I drop a few hints.)

Put more simply: I do NOT think adventures should be balanced such that every encounter is perfectly balanced to the party. Nor do I think there should be too much structure around this process. The judge should be free to create a great story, and that requires easy and hard encounters.

My personal process: I focus on story and key encounters when I write an adventure. Then I flesh it out around that. I get a sense of what encounters will make for a great story. Some of those will be hard, some easy, some medium.

Right now I am working on an adventure. I have the basic title: "Attack of the Silver Skull." I know some of the key encounters that kick it off:
* It starts at a public execution in a medieval town. The duke has ordered the beheading of a religious rival. As the rival's head is detached by the executioner's blade, dark clouds billow across the sky, blotting out the sun. An enormous reptilian bird with a peaked skull and long, narrow beak descends on the crowd, claws back against the town guard, and grabs the severed head in its claws. Only then does the crowd realize that the severed head has turned to silver - somehow, as the evil priest was decapitated, his head turned into a silver skull!
* Over the next few days, there are repeated sightings of dark-cloaked men with silver skulls for faces. They are seen at night, in the alleys and taverns, even inside the royal quarters!
* One night not too far after, the characters are ambushed by a cluster of silver-skulled men. The vicious battle seems like a big event...
* ...until they learn, the next morning, that dozens of silver-skulled assailants prowled the city that night, attacking anyone of note, including the duke. And the duke awoke this morning with a silver skull, fought off the terrified guardsmen who tried to restrain him, and set off for the crypts beneath his castle!

Now someone has to summon the nerve to follow him into the crypts, where old stories say a silver-skinned court wizard was buried some centuries ago, along with his lord at the time...

And of course, thus begins the dungeon crawl proper.

So when I'm coming up with an adventure, it's all about the story. Even a dungeon crawl, for all that it can be denigrated as "linear," has an internal logic, and in many cases has a story within it. Something like the outline above includes certain encounters that really have to conclude in a certain way. It's important that the cult priest get decapitated, and that the lizard-bird fly off with his skull. (It's actually a giant pteradactyl but I would never use that term with the players...) It's important that the duke behave strangely. And, when I get into the dungeon encounters, there has to be a buildup of tension that leads to the battle with the Silver Skull itself...

Anyway, it's late and I'm a little tired, but hopefully that makes sense. We didn't need EL's in 1974 and I'm not sure we need them now...

[Machpants]

It does make sense but a CR type system (even if not so precise) is still useful when not using a balanced encounter system. If you need to grab a low power bunch of enemies you can look at about the CR you want, and vice versa. However, unless there are a ton of monsters, it doesn't take much to get the idea of the amount of challenge that all the supplied monsters present.

So, in conclusion, a monster challenge level system is a nice bit of extra info but not a necessity IMO.

[mshensley]

Levels and/or Hit Dice have always been a decent guide for something's toughness. They've always worked well enough for me.

[goodmangames]

Agreed on hit dice as the judge of encounter level. That's the original "encounter planning tool"...

[GnomeBoy]

I keep hearing, here and elsewhere, comments that seem to include some heavy eye-rolling at the 'standard encounter' system for 3.5.

Am I the only one who found the two charts -- especially Table 3-2 -- on page 49 of the DMG useful? Surely not every one is running CRs right at their party level all of the time... Or thinking that the rules think they should be doing so(?). Even challenges right at the party's EL allow for some wiggle room, not to mention things at any given CR that they aren't equipped to cope with very well (invisibility, flying, mental attacks, etc. depending on the specific group of characters).

[geordie racer]

I started this thread after reading a useful little post about encounter levels having been used to just using Hit Dice and special attacks as my guide. I'm trying to get my head around the 3e way of doing stuff to help with conversion and some new-school players who are up for trying out DCC in June.

I think the players should just run sometimes, and have cakewalks other times. And there should be encounters that are extremely simple if properly thought through, and nigh-impossible if not approached intelligently

YES !

[mshensley]

I keep hearing, here and elsewhere, comments that seem to include some heavy eye-rolling at the 'standard encounter' system for 3.5.

Am I the only one who found the two charts -- especially Table 3-2 -- on page 49 of the DMG useful? Surely not every one is running CRs right at their party level all of the time... Or thinking that the rules think they should be doing so(?). Even challenges right at the party's EL allow for some wiggle room, not to mention things at any given CR that they aren't equipped to cope with very well (invisibility, flying, mental attacks, etc. depending on the specific group of characters).

As you point out, the chart does call for mostly weak encounters and the occasional overwhelming one. The problem with 3e (which lead to the weirdness that is 4e) is that combat takes too long to worry with weak encounters (EL <= level). Eventually modules started using fewer, tougher encounters which led to more powerful pc classes and feats coming out which led to even tougher encounters, etc., etc. By the end of 3e, CR's were almost worthless for gauging a challenge. I routinely had to use EL's 3 or 4 higher than the party's level to pose any challenge at all.

[GnomeBoy]

Hmm. I didn't mean to say it calls for mostly weak encounters. As I read that chart, it calls for 20% to be tougher than the party to some degree. And then there is another 20% that is "easy, if handled properly" which could be used as Joseph describes above: "nigh-impossible if not approached intelligently". If that's half of that 20%, then we have 30% of encounters tougher than the party. And another 50% that's a challenge, but probably not going to get them killed, or even severely injured/deplenished. Which leaves about 20% in the "no sweat" category, i.e. 4 out of 5 are tough. Sounds right enough to me.

In my direct and recent experience, that chart is a pretty good guide. Of course, the character design plays a part: I've had mixes of characters that were very, very good at certain types of things, and walked over stuff that should have at least had them breathing a bit hard. But on the other hand, if there was an encounter that was at their level, but featured some 'trick' to it like invisibility, the were suddenly in waaay over their heads if they were not able to deal with invisibility in their personal bag of tricks.

Maybe the fact that I only own a fraction of WotC put out has spared me from this phenomenon of the 'broken' challenge system. But then again, my players have books I don't and I let them use them. So far, so good...

[kataskicana]

We didn't get any good mileage out of recommended CRs.

CRs aren't any better than Hit Dice as a guide. The composition of a party, the gear they have, and many other things factor into an encounter.

I love the idea that the party doesn't always have to win. I think especially in the grittier fantasy literature there is a lot of fight-avoiding that goes on as opposed to just looking for things to kill for some XP. If you have to really go up against a 'really bad dude' you spend a lot of time coming up with a plan, recruiting allies, or questing for one or more items that exploit one of its vulnerabilities.

In my old age and as gaming time has become rarer for some of our group, I like fights to be meaningful in some way. Not saying they have to be unique or extraordinary, but they should move the plot along or have a purpose. If we have a 'meaningless' fight it is a rare thing done to add some action to break up a night that has been mostly RPing or puzzle solving, etc.

[Ravenheart87]

Conan had to run a few times too, thanks to "unbalanced encounters". Did it make him less badass? No.

[jmucchiello]

Far more important for creating balanced encounters is having a good DM who knows what his players' characters can handle. And that holds true for just about all RPGs in existence. No RPG that I know of has a good "how to design an encounters" tool that works for below average game masters. There are just too many variables for just a thing to exist.

[smathis]

I've tried CR and all that in 3e. I preferred Hit Dice in older editions. I think 4e does a decent job of "balancing out" encounters. In fact, I think it does too good of a job. I suspect that's why the combats in 4e bore me to tears after the first couple of rounds.

[geordie racer]

Far more important for creating balanced encounters is having a good DM who knows what his players' characters can handle.

Due to the greater level of randomization, the potential range of what they can handle is increased (upwards and maybe downwards too if they roll badly), so from a DMing point of view, I think it's going to be very interesting. I'm eager to see how modules fare with different groups.

[finarvyn]

Put more simply: I do NOT think adventures should be balanced such that every encounter is perfectly balanced to the party. Nor do I think there should be too much structure around this process. The judge should be free to create a great story, and that requires easy and hard encounters.

I think that this point may have gotten lost along the way. It's a subtle matter of camapign philosophy, but an important one: should characters be entitled to defeat anything put in their way?

I have some players who would argue "yes!" They seem to play with the philosophy that I wouldn't have given them a challenge if they weren't going to be able to beat it. Perhaps that is the way RPGs are designed nowadays, I don't know.

To me, one of the most important role-playing skills to learn is when to fight and when to run. Did Bilbo charge into Smaug's lair with Sting in hand assuming that he "should" be able to kill a dragon? If Bilbo had tried it and gotten smacked down, would he really have had a gripe with the GM?

I think that true role-playing experinece teaches one that some things are beatable and others are not ... at least not directly beatable. Players need to be clever. They need to come up with alternate ways to approach situations rather than just blindly charging and hoping to win the day with a sharp blade. And sometimes they encounter something that can't be beaten now, and maybe not within the lifetime of the campaign. That's part of what can make for dramatic games, when there is an ongoing villian who somehow escapes death in order to plague the heroes over and over.

Anyway, I thought it was a key comment and that it might have been overlooked in the middle of a longer post.

[jmucchiello]

It's a subtle matter of camapign philosophy, but an important one: should characters be entitled to defeat anything put in their way?

There's nothing subtle about this campaign philosophy. It is standard sandbox philosophy. Thousands of "old school" DMs play using this philosophy all the time.

The question for DCCRPG is how does the less than seasoned DM learn how to tell the difference between a dangerous and a pushover encounter (and all those in between)? What tools does the game give him to create an encounter of exactly the right amount of danger that he is seeking?

I suppose that if your target audience is expert DMs, then you can skip having some kind of encounter design rules.

[talmor]

I suppose that if your target audience is expert DMs, then you can skip having some kind of encounter design rules.

I'm not sure you can. From what I've gathered elsewhere on this board, one of the design philosophies is "unique monsters in each module." If that's the case, I know I'd want some advice/rules for creating my own monsters. Even if it's just guidlines to help me focus/get the old creative juices flowing, I'd want SOMETHING to guide me through, so that my first creation doesn't accidently curb-stomp my party.

Also, I play with a large number of gaming newbies, and a couple of them have expressed interest in running. I THINK DCC would be a great game for them, but when they first sit down to make an adventure, they'll be doing it fairly cold--not every gamer has 20+ years of gaming experience, and I'd hope that Goodman Games doesn't assume this is the case. There are still people joining the hobby, and they need a little hand holding, just like we all did back in the day.

[jmucchiello]

I suppose that if your target audience is expert DMs, then you can skip having some kind of encounter design rules.

I'm not sure you can.

I was being facetious. But Joe has already said there were going to be no CR-like rules.

[talmor]

I was being facetious. But Joe has already said there were going to be no CR-like rules.

My apologies, I didn't pick up on that.

I'm not sure we need CR-like rules, necessarily. I'd be happy with something like the old D&D "dungeon level tables" that gave you some idea of what level various monsters should be on--a nice ball park for what players of various levels can handle. It's especially nice when you don't really know the quirks are rules of special defenses, special attacks, hit die, spell resistance, spell like abilities, etc.

Do something like that, but a tad more robust and clear, and combine it with a primer for creating your own monsters and dungeon denizens, then at least a decent selection of "sample" monsters and you should be good to go.

I know they're trying to keep it to one book, and a small out at that (which is awesome), but I also want it to be something that new players can pick up, understand, and use to create their own games without having to buy modules.