Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 PhyrexianKitsune Mar 01, 2015 0:13:08	As the title asks. I am very used to a group of players when it comes to desgining adventures. Since D&D is a group game, most pre-made adventure paths and even homebrew ones are undouptly geared towards an adventuring party. However, I have very few friends IRL with any intrest in tabletop...they are more of the videogame(espcially JRPG) crowd who prefers having pre-set characters with personalites and backstories desgined for them and crunch/stats that build themselves/auto level in one way(as I said, JRPG crowd) and as a result all my attempts to get them into tabletop has failed miserably...they won't even give it a chance. I do however have one friend IRL who is just as into tabletop as me, and like me hasn't had a IRL group in years. We've desided we miss gaming IRL deeply(I do have a pathfinder group on skype, and a 5e one that recently broke up because the DM lost acssess to his computer....indefinetly....but online isn't the same as IRL...) so the two of us have decided to suck it up and just do a solo game togther where I DM(Because I have more experence DMing while my friend has never been on the other side of the screen, even if I am fairly new to the DM buisness myself.) and my friend plays a singular PC(s), because running DMPCs is not something I like to do. However, here is the catch. I have never desgined an adventure for a small party, let alone a party of one. All games I have run have been group affairs. As a result, I have little idea how to ballance encounters for a one- PC party, and could use some advice on this. While I have more experence DMing for 3.5e/PF I decided to work in 5e for this because 3.5e/PF is just SO crunchy that I'd find trying to ballance things for a 1-2 PC party in that edition to be very difficult. 5e is a far more streamlined and elegant system with less fiddly rules to deal with and less having to worry about what magic items to give/not give out, which are all great pluses.  In general, 5e is just flat out -easier- to work with.   So what exactly am I looking for advice on? Simple....I tend to be a big plots kind of guy. I like the big, the epic, the plots where something meaningful is at stake and as a result my encounters are often sutiably...well...dangerous. I am by no means a killer DM, but likewise I don't desgine or like "easy" encounters with small ammounts of enemies. I also hate solo enemies with a passion am addicted to minions. I love disposable mooks. So my encounters tend to feature them in a big way, to the point bosses are usually casters surrounded by minions rather then that single dumb oaf trying to cleave you in half with a sword. I much prefer cunning villains with spellcasting ability to brutish melee ones (though they make great minions) and thus one-on-one fight encounters are just NOT my cup of tea as a GM since caster bosses arn't great for such things. So needless to say desgining for a single PC is going to be difficult for me.   Luckally, I have one thing working in my favor....my friends tends to prefer stealthy characters and likes his characters to have acssess to magic if possible, so this at least gives me an easier time making encounters with cuning enemies then if he favored say barbarians who'd need every encounter to be solved with fighting and thus need a lot of small one-on-one grudge matches with big dumb oafs. So with this in mind I am considering actually making the adventure VERY intrigue and stealth based and playing to both out strengths rather then trying to do something I don't like doing. Instead of typical dungeon runs fighting against hoards of monsters I have a setup in mind where my friend's character(s) are members of a theives guild/assassin brotherhood/underground rebel movement/simmilar organization who would be targeting nobility on a semi-regular basis. This way, I get my scheming manipulative villains with more minions then Gru himself, it's just the PCs here don't ever come in contact with most of them because the're not charging into the minion-infested strongholds and dungeons of the bad guys, there quietly sneaking through the back door of their palaces/homes instead. However, I still get to show the power-plays and manipulative guile of these corrupt nobles...just in a very non-traditional way.  I can even throw in a few of my beloved "minon-tastic" encounters but give the PCs multible non-combat sollutions to them so if they happen to get bad stealth rolls they have other "outs" beyond trying to fight through an encounter thats way to difficult for them to handle with their smaller numbers through combat means.   Also, such a setup could be a springboard for constant adventurers, rather the make it one campaign I could turn it into episodic things...like...each time my friend and I sit down and play it could be a "hit of the week" kind of deal, with each new adventure being a new job/task from their guild/brotherhood/undergound dissidant society that while seemingly seperate will have an underlying narrative that will slowly unfold, and likely result in a big twist(which is something else I am a fan of...the person you think is the BBEG at first is never actually true BBEG in my games.). I have a VERY rough idea for the kind of larger narative I think would be good here, but what I'm looking for advice on most is the individual encountes/missions and how to effectively desgine for a 1-2 PC party. So if anybody could give me some advice/tips/ideas in this department I'd be grateful!
#2 KlaudisRex Mar 01, 2015 7:10:13	I always find it best to keep it simple at first. You may have a ton of really good ideas, and that's great....but integrating them can be overloading yourself with work (especially if they players don't even decide to run the course you had in your mind!).    So keep it simple, see how things go.  Make sure the players can even attend your sessions, and start with simple quests that can unfold or be fleshed out later, once you see the players really getting involved.   Personally, for your situation, I would crack open the DMG and roll up an adventure hook or quest and just see where it goes from there....tie it into your grander plot lines in future sessions.  No sense in wracking your brain with all sorts of glorious BBEG end battles now, keep those for later.  You just need a starting point.
#3 TheNovaLord Mar 01, 2015 12:04:59	What is the solo pc going to be?
#4 PhyrexianKitsune Mar 01, 2015 12:59:32	Unknown at the moment, however due to the kind of characters my friend usually plays in tabletop and D&D-related videogames, and his many questions asked about the arcane trickster rouge when  told him it was now a base class option instead of a pretige class, I can safely say with 90% certanty that the character will likely be either a straight arcane trickster or a multiclass arcane trickster/fullcaster since he also asked/showed intrest in the 5e multiclassing system. I can also say that if not an arcane trickster or other magical rogueish type, the next most likely thing he'll produce would be an archery-focused eldritch knight fighter. He asked a lot of questions about the system since this is his first time playing in 5e and seemed most interested in either an arcane/rogue hybrid kind of character or arcane/archer hybrid character...so high chance for either arcane trickster rogue or archery-based eldritch knight, here. He also may suprise me and go say, bard, but generally with the way he plays it is safe to expect versatile character with a combination of both martial abilites and magic, with decent skills as well. He's the kind of player that likes having as many options as possible, and tends to favor rogue-ish characters that can also acssess magic in some shape or form. He's not one for pure melee fighters like barbarians and while he ocasionally flirts with fullcasters he prefers casters that have other options beyond casting and thus tends towards hybrid/multiclass builds, at least in 3.5e/pathfinder. In 5e however both arcane trickster and ranged eldrtich knight give him largely what he likes to play without multiclassing, so as stated I can assume with 90% certanty he'll be a rogue going into arcane trickster, which is why I had the setup I did in mind. However, I am not married to said concept either and if he throws an unexpected twist at me and rolls a barbarian or battle master fighter or something like that I am more then able to acomidate and say swap to a tourniment-arc type of game where instead of typical dungeon runs each fight is a 1-on-1, 2-on-1 or tag battle kind of affair rather then the typical "cave full of monster mobs" kind of adventure which is harder to do for a party of 1. Same thing if he rolls a fullcaster, I have ideas bouncing around for a "mage-based" adventure if that is indeed the case, but as stated the likelyhood of him going fullcaster are low and the likelyhood of him going full non-magical martial is even lower. I can almost gurintee he'll be an arcane caster/something hybrid(as despite his like for versatile casters he is very much NOT into divine casters mainly for RP reasons...he dosen't like the idea of relying on an outside/higher power for his spells as divine casters usually do and likes his character's power to be "their own" rather then granted by somebody else...which likely makes warlock an option that I can safly say he won't be picking up either.) with a heavy suspicion the "something" will be rogue, but I can't say for certain. 90% is as much certanty as I can profess currently.   So with that in mind, yeah. I can call him up later and ask about his progress with character building so I can hopefully give you all more info on the specifics.
#5 supreme_slayer Mar 01, 2015 14:15:05	Why don't you just talk to your friend and find out what kind of game they want to play, and what kind of character they will be playing? Especially since it's only one person, fitting to tastes is pretty crucial. Just collaborate to come up with a tone amd setting amongst yourselves, then build off that. As for balance, you are going to find that you will have to majorly tone down encounters so that your one pc isn't dead every time. Going to 0 hp with nobody to revive you means you have yo be lucky, amd hope that you either roll a 20 on your first death save, or that the enemy isn't the killing kind.
#6 bawylie Mar 01, 2015 22:55:45	Have your friend play 3 characters. Or 2. It'll open your options considerably.
#7 BoldItalic Mar 01, 2015 23:37:48	Different take: run a character each and don't have a DM. Just the two of you adventuring together, making up the story between you as you go along. It can work.