Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Thauruviel Jul 20, 2015 6:23:35	Hi everyone. I'm starting a solo campaign DMing for a friend who has never played 5e. He's playing a rogue, and I'm modifying Expeditious Retreat's Gambler's Quest to start him off. My question is this: How tough of an encounter can he probably handle?   Obviousl, I understand how building encounters works, but since the system is designed around an assumption of four adventurers, it seems like the encounter range I get for one 1st level character is too much (25-100XP).   So, how much can a solo adventurer REALLY handle on a regular basis?
#2 iserith Jul 20, 2015 6:52:21	The character can handle a lot if the player is making smart decisions. They can't handle that much if they don't. A solo character is well-advised to get an idea of what they will face ahead of time, prepare accordingly, and fight only on their own terms, retreating or dealing with the challenge in other ways when they can't.   The numbers won't help you here, I'm afraid. So I would suggest not thinking of things in terms of "encounters," where there is an expectation of combat. Instead, think of things as complications in the way of a character achieving his or her goals. How the player deals with that will either raise or lower the inherent difficulty. Consider also the motivations and goals of the potential enemies in the scene - do they necessarily want to slay the PC or can they achieve their own goals some other way?
#3 Kazadvorn Jul 20, 2015 7:20:53	Back in the Dark Ages (1975) it was often difficult to find players for any RPG. You'd often find yourself with 2 or 3 people total at the the table. One thing that was very common, early on, was running Wizards or Clerics as the PC's and then allowing them to hire 'Men-at-Arms' or Thieves as 'minions'. This tended to make Charisma a more important stat, because that determined how many 'followers' a character could have, and how likely it would be for the 'hired hands' to follow orders. In the old box set (and I believe in the AD&D manuals) there were guidelines for how 'sharing the loot' and whatnot would affect the employee's loyalty and willingness to take unusual risks.   These days, if we're using hirelings, I just use a Charisma based ability check to see if the player has control of the hireling during the turn. If the player fails the DC, then I take control of the minion's actions. Usually that just means the minion goes on full defense, but if the die roll is really bad, the minion might run away, cower, surrender or... depending on how bad the PC was treating the minion... even join the other side.
#4 bawylie Jul 20, 2015 7:34:17	I disagree with the advice to think of them as something other than encounters. It's important to keep in mind what they are and how they fit in the game.    In essence they're an unresolved conflict with an uncertain outcome. They have to be played through to determine what happens. As part of that, each encounter must have some kind of purpose (a central conflict or dramatic question) along with win/loss/tie conditions.    All these must be reasonably clear to a solo player bc they are limited to coming up with whatever 1 brain can come up with, and can only act with one character as well. There is little margin for error, and once the PC fails, there's nobody to bail them out.    So we must always let the solo player know what's unresolved, what's at stake, and what it takes to win or lose. This is true even for social or exploration encounters.    What can the solo player handle? That you'll have to measure in terms of what they can dish out vs what they can take. Again, true across all 3 pillars. Generally, I find it's not desireable to have more than one source of attrition for each player action.    Say we have 3 goblins fighting your solo player. They do 5 damage each on average. Against our solo player at level 1, these 3 goblins will kill him before he kills them. There's too much attrition there. In exploration, our solo player might face inclement weather, starvation, and misdirection - without the resources to overcome all those particular challenges.    It gets down to the solo player basically enduring (or not) whatever comes their way, before they can do something, and  too often that 'something' is merely mitigation of incoming attrition.    What can the solo player handle? Not much. Of course, you realize this and write your encounters accordingly, and they're still fun. Or, you allow the solo player to run a 'Main Character' and 2 cohorts. The cohorts have abilities, skills, ACs, proficiency bonuses, & attacks, but maybe not classes. Someone has a playing-card sized character sheet floating around. It has only space for the basics. If you give your solo player 2 cohorts, who can cover some of the main character's weaknesses, you'll find they can handle a bit more incoming attrition.
#5 Elfcrusher Jul 20, 2015 7:44:37	I'm facing a similar thing myself soon, as I'll be doing some DMing for my two nephews (ages 9 and 13)....huge fans of the game, but not a ton of experience.   I don't want them playing multiple characters because I think doing so has the unintended side-effect of making the player less vested in their main character.  So what I think I'm going to do is create two NPCs and let each of the players 'control' one of the NPCs, but only in the sense of giving orders.  I'll interpret the orders and do the actual dice rolling, so that they can focus on their one character.  And I'll pick NPCs that do straightforward tasks, like fighters or archers.  If it has to be a wizard then one with mostly single-target nukes.  Or a cleric with a bunch of heal spells.
#6 Rhenny Jul 20, 2015 7:46:19	I agree with Bawylie and Iserith.   The rogue (or any solo PC) really has to take advantage of situations and avoid combat when possible.   Playing with 1 or 2 players is very swingy.  The randomness of attacks makes it hard to judge if the players will succeed or fail even in smaller combats.   Personally, I love stealth campaigns and campaigns that are based more heavily on exploration and interaction.  Rogues are terrific in these types of campaigns.   Advice:  Make sure you have contingencies for when and if the PC is knocked unconscious if you want the player to live to fight another day.   Take advantage of factions or NPCs who may arrive at the right place at the right time.  Think about how the villians would take the PC prisoner, and what they would do with the prisoner after (incarcerate, randsome, enslave, etc.).  Also, use magic and/potions to help the PC out if you feel he needs it.  With 5e, the designers did not factor magic items into encounter difficulty, so a few interesting magic items can really make a huge difference (i.e., items that heal, items that allow the PC to escape more easily, items that help the PC rest in dangerous areas, etc.).   Have fun with it.
#7 Thauruviel Jul 20, 2015 11:51:09	Thanks guys. This adventure was written for Pathfinder, so the encounter levels are quite a bit different. It has a level 2 rogue frequently up against 2-3 orcs, etc. That's just not feasible unless you have a big advantage. The goal is to avoid combat in this adventure, but there are some situations where it will be inevitable (There's an undead encounter that is pretty brutal, and an evil cleric who will attack unprovoked). The main goal of the module is to sneak around and steal back some items though, so I think it may still work. I'll just have to be sure my player knows he's not going to beat an orc going toe to toe.