Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 sneake Jul 02, 2008 11:31:35	This is my first attempt at DM'ing, as well as my first encounter with 4th edition. My players, a paladin, a rogue, a cleric and a wizard got through the first encounter just fine, but the second one (kobold ambush 2) nearly wiped them all out. Granted, the party consisted of only four characters, But this encounter seemed unreasonably hard for a group of adventurers that are just starting. I'd rather not put a DMPC in the game, but does anyone have some advice to scale it down a bit? Less monsters maybe? Or more evenly spread out? I don't want to spoil their feeling of victory but they just barely scraped through (that included some fudging on my part. Any Ideas? I'm kinda new at this.
#2 enigmashock Jul 02, 2008 13:12:00	This is my first attempt at DM'ing, as well as my first encounter with 4th edition. My players, a paladin, a rogue, a cleric and a wizard got through the first encounter just fine, but the second one (kobold ambush 2) nearly wiped them all out. Granted, the party consisted of only four characters, But this encounter seemed unreasonably hard for a group of adventurers that are just starting. I'd rather not put a DMPC in the game, but does anyone have some advice to scale it down a bit? Less monsters maybe? Or more evenly spread out? I don't want to spoil their feeling of victory but they just barely scraped through (that included some fudging on my part. Any Ideas? I'm kinda new at this. I have 6 characters and wanted to level the module accordingly, so I had to go through this process in reverse to add baddies. The module is designed for 5 players, since you have 4, it will always be more challenging with 20% less manpower. What I would recommend, something that is very simple (thanks to the new rules) is take the xp total of the encounter (lets say 600xp), divide that by 5 (the number of players it is intended for; 120xp/per PC), then re-multiply that by your new player number; in your case 4 (120xp X 4 = 480xp). Now you have a new xp budget for the encounter. In our example, you need to remove about 120xp-worth of baddies from the encounter, so that might be a single Dragonshield (125xp), or a Skirmisher or slinger (100xp), or 5 minions (125 xp) or some variation therein. Alternately, you can take take the new budget (480xp) and build a new encounter using kobolds. Perhaps incorporate new guys from this month's Dragon Magazine. Anyway, I hope this helped.
#3 jindy Jul 02, 2008 19:01:59	I found the first couple of encounters were a lot tougher on the party than I expected as well... and I think a big part of that is the learning curve of the players trying to figure out how to play their characters and how to work together. So, I think part of what you experienced was likely the same thing... players new to the game figuring out how to play.
#4 quizzit_dup Jul 02, 2008 20:52:17	I have 6 characters and wanted to level the module accordingly, so I had to go through this process in reverse to add baddies. The module is designed for 5 players, since you have 4, it will always be more challenging with 20% less manpower. What I would recommend, something that is very simple (thanks to the new rules) is take the xp total of the encounter (lets say 600xp), divide that by 5 (the number of players it is intended for; 120xp/per PC), then re-multiply that by your new player number; in your case 4 (120xp X 4 = 480xp). Now you have a new xp budget for the encounter. In our example, you need to remove about 120xp-worth of baddies from the encounter, so that might be a single Dragonshield (125xp), or a Skirmisher or slinger (100xp), or 5 minions (125 xp) or some variation therein. Alternately, you can take take the new budget (480xp) and build a new encounter using kobolds. Perhaps incorporate new guys from this month's Dragon Magazine. Anyway, I hope this helped. Why wouldn't you just grab the XP budget for the encounter lvl it is suppsoed to be (DMG pg 57) and delete monsters to fit to that number. For instance, if the encounter is listed at Level 2, we see that a lvl2 encounter for 5pc's is 625XP. You are running 4 PC's, so you only need 500xp for a lvl 2 encounter. Remove 125xp in monsters and viola! Of course I guess it's 6 in one hand half dozen in the other.
#5 sneake Jul 02, 2008 22:48:35	Thanks a lot, that does indeed look like the best idea (Especially considering the encounter with Iron Tooth himself...). I'll see how this works out.
#6 enigmashock Jul 03, 2008 0:38:23	Why wouldn't you just grab the XP budget for the encounter lvl it is suppsoed to be (DMG pg 57) and delete monsters to fit to that number. For instance, if the encounter is listed at Level 2, we see that a lvl2 encounter for 5pc's is 625XP. You are running 4 PC's, so you only need 500xp for a lvl 2 encounter. Remove 125xp in monsters and viola! Of course I guess it's 6 in one hand half dozen in the other. The reason I did it this way is because I wanted to try and preserve the intent of the individual encounters in terms of difficulty. We are all looking on this as a learning experience, on one hand so the players can understand the new rules and their characters, and on the other hand how, as a DM, do you build and run an encounter. For this module I am deferring to the wizards staff for what the encounters should be - some slightly higher, and some slightly lower to hit that "ideal" adventure pace. I am studying how each encounter works, what combos of baddies are more or less effective against who, how does terrain and setting affect the experience under 4E, etc. Once I get a grasp on all that, I will be off to the races.