Tonight is my 1st game with a complete party as succh. The 1st adventure is a hex crawl where I will be awarding 50xp per hex explored around the area of Threshold and xp for roleplaying and story rewards. The party composition.
1 Half Elf Bard
1 Cleric of Gorum (war)
1 Fighter (Polearm master)
1 Wizard of yet to be determined specialty
1 yet to be generated character.
Here is my wandering monster table. Most encounters are CR I think although I am not using the multiplier for numbers due to the party composition.
20% chance check twice per day. 40% chance in mountains or forest.
1. Ogre
2. 4 Hobgoblins
3. 4 Goblins, 2 Hobgoblins
4. 8 Goblins wearing red caps
5. 2 Bugbears, mated pair raiding
6. 8 bandits, 2 thugs
Could be tough fights and that is intentional. Both the bard and wizard have sleep spells though which can end an encounter fast and being a hex crawl it might be several days before they reach another encounter. PCs are well equiped and generated using the PHB.
Too brutul if you don't intend any players to die, ever. If you want a gritty start to your campaign, should be fun, but I'd warn each player to bring a backup PC in that case and let them know what they are in for.
At any rate, characters who survive more than a couple encounters would quickly level up to 2 and gain a great deal of survivability.
Karnos wrote:
That ogre could really lay down some smack on those PCs. If they are even a little unlucky, I see multiple PCs being killed in that fight. But if that's how you intend to run the game, so be it!
It'll be a slaughter. The PCs will all be dead before the pizza arrives.
You really should follow the normal encounter building rules, inlduing the multpliers for number of monsters. If you run most of those encounters thru those, they far surpass deadly. Be patient. Level one characters are very very very weak. Save the CR 1/2+ for later.
Eric888 wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
grendel111111 wrote:
I don't know if you're asking if it's too brutal when you have not looked at the encounter building rules, or if you're asking if it's too brutal having looked at the encounter building rules, knowing you've built encounters higher than hard and headed toward lethal, but are okay with that?
Really the game wont be about exploring or doing anything in particular, it'll become a survival game.
That can be a fine game, but if it's not what you wanted (or not what you pitched to the players), then its a big problem.
Looks fine to me , Zard.
Give them some experience with the character creation rules and teach them to respect your authority in one easy step.
Shasarak wrote:
I'd throw in 2-4 easy random encounters, just because. (2 to change your roll to a d8, 4 to a d10) To me, random encounters are cool, and should have a balance of easy and hard.
Maybe some easy as pie stuff, like CR 1/8 or 1/4 things.
Otherwise, as long as they aren't suprised, and as long as there's always an 'out' it's really up to your PCs if they die today, lol.
Do you have monsters run, or do they all fight to the death or chase PCs who run?
PS: I'd be almost the least afraid of the ogre...They're noisy and slow, they can only drop one PC a round, and it'll be taking 4-5 hits from weapons and spells each round.
Zardnaar wrote:
Eric888 wrote:
I vote for yes, it's too brutal at level 1. Let the party start off with a few easier encounters, then you can throw ogres and hobgoblins at them at level 2.
Remember, CR means "a party under this level is likely to suffer fatalities."
I get the impression you're already aware of this, though. To brutal or not to brutal, eh?
ClockworkNecktie wrote:
Eric888 wrote:
I can't believe you included goblins *in red capes*. Red-cape goblins are *way* over CR.
Seriously, though, it seems fine for the kind of game you seem to be interested in - oldschool high-lethality exploration - and assuming you give the players options to respond to things rather than "you encounter an Ogre, roll for initiative".
That said, it might be worth adding some easier, or even non-hostile random encounters just to up the uncertainty level. Right now random encounters seem explicitly to be *tough* encounters, which isn't necessarily very random. When you say that there's a 20% chance of these encounters, 40% in mountains or forest, is that the *only* variation? Will players have these encouters travelling on well-traveled roads, for example? Are there safer and more dangerous areas of your world? It doesn't seem too bad if these encounters are explicitly for times when the PCs are traveling through explicitly dangerous areas. On the other hand if there are two 20% chances every day of this kind of encounter just walking to the nearest village, it does make you wonder how trade happens.
Thoughts_My_Aim wrote:
I'd play. Though I would have one or two spare characters along with me.
Nice.
I still would expand your random encounter table. Include the harder fights (you had that covered), include some easy fights, and include some beneficial random stuff too. Like meeting a healer, wealthy traveler in distress, finding a cool beneficial shrine, finding some forgotten treasure, and finding an adventure seed for later in the campaign.
After all, not all random encounters need (or should) be a fight or flight situation.
Hey, this is one of the players in Zard's campaign, lets call me SirEmilCrane. I was playing the pole arm fighter. We're chatting post-session so I figured I'd give some player point of view.
From a player point of view I didnt feel the encounters were too brutal. In fact with one exception it felt a little easy. In a wilderness campaign you always have the option to leave and rest up somewhere relatively safe. We hit every fight fresh. The only real problem was the hobgoblins, there were brutal. I got dropped to 1HP by a single hit from one of them. We had a really great time tonight, just the right level of challenge. When you have only one fight you can make a pain train of bless, bard buffing, faerie fire, guiding bolt, action surges, the diviner ability to hand out good and crappy rolls, its nasty.
Sleep was the big killer, wiped out half the fight before any blows were struck, I started getting a bit annoyed, there were fights where i didnt even get to attack.
Zardnaar wrote:
Yunru wrote:
Yunru wrote:
Eugee wrote:
BTShire wrote:
They failed to encounter the Ogre on a random encounter. I did put one in a lair but it was in part of the map where they would be level 2 or 3 before they get there.
They failed to encounter the Ogre on a random encounter. I did put one in a lair but it was in part of the map where they would be level 2 or 3 before they get there.
I'll be one of the contrarians. It looks pretty reasonable to me. The Ogre is a mildly problematic creature, because it can outright kill the wizard in one hit, which would be bad. Also the bugbears are dangerous for a similar reason if you allow surprise to be an element of the encounter.
I think people should note the frequency of encounters, and actually look at the likely impact of Sleep on the hobgoblin/goblin/bandit types. I've been through similarly spec'ed encounters, including facing an Ogre solo with 1st level characters and it is not as dangerous as many of you are making it out to be.
yakuba wrote:
A little hard if you look at each encounter as a fight but the way you describe it then I think you played it fine. Deliberately taking on an ogre just because it's there then you get what you deserve...bad or good 
Arawn76 wrote: