I'm planning on running B2 - Caves of Chaos for my son and his friends. I'm looking at the old module and seeing Orcs with 5 HP and a room full of them. I look at the DM's PDF that's out there (I haven't gotten the Monster Manual yet) and these suckers are a lot tougher! They do more damage and all that. So.....I'm thinking that I might have to tone down the number of monsters at first. Is that a fair assesment?
The Caves of Chaos was a beta document. You'll find many creatures and mechanics are different from those in the final product. It would probably be a good idea to stick with the in-module stats when there's a discrepency.
As you get more comfortable wit DMing you will also probably get more comfortable adjusting combats based on your players. Depending on how much time you have and how much effort you want to put into it there are guidelines in the online DMG that show you how to build encounters.
Play, have fun, if it's a cakewalk and boring throw in reinforcements. If it's too deadly scale back or bring in the cavalry.
You can always encourage the players to sneak. snipe or ambush, run away when things get too dangerous, or negotiate or persuade to try to avoid combat and get helpful information.
I think part of the rationale behind making 1st level PCs so fragile and some monsters more robust is to foster more thought about entering into combat.
There are some rooms/encounters in Caves of Chaos that simply have too many creatures. In the playtest it was somewhat possible for the party to go into a room with 6 or 7 hobgoblins. Now, that would be suicide unless the party had a good plan and some luck. Even a pack of kobolds is deadly (since they have the pack tactic bonus).
Remember, if the party gets TPKd, you can take them prisoner and then invent a way for them to try to escape - loan jailer gets too close to a few of the chained up PCs, the chains on one PC are loose, another prisoner that was there before slides over an improvised thieves' tool he made and hid, etc.
Novacat wrote:
Ah, another old-timer. When I started, dwarves were fighters, hobbits were thieves and elves were fighter/magic users. 
My biggest advice would be that first level characters are really fragile, you may want to consider leveling up quite quickly. First few levels are really just designed to show you how to play.
Good luck!
I was wondering what was going on when I saw that it was only 300 exp until 2nd level?!?!?
The devs have even stated that they expect many (if not most) campaigns to start out characters at 3rd level once people have some experience with the system.
Of course I like to start my groups out as apprentices and little kids, but then again I don't throw room-fulls of hobgoblins at them until they're at least second level.
Actually, now that I think about it, the beta document I had in mind was called Mines of Madness. I don't think there's a 5E version of Caves of Chaos.
Yes, there was a Caves of Chaos playtest adventure. It would be fairly out-of-date, as far as the stats for creatures are concerned. The playtest adventure only detailed the caves; it wasn't a complete update of B2 - The Keep On the Borderlands.
You could just update the creatures' stats with those from the MM (or those available in the DM Basic Rules document).
lawrencehoy wrote:
We've been doing the same thing. You may want to refer to the online DMG at http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules for encounter balance guidelines.
Yes. The monsters are tougher than in the original BECMI ed.
But so are the players. :-)
I would lower the number appearing in the original (try finding the playtest)
When it comes to xp: Remember that gold no longer gives XP, only monster kills, good ideas, and bonuses from completing something :-)
Regards from another old school dm(even though my first was In Search of Adventure back in 88)
Orcs are much tougher than 1e. Either replace with goblins, or just use the goblin's stats for the orc hordes; "common" orcs. Keep the real stats for a chosen few orc "sergeants".
JedidiahCurzon wrote:
With 5e, the big thing to remember is that any encounter where monsters can gang up against 1 or more pcs can turn ugly for the pcs.
I think the Basic DMG gives pretty good guidelines to keep encounters sane.
Use reinforcements/second wave of monsters if you want to push pcs more. For example, they may encounter 2 hobgoblins, but in 2 rounds another 2 respond to the noise. I find this works better in 5e than having the party encounter 4 hobgoblins (and wait til at least 2nd level for the hobgoblins).