I'm writing a oneshot which takes place over a short period of time, so only really one short rest available. Is the Adventuring Day a good thing to work around (for level 5 characters, that means 3,500xp worth of encounter each), or is this all skewed and ineffective?
I have 4 encounters planned (just sorting out the quantities), 1 is an easy swathe of CR1/4 enemies, number 2 is a medum encounter with CR 1 monsters, 3 is a hard one with CR 2 and a single CR5 monster, and then the finale is either challenge 8 or 10, depending on how many players there are.
Building this for level 5 players, and trying to plan for 3-5 players. Any advice on building this to be a challenge but not a cakewalk or an impossible task would be appreciated!
How long is the one-shot going to last in terms of actual time?
The encounters you've got planned sound reasonable (although 5 x level 5 players will probably destroy a CR8 monster in a single turn if they saved their abilities for it), but fights, even against weak enemies, take a bunch of gaming time. Expect a minimum of 30 minutes, but more likely 1 hour per fight, assuming a party of 4. In a 5 hour gaming session, 4 encounters will eat almost the entire session.
I'd suggest instead that you plan out the adventure on the basis of time available. Assume 1 hour for the PCs getting started. Will they be doing much RP? Will there be a mystery to solve that could leave them getting sidetracked? Will there be a puzzle?
Fitting 4 combats into a single session sounds pretty tiresome to me; the gameplay won't be very varied, and they'll all have burnt through their spells and cooldowns by fight 4 (even if it's not strategically wise, the Wizard might blow Fireball on the first encounter).
You could start them with an easy fight against CR1 monsters just to get the game off to a start and launch the initial plot hook, throw in some RP, a second fight to up the stakes, then a miniature dungeon (3 rooms - a trap, an obstacle/puzzle, then the final encounter).
Hmm... I've run this before with 5 combats over 2 sessions (trying to condense it to an actual oneshot). The first encounter is Easy difficulty and should be the plot hook more than anything of any real danger, and shouldn't be overly time consuming! So it's really 1 medium fight, 1 hard fight, and 1 deadly fight.
also for a party of 5 level 5's they get the bigger bad guy - same enemy, better stats, CR10, so it's a bit more dangerous for them (more HP to soak up, higher DC on saves against its abilities).
I like to think I have fairly varied enemies for them to deal with, and last time it went down a storm, so I hope it'll be fun after refinement! The main things I found were that the enemies were too powerful (I've nerfed them a bit since) so the party were basically crippled by the final fight, which is of course the most difficult one!
Hmm... I've run this before with 5 combats over 2 sessions (trying to condense it to an actual oneshot). The first encounter is Easy difficulty and should be the plot hook more than anything of any real danger, and shouldn't be overly time consuming! So it's really 1 medium fight, 1 hard fight, and 1 deadly fight.
also for a party of 5 level 5's they get the bigger bad guy - same enemy, better stats, CR10, so it's a bit more dangerous for them (more HP to soak up, higher DC on saves against its abilities).
I like to think I have fairly varied enemies for them to deal with, and last time it went down a storm, so I hope it'll be fun after refinement! The main things I found were that the enemies were too powerful (I've nerfed them a bit since) so the party were basically crippled by the final fight, which is of course the most difficult one!
Fortunately, the final fight of a one-shot is one of the rare occasions where a party can TPK and it's all good.
My thoughts exactly! I've worked it out and it comes in at just under 3000xp per player over the whole thing, with 1 short rest (potentially magically assisted into a long rest depending on the state of the party, and if it is then it's the big boss for all size parties!
You could make it Milestones instead of XP. When you or they are ready for the next level, just move them up.
Thanks for the reply, but I was more thinking for "what can a party of advenurers take in one go between long rests" kinda thing, I don't plan on leveling up the characters in a oneshot!
The easiest way to speed things up combatwise is to limit the action economy by limiting the enemies and upping the difficulty. The shorter the “DM’s Turn” is, the more encounters you can squeeze in. If you make them all Deadly you only need 3-4 of them for a very full day.
The easiest way to speed things up combatwise is to limit the action economy by limiting the enemies and upping the difficulty. The shorter the “DM’s Turn” is, the more encounters you can squeeze in. If you make them all Deadly you only need 3-4 of them for a very full day.
Awesome. I've made sure the creatures are fairly simple to run (no great quantities of spells to pick from, just ranged and melee attacks and the occasional spell they can cast or ability they can use), so I think I can keep the DM turn down to a reasonable level. I will also be prefacing the turns (It's player 1's turn, Player 2 you're up next) and pre-rolling initiative for the monsters before the game so they are all noted down ready to go (and doing so in groups!).
The easiest way to speed things up combatwise is to limit the action economy by limiting the enemies and upping the difficulty.
Just upping difficulty and using fewer encounters generally does the job; a Deadly fight takes longer to resolve than an Easy fight, but it doesn't take 4x as long (if you can just get rid of the Easy fight, that will save a bunch of time). Using glass cannon monsters also helps, a cave bear with 42 hp and 21 dpr is the same challenge as an ogre with 59 hp and 13 dpr, but is a shorter fight.
The easiest way to speed things up combatwise is to limit the action economy by limiting the enemies and upping the difficulty.
Just upping difficulty and using fewer encounters generally does the job; a Deadly fight takes longer to resolve than an Easy fight, but it doesn't take 4x as long (if you can just get rid of the Easy fight, that will save a bunch of time). Using glass cannon monsters also helps, a cave bear with 42 hp and 21 dpr is the same challenge as an ogre with 59 hp and 13 dpr, but is a shorter fight.
I pretty much mostly just make most fights deadly+ as my default (unless it’s just a fluff fight). More times than I can count on one hand they have spanned 2 sessions for the 1 fight. If it’s deadly because of high base CR then it’s short. If it’s deadly because of sheer volume of hostiles… takes forevers. (26 skeletons, a skeletal Minotaur, a mummy and a bone golem took 7 hours over two sessions for a 3rd level party because I had to do it in waves so they wouldn’t get overwhelmed and TPK. The godmother of all Wyverns went down like a sack of potatoes in 2.5 rounds earlier in the same adventuring day when they were only 2nd level.. (The party was 4th level by the end of that same adventuring day.)
Fewer enemies is just faster (unless they’re all “minions” with 1 HP).
Glass cannons do help too, that’s for sure.
Also, higher HP is faster than higher AC, and higher Attack bonuses are faster then higher volume of attacks. Anything to shorten “the DM’s Turn” will speed up combat.
If it’s deadly because of sheer volume of hostiles… takes forevers. (26 skeletons, a skeletal Minotaur, a mummy and a bone golem took 7 hours over two sessions for a 3rd level party because I had to do it in waves so they wouldn’t get overwhelmed and TPK.
Well, of course if you do it in waves it will take longer, as does fighting in chokes (given that 26 skeletons with shortbows should kill the entire party in two rounds if they're all able to shoot, I assume they couldn't). Of course, the last time I ran into something similar the druid dropped Spike Growth and we proceed to ignore the chaff. The main thing that shortens fights with lots of combatants is area spells blowing up all the chaff.
If it’s deadly because of sheer volume of hostiles… takes forevers. (26 skeletons, a skeletal Minotaur, a mummy and a bone golem took 7 hours over two sessions for a 3rd level party because I had to do it in waves so they wouldn’t get overwhelmed and TPK.
Well, of course if you do it in waves it will take longer, as does fighting in chokes (given that 26 skeletons with shortbows should kill the entire party in two rounds if they're all able to shoot, I assume they couldn't). Of course, the last time I ran into something similar the druid dropped Spike Growth and we proceed to ignore the chaff. The main thing that shortens fights with lots of combatants is area spells blowing up all the chaff.
They were custom Skeletons without bows, and the party was able to utilize choke points. But they still came 9 at a time (6 PCs) with the big’un in the first wave. That was their… 3rd (4th?) Deadly+ that day out of 5, with only a single Wiz (the rest were all Rogues, a Warlock, a Barbarian and a Cleric) and only 1 short rest that day because “they’re getting away!” Meat grinder of a day for them, got ‘em from 2nd to 4th in 1 adventuring day. If I had thrown all 26+++ at them at once on an open field it wouldn’t have been a combat, it would’a been an execution.
The easiest way to speed things up combatwise is to limit the action economy by limiting the enemies and upping the difficulty. The shorter the “DM’s Turn” is, the more encounters you can squeeze in. If you make them all Deadly you only need 3-4 of them for a very full day.
Awesome. I've made sure the creatures are fairly simple to run (no great quantities of spells to pick from, just ranged and melee attacks and the occasional spell they can cast or ability they can use), so I think I can keep the DM turn down to a reasonable level. I will also be prefacing the turns (It's player 1's turn, Player 2 you're up next) and pre-rolling initiative for the monsters before the game so they are all noted down ready to go (and doing so in groups!).
They were custom Skeletons without bows, and the party was able to utilize choke points. But they still came 9 at a time (6 PCs) with the big’un in the first wave. That was their… 3rd (4th?) Deadly+ that day out of 5, with only a single Wiz (the rest were all Rogues, a Warlock, a Barbarian and a Cleric) and only 1 short rest that day because “they’re getting away!” Meat grinder of a day for them, got ‘em from 2nd to 4th in 1 adventuring day. If I had thrown all 26+++ at them at once on an open field it wouldn’t have been a combat, it would’a been an execution.
I think that's a case of "fight took a long time because it was designed to take a long time"; you had 500+ hit points worth of monsters, most of which weren't doing any damage because they couldn't reach the PCs, and then a lack of area damage, so of course it took forever to grind through. The lesson I would learn from that is "Fights in chokepoints suck" and I'd have the monsters just pull back when they couldn't force their way through (and if the PCs don't take the opportunity to run, a flameskull arrives to solve the problem).
So it sounds like (and experience tells me) the first fight will take a while due to the volume of critters.
them being homebrew, and the fight being to set the scene more than anything, I'll be dropping them to 1-2hp each I think, so that hitting them means they die! That should speed it up (they only had 7hp anyway) and perhaps even lull the adventurers into a false sense of security...
They were custom Skeletons without bows, and the party was able to utilize choke points. But they still came 9 at a time (6 PCs) with the big’un in the first wave. That was their… 3rd (4th?) Deadly+ that day out of 5, with only a single Wiz (the rest were all Rogues, a Warlock, a Barbarian and a Cleric) and only 1 short rest that day because “they’re getting away!” Meat grinder of a day for them, got ‘em from 2nd to 4th in 1 adventuring day. If I had thrown all 26+++ at them at once on an open field it wouldn’t have been a combat, it would’a been an execution.
I think that's a case of "fight took a long time because it was designed to take a long time"; you had 500+ hit points worth of monsters, most of which weren't doing any damage because they couldn't reach the PCs, and then a lack of area damage, so of course it took forever to grind through. The lesson I would learn from that is "Fights in chokepoints suck" and I'd have the monsters just pull back when they couldn't force their way through (and if the PCs don't take the opportunity to run, a flameskull arrives to solve the problem).
They were all trapped in a building the undead were protecting (the mummy’s tomb). Key Hamintep’s tomb to be exact, from a 2e module I jazzed up by swapping a regular skelly for a minotaur and making sure the PCs wouldn’t get shot to death. (And I added the construct because I wanted to give them that “oh 💩” moment when the skeletons that had just finished off got reformed into a bone golem. 😉)
And they were all doing damage because some of the party, the warlock in particular, got caught outside of the choke points when the mosters literally started coming out of the walls. He almost died before they pushed through to rescue him. It was tense. They got lucky when the Wiz passed his Arcana check to cast the scroll he had been saving.
But by comparison, Clawfang was 340 HP all by herself, she dropped a PC on turn 1 when she dropped out of the sky and literally landed on her. Still didn’t last more than 20 minutes.
I'm writing a oneshot which takes place over a short period of time, so only really one short rest available. Is the Adventuring Day a good thing to work around (for level 5 characters, that means 3,500xp worth of encounter each), or is this all skewed and ineffective?
I have 4 encounters planned (just sorting out the quantities), 1 is an easy swathe of CR1/4 enemies, number 2 is a medum encounter with CR 1 monsters, 3 is a hard one with CR 2 and a single CR5 monster, and then the finale is either challenge 8 or 10, depending on how many players there are.
Building this for level 5 players, and trying to plan for 3-5 players. Any advice on building this to be a challenge but not a cakewalk or an impossible task would be appreciated!
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How long is the one-shot going to last in terms of actual time?
The encounters you've got planned sound reasonable (although 5 x level 5 players will probably destroy a CR8 monster in a single turn if they saved their abilities for it), but fights, even against weak enemies, take a bunch of gaming time. Expect a minimum of 30 minutes, but more likely 1 hour per fight, assuming a party of 4. In a 5 hour gaming session, 4 encounters will eat almost the entire session.
I'd suggest instead that you plan out the adventure on the basis of time available. Assume 1 hour for the PCs getting started. Will they be doing much RP? Will there be a mystery to solve that could leave them getting sidetracked? Will there be a puzzle?
Fitting 4 combats into a single session sounds pretty tiresome to me; the gameplay won't be very varied, and they'll all have burnt through their spells and cooldowns by fight 4 (even if it's not strategically wise, the Wizard might blow Fireball on the first encounter).
You could start them with an easy fight against CR1 monsters just to get the game off to a start and launch the initial plot hook, throw in some RP, a second fight to up the stakes, then a miniature dungeon (3 rooms - a trap, an obstacle/puzzle, then the final encounter).
Hmm... I've run this before with 5 combats over 2 sessions (trying to condense it to an actual oneshot). The first encounter is Easy difficulty and should be the plot hook more than anything of any real danger, and shouldn't be overly time consuming! So it's really 1 medium fight, 1 hard fight, and 1 deadly fight.
also for a party of 5 level 5's they get the bigger bad guy - same enemy, better stats, CR10, so it's a bit more dangerous for them (more HP to soak up, higher DC on saves against its abilities).
I like to think I have fairly varied enemies for them to deal with, and last time it went down a storm, so I hope it'll be fun after refinement! The main things I found were that the enemies were too powerful (I've nerfed them a bit since) so the party were basically crippled by the final fight, which is of course the most difficult one!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
Fortunately, the final fight of a one-shot is one of the rare occasions where a party can TPK and it's all good.
My thoughts exactly! I've worked it out and it comes in at just under 3000xp per player over the whole thing, with 1 short rest (potentially magically assisted into a long rest depending on the state of the party, and if it is then it's the big boss for all size parties!
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You could make it Milestones instead of XP. When you or they are ready for the next level, just move them up.
Thanks for the reply, but I was more thinking for "what can a party of advenurers take in one go between long rests" kinda thing, I don't plan on leveling up the characters in a oneshot!
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The easiest way to speed things up combatwise is to limit the action economy by limiting the enemies and upping the difficulty. The shorter the “DM’s Turn” is, the more encounters you can squeeze in. If you make them all Deadly you only need 3-4 of them for a very full day.
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Awesome. I've made sure the creatures are fairly simple to run (no great quantities of spells to pick from, just ranged and melee attacks and the occasional spell they can cast or ability they can use), so I think I can keep the DM turn down to a reasonable level. I will also be prefacing the turns (It's player 1's turn, Player 2 you're up next) and pre-rolling initiative for the monsters before the game so they are all noted down ready to go (and doing so in groups!).
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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Just upping difficulty and using fewer encounters generally does the job; a Deadly fight takes longer to resolve than an Easy fight, but it doesn't take 4x as long (if you can just get rid of the Easy fight, that will save a bunch of time). Using glass cannon monsters also helps, a cave bear with 42 hp and 21 dpr is the same challenge as an ogre with 59 hp and 13 dpr, but is a shorter fight.
I pretty much mostly just make most fights deadly+ as my default (unless it’s just a fluff fight). More times than I can count on one hand they have spanned 2 sessions for the 1 fight. If it’s deadly because of high base CR then it’s short. If it’s deadly because of sheer volume of hostiles… takes forevers. (26 skeletons, a skeletal Minotaur, a mummy and a bone golem took 7 hours over two sessions for a 3rd level party because I had to do it in waves so they wouldn’t get overwhelmed and TPK. The godmother of all Wyverns went down like a sack of potatoes in 2.5 rounds earlier in the same adventuring day when they were only 2nd level.. (The party was 4th level by the end of that same adventuring day.)
Fewer enemies is just faster (unless they’re all “minions” with 1 HP).
Glass cannons do help too, that’s for sure.
Also, higher HP is faster than higher AC, and higher Attack bonuses are faster then higher volume of attacks. Anything to shorten “the DM’s Turn” will speed up combat.
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Well, of course if you do it in waves it will take longer, as does fighting in chokes (given that 26 skeletons with shortbows should kill the entire party in two rounds if they're all able to shoot, I assume they couldn't). Of course, the last time I ran into something similar the druid dropped Spike Growth and we proceed to ignore the chaff. The main thing that shortens fights with lots of combatants is area spells blowing up all the chaff.
They were custom Skeletons without bows, and the party was able to utilize choke points. But they still came 9 at a time (6 PCs) with the big’un in the first wave. That was their… 3rd (4th?) Deadly+ that day out of 5, with only a single Wiz (the rest were all Rogues, a Warlock, a Barbarian and a Cleric) and only 1 short rest that day because “they’re getting away!” Meat grinder of a day for them, got ‘em from 2nd to 4th in 1 adventuring day. If I had thrown all 26+++ at them at once on an open field it wouldn’t have been a combat, it would’a been an execution.
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Yeah, announcing whoever is “on deck” helps too.
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I think that's a case of "fight took a long time because it was designed to take a long time"; you had 500+ hit points worth of monsters, most of which weren't doing any damage because they couldn't reach the PCs, and then a lack of area damage, so of course it took forever to grind through. The lesson I would learn from that is "Fights in chokepoints suck" and I'd have the monsters just pull back when they couldn't force their way through (and if the PCs don't take the opportunity to run, a flameskull arrives to solve the problem).
So it sounds like (and experience tells me) the first fight will take a while due to the volume of critters.
them being homebrew, and the fight being to set the scene more than anything, I'll be dropping them to 1-2hp each I think, so that hitting them means they die! That should speed it up (they only had 7hp anyway) and perhaps even lull the adventurers into a false sense of security...
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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They were all trapped in a building the undead were protecting (the mummy’s tomb). Key Hamintep’s tomb to be exact, from a 2e module I jazzed up by swapping a regular skelly for a minotaur and making sure the PCs wouldn’t get shot to death. (And I added the construct because I wanted to give them that “oh 💩” moment when the skeletons that had just finished off got reformed into a bone golem. 😉)
And they were all doing damage because some of the party, the warlock in particular, got caught outside of the choke points when the mosters literally started coming out of the walls. He almost died before they pushed through to rescue him. It was tense. They got lucky when the Wiz passed his Arcana check to cast the scroll he had been saving.
But by comparison, Clawfang was 340 HP all by herself, she dropped a PC on turn 1 when she dropped out of the sky and literally landed on her. Still didn’t last more than 20 minutes.
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