So topic says it. When setting up encounters, do you ever take some time to build characters (or populate them from the campaign page) in the encounter builder and run them through it? I have done so with a couple things now, and I found it helpful in rebalancing some things. Now naturally, the dice gods can, at ANY time, come along and shift the balance badly, but as a general rule, I have found fine-tuning some of my encounters a bit easier after running through them.
I use 2 methods, one is for a series of dungeons I am going to set up, so I take 3 characters, at the level I will have the party and run them through. Second, I populate the party from our campaign and run them against my encounter. In both, there are a ton of variables, from players choices differing from mine, and in the dungeon ones, I have NO idea what the party makeup will be compared to my bodged together group of misfits. It does, however give me a feel for what can happen and if it looks like it will be too easy or too hard. Sometimes the enemy dynamics work in ways one doesn't expect, or an ability has more or less effect than expected and running the encounter can often uncover it.
So have you ever?
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I've never bothered doing this as the encounter tool I use is pretty darn good (donjon), but I've known a couple other DMs who do. Then again, my rule of thumb is "plan for less, add more if needed."
I also occasionally forget my own players' abilities, but generally I'm aware of most of what they can do, so I just keep that in mind with encounters.
I don't sit down and roll dice, and I don't set up a battle map. Instead I use average dice rolls, adjusted by percent chance of hit against typical AC or saving throw, and theater of the mind. I make some assumptions about how many targets are likely to be targetable by an AoE ability. I think about how much healing the party can do and how fast. I calculate how many rounds it will take to wipe out the monsters, and see how much damage the monsters can do to the PCs in that time.
After 14 levels of play, I've got a pretty good idea of the party's tactics so I design the encounter to survive the Alpha Strike for sure, then the second round maybe (die rolls, changes in tactics, it varies...) and if it goes to the third round then either there is more than meets the eye or one side (or both sides...) are rolling REALLY poorly.
I will run the Encounter Builder with the campaign sheets and put it through a Gedankenexperiment based off what I know of the players and their tactics. I won't set up the battle mat and pull out the minis, but I do roll digital dice. Especially when it's a new group or we pickup or lose a player. Tactics change, and having that extra body either missing from or present on the field matters.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
After 14 levels of play, I've got a pretty good idea of the party's tactics so I design the encounter to survive the Alpha Strike for sure, then the second round maybe (die rolls, changes in tactics, it varies...) and if it goes to the third round then either there is more than meets the eye or one side (or both sides...) are rolling REALLY poorly.
Interesting. I take a very different approach - I design combats to last a bare minimum of 3 turns, and usually intend them to last around 6 turns of combat. I therefore use high hit point enemies with moderate damage output. I very rarely use attacks that blast the party hard enough to drop them in one or two turns.
In response to the OP, I just look at the creatures' abilities and attacks and just judge how hard they'll hit. Provided they don't have any one shotting ability, the party will usually get by. I have a good feel for it.
I don't believe in throwing in more enemies, changing stats or otherwise altering an encounter once it begins. What's written is what happens, no matter how likely it makes a TPK. Doing so deprives players of agency and makes their struggles irrelevant. You might as well just describe the fight and dispense with the dice altogether if you're going to change the encounters around depending on how well they're doing, as the experience is really just DM narration.
After 14 levels of play, I've got a pretty good idea of the party's tactics so I design the encounter to survive the Alpha Strike for sure, then the second round maybe (die rolls, changes in tactics, it varies...) and if it goes to the third round then either there is more than meets the eye or one side (or both sides...) are rolling REALLY poorly.
Interesting. I take a very different approach - I design combats to last a bare minimum of 3 turns, and usually intend them to last around 6 turns of combat. I therefore use high hit point enemies with moderate damage output. I very rarely use attacks that blast the party hard enough to drop them in one or two turns.
In response to the OP, I just look at the creatures' abilities and attacks and just judge how hard they'll hit. Provided they don't have any one shotting ability, the party will usually get by. I have a good feel for it.
I don't believe in throwing in more enemies, changing stats or otherwise altering an encounter once it begins. What's written is what happens, no matter how likely it makes a TPK. Doing so deprives players of agency and makes their struggles irrelevant. You might as well just describe the fight and dispense with the dice altogether if you're going to change the encounters around depending on how well they're doing, as the experience is really just DM narration.
While I believe this is true in general, there have been many times where a premade encounter or one I designed specifically had "extras" that would come in on X round. In some cases, the PC's were getting so nuked, I just dropped the extras. Why force a TPK?
On the opposite end of the spectrum, if the characters cakewalk through an encounter, why not run it back to back with the next encounter you planned to up the threat? Just sayin'.
While I understand player agency, what you say here is about equal in my mind to the example I will list below.
"I wrote up this interesting and challenging encounter for you guys!" *PCs plow through all enemies in round 1* "Whelp, I didn't expect you all to do that...sorry. That's all I got."
I think most players expect to at least get a bloody nose in combat and if you beat them within an inch of their life and they win, they are cheering themselves, not contemplating player agency.
I used to try to do this, but the actual runs would always deviate so much from my tests. Initiative order alone can make such a huge difference in how the battle plays out, and my players are pretty good at coming up with strategies that I did not anticipate. As such, I generally just kind of go with my gut when designing encounters, basing the difficulty on how they've preformed in the past.
After 14 levels of play, I've got a pretty good idea of the party's tactics so I design the encounter to survive the Alpha Strike for sure, then the second round maybe (die rolls, changes in tactics, it varies...) and if it goes to the third round then either there is more than meets the eye or one side (or both sides...) are rolling REALLY poorly.
Interesting. I take a very different approach - I design combats to last a bare minimum of 3 turns, and usually intend them to last around 6 turns of combat. I therefore use high hit point enemies with moderate damage output. I very rarely use attacks that blast the party hard enough to drop them in one or two turns.
In response to the OP, I just look at the creatures' abilities and attacks and just judge how hard they'll hit. Provided they don't have any one shotting ability, the party will usually get by. I have a good feel for it.
I don't believe in throwing in more enemies, changing stats or otherwise altering an encounter once it begins. What's written is what happens, no matter how likely it makes a TPK. Doing so deprives players of agency and makes their struggles irrelevant. You might as well just describe the fight and dispense with the dice altogether if you're going to change the encounters around depending on how well they're doing, as the experience is really just DM narration.
While I believe this is true in general, there have been many times where a premade encounter or one I designed specifically had "extras" that would come in on X round. In some cases, the PC's were getting so nuked, I just dropped the extras. Why force a TPK?
On the opposite end of the spectrum, if the characters cakewalk through an encounter, why not run it back to back with the next encounter you planned to up the threat? Just sayin'.
While I understand player agency, what you say here is about equal in my mind to the example I will list below.
"I wrote up this interesting and challenging encounter for you guys!" *PCs plow through all enemies in round 1* "Whelp, I didn't expect you all to do that...sorry. That's all I got."
I think most players expect to at least get a bloody nose in combat and if you beat them within an inch of their life and they win, they are cheering themselves, not contemplating player agency.
I don't think that you can ever force a TPK if the PCs have the option of cutting and running. Sometimes, that ought to be the option.
And I think I'll take your "sorry that's all I got" and raise you:
"I wrote up this interesting and challenging encounter for you guys!" *PCs plow through all enemies in round 1* "But AHA! Turns out there were three more trolls just around the corner...!"
I used to try to do this, but the actual runs would always deviate so much from my tests. Initiative order alone can make such a huge difference in how the battle plays out, and my players are pretty good at coming up with strategies that I did not anticipate. As such, I generally just kind of go with my gut when designing encounters, basing the difficulty on how they've preformed in the past.
TOTALLY agree with the Initiative thing. Good rolls can help the players utterly curbstomp the enemy where bad rolls (we had those recently...) turns a simple fight into a mess.
Never have. Player options are inherently unpredictable. The d20 adds so much variance, at so many different places. Then you've got so many options per player, and many are not directly comparable to pick a strictly superior option in the moment. The order of them changes things too. Then you've got the ability to bend mechanics. "Can I try to pull the spell focus out of his hand" sort of thing.
This is an enormous strength of the game, to be clear.
But anyway, no. I'm curious to see how many people do though.
Without doubt, player choices and, as several have said, the dice gods, can shift an encounter in an instant. I only play with them when I am trying to find something to push their limits. I run it, to see, if on an average scrap, would it be highly unbalanced. Essentially to prevent what I THOUGHT might be a challenge from ending up a joke (again, dice can easily accomplish this) or something I think might offer a challenge end up being a fairly certain TPK unless I intervene. In both scenarios, player choice and dice rolls can shift things pretty heavily. On the easy-peasy side, I am fine with some poor rolls from my side and/or great rolls on their side lessening an encounter. I am also ok with the team coming up with some tactic or plan I hadn't considered and breezing through it. On the extra challenge side, my testing is to get a feel and ensure (as best I can) that a couple bad rounds of rolls for my players doesn't shift the fight to un-winable. Making it close, even having a couple folks fall unconscious is fine, and a series of bad rounds can also kick us in the groin, but having several bad rounds of rolls in sequence isn't nearly as common, so the test helps there a bit.
Without question, it's a long way from perfect, but I have found it has helped me build those on-the-edge encounters, where the outcome seems in question for a while.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
After 14 levels of play, I've got a pretty good idea of the party's tactics so I design the encounter to survive the Alpha Strike for sure, then the second round maybe (die rolls, changes in tactics, it varies...) and if it goes to the third round then either there is more than meets the eye or one side (or both sides...) are rolling REALLY poorly.
Interesting. I take a very different approach - I design combats to last a bare minimum of 3 turns, and usually intend them to last around 6 turns of combat. I therefore use high hit point enemies with moderate damage output. I very rarely use attacks that blast the party hard enough to drop them in one or two turns.
In response to the OP, I just look at the creatures' abilities and attacks and just judge how hard they'll hit. Provided they don't have any one shotting ability, the party will usually get by. I have a good feel for it.
I don't believe in throwing in more enemies, changing stats or otherwise altering an encounter once it begins. What's written is what happens, no matter how likely it makes a TPK. Doing so deprives players of agency and makes their struggles irrelevant. You might as well just describe the fight and dispense with the dice altogether if you're going to change the encounters around depending on how well they're doing, as the experience is really just DM narration.
While I believe this is true in general, there have been many times where a premade encounter or one I designed specifically had "extras" that would come in on X round. In some cases, the PC's were getting so nuked, I just dropped the extras. Why force a TPK?
On the opposite end of the spectrum, if the characters cakewalk through an encounter, why not run it back to back with the next encounter you planned to up the threat? Just sayin'.
While I understand player agency, what you say here is about equal in my mind to the example I will list below.
"I wrote up this interesting and challenging encounter for you guys!" *PCs plow through all enemies in round 1* "Whelp, I didn't expect you all to do that...sorry. That's all I got."
I think most players expect to at least get a bloody nose in combat and if you beat them within an inch of their life and they win, they are cheering themselves, not contemplating player agency.
I don't think that you can ever force a TPK if the PCs have the option of cutting and running. Sometimes, that ought to be the option.
And I think I'll take your "sorry that's all I got" and raise you:
"I wrote up this interesting and challenging encounter for you guys!" *PCs plow through all enemies in round 1* "But AHA! Turns out there were three more trolls just around the corner...!"
If your players KNOW you are just adding in extra shizz, that's one thing. I never run any module as is so, if someone has read it, my version will be different. As has been pointed out, as a DM, you will never know what your players might do in a game. If they do something unexpected, which they quite often do, you make allowances to incorporate what they've done into the game, right? If so, then you may have already changed your encounter. Why stop there? What if you are inspired to add another layer to the encounter, not necessarily just extra monsters but, maybe an encounter mechanic, a possible new party goal, a chance to gain new allies, etc?
No, I don’t test my encounters. I am not ashamed to admit that I commit the unforgivable sin of “hot fixing” my encounters whenever necessary. In other words, my encounters are not always the same when they’re over as they were when I started. I adjust things such as the number of hostiles (individual and waves), enemy AC and HP, and even the special traits on the statblock might change depending on need (especially HP).
Sometimes I make encounters too difficult and need to tone them down. Most of the time though, it turns out I didn’t make them challenging enough and end up adding monsters/waves of monsters, or most often adding HP to monsters mid-combat. The most significant single increase I ever did was to start with an overtuned wyvern, bumped the HP from average to Max, and then bumped it’s HP two more times mid combat to make sure it was challenging enough. (By the time combat was over it had 340 HP.) Of course, the more combat encounters I prepare and run, the more accurate my calculations and estimate later are, the less often I need to hot-fix them anymore.
So topic says it. When setting up encounters, do you ever take some time to build characters (or populate them from the campaign page) in the encounter builder and run them through it? I have done so with a couple things now, and I found it helpful in rebalancing some things. Now naturally, the dice gods can, at ANY time, come along and shift the balance badly, but as a general rule, I have found fine-tuning some of my encounters a bit easier after running through them.
I use 2 methods, one is for a series of dungeons I am going to set up, so I take 3 characters, at the level I will have the party and run them through. Second, I populate the party from our campaign and run them against my encounter. In both, there are a ton of variables, from players choices differing from mine, and in the dungeon ones, I have NO idea what the party makeup will be compared to my bodged together group of misfits. It does, however give me a feel for what can happen and if it looks like it will be too easy or too hard. Sometimes the enemy dynamics work in ways one doesn't expect, or an ability has more or less effect than expected and running the encounter can often uncover it.
So have you ever?
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I've never bothered doing this as the encounter tool I use is pretty darn good (donjon), but I've known a couple other DMs who do. Then again, my rule of thumb is "plan for less, add more if needed."
I also occasionally forget my own players' abilities, but generally I'm aware of most of what they can do, so I just keep that in mind with encounters.
I completely agree.
I use the encounter builder on here. The only time I’ve prerun an encounter is when I was testing a complex trap with a fellow DM.
Only spilt the party if you see something shiny.
Ariendela Sneakerson, Half-elf Rogue (8); Harmony Wolfsbane, Tiefling Bard (10); Agnomally, Gnomish Sorcerer (3); Breeze, Tabaxi Monk (8); Grace, Dragonborn Barbarian (7); DM, Homebrew- The Sequestered Lands/Underwater Explorers; Candlekeep
I don't sit down and roll dice, and I don't set up a battle map. Instead I use average dice rolls, adjusted by percent chance of hit against typical AC or saving throw, and theater of the mind. I make some assumptions about how many targets are likely to be targetable by an AoE ability. I think about how much healing the party can do and how fast. I calculate how many rounds it will take to wipe out the monsters, and see how much damage the monsters can do to the PCs in that time.
After 14 levels of play, I've got a pretty good idea of the party's tactics so I design the encounter to survive the Alpha Strike for sure, then the second round maybe (die rolls, changes in tactics, it varies...) and if it goes to the third round then either there is more than meets the eye or one side (or both sides...) are rolling REALLY poorly.
I will run the Encounter Builder with the campaign sheets and put it through a Gedankenexperiment based off what I know of the players and their tactics. I won't set up the battle mat and pull out the minis, but I do roll digital dice. Especially when it's a new group or we pickup or lose a player. Tactics change, and having that extra body either missing from or present on the field matters.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Interesting. I take a very different approach - I design combats to last a bare minimum of 3 turns, and usually intend them to last around 6 turns of combat. I therefore use high hit point enemies with moderate damage output. I very rarely use attacks that blast the party hard enough to drop them in one or two turns.
In response to the OP, I just look at the creatures' abilities and attacks and just judge how hard they'll hit. Provided they don't have any one shotting ability, the party will usually get by. I have a good feel for it.
I don't believe in throwing in more enemies, changing stats or otherwise altering an encounter once it begins. What's written is what happens, no matter how likely it makes a TPK. Doing so deprives players of agency and makes their struggles irrelevant. You might as well just describe the fight and dispense with the dice altogether if you're going to change the encounters around depending on how well they're doing, as the experience is really just DM narration.
While I believe this is true in general, there have been many times where a premade encounter or one I designed specifically had "extras" that would come in on X round. In some cases, the PC's were getting so nuked, I just dropped the extras. Why force a TPK?
On the opposite end of the spectrum, if the characters cakewalk through an encounter, why not run it back to back with the next encounter you planned to up the threat? Just sayin'.
While I understand player agency, what you say here is about equal in my mind to the example I will list below.
"I wrote up this interesting and challenging encounter for you guys!" *PCs plow through all enemies in round 1* "Whelp, I didn't expect you all to do that...sorry. That's all I got."
I think most players expect to at least get a bloody nose in combat and if you beat them within an inch of their life and they win, they are cheering themselves, not contemplating player agency.
I used to try to do this, but the actual runs would always deviate so much from my tests. Initiative order alone can make such a huge difference in how the battle plays out, and my players are pretty good at coming up with strategies that I did not anticipate. As such, I generally just kind of go with my gut when designing encounters, basing the difficulty on how they've preformed in the past.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I don't think that you can ever force a TPK if the PCs have the option of cutting and running. Sometimes, that ought to be the option.
And I think I'll take your "sorry that's all I got" and raise you:
"I wrote up this interesting and challenging encounter for you guys!" *PCs plow through all enemies in round 1* "But AHA! Turns out there were three more trolls just around the corner...!"
TOTALLY agree with the Initiative thing. Good rolls can help the players utterly curbstomp the enemy where bad rolls (we had those recently...) turns a simple fight into a mess.
Never have. Player options are inherently unpredictable. The d20 adds so much variance, at so many different places. Then you've got so many options per player, and many are not directly comparable to pick a strictly superior option in the moment. The order of them changes things too. Then you've got the ability to bend mechanics. "Can I try to pull the spell focus out of his hand" sort of thing.
This is an enormous strength of the game, to be clear.
But anyway, no. I'm curious to see how many people do though.
Without doubt, player choices and, as several have said, the dice gods, can shift an encounter in an instant. I only play with them when I am trying to find something to push their limits. I run it, to see, if on an average scrap, would it be highly unbalanced. Essentially to prevent what I THOUGHT might be a challenge from ending up a joke (again, dice can easily accomplish this) or something I think might offer a challenge end up being a fairly certain TPK unless I intervene. In both scenarios, player choice and dice rolls can shift things pretty heavily. On the easy-peasy side, I am fine with some poor rolls from my side and/or great rolls on their side lessening an encounter. I am also ok with the team coming up with some tactic or plan I hadn't considered and breezing through it. On the extra challenge side, my testing is to get a feel and ensure (as best I can) that a couple bad rounds of rolls for my players doesn't shift the fight to un-winable. Making it close, even having a couple folks fall unconscious is fine, and a series of bad rounds can also kick us in the groin, but having several bad rounds of rolls in sequence isn't nearly as common, so the test helps there a bit.
Without question, it's a long way from perfect, but I have found it has helped me build those on-the-edge encounters, where the outcome seems in question for a while.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
If your players KNOW you are just adding in extra shizz, that's one thing. I never run any module as is so, if someone has read it, my version will be different. As has been pointed out, as a DM, you will never know what your players might do in a game. If they do something unexpected, which they quite often do, you make allowances to incorporate what they've done into the game, right? If so, then you may have already changed your encounter. Why stop there? What if you are inspired to add another layer to the encounter, not necessarily just extra monsters but, maybe an encounter mechanic, a possible new party goal, a chance to gain new allies, etc?
No, I don’t test my encounters. I am not ashamed to admit that I commit the unforgivable sin of “hot fixing” my encounters whenever necessary. In other words, my encounters are not always the same when they’re over as they were when I started. I adjust things such as the number of hostiles (individual and waves), enemy AC and HP, and even the special traits on the statblock might change depending on need (especially HP).
Sometimes I make encounters too difficult and need to tone them down. Most of the time though, it turns out I didn’t make them challenging enough and end up adding monsters/waves of monsters, or most often adding HP to monsters mid-combat. The most significant single increase I ever did was to start with an overtuned wyvern, bumped the HP from average to Max, and then bumped it’s HP two more times mid combat to make sure it was challenging enough. (By the time combat was over it had 340 HP.) Of course, the more combat encounters I prepare and run, the more accurate my calculations and estimate later are, the less often I need to hot-fix them anymore.
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