Hey all. I'm planning a Halloween 1-shot around a homebrew creature that I've been wanting to use for years, but I'm struggling to work out what level my players should be building their characters at. I won't post the creature here in case my players happen to stumble upon this thread, but its a CR 9 legendary creature with lair actions, one of which allows it to summon two CR1 creatures every other turn. I'll have 4 or 5 players, and I do want the fight to be a real challenge. What level do y'all think I should tell them to build to?
You're kinda doing this in reverse, you'd be better off choosing the character level and then making the monster fit it.
How many encounters are they going to be doing prior to reaching the end boss? It will really depend on what else they'll be doing before they get there.
It also really hard to determine difficulty based on just character level and CR. I like to take into account what things the creature is capable of, and what the PCs are capable of. A flying creature with powerful ranged attacks can punch way over its weight against a group of melee based PCs without good ranged attacks. An undead vs. a team of clerics and paladins would be far weaker than the CR indicates. Simplistic examples I know, but you get the point. Also, how do things like the environment affect the battle? Is it dark? Very large or very small battlefield? Difficult terrain? Minions?
These kinds of things are unfortunately even harder to prep for a one shot, and the higher level you go, the harder it can be. Not only do you have to know the PCs' abilities inside and out, but then you have to guess at how the players will play them. Will they forget about an ability you counted on them using? Will they come up with an approach you didn't think of? If you can get your players to let you know at least a general idea of what kinds of characters they will be building, it would probably help.
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Hey all. I'm planning a Halloween 1-shot around a homebrew creature that I've been wanting to use for years, but I'm struggling to work out what level my players should be building their characters at. I won't post the creature here in case my players happen to stumble upon this thread, but its a CR 9 legendary creature with lair actions, one of which allows it to summon two CR1 creatures every other turn. I'll have 4 or 5 players, and I do want the fight to be a real challenge. What level do y'all think I should tell them to build to?
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You're kinda doing this in reverse, you'd be better off choosing the character level and then making the monster fit it.
How many encounters are they going to be doing prior to reaching the end boss? It will really depend on what else they'll be doing before they get there.
No other encounters: Level 5
3 Deadly encounters: Level 8
5 Medium - Hard encounters: Level 7
7 Medium - Hard encounters: Level 9
It also really hard to determine difficulty based on just character level and CR. I like to take into account what things the creature is capable of, and what the PCs are capable of. A flying creature with powerful ranged attacks can punch way over its weight against a group of melee based PCs without good ranged attacks. An undead vs. a team of clerics and paladins would be far weaker than the CR indicates. Simplistic examples I know, but you get the point. Also, how do things like the environment affect the battle? Is it dark? Very large or very small battlefield? Difficult terrain? Minions?
These kinds of things are unfortunately even harder to prep for a one shot, and the higher level you go, the harder it can be. Not only do you have to know the PCs' abilities inside and out, but then you have to guess at how the players will play them. Will they forget about an ability you counted on them using? Will they come up with an approach you didn't think of? If you can get your players to let you know at least a general idea of what kinds of characters they will be building, it would probably help.