I am test running a campaign where I dm for a single player.
They will start at level one and have no combat help from npcs. It's a solo adventure.
While testing the combats it seems to be very difficult to balance. It seems just one or two bad rolls on the players part would spell certain doom for them, even if it is a one one one encounter.
I have thought of various ways to balance it a little more towards the player winning since they start at such a low level but the only thing I can come up with that should work is to make the encounter a medium difficulty at most. Even for a boss encounter until they can get a few elevels under their belt.
Just curious if anyone has any other ideas? I don't want to just arbitrarily weaken the monsters or fudge dice andnthenplayer doesn't want that either. They are ok if their character dies but wants it to be a fair fight not just destroyed from the beginning. They also do not want npc help in combat which makes sense because they want THEIR character to be the hero not a team of npcs and one pc. Which makes sense to me. Of course npcs will be their for info and rp etc like normal.
You could use the average damage for enemy attacks instead of rolling for it.
You could find a way to give the player more HP. A quest giver casts Aid prior to sending them out, or just call it a house rule "heroic HP" to have players start with more HP.
If the player hasn't settled on a character yet, try to steer them toward a rogue or something that has more ability to get out of a bad situation.
You could use the average damage for enemy attacks instead of rolling for it.
You could find a way to give the player more HP. A quest giver casts Aid prior to sending them out, or just call it a house rule "heroic HP" to have players start with more HP.
If the player hasn't settled on a character yet, try to steer them toward a rogue or something that has more ability to get out of a bad situation.
I do the average damage already just to speed things up. I don't wanna influence their character that way as that's overreaching in my opinion. Heroic hp is something to consider.
You might want to consider starting them at a middle-tier level. This will help you in a few regards. Most importantly, this will give the player a much larger health pool, mitigating some of the “couple bad rolls and game over” issues. Additionally, the player will have a larger pool of spells and abilities to use, some of which will provide greater survivability. Finally, this will help you, since you will have a greater range of monster CRs to toss at the player.
Relaxing the attunement rules can also help some, by giving them more magical equipment so they can fight bigger monsters.
NPCs might give blessings or other boons when the player helps them - Death Ward, for example is going to be a good one in a campaign where no one can help the person up if they drop to 0.
You can have enemies capture the PC if they are knocked unconscious, rather than just execute them and force failures of death throws.
You have to be prepared that the PC might just die to bad dice rolls. If you don't have NPCs in the fight, there is literally no way to avoid it. Even if the PC is level 5, it's possible that a single Goblin can kill them if the dice just go horribly against your player.
Starting at level 1, a single critical hit stands a good chance of killing your PC. This will always be a danger in a solo campaign without NPCs.
Put the low level player up against really junk monsters. A few cat will do, if you want them to stand a chance of getting out alive. You can't really put them up against a single goblin until they're level 3 or higher, because the chance of a critical hit on them ending the campaign is just way too high.
Honestly you need NPCs if you want to have enjoyable combats. Every solo campaign I've ever run has required them, not just for the PC's survival, but for variety too. If your PC plays a martial class, combat will be relegated to little more than rolling attacks. If they play a spellcaster, they'll use the same spells in every encounter.
All interesting ideas. I know this game is meant to be a group game and that's why single player is so hard but me and the player still want to do it with just the two of us.
I will consider the suggestions but looking for other ways if doing it. Perhaps a combat animal companion of sorts would help...
Not necessarily for combat, but you will need some sort of "intelligence" for the PC to always have on hand for conversation in lieu of a table of players. This NPC will basically allow you the DM to do some non-meta sounding board stuff.
Going to link a great video on running a 1 on 1 game, that I think talks about combat scaling but focuses more on just the need for a different DM and player dynamic given the lack of a party:
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I run primarily solo games. My biggest piece of advise would be to allow the player other alternatives or escape routes to combat, especially in tier 1 play. For example, you might throw at them goblins who want weapons. They were planning on killing them PC for the weapons, but the PC might be able to offer then weapons instead of straight fighting. Or, here's a situation from my game, the enemy through a vial of essence of ether at the PC. The PC succeeded the first con save, then used druidcraft to redirect back to the enemy knocking them unconscious. Just give the agency to the players rather than the dice in the early levels especially.
Also, I find starting just a little higher levels helps a bit. Like around level 3 or so gives PCs a lot more options and ways to survive. If you want to start level 1, what I'll do sometimes is level them up faster than normal until their a bit higher level (level 3-5 usually) just so there's less time they're defenseless.
The final thing would just to make it clear that a TPK is not that hard in this situation and you did everything you could to avoid them being common but if it happens that's just part of playing with one player.
I agree with writing the adventure in such a way that potentially falling to 0 hp doesn't mean the end. If they're mauled by a beast, someone rescues them. If they're knocked out by a thief, the thief stabilizes them so they don't face a murder rap.
I try to level people from 1 by giving them XP for skill checks. It's 300 XP. RAW, all they really have to do is stab 30 kittens.
I like what Caerwyn suggested. Make the player a higher level and/or give them some other sort of buff.
Alternately give them an extra turn each round. With only one PC instead of many they will guaranteed lose the war of action economy. The enemies will be able to do more because there will always be more of them.
This is also why only using a single creature as a "boss" fight vs a 6 person party is bad. The party in this case can do vastly more on each round.
Action economy is definitely important. A lot of suggestions to think about but did not want to just auto level them or start them off with multiple magic items.
This will be a challenge as a dm but I will likely go the way of temp buffs or a companion pet for combat. Maybe a one time npc team up with someone who becomes a rival later. A few other options will be considered such as an heirloom shield or armor.
Yeah I'm not worried about them not solving puzzles and what not they are a skilled and experienced player, so they are good there. Thank you for the info though. 👍 I'm still leaning towards maybe the heirloom armor and then possibly a companion or rival after the first level or two.
Sly Flourish just released an article yesterday about one on one D&D. Mike's thoughts on gameplay are always worth a read, and he likes to keep things short.
Sly Flourish just released an article yesterday about one on one D&D. Mike's thoughts on gameplay are always worth a read, and he likes to keep things short.
Balancing is almost impossible due to die rolls with only a single character and low hit points.
As an example, the very first test encounter I ran in 5e just to see how things work was one orc vs a first level ranger and a first level druid with normal starting equipment. The orc knocked one character to zero and almost got both. The characters just didn't roll that well on to hit die rolls. A crit wasn't even involved. A single orc is a hard encounter for two 1st level characters. Similarly, a single goblin is considered a hard encounter for one 1st level character.
If you use hidden die rolls then you can fudge things so that the creature doesn't kill the character if necessary.
However, other than that, you are probably best off getting them out of level 1 as quickly as possible just so that they will have a few more hit points. Also, add a NPC/sidekick or let the player run two characters to make the group a bit more robust.
Finally, you should get the player to create a character that would believably be out adventuring on their own. Most characters have a group for a reason.
One way to adjust balance could also be, if the PC is fighting goblins, give the goblins poor weapons. It could be a rusty short sword, that instead of 1d6 damage did 1d4 and it was off balance, so maybe -1 to hit also. Or they don't even have swords at all, but just clubs, sticks from a tree, improvised weapons, which they are not proficient with.
If it is beasts they fight, it could be young beast, not at full strength, thus dealing less damage than the full grown version in the monster manual.
Oh and also don't forget, not every encounter has to be solved with combat. Maybe the lone goblin og orc, really don't want to fight, maybe they are just out gathering food for their wives. :)
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I am test running a campaign where I dm for a single player.
They will start at level one and have no combat help from npcs. It's a solo adventure.
While testing the combats it seems to be very difficult to balance. It seems just one or two bad rolls on the players part would spell certain doom for them, even if it is a one one one encounter.
I have thought of various ways to balance it a little more towards the player winning since they start at such a low level but the only thing I can come up with that should work is to make the encounter a medium difficulty at most. Even for a boss encounter until they can get a few elevels under their belt.
Just curious if anyone has any other ideas? I don't want to just arbitrarily weaken the monsters or fudge dice andnthenplayer doesn't want that either. They are ok if their character dies but wants it to be a fair fight not just destroyed from the beginning. They also do not want npc help in combat which makes sense because they want THEIR character to be the hero not a team of npcs and one pc. Which makes sense to me. Of course npcs will be their for info and rp etc like normal.
You could use the average damage for enemy attacks instead of rolling for it.
You could find a way to give the player more HP. A quest giver casts Aid prior to sending them out, or just call it a house rule "heroic HP" to have players start with more HP.
If the player hasn't settled on a character yet, try to steer them toward a rogue or something that has more ability to get out of a bad situation.
I do the average damage already just to speed things up. I don't wanna influence their character that way as that's overreaching in my opinion. Heroic hp is something to consider.
You might want to consider starting them at a middle-tier level. This will help you in a few regards. Most importantly, this will give the player a much larger health pool, mitigating some of the “couple bad rolls and game over” issues. Additionally, the player will have a larger pool of spells and abilities to use, some of which will provide greater survivability. Finally, this will help you, since you will have a greater range of monster CRs to toss at the player.
Relaxing the attunement rules can also help some, by giving them more magical equipment so they can fight bigger monsters.
NPCs might give blessings or other boons when the player helps them - Death Ward, for example is going to be a good one in a campaign where no one can help the person up if they drop to 0.
You can have enemies capture the PC if they are knocked unconscious, rather than just execute them and force failures of death throws.
I've run several solo campaigns from level 1.
You have to be prepared that the PC might just die to bad dice rolls. If you don't have NPCs in the fight, there is literally no way to avoid it. Even if the PC is level 5, it's possible that a single Goblin can kill them if the dice just go horribly against your player.
Starting at level 1, a single critical hit stands a good chance of killing your PC. This will always be a danger in a solo campaign without NPCs.
Put the low level player up against really junk monsters. A few cat will do, if you want them to stand a chance of getting out alive. You can't really put them up against a single goblin until they're level 3 or higher, because the chance of a critical hit on them ending the campaign is just way too high.
Honestly you need NPCs if you want to have enjoyable combats. Every solo campaign I've ever run has required them, not just for the PC's survival, but for variety too. If your PC plays a martial class, combat will be relegated to little more than rolling attacks. If they play a spellcaster, they'll use the same spells in every encounter.
All interesting ideas. I know this game is meant to be a group game and that's why single player is so hard but me and the player still want to do it with just the two of us.
I will consider the suggestions but looking for other ways if doing it. Perhaps a combat animal companion of sorts would help...
Not necessarily for combat, but you will need some sort of "intelligence" for the PC to always have on hand for conversation in lieu of a table of players. This NPC will basically allow you the DM to do some non-meta sounding board stuff.
Going to link a great video on running a 1 on 1 game, that I think talks about combat scaling but focuses more on just the need for a different DM and player dynamic given the lack of a party:
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I run primarily solo games. My biggest piece of advise would be to allow the player other alternatives or escape routes to combat, especially in tier 1 play. For example, you might throw at them goblins who want weapons. They were planning on killing them PC for the weapons, but the PC might be able to offer then weapons instead of straight fighting. Or, here's a situation from my game, the enemy through a vial of essence of ether at the PC. The PC succeeded the first con save, then used druidcraft to redirect back to the enemy knocking them unconscious. Just give the agency to the players rather than the dice in the early levels especially.
Also, I find starting just a little higher levels helps a bit. Like around level 3 or so gives PCs a lot more options and ways to survive. If you want to start level 1, what I'll do sometimes is level them up faster than normal until their a bit higher level (level 3-5 usually) just so there's less time they're defenseless.
The final thing would just to make it clear that a TPK is not that hard in this situation and you did everything you could to avoid them being common but if it happens that's just part of playing with one player.
Good luck!
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Thanks for all the tips. I will watch the video. I look forward to hearing from others.
I agree with writing the adventure in such a way that potentially falling to 0 hp doesn't mean the end. If they're mauled by a beast, someone rescues them. If they're knocked out by a thief, the thief stabilizes them so they don't face a murder rap.
I try to level people from 1 by giving them XP for skill checks. It's 300 XP. RAW, all they really have to do is stab 30 kittens.
I like what Caerwyn suggested. Make the player a higher level and/or give them some other sort of buff.
Alternately give them an extra turn each round. With only one PC instead of many they will guaranteed lose the war of action economy. The enemies will be able to do more because there will always be more of them.
This is also why only using a single creature as a "boss" fight vs a 6 person party is bad. The party in this case can do vastly more on each round.
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Action economy is definitely important. A lot of suggestions to think about but did not want to just auto level them or start them off with multiple magic items.
This will be a challenge as a dm but I will likely go the way of temp buffs or a companion pet for combat. Maybe a one time npc team up with someone who becomes a rival later. A few other options will be considered such as an heirloom shield or armor.
Yeah I'm not worried about them not solving puzzles and what not they are a skilled and experienced player, so they are good there. Thank you for the info though. 👍 I'm still leaning towards maybe the heirloom armor and then possibly a companion or rival after the first level or two.
Sly Flourish just released an article yesterday about one on one D&D. Mike's thoughts on gameplay are always worth a read, and he likes to keep things short.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I'll second this. It is a good article.
I will check it out thanks for the info.
Balancing is almost impossible due to die rolls with only a single character and low hit points.
As an example, the very first test encounter I ran in 5e just to see how things work was one orc vs a first level ranger and a first level druid with normal starting equipment. The orc knocked one character to zero and almost got both. The characters just didn't roll that well on to hit die rolls. A crit wasn't even involved. A single orc is a hard encounter for two 1st level characters. Similarly, a single goblin is considered a hard encounter for one 1st level character.
If you use hidden die rolls then you can fudge things so that the creature doesn't kill the character if necessary.
However, other than that, you are probably best off getting them out of level 1 as quickly as possible just so that they will have a few more hit points. Also, add a NPC/sidekick or let the player run two characters to make the group a bit more robust.
Finally, you should get the player to create a character that would believably be out adventuring on their own. Most characters have a group for a reason.
One way to adjust balance could also be, if the PC is fighting goblins, give the goblins poor weapons. It could be a rusty short sword, that instead of 1d6 damage did 1d4 and it was off balance, so maybe -1 to hit also.
Or they don't even have swords at all, but just clubs, sticks from a tree, improvised weapons, which they are not proficient with.
If it is beasts they fight, it could be young beast, not at full strength, thus dealing less damage than the full grown version in the monster manual.
Thanks for the tips on the beasts that could be fun especially if they go ranger or druid.
Oh and also don't forget, not every encounter has to be solved with combat.
Maybe the lone goblin og orc, really don't want to fight, maybe they are just out gathering food for their wives. :)