Hello! Going to preface this with saying that while I am not new to DMing, I am mediocre at best, and I am also returning to the gig after an extended hiatus. One of the things I have always struggled with is how to build an appropriate combat encounter for my games. Most of what I have run when I DM has been the published modules, so very little thinking and planning needed there. But I am in the process of transitioning from Sunless Citadel to Forge of Fury, and want to do something a bit more compelling to fill the travel time (game time, that is) it is going to take to get to the next location than just a brief paragraph that "travel happened, and then you arrived." I have an idea in motion currently, but need to flesh it out a bit in a way that won't kill the players, and also not level them up so much that they are outside the parameters of the module.

To give a little background, the PCs have reached the end of the Sunless Citadel. One of the characters needed to find a fruit to heal her ailing father, which she did; however, the fruit was already starting to rot. They'd managed to recover Sharwyn and Sir Braford, but both are in a bad way, and will never make it back to Oakhurst (think that was the town name) alive. The character who found the fruit chooses to sacrifice her one chance to save her father, and offers it up to the dying NPCs. Only, it's just enough to save one, and Sir Braford insists Sharwyn eats the fruit, which heals her. Braford dies, but not before requesting that the PCs return his holy symbol to the Church of the Silver Flame in Thrane. They agree, and that's how things end in the Citadel.

The idea I have is this: While in Thrane, they are approached by a guy who asks them to help him recover his impounded airship from the authorities. If successful, he will take them to the Mror Holds, where I am setting the Forge of Fury adventure, per the book's suggestion. Depending on how well they do, it could also give them access to an ally who could help them in the future. I am thinking two to three encounters with various guards, with the last being the hardest of the encounters, sort of a boss fight scenario. I am having the hardest time understanding how to build the encounter so that it's not super easy, but also not deadly or otherwise unwinnable. The party of five characters is level 3, and I am thinking to have the airship captain (a CR 1 half elf soldier build) and his first mate (a CR 2 shifter scout build) join them, so I think the opponent count could be higher than normal, but I am just not sure how to go about building these encounters. Have looked at several how-to guides on building encounters, but find most of them difficult to understand, or tend to go off on a tangent unrelated to what I am looking for.

I am hoping some of you more experienced DMs could help flesh out this plan of mine, or at least point me in the direction of something that succinctly explains encounter building in a way that I can understand. Need to have this ready for Friday night's game, and I am starting to panic! Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

If you want to just use the rules in the DMG, the encounter builder makes adding up values a lot easier. However, there's a couple things to consider

• The rules have both a daily budget (for 5xlevel 3, 6000) and an encounter budget. Filling the daily budget with only three fights will put all three fights at 2,000 ('Deadly'), which may be more hardcore than your players are used to.
• The rules assume at least two short rests per day. If no short rests are possible (which seems likely in this case) I'd probably only use a total budget of around 3,000.
• I generally handle allied NPCs with "and they're offscreen fighting some bad guys who are also offscreen" as that keeps the amount of stuff I need to keep track of minimized.  If you're going to use them onscreen, I'd probably bump the daily budget to 8k, or 4k with no rests.
• Different playing groups and PC groups have different levels of challenge they're comfortable with. If you don't have a firm sense of their abilities, and are relatively inexperienced themselves, don't be afraid to fudge -- adjust later encounters based on how the PCs are doing, or have reinforcements arrive mid-fight.
• Have a plan for 'oops, the PCs fail'. That doesn't have to be everyone dies; for example, guards might toss them in prison, particularly if the PCs were making an effort to not kill guards (it may be worth reminding players of the option).

I think has Pantagruel666 forwarded some good advice here.

A relatively simple, easy, and effective encounter builder is Kobold Fight Club. If you want to build 3 encounters, escalating in difficulty, I might create a Medium, Hard, and Deadly encounter using KFC.

Planning and trying to balance encounters ahead of time like that is a good first step. 

Knowing how to dynamically "tweak" the combat if things go other than expected or desired is a good skill to develop as well. That may-or-may-not included die fudging (depending on your views on whether that's acceptable, or not), but you can adjust combat in other ways as well. As Pantagruel666 points out having an "oops, the PCs failed" recovery plan, or a "hey, the PCs are succeeding way to easily" plan would be good to have figured out ahead of time.

Alternatively - and this would only work if the Players are aware you're adopting this style - don't try and balance your encounters. Build encounters thematically according what is plausible, given the way the Adventure is unfolding, without paying attention to balance. If your Players are aware you've adopted this kind of design style, then they won't make the assumption that every combat encounter is winnable, or solvable, and charge straight in. Suddenly scouting and battlefield intelligence becomes more important, so don't be reticent to give them clues and hints. Maybe they'll decide to charge in, maybe they'll get reinforcements, maybe they'll bypass the combat entirely. I think that so long as everyone understands what your design approach is, you'll find that your Players often surprise you with the solutions they come up with :)

Thank you for the reply! This has been incredibly helpful, as the whole encounter budget thing was one of my stumbling blocks. Have a slightly better sense of how that works now, so think I can cobble something together that should give them a challenge but not kill them outright. :-) Appreciate the advice.

By 'fudge' in this case I meant adjusting your preplanned encounters (original plan was 12 guards, maybe I'll use 10) or having maybe/maybe not creatures (reinforcements might arrive late, early, or not at all). Die roll fudging is a separate issue that I mostly avoid; if I didn't intend for it to be random I shouldn't be rolling in the first place.

Quote from Vedexent >>

 

Alternatively - and this would only work if the Players are aware you're adopting this style - don't try and balance your encounters. Build encounters thematically according what is plausible, given the way the Adventure is unfolding, without paying attention to balance. If your Players are aware you've adopted this kind of design style, then they won't make the assumption that every combat encounter is winnable, or solvable, and charge straight in.

 Funny idea. If I'm doing this in D&D I think I 1. would warn my players (like REALLY warn them) 2. Be really explicit that here are MANY, MANY enemies and 3. have that 'oooops, The-PC-failed'-plan already mentions. At least the first few times!

Perhaps try out Kobold fight club with an encounter you've already played - just to check the "danger-level" for your style of game. I think both earlier posts has a lot of good advice.

Other things you can keep "up your sleeve" is for instance a (healing?) potion or two. Might save an important NPC from an early death due to bad luck, and nobody knows if you choose not to use it.