To be accurate my Players are 3 Wizards, a Sorcerer, and a Arcane Trickster Rouge. When I was running our session 0 we all agreed that joining different Guilds didn't make a whole lot of sense. So we spent an hour talking about the merits of all the guilds and they ultimately landed on Izzet. Then we got into character creation, I told them that while the book says that the guild is made up of certain classes, I would allow other classes as long as they justified a fit for them. But they all ultimately landed on the above party make up.
So now I am sitting here trying to figure out how I build an adventure for them. I have some ideas of what I think would be cool regarding what project they are working on within the guild (they are building a Weather Machine as a super weapon). Finding parts, power sources, information, and just hiding what they are doing are all great hooks for an adventure here. But the problem I am having is designing encounters.
Up to this point I have only run traditional adventures with a more standard party make up. But now I am thinking about how to modify my prep to handle the fact my players are a bunch of squishys. I have played a Wizard before, and being on the front lines sucks when it happens. Add to the fact that my players generally tend to favor combat over role-play heavy type campaigns (they literally said we want Boss battles, we wanna fight guild masters and such (I said dark souls style boss battles and they said yes)).
On the one hand I could give them NPCs to boss around and serve as meat shields. But they are only level 5 (starting because they want level 20), and while granted their project is important to the guild, I don't think it is a good idea to give them access to such things so early.
What is your opinion on what I could do with this, in terms of encounter design? Should I ease them into it with some easier stuff that has a hard time with caster types, or should I just yeet them into the deep end in order to illustrate for them their weaknesses?
Personally I would kill the RED Trickster, clearly he is either a commie or a plant from the Wizards of Thay. Failing that 4 arcane casters throwing out 2d6 - 2d8 ranged attack cantrips and the Trickster either throwing out booming blade / Green-flame-blade on a rapier for 2d8+Dex + 3d6 sneak damage when possible, they should be okay as long as the encounters are balanced.
My recommendation is a seemingly easy start with an abundant amount of melee combatants. Engage each of them with 1-3 of these easy-to-kill melees - your purpose is to force them to use defensive tactics and spells to get themselves out of the way. If you don’t teach them this early enough they will die very easily later on.
After this pressure they should definitely be packing spells like Blink, Blur, Shield, Mirror Image, etc. If not, then you’re not responsible anymore for them not learning how to play it.
Besides that, they should have ample spells for conjuring demons for fodder, using AoE to separate themselves from the bad guys, and targeted disabling to slow them down for others.
The problem with a party like this is when they start getting summons like elementals and better spells in general - they will absolutely dominate your spellcasters, overwhelm melees, and outright deny the bigger baddies. You’ll need to make your later encounters much more effective at counterspells (more low level spellcasters), and enough baddies to surround them (they won’t have great perception).
I would be tempted to not customize for them and let them either come up with clever tactics or find out they should adjust things. The main weakness is that everything they have is daily powers, so if you actually use up your daily encounter budget they'll be running on fumes by the last fights.
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To be accurate my Players are 3 Wizards, a Sorcerer, and a Arcane Trickster Rouge. When I was running our session 0 we all agreed that joining different Guilds didn't make a whole lot of sense. So we spent an hour talking about the merits of all the guilds and they ultimately landed on Izzet. Then we got into character creation, I told them that while the book says that the guild is made up of certain classes, I would allow other classes as long as they justified a fit for them. But they all ultimately landed on the above party make up.
So now I am sitting here trying to figure out how I build an adventure for them. I have some ideas of what I think would be cool regarding what project they are working on within the guild (they are building a Weather Machine as a super weapon). Finding parts, power sources, information, and just hiding what they are doing are all great hooks for an adventure here. But the problem I am having is designing encounters.
Up to this point I have only run traditional adventures with a more standard party make up. But now I am thinking about how to modify my prep to handle the fact my players are a bunch of squishys. I have played a Wizard before, and being on the front lines sucks when it happens. Add to the fact that my players generally tend to favor combat over role-play heavy type campaigns (they literally said we want Boss battles, we wanna fight guild masters and such (I said dark souls style boss battles and they said yes)).
On the one hand I could give them NPCs to boss around and serve as meat shields. But they are only level 5 (starting because they want level 20), and while granted their project is important to the guild, I don't think it is a good idea to give them access to such things so early.
What is your opinion on what I could do with this, in terms of encounter design? Should I ease them into it with some easier stuff that has a hard time with caster types, or should I just yeet them into the deep end in order to illustrate for them their weaknesses?
Personally I would kill the RED Trickster, clearly he is either a commie or a plant from the Wizards of Thay. Failing that 4 arcane casters throwing out 2d6 - 2d8 ranged attack cantrips and the Trickster either throwing out booming blade / Green-flame-blade on a rapier for 2d8+Dex + 3d6 sneak damage when possible, they should be okay as long as the encounters are balanced.
Deep end for sure. Don’t change anything.
My recommendation is a seemingly easy start with an abundant amount of melee combatants. Engage each of them with 1-3 of these easy-to-kill melees - your purpose is to force them to use defensive tactics and spells to get themselves out of the way. If you don’t teach them this early enough they will die very easily later on.
After this pressure they should definitely be packing spells like Blink, Blur, Shield, Mirror Image, etc. If not, then you’re not responsible anymore for them not learning how to play it.
Besides that, they should have ample spells for conjuring demons for fodder, using AoE to separate themselves from the bad guys, and targeted disabling to slow them down for others.
The problem with a party like this is when they start getting summons like elementals and better spells in general - they will absolutely dominate your spellcasters, overwhelm melees, and outright deny the bigger baddies. You’ll need to make your later encounters much more effective at counterspells (more low level spellcasters), and enough baddies to surround them (they won’t have great perception).
I would be tempted to not customize for them and let them either come up with clever tactics or find out they should adjust things. The main weakness is that everything they have is daily powers, so if you actually use up your daily encounter budget they'll be running on fumes by the last fights.