4th & Dragon : Dungeons and Dragons...and stuff

Let’s say that you’re running a published encounter (like one of the ones in the mini-adventure in the back of the DMG) but when you’re PCs arrive at the encounter, they don’t quite match the specs that the encounter was designed for.  Their level might be different, or there might be more or fewer PCs than the encounter was designed for.  You could run the encounter as is, but that would lead to some sort of hiccup in the character advancement, or would make the encounter harder or easier than the module planed on.  So, to get rid of that problem, you decide to scale the encounter, a process that’s supposed to be really easy in 4e.  And when it comes to levels, it is.  Party level too high?  Bump every monster in the encounter up the necessary number of levels.  Too low?  Bump them down.  Every monster is supposed to be easily manipulatable through an approximately 10 level range (5 up, 5 down) and there are guides for that in the DMG.

But what about numbers?  Say you have a large group of 8 PCs.  Or maybe some of your players didn’t show up and you’re down to three PCs for the evening.  How do you go about scaling those stock encounters that were designed for 5 PCs?

Black Plauge - 04 September 2008 07:10 AM

But what about numbers?  Say you have a large group of 8 PCs.  Or maybe some of your players didn’t show up and you’re down to three PCs for the evening.  How do you go about scaling those stock encounters that were designed for 5 PCs?

The way I have been handling it is to look at the fight xp total and scaling it back into the right realm. This could mean that baddies drop/raise in levels or simply get taken out/added to the fight.

When you have fewer player they what they recommand, usualy putting some monster aside or make them come in wave to not overflow then PC. What they recommand in the DMG is remove some NPC out of the encounter if you have more player add a few NPC. Take the table in the DMG for xp target for encounter check for the number of PC you got and you will see how much in xp value you have to add NPC. Usualy adding 1 NPC per player is a good math.

For higher level or lower level party use the DMG again to scale it. I found it personnaly easier to scale for the number of PC then fo rthe level, but thats just me.

That’s always been one of the main reasons I try and stay away from buying modules/adventures; I never have exactly 5 players from week to week.  Usually I will have 6-7 and about 4 or so will be able to make each session.  However, I think 4E makes it a lot easier to scale upwards.  Generally speaking the basic encounters have monsters that are even to the encounters level, so its really easy to just add more standard monsters for each extra player.  This breaks slightly when the level of the monsters are higher or lower then the level of the encounter, in which case I just fudge it and pretend they are and maybe increase or decrease an attack or damage by 1 for a few of the monsters.  If they encounter doesn’t have any standard monsters in it it can be a lot harder because you have to find a standard monster that would be in the encounter group.  This is sometime almost impossible without making your own from scratch as the solo monster in the encounter is new with the release of the module/adventure.  Try “leveling” the monster then to bring the XP total more inline with the pool for your party size and level.  I won’t get into making an encounter lower level for a smaller group as I think taking away creatures is a bit too much (one, maybe two is ok) so I’d just “unlevel” things and take a point off of their defenses.  Unfortunately there isn’t really good ways to do this stuff so fudging it is the best I got.

Talae - 04 September 2008 07:21 AM

Black Plauge - 04 September 2008 07:10 AM

But what about numbers?  Say you have a large group of 8 PCs.  Or maybe some of your players didn’t show up and you’re down to three PCs for the evening.  How do you go about scaling those stock encounters that were designed for 5 PCs?

The way I have been handling it is to look at the fight xp total and scaling it back into the right realm. This could mean that baddies drop/raise in levels or simply get taken out/added to the fight.

But how do you decide what to do?

Say you have a level 2 encounter designed for 5 PCs.  It was designed with an XP budget of 625.  You’ve only got 3 PCs, and thus are limited to an XP budget of 375.  How do you decide whether to scale back the level of some/all of the monsters or to eliminate monsters to drop that “extra” 150 XP?

Or maybe you have 8 PCs.  You now get an XP budget of 1000.  Do you level up or add creatures to make up that needed 375 XP?  If it’s sometimes one and sometimes the other, what criteria do you use to choose?

I’m trying to figure out how other DMs handle this and what their experience with it is, so that I can write guidelines for scaling encounters of my own design (I’m getting ready to update Tax Man by adding the stats).

Usualy they say to scale for the number not the level. But up to you.

Scaling up is easy. Just increase the amount of monsters and in some cases (when many is not good for the plot) increase the level(s).

Scaling down can result in odd encounters if the adventure calls for some specific number of foes (like a goblin tribe). I recommend turning some normal monsters into minions to preserve the number of foes but to reduce the xp.

I do not recommend scaling down levels because the monsters can become too weak.

I do not recommend scaling down levels because the monsters can become too weak.

If monsters becoming too weak is an argument against leveling down to scale an encounter for low numbers, why isn’t monsters becoming too strong an argument against leveling up to scale an encounter for high numbers?

The “oversize” group seems to be an easy solution...double up on some of the supporting cast critters.

Part of the overall structure of 4E, and the reason why many (not all) encounters revolve around foes in roughly equal numbers to the party, is to give the PCs a comparable group of targets of appropriate power to tackle.

Downscaling is tougher, as taking away creatures or reducing the power of them can seriously alter the nature, personality, or design of an encounter.  In many cases, it might be better to lower the monsters’ levels rather than reduce how many there are to accommodate a smaller party.  “Demoting” elite creatures to standard versions might also be a wise approach.

Mind you, this is all said with very little actual 4E experience, so it’s all theory from this end.

Just for an example:

The 4MM lists as a Level 9 Encounter (p205):

1 Orc Cheiftan (l8 Elite brute)
5 Orc Warriors (l9 Minion)
1 Dire Boar (L6 Brute)
2 Ogre Skirmishers (L8 Skirmisher)

An appropriate encounter for a 9th level party of 5 PCs.

To ratchet it up for a party of 8, you need 1,200 more XP.  My inclination would be 2 more Ogre Skirmishers (700) and 5 more Orc Warriors (500 XP).  It’s more of the same, so it fits the nature of the group, and it gives more targets for the larger party to deal with.

For a 3-member party facing the same threat, you’ve got to knock off 800 XP...a tougher challenge.  My inclination would be to drop the Chieftan back to non-elite status (350), and give up one Ogre and 1 Warrior (350 and 100 respectively).  The remaining group still has the same general “look and feel”, but it’s scaled to fit with minimum adjusting or effort on your part as DM.

I find that encounters stay more dynamic and interesting if you don’t lower levels much, so that the risk of single creatures hitting the players stays about the same. If you demote foes (elite to standard etc.), you can the lower xp reward to the correct levels while keeping levels equal and you don’t suffer from really low chance of hitting the PC’s.

Rothe - 04 September 2008 11:46 AM

I find that encounters stay more dynamic and interesting if you don’t lower levels much, so that the risk of single creatures hitting the players stays about the same. If you demote foes (elite to standard etc.), you can the lower xp reward to the correct levels while keeping levels equal and you don’t suffer from really low chance of hitting the PC’s.

I still don’t get why you worry about that but not about the converse problem (monsters hitting the PC’s too often) that comes with leveling up the monsters.  You seem to have a double standard and I’m trying to get a feel for why.

Edit: I should note that I don’t necessarily think that having a double standard is a bad thing.  If there is a good reason for it then a double standard can be a good thing.  I’m trying to understand your reasons, Rothe, not criticize you for having them.

OK, the reason is that in some cases you really don’t have much to work with in terms of upgrading for more players - this is only those cases where you don’t want the encounter to be against many foes for plot reasons.
Let’s say you have an encounter against a dragon. You often don’t want to be adding other creatures in there, so your only options are to add levels to the monster or to add hazards that make the encounter more difficult, but are not creatures.

I do recommend primarily adding monsters to increase challenge, but sometimes you don’t have that option, especially with solo monsters.

For decreasing the challenge, you usually have an easier time to do it by “demoting” monster types without changing how the encounter looks. For example, you might reduce a solo dragon to an elite if you only have 2-3 players.

I always try to avoid adjusting levels to account for more/less if I can - sometimes it is difficult though.

Well when I have worked on designing encounters, I use the experience table in the DMG.  And if there are more than 6/less than four, just take how much experience for one and divide, that is how much per PC.  So say you have 1200 exp for a lvl 2 encounter for 6 PCs (this is completely random numbers, just for examples sake) then you divide by 6 for the exp per PC.  And if you have 8 PC’s then multiply and get your total exp budget for such and such level encounter for so many PC’s, like 1600 in this case.  Then look at the exp for each monster in your module and kind of rebuild it to your specifications.  Maybe a level up on a few monsters if you need to keep the number of them low.  And if you want it weaker then replace a few monsters with say 2 minions instead of the 4-5 that is equal to one brute.  Just comes to breaking everything down and rebuilding it how you need it.  Might take a little time but I think it works good.

All publish adventure set for 5pc, i just started with new group of 3pc. which i find it difficult to scale it for my group. if replace the standard with more minions, it doesn’t show the serious threat of the story/adventure, where it actually need 5pc to save the world.

My group just done the kobold hall, i intend to bring them to talon pass add one NPC hero for them. by the end they will be at lv3, then introduced them to KotS, thinking by then they would be able to take up the challenge… hopefully.

thanks.

Like I was saying, I understand that sometimes you just can’t add minions because an encounter just has the feel of a few tough (Gibbering Mouther Ate Your Word!) enemies.

In that case I would think your only real option would be to level a monster or two down or just replace them with a weaker type of monster.

Okay, so to summarize thus far we have the following methods:

- add/subtract monsters
- level up/down monsters
- add/subtract traps/hazards
- up/down grade monsters (minion <> standard <> elite <> solo)

Now, how would you prioritize these methods.  I.e. given no plot considerations, which one would you go for first?  If that one wasn’t possible/reasonable (for any reason, plot or otherwise) which would you go for second?  Etc.

Are there other methods that people have that I didn’t list?  If so, where would you put them in your priority scheme?