Ah yes, combat, because what is a game about sword and sorcery without a reason to use the swords and sorcery? For this post, we’re going to delve into the most basic details of designing an encounter that fits your campaign and power level.
For now, we’re going to start with those staple first encounters that seem to go well. Now, some people will be wondering what to do if they’re starting things at a higher level (like at level 3, 5, or 7), and to this I have to say: this post isn’t for you. If you are a new DM, ask your players to come down to level 1 with you. Seeing your players grow through their levels will teach you so much about how to design encounters, and will also allow you to take things slow.
If you’re here, you’ve probably already put together a setting/setup for your campaign. If you haven’t, go ahead and pop over to this post and come back when you’re ready. (Hint: If you haven’t done that part yet, you’re not ready. Step 1 will make this very clear). Attached to this guide will be “quick start” notes that outline very simple ways to use the lessons you’ve learned along the way.
Step 1: Understand your locale.
So, you’ve got a setting, you’ve got interesting places to put your players, and you probably have an idea of where they’ll all be starting. Odds are, this place isn’t going to be terribly dangerous, and if you’re new and wanted to go for dangerous, I’d suggest rethinking something so flashy. You’re far beyond a “Getting Started” post if you’re really ready for that anyways.
The two best ways to start a campaign (in my opinion) are in a town, or in a prison. A town works well enough, so long as you can orchestrate a way for all of your players come together. A prison is much less complicated, as you typically give/discuss a reason for your players to be in that sort of setting. A more detailed post on how to form adventures will come later, but for now, it’s more important you know how to challenge your players appropriately.
We’re going to use these possible starts as a way to analyze the way a locale affects things…
Now, in the event of a “prison” start, you have guards to worry about. These could be bandits they were captured by while walking the road, cultists of to some evil deity that wish not to be discovered, or if your campaign isn’t afraid to go full criminal, just plain guardsmen.
The theme here is what’s important, and knowing bandits, cultists, or guards gives you more precise options down the line. They’re all also perfectly viable, as bandits, cultists, and guards have the 1/8th challenge rating (Referred to as CR from here on out). This makes them very easy to dispatch, but most importantly, they come with natural points of progression for harder enemies. At level 1, a fantastic first encounter is matching a 1/8th CR enemy against your players 1-1, which is to say, if you have 4 players, you have them fight 4 bandits/cultists/guards.
Prison Quick Start, Part 1:
The details of how you get to this point are up to you, at least until I get around to posting an adventure-building guide, but if you’re desperate and need a suggestion now, I recommend giving your players some time in their ‘cell’ to introduce themselves, before pointing out an obvious method of escape as whomever is watching them leaves the room to go to the bathroom.
The room in question should contain their means of imprisonment, a place for the person watching them to sit, and for simplicity’s sake an obvious chest with their equipment. Once the players have let themselves out and fetched their things, have the guard who stepped out earlier return, and then call for help. Have however many bandits/cultists/guards you need storm the the chamber to create that 1-1 fight, and enjoy the show as your players test their abilities for the first time.
The ‘town’ start. There is no simpler way to begin a campaign than this, as small towns tend to have no shortage of small problems. The best part about the town start is, bar none, the variety of things you can throw at your players.
Here’s a short list of possible first jobs to get the brain going:
Rat Infested Cellar (the ultimate classic)
Disturbance at the graveyard (skeletons + zombies are some of the absolute best early enemies)
Highwaymen terrorizing the roads (goblins, bandits, and whatever else makes sport of robbing poor townsfolk)
Something Unfriendly Taking up residence in a nearby cave (Giant Wolf Spiders! Giant Beasts! Madmen! A fledgling necromancer! Anything is fair game when a cave is involved!)
Aggressive Bullywugs in a Nearby Swamp (frog people, anyone?)
Less short would be a list of starts to some greater narratives to throw at a player. This takes quite a bit more preparation, and understanding how to build encounters to match your players power level, which comes in Step 2.
Town Quick Start, Part 1:
This couldn’t be simpler. Have your players meet in the tavern, preferably one with a simple name and easily remembered name (The Full Flagon, The Drunken Fool, something maybe including the owner’s name, etc). Let them introduce themselves to one another, and nudge them with the fact that fresh characters start with very little money if they don’t seem to know what to do.
The moment one of them brings up needing work, have the bartender tip them off to whatever job you’ve decided to throw their way. Then, all you need is a person willing to pay to get it done (a guard captain who can’t spare any men, a group of local farmers living near the danger, the mayor, a local wizard who needs something procured; whatever works). And then your players are on their way! There’s not a lot you can safely ‘expect’ your players to do, but going to kill something they’ll get paid for is definitely one of them.
When your players get there, have them fight their first encounter. Below is a simple list of how to keep it easy enough for a first fight based on Challenge Rating (referred to as CR from now on):
CR 1/8 - 1 for each player
CR ¼ - 1 for each player, minus 1
CR ½ - This is trickier. 1 for 2 players. 1 + a CR 1/8 enemy for 3 players. 1 + a CR ¼ for 4 players. 1 + 2 CR 1/8 enemies for 5 players, adding an additional CR 1/8 enemy for each player after that.
At this point you’ve probably noticed that everything talked about here has something in common: it explains how a locale influences the foes your players will face.
What I haven’t talked about yet is how it all comes together - the influence of your setting. Certain places are going to have different problems, problems you’ve probably already thought about when making your setting. A kingdom at war with a necromancer is going to deal with more undead, a unsafe chain of islands is going to feature pirates, sahuagin, kuo-toa, and sea creatures more prominently, and a more pious kingdom might deal with demon-worshipping cultists carrying out the bidding of their dark masters.
This might not seem important, but I can assure you that it is. Fitting enemies to their locale sets a mood; spiders live in caves, rats live in cellars, and goblins ambush traveling merchants outside of town. If you have the spiders ambush people like highwaymen, you need to realize you’ve just created a very interest scenario that the players will demand an explanation for, and if you’ve got one, more power to you, but that’s really just another way the locale is important in how you set up your combat scenarios.
Step 2: Balance and Kobold Fight Club.
That’s right, i said Kobold Fight Club.
http://kobold.club/fight/#/encounter-builder
THAT kobold fight club, every 5e Dungeon Master’s best friend. This extraordinarily useful tool helps you “budget” out encounters for your party. There’s more to it than that, though, and it’s what Step 2 is all about. Unfortunately for other editions, this is a 5e blog, and that’s what I’ll be focusing on. I’d love to get into the nuances of what came before, but as this is a blog for beginners, and 5e is the most beginner-friendly edition to ever exist, I’m going to keep it 5e for now.
So, how does it work? Simple - you input the number of players you have, and their levels, and you look at what the adventure (and its locale) calls for in terms of potential enemies. As an example, we’re going to use 4 level 1 characters to explore possible encounters.
Now, one of the very first things I did was recommend certain encounters to you in Step 1. Here’s how they ration out by KFC’s calculations (assuming 4 players).
4 CR 1/8 Enemies - Medium Difficulty (200xp)
3 CR ¼ Enemies - Hard Difficulty (300xp)
1 CR ½ Enemy +1 CR ¼ Enemy - Medium Difficulty (225xp)
As you can see, they’re all in the 200-300 xp range, and are between hard and medium difficulty. Believe it or not, “hard” is not very hard in this situation, as your players will be at full HP and have all of their spells/abilities ready to go.
In fact, don’t think of Easy, Medium, Hard, and Deadly as difficulties at all! What you should do is think of them ‘resource sinks’. Combat takes a toll, and your players will have to use spells to either keep their hitpoints high, or knock their enemies down fast. Regardless, 4 CR 1/8 Enemies become far, far more menacing.
Quick Note: DMs managing new players should mention “Short Rests” after their first combat. These short rests take only an hour, and let them roll their Hit Die (HD) to regain HP naturally. They have one of these HD for every level acquired, so level 1 characters can only do it once, and adventures should be built with that in mind.
Now, KFC also includes what’s known as a ‘daily budget’. Daily budgets are great, but at level 1, it’s a little misleading. Not every party can handle 1200xp worth of fighting in one day right off the bat, after all! That’s why it’s important to take things slow, and throw them into combat with what they can handle.
We’re gonna get back in the ‘Prison’ and ‘Town’ starts now, and use what know about KFC and building encounters to build a ‘Deadly’ final encounter for the players!
Prison Quick Start, Part 2:
So, your players have met, introduced themselves, broken out, and now have a pile of corpses around them. Great! But why, if your players could do that, were they captured in the first place? Well clearly, there must be more bandits/cultists/guards around, and possibly even a leader among them!
Using KFC, your Monster Manual, and perhaps (THIS) extremely useful link, find a suitable ‘boss’ for your bumbling prison guards. If you went bandits/cultists/guards, here’s a suggestion to make it even easier:
Cultists - Cult Fanatic (CR 2)
Bandits - Bandit Captain (CR 2)
Wait a minute, one of these things isn’t like the other. A Knight has a CR of 3, making it worth 700xp! Clearly it needs to be toned down, so tone it down we will! How does one ‘tone down’ a creature, though? Simply put, we look at its competition.
Knight - 52 Average Hit Points, Armor Class 18, +5 to hit, x2 Attacks, 20 Total Average Damage, Leadership
Cult Fanatic - 33 Average Hit Points, Armor Class 13, +4 to hit, x2 Attacks, 8 Total Average Damage, !SPELLS!
Bandit Captain - 65 Average Hit Points, Armor Class 15, +5 to hit, x3 Attacks, 17 Total Average Damage, Parry
Hmm… Well, the Cult Fanatic is a spellcaster, making it very difficult to compare to the knight. It’s best if we disregard that. Looking further, the Knight is significantly more difficult to kill with it’s whopping 18 Armor Class than the Bandit Captain’s much more manageable 15. In addition to this, the Knight’s leadership ability makes everyone around him much more dangerous.
In this instance, I would rename the knight to ‘Guard Captain’, and cut the Leadership ability altogether. Next, I’d downgrade the armor class to 16. This makes him a higher damage, slightly less durable variant of the Bandit Captain. In addition to this, you can also just use the Bandit Captain’s stat block for a Guard Captain altogether, as nothing about his toolkit is completely unbelievable for a guard.
Next, we have to put it altogether in a proper, final showdown. With a CR 2 creature commanding a 450 xp bounty, we have to be mindful of how it’s already in the ‘Deadly’ category of encounters. What’s important to understand, though, is that quantity often beats quality, and a single enemy worth 450xp is much easier to beat than several enemies totaling 450xp. Also, this is the finale! A fight is allowed to get a little dicey in these situations.
I recommend going one of two routes - Adding a single CR 1/8 minion to support the big bad boss, (Giving us an adjusted bounty of 712xp! Yikes!), or having a couple CR 1/8 minions fight the players alone, and then have the boss ambush the players just after they’ve dispatched the first wave of weaker guards. Doing these two fights one after another, but separately, gives a 100xp fight followed by a 450xp fight with no time to rest, for a total of 600xp and plenty of breathing room for the players. Either way, there’s a decent possibility that one player is knocked unconscious by this combat, and that’s really all you want to threaten so early on in the campaign.
Alright, everyone knows each other, they’ve found their job, and they just dealt with a group of skeletons/highwaymen/rats/spiders. Why were they there, though? What force (factoring in the setting and locale) made all of this happen? Here’s a few examples below, based on the first scenario:
The rats in the cellar were chased up from below.
The local priest has turned to a darker master, and now defiles the graveyard they’re meant to tend.
The highwaymen you fought have a camp nearby, as show by a map found on one of their corpses.
The cave you’re in goes much deeper, and you’ve not yet cleared it of all dangers…
The Bullywug’s camp can be seen just up ahead! It looks like there’s more of them…
Yeah, some of those were a little too self-explanatory and merely lent to a ‘what’s next?’, but it’s not always so complicated. Using KFC, the Monster Manual, and THIS extremely useful link, let’s find appropriate enemies for a finale!
An ankheg burrows through the ground beneath the town, and is responsible for the rats! (CR 2)
The local priest is evil, and lucky for you, a standard priest fits the bill (CR 2)
Bandit Captains are CR 2, Goblin Bosses are CR 1 (with stronger minions to compensate). All good stuff.
Those Giant Wolf Spiders are shacking up with a proper Giant Spider (CR 1), or perhaps you found wolves, and a Dire Wolf (CR 1) leads the pack!
Oh dear… those Bullywugs have tamed a man-eating Giant Toad! (CR 1)
These can all be worked with, and for a big final showdown, we want an adjusted XP of 600-750. That puts us well into Deadly territory, and lets us explore with just what ‘adjusted’ XP is. Basically, many smaller enemies totaling 100xp are much more dangerous than one enemy worth 100xp, so when fighting a group, the xp is adjusted upwards to compensate. KFC does this automatically, so let’s look at how adjusted XP rates influence the final round of combat:
An Ankheg is pretty nasty all on its own, but have a fifth Giant Rat emerge alongside it and things just might get crazy (Adjusted XP 712)
The priest was corrupted, and the cultist (CR 1/8) who brought the words of a new, dark master to him is present. Together, they make for a much more daunting fight (Adjusted XP 712)
The Bandit Captain and one of his bandits are more than enough for 4 level 1 characters (Adjusted XP 712). Goblins, however, can be much meaner. 2 Goblins and a boss give us an Adjusted XP of 600, and a 3rd goblin brings us to 700. Let’s not forget how dicey things can get when you add more enemies though and keep it at 2 goblins and their boss until we know more about the party’s capabilities.
Giant Wolf Spiders and Giant Spiders match the Goblin and Goblin Boss dynamic. 2 Giant Wolf Spiders and 1 Giant Spider give us a 600 Adjusted XP, which just barely gets us to the mark.
Like the goblins and the spiders, Bullywugs and their Giant Toad follow the ¼ and 1 CR statline. 2 Bullywugs, 1 Giant Toad, 600 Adjusted XP, and probably 1 player scarred for life after they’re swallowed whole by the toad. Perfect.
Now, at this point, you’ve got what you need to start a campaign, but what about going forward? Well, it’s different for every party. What’s important is that you know how to build fights and adjust the values to suit your party’s needs. Here are some extra notes to think about before we finish up:
Are enemies I’m using especially good against the party? Dragons are famous for flying up and out of reach, turning that DPS machine barbarian into a rage-less, terrible archer. On the other end, that cleric with tons of Wisdom that LOVES Hold Person might be a little too good against certain humanoids…
What advantages do I or the players have? A group of archers shooting at the players from a point they can’t reach makes the players fight back with their own ranged attacks, which they might be lacking. Underbudget encounters like this until you understand more about how they drain the party’s resources.
Am I giving the party too much time to rest and prepare? Any fight seems easy if the party has ample time to rest up, so make plans to take that away from them! Ambushing the players while they’re resting can be a great way of reminding them that Short Rests aren’t always free, and can up the difficulty when you find the content too easy to be engaging.
One Big Enemy. These can be fun, especially as a finale, but can come off as too easy if the players have a knack for killing things quick. Consider giving a single, larger enemy ‘Legendary Actions’. These can happen at the end of any players’ turn, and a creature usually has 2-3 of them. The Big Enemy gets those 2-3 actions refreshed at the end of one of its turns, and can use 1 to make a single attack, move, or even use 2-3 at a time to activate a signature ability on the fly! More about this in a later post…
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