In which we design "an encounter"

 

First – What IS an encounter? Encounters aren't just “band of orcs attacks.” I've started using “Environmental Encounters” from the good folks over at Infinium Game Studio. It provides randomized encounter suggestions for two DOZEN kinds of terrain. I've only used a few of them (grassland, marsh, deciduous forest.) The party may soon have me using farmland, hills, mountains or even snow. Encounters include events, combat, quirks and No results" which still impact game play. Each terrain presents four contexts: a) default, b) emphasis on combat, c) emphasis on “event”, and d) emphasis on safe travel. If the party's traveling on a road or path and in a “civilized” area we go with D.  Otherwise I tend to look at all three other options (based on a 1d20) and pick the one that fits the current situation well.  That way if I have a "railroad" encounter I can drop it where it fits best and the players aren't as likely to recognize it as RR since if fits the same play-flow as everything else.

Second - WHEN do we need an encounter? I roll 3-5 times a day depending on player choices. Where are they? Where are they headed? How fast are the traveling? I've been using a d6 but have been getting “too many” so may switch this up to a d8, regardless of all the above. Something ALWAYS happens on a “1.”

Third – and the meat of this article – how much is enough? I rely on the work of Sly Flourish and his Lazy Encounter Benchmark. And y'know I love my spreadsheets. So I have a section which lists each character in the party, along with their level. Not everybody plays every session so I can select JUST those characters who are along for the ride on a given evening. Step one: total the levels. Step two: determine tier. Step three:apply Lazy Encounter math. So there's one column. Done. My next party will likely comprise seven characters totaling 33 levels. So a deadly encounter would be 16 1/2 CR's. Hard: 8 1/4, medium 4 1/8 and easy 2 1/16. Done? Hardly!

Y'see I quickly learned that just throwing a nice big juicy 17CR beast at the party wouldn't work. Action economy dontcha know. So the CURRENT experiment adds two more columns. I assign half the CR to the BBG. In the example above it'd be a 8 or 9 CR critter. The rest of the CR are divided by the number of characters -1. In the case above this means that the 8 or 9 CR critter will be accompanied by six or seven CR 1 critters. NOW we have a suitable BBG and enough side-kicks to deal with the action economy.  Done? Not quite.

What if your BBG is a player class? In other words, how does CR relate to class level? After doing a TON or reading, it seems the agreed upon number is 2/3. A 12^th level Barbarian is (roughly) a CR 8. So I've added one more column that does THAT math on the fly as well. In the case above I'd throw a 12^th lvl BBG with 6 2^nd level minions.

So four rows (deadly, hard, medium, easy) and four columns (general CR, BBG, minions, class-level conversion.) Member of the party can't make it one night? Just take their level off the sheet. Example …. Ogar the Barbarian can't make it. Takes 10 seconds to drop his “6” and reduce the party size to 6. The columns automagically change. CR 13.5, BBG of 6 or 7, 5 or 6 sidekicks of CR 2 ….. and if they're facing a character class it should be 10^th level.Keep in mind this takes a LOT longer to explain than to implement.

Now lets go back to our IGS table. There are several types of encounters. Here's how I incorporate them. If a combat encounter is called for they're labeled hard, medium or easy.  I use the tables found at Chaos Generators for additional suggestions based on ALL of the above. And if the encounter is obstacle related? it's back to Sly Flourish and his cheat sheet for guidance. 

Complex? Seems that way. But MOST of the math is done before the session commences. Players know “something always happens on a 1” and they're usually excited to see what it's going to be – cultists? A dragon? A tree trunk in the road? A magic spring? I can usually generate an encounter and thread it into the story line in less than a minute. My players expect it to be coherent and they expect their decisions to impact the outcome.

And the road goes ever onward.