Troll Lord Games

Credit to Wulf Ratbane on ENWorld:

Fantasy - Pathfinder: Encounter Design Simplified

Step One: Determine the Encounter Budget

For each PC in the party, look up his level, and add the indicated amount of XP to the encounter budget.

Example: Party of four 1st level PCs each add +100 to the budget; total budget = 400 XP.

Code:

Level XP Budget (per PC) 1 100 2 150 3 200 4 300 5 400 6 600 7 800 8 1200 9 1600 10 2400 11 3200 12 4800 13 6400 14 9600 15 12800 16 19200 17 25600 18 38400 19 51200 20 76800

Step Two: Determine Desired Difficulty

Multiply the total XP budget by the following multipliers:

Easy: x2/3 (-1 EL)

Average: x1

Challenging: x1.5 (+1 EL)

Hard: x2 (+2 EL)

Epic: x3 (+3 EL)

Example: Initial budget 400, challenging encounter x1.5, final budget = 600.

Step Three: Purchase Creatures from the Budget

Using the Creature XP values provided by Pathfinder, "purchase" creatures out of your encounter budget.

Code:

CR XP 1/10 40 1/8 50 1/6 65 1/4 100 1/3 135 1/2 200 1 400 2 600 3 800 4 1200 5 1600 6 2400 7 3200 8 4800 9 6400 10 9600 11 12800 12 19200 13 25600 14 38400 15 51200 16 76800 17 102400 18 153600 19 204800 20 307200 21 409600 22 614400 23 819200 24 1228800 25 1638400

NOTE 1: If you have to purchase more than 10 of any creature, it's probably not going to add much to the challenge of the encounter.

NOTE 2: Buy the most expensive creatures first. When you are done, if you have points left over, you can either toss them aside, or you can "overspend" just enough to buy one creature of the closest available amount.

Pathfinder Examples

These examples are taken directly from the Alpha 2 document.

Quote:

Lets say you want your group of four 5th-level characters to fight a group of ogres (CR 3).

Four 5th level characters each add 400 XP to the budget, for a total of 1600 XP.

An average fight (x1 budget multiplier, 1600 budget) is 2 ogres (CR3=800 each).

A challenging fight (x1.5 budget multiplier, 2400 budget) is 3 ogres.

A hard fight (x2 budget multiplier, 3200 budget) is 4 ogres.

An epic fight (x3 budget multiplier, 4800 budget) is 6 ogres.

Quote:

Lets say you want your group of six 8th-level PCs to face off against a group of gargoyles (CR 4) and their stone giant boss (CR 8). This is to be a challenging fight.

Six 8th level PCs is a base budget of 6 x 1200XP, or 7200 XP.

It's to be a challenging fight, x1.5, final budget = 10800 XP.

Stone Giant (CR8) costs us 4800 XP, leaving 6000 XP to spend on gargoyles.

Gargoyles cost 1200 XP each; 6000/1200 = five gargoyles.
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The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

Next Con I am attending: http://www.neoncon.com/

My House Rules: http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... llordgames

This reads like a streamlined variation on the Gamemastering rules that Benjamin Durbin (a.k.a. Wulf Ratbane) laid out in his Grim Tales rulebook at Bad Axe Games.

All I can tell you is, I spent the $2 US to download his Grim Tales: Gamemastering PDF, and it was one of the best d20 design assists I've ever bought.

I'm currently using it to design appropriately-scaled encounters for the C&C module I'm putting together against my will (meaning, I don't have the time to spare writing this thing, but I keep coming back to it anyway).

If you like the Gamemastering doc, I found his rules and Excel spreadsheet Creature Creation package also very useful, as well as his science-fiction creature rules and Excel spreadsheet combo, The Captain's Guide to Alien Lifeforms.

Your mileage may vary, but I hope this helps,

TheNewGuy
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"But if your hand touches metal, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet, I will end you"

It is what Wulf Ratbane did, hence my giving him credit for it in the very first line of my post.

I was unaware of his PDF's, I'll check them out.

It also sounds like your saying this is workable with C&C?
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The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

Next Con I am attending: http://www.neoncon.com/

My House Rules: http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... llordgames

Treebore wrote:
It is what Wulf Ratbane did, hence my giving him credit for it in the very first line of my post.

I did see that -- I just wasn't sure if you knew that Wulf and the Benjamin Durbin of Grim Tales that I was about to mention were the same guy, that's all.

Treebore wrote:
I was unaware of his PDF's, I'll check them out.

It also sounds like your saying this is workable with C&C?

What you posted is a new variant/streamlining of the basic idea that I haven't seen before, so I'm not prepared to say. I'm a writer-type, and my grasp of math and statistics is far poorer than I'd like. It would be wrong for me to pass judgement on what you quoted; I'm simply not numerate enough.

As for the PDFs, they're geared to d20 D&D (3.0 specifically, if I recall rightly), but since C&C and d20 share the same math "roots", I find Durbin's stuff indispensable, myself, when I need to have a sense of whether a given encounter, for a given number of players, is appropriate or not.

For the record, I never found the "Challenge Rating for Four Characters" or the related Encounter Level system of D&D 3.x very useful. Again, my gift for mathematical extrapolation is embarassingly limited.

With Durbin's PDFs and spreadsheets, I can design what I need first, and then plug it through his system to see how it "stacks up" difficulty-wise for the number of players I expect for the encounter.

If it's too high, or two low, I keep doing iterations `til I get a "challenge level" I feel is appropriate for the number of players I expect.

Likewise, with the Creature Creation spreadsheet and rules, I build what I envision first, and then tweak it, until it's as tough as I feel it should be.

A lot of the D&D 3.x stats get ditched for use in C&C (huzzah!), but I do go in with a better practical understanding of just how tough my opponents and encounters are likely to be, before the players ever arrive.

Hope this helps and clarifies,

TheNewGuy
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"But if your hand touches metal, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet, I will end you"

It does, thanks!
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The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

Next Con I am attending: http://www.neoncon.com/

My House Rules: http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... llordgames

I like this. I'm gonna get my players to try to break it to see how it holds up, but it looks solid.

This is not very different than something previously discussed:
Previous discussion which doesn't even mention any of the various alternate ways people have been using for this exact same thing, in essence. So, all I really see with this proposal is having all the calculations done already. Maybe saves some time, but obviously convertible to C&C terms, if one were so inclined.

By the way, I no longer use that "CR system" (I did playtest it some, and it worked OK, but I'm trying hard to get away from my ordinary "rules.")

serleran wrote:
This is not very different than something previously discussed:
Previous discussion which doesn't even mention any of the various alternate ways people have been using for this exact same thing, in essence. So, all I really see with this proposal is having all the calculations done already. Maybe saves some time, but obviously convertible to C&C terms, if one were so inclined.

By the way, I no longer use that "CR system" (I did playtest it some, and it worked OK, but I'm trying hard to get away from my ordinary "rules.")

I would assume CK's get to a point of experience where they don't even use a "CR system". I know I don't. I look at HP, BtH, AC's, and spells likely to be used and I am pretty good at knowing how survivable it is. Only crazy dice rolls surprise me much anymore. Like rolling 9 failed rolls out of 10 for 10th level characters.
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The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

Next Con I am attending: http://www.neoncon.com/

My House Rules: http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... llordgames

That look very Precise.

I used to just wing it as DM and no one complained or died offf too frequently. (usually)

But for people looking for a clear guide, that sounds workable to me based on only this one reading.

Occaisionally, you may want to design an encounter the party CAN"T win... I just just overspend over the epic level.