Creating adventures is one of the great benefits of being a Dungeon Master. It’s a way to express yourself creatively, designing fantastic places and events filled with monsters and imaginative elements of all kinds. When you design an adventure, you call the shots. You do things exactly the way you want to. Designing an adventure can be a lot of work, but the rewards are great. Your players will thrill at the challenges and mysteries you have created for them. Experienced DMs pride themselves on masterful adventures, creative new situations and locales, and intriguing NPCs. A well-honed encounter—whether it’s a monster, a trap, or an NPC who must be reasoned with—can be a thing of beauty.
“What is an adventure?” isn’t as easy a question to answer as you might think. While a campaign is made up of adventures, it’s not always clear where one adventure ends and another begins. Adventures can be so varied that it’s tough to pin down the basics. This chapter is going to try to help you do that.
An adventure starts with some sort of hook, whether it’s a rumor of treasure in an old, abandoned monastery or a plea for help from the queen. The hook is what draws the PCs into the action and gets them to the point where the story of the adventure truly begins. This point might be a location (such as the monastery or the queen’s palace) or an event (the theft of the queen’s scepter, which the PCs are tasked with recovering).
Adventures are broken down into encounters. Encounters are typically keyed to areas on a map that you have prepared. Encounters can also be designed in the form of if/then statements: “If the PCs wait outside the druid’s grove for more than an hour, then his three trained dire bears attack.” The encounters of an adventure are all linked in some way, whether in theme (all the encounters that occur as they travel from the City of Greyhawk to the Crystalmist Mountains), location (all the encounters in the ruins of Castle Temerity), or events (all the encounters that occur as the PCs attempt to rescue the mayor’s son from Rahurg the ogre king).
Motivation is what drives the adventure—it’s what gets the PCs involved in whatever you have designed for them to do. If the PCs aren’t motivated, they won’t do what you want them to, and all your work will be wasted. Greed, fear, revenge, need, morality, anger, and curiosity are all powerful motivators. So, of course, is fun. Never forget that last one.
Writing an adventure with strong motivation is really a matter of knowing what style of game you and your players prefer (see page 7 for a discussion of different playing styles).
Tailored motivations are ones that you have specifically designed with your group’s PCs in mind. Here are just a few of many possible examples.
A status quo motivation isn’t really a motivation in the strict sense of the word. It’s the fact that (for instance) adventure awaits in the Lost Valley for anyone who dares brave the wyvern-haunted cliffs that surround the place. The PCs can go there or not, depending on how they feel.
While a tailored motivation is good for ensuring that the PCs end up in the adventure you have designed and for letting the players feel that their characters have a real place in the world, a status quo motivation allows you to set up situations unrelated to the PCs specifically. Doing this creates a sense of perspective, the feeling that the campaign world is a real place that extends beyond the PCs.
An adventure runs its course from the beginning to an ending. Some adventures are completed in an hour. Others take months of playing sessions. Length is up to you, although it’s smart to plan ahead and know roughly how many sessions an adventure will last (and make sure that the current group of players can commit to that length). Following are some guidelines to keep in mind for structuring good adventures and avoiding bad ones.
Good adventures are fun. That’s an easy generalization, but it’s also true. An adventure that everyone enjoys likely includes the following features.
Choices: A good adventure has at least a few points where the players need to make important decisions. What they decide should have significant impact on what happens next. A choice can be as simple as the players deciding not to go down the corridor to the left (where the pyrohydra waits for them) and instead going to the right (toward the magic fountain), or as complex as the PCs deciding not to help the queen against the grand vizier (so that she ends up being assassinated and the vizier’s puppet gains the throne).
Difficult Choices: When a choice has a significant consequence, it should sometimes be a difficult one to make. Should the PCs help the church of Heironeous wage war on the goblins, even though the conflict will almost certainly keep them from reaching the Fortress of Nast before the evil duke summons the slaadi assassins? Should the PCs trust the words of a dragon, or ignore her warning?
Different Sorts of Encounters: A good adventure should provide a number of different experiences—attack, defense, problem-solving, roleplaying, and investigation. Make sure you vary the kinds of encounters the adventure provides (see Encounters, page 48).
Exciting Events: Like a well-told story, a good adventure should have rising and falling tension. This sort of pacing is easier to accomplish with an event-based adventure (since you have more control over when each encounter takes place), but it’s possible in a site-based adventure to design a locale where the encounters are likely to occur in a desired fashion. Make sure to pace events appropriately. Start slowly and have the action build. A climactic encounter always makes for a good ending.
Encounters that Make Use of PC Abilities: If the party’s wizard or sorcerer can cast fly, think about incorporating aerial encounters into the adventure. When there’s a cleric along, occasionally include undead that she can use her turning ability on. If the party has a ranger or a druid, include encounters with animals (dire animals can make challenging encounters for even mid- to high-level PCs; see the Monster Manual for more information). The advice to remember is “Everyone gets a chance to shine.” All abilities available to PCs were designed to make the characters better, but an ability (or a spell) that a character never gets to use is a waste.
Try to avoid the pitfalls described below.
Leading the PCs by the Nose: A bad event-based adventure is marked by mandates restricting PC actions or is based on events that occur no matter what the PCs do. For example, a plot that hinges on the PCs finding a mysterious heirloom, only to have it stolen by NPCs, is dangerous—if the players invent a good way to protect the heirloom, they won’t like having it stolen anyway just because that’s what you had planned beforehand. The players end up feeling powerless and frustrated. No matter what, all adventures should depend upon player choices, and players should feel as though what they choose to do matters. The results should affect the campaign setting (albeit perhaps in minor ways), and they should have consequences (good or bad) for the PCs.
PCs as Spectators: In this kind of bad adventure, NPCs accomplish all the important tasks. There might be an interesting story going on, but it’s going on around the PCs, and they have very little to do with it. As much as you might like one of your NPCs, resist the urge to have him or her accomplish everything instead of letting the PCs do the work. As great as it might be to have your big NPC hero fight the evil wizard (also an NPC) threatening the land, it’s not much fun for the players if all they get to do is watch.
Deus ex Machina: Similar to the “PCs as spectators” problem is the potential pitfall of the deus ex machina, a term used to describe the ending to a story in which the action is resolved by the intervention of some outside agency rather than by the characters’ own actions. Don’t put the PCs in situations in which they can only survive through the intervention of others. Sometimes it’s interesting to be rescued, but using this sort of “escape hatch” gets frustrating for the players quickly. Players would rather defeat a young dragon on their own than face an ancient wyrm and only defeat it because a high-level NPC teleports in to help them.
Preempting the Characters’ Abilities: It’s good to know the PCs’ capabilities, but you shouldn’t design adventures that continually countermand or foil what they can do. If the wizard just learned fireball, don’t continually throw fire-resistant foes at him. Don’t create dungeons where fly and teleport spells don’t work, just because it’s more difficult to design challenging encounters for characters with those capabilities. Use the PCs’ abilities to allow them to have more interesting encounters—don’t arbitrarily rule that their powers suddenly don’t work.
Much of the structure of an adventure depends on what the PCs know and when they learn it. If they know that there’s a dragon at the bottom of the dungeon, they will conserve their strength for that encounter and have proper spells and strategies prepared. When they learn the identity of a traitor, they will probably act on this information immediately. If they learn too late that their actions will cause a cavern complex to collapse, they won’t be able to keep it from happening.
Don’t give away the whole plot in one go, but do give the players some new bit of knowledge every so often. For example, if the drow elves are the secret masters behind an uprising of giants, slowly reveal clues to that fact. Information gained while fighting the hill giants leads the PCs to the frost giants, which in turn garners them clues that take them to the fire giants. Only among the fire giants do the PCs encounter information that leads them to understand that the drow are involved. And thus the final encounter with those drow masters is made all the more dramatic.
In some situations, the PCs know everything they need to know before the adventure begins. That’s okay. Occasionally, there is no mystery. For example, the adventurers learn that a haunted tower in the woods is inhabited by a vampire and her minions. They go in with stakes and holy water, slay a bunch of undead, and finally meet up with the vampire and take her out. That’s a fine adventure. Sometimes, however, a surprise that the PCs never could have seen coming makes it all the more interesting—the vampire turns out to be a good-aligned undead resisting her bloodlust but slowly succumbing to the temptation of an erinyes devil who lives under the church back in town. Both the “no surprises” and the “unexpected twist” structures work well, so long as you avoid overusing either.
Keep divination magic in mind when predetermining how you’re going to control the flow of information. Don’t deny the spells their potency. Instead, learn what they can and cannot do, and plan for the PCs to use them. (See Handling Divinations, page 34). After all, if you have assumed that they would cast the proper spells and they don’t use what’s available to them, they deserve to fail.
The Tomb of Horrors, the Temple of Elemental Evil, the Ghost Tower of Inverness—these are places of legend, mystery, and adventure. If you create an adventure based around some place—a dungeon, a ruin, a mountain, a valley, a cave complex, a wilderness, a town—then you have created a site-based adventure. Site-based adventures revolve around a map with a key, detailing important spots on that map. Encounters in the adventure are triggered when the PCs enter a new location at the site. The implication is that each encounter describes what occurs at that site when the PCs arrive (or arrive for the first time).
Creating a site-based adventure involves two steps: drawing a map and keying the encounters.
Draw a Map: Graph paper is useful for mapping out dungeons, because you can assign a scale for the squares, such as 5 feet or 10 feet per square. The printed gridlines also aid in drawing straight lines (particularly useful when you’re mapping the interior of a building or a dungeon). Mark important areas with numbers or letters that reference the map key. Make notes on the map describing anything of importance, including room contents (statues, pools, furniture, pillars, steps, pits, curtains, and so on). Plan out which areas are linked by similar or allied inhabitants. Place traps, taking care to note particularly the location of trap triggers. Consider spell ranges—if an NPC wizard is in a particular area and you know that she might cast a particular spell, save yourself time during the playing of the adventure by noting now how far the spell effect can extend.
As you map out the site, think about how you’ll depict each area at the gaming table. It’s a bad idea, for example, to design a site with many areas that are larger than the grid you place your miniatures on. If it’s likely that characters will travel back and forth between two adjacent rooms, make each of the rooms small enough to fit both of them on the tabletop grid at the same time.
Remember that the player characters are catalysts for change. While you play, note changes caused by the PCs’ presence—possibly even writing them directly on the map. That way it’s easier to remember, on the second time they pass through an area, which doors they have knocked down, which traps they have triggered, which treasures they have looted, which guardians they have defeated, and so forth.
Create a Key: A map key is a set of notes (as detailed or brief as you need them to be) detailing each area’s contents, NPCs (description, statistics, possible actions), and whatever else makes the place special. For example, on an outdoor map you might mark an area that triggers a landslide if crossed, a bridge over the river guarded by lizardfolk, and the lair of a basilisk—complete with details about the interior of the lair and the treasure formerly in the possession of the half-eaten, petrified victims in the back. Each entry should include the game information needed to run that encounter. If an area has nothing to write about, don’t bother marking it on the key.
Most dungeon adventures are site-based. See The Dungeon, page 57, as well as the sample dungeon adventure that begins on page 78.
A site-based adventure allows the PCs to drive the action. If they come to a fork in the path, they’re free to choose whichever way they want. It doesn’t matter which path they choose, or if they never go down one path at all. The characters can leave the location and come back, often resuming the adventure exactly where they left off (although some aspects of the site may have changed, depending on how static the site is; see below).
A site-based adventure is easy to run once you’ve made all the preparations. All the information is right there in front of you, on the map and in the key. Between the two of them, you should be able to handle any sort of action the PCs may take during the adventure.
Site-based adventures often lure PCs based simply on the reputation of the site, but sometimes an event triggers a site-based adventure, drawing the PCs to the location. Once they are at the site, your map and its key come into play.
Sometimes a site-based adventure takes place at a static location. The map depicts an old ruin filled with monsters, shows where the ancient treasures are located within the ruin, where the traps or danger spots are located, and so on. The PCs can arrive at this location at any time, stay as long as they desire, leave whenever they want, and come back later to find the site pretty much the same as they left it (although more monsters may have taken up residence, or a few may have wandered off; maybe a trap has been triggered by a monster and no longer threatens the PCs, or a trap the PCs previously triggered has been reset).
Designing a static site-based adventure is fairly easy. You don’t have to think much about how the residents of the various encounter areas interact, and each encounter area need only be designed with the most immediate implications in mind—namely, what happens when the PCs arrive?
By contrast, a good example of a dynamic site is a drow fortresstemple. A dynamic site usually involves some sort of intelligent organization. As the PCs move around the site, they discover that actions in certain areas affect encounters in other areas. For example, if the PCs kill two of the drow priestesses in the fortress-temple but allow a third one to escape, the fortress-temple mobilizes its populace—now, defenders are moving around from location to location and are much more likely to attack any unknown intruders rather than ask questions. Perhaps the two dead priestesses rise from the dead as vampires and start creating vampire spawn as bodyguards.
Designing a dynamic site is more complicated than designing a static one. In addition to creating a map and a key—both of which might be updated significantly as the adventure develops—you must address the following issues as well.
The death of the king. The Rain of Colorless Fire. The carnival’s arrival in town. Unexplained disappearances. Merchants of Druus looking for caravan guards. Events can lead to adventures, drawing the PCs in and getting them involved in amazing predicaments.
When you create an an event-based adventure, you structure it in the form of “Something happens, and if the PCs do this, then that happens…” An event-based adventure is built around a series of events influenced by the PCs’ actions. The PCs’ reactions change the events that occur, or the order in which they occur, or both.
In an event-based adventure, the PCs usually have a goal or a mission beyond “Kill all the monsters” or “Get as much treasure as possible” or even “Explore this area.” The adventure instead focuses on the adventurers trying to accomplish something specific. The encounters in the adventure occur as an offshoot of that effort—either as a consequence of their actions, or as opposing forces attempting to stop them, or both.
This kind of adventure is often described as story-based, because it’s more like a book or a movie and less like exploration of a passive site. An event-based adventure usually doesn’t use a room-by-room key of a location but instead consists of notes on which events occur when. Two of the best ways to organize these notes are in the form of a flowchart or a timeline.
Flowchart: By drawing connected boxes or circles with event descriptions in them, it’s easy to visually track the flow of events: “As the PCs investigate the murder, they question the innkeeper. She tells them that she saw someone suspicious hanging around the back of the livery last night. If they ask specifically about Gregory, she tells them where he lives.” In this example, the flowchart has two lines drawn away from the innkeeper. One goes to the livery and the other goes to Gregory’s house, since those are the two likely paths the PCs will take next.
Timeline: Another way to organize an event-based adventure is by the passage of time. A timeline starts when the PCs get involved in the story (or sometimes even before then). It marks what happens when: “One day after the PCs arrive in town, Joham comes to them pleading for help. The next day, Joham is found dead in his room at the inn. That evening, Gregory comes to the inn, poking around for information to see if the body has been found.”
Combination: An event-based adventure might use both a flowchart and a timeline that are closely integrated: “If the PCs ask the innkeeper about Gregory on the day after the murder, she tells them where he lives. The following morning, Gregory shows up at the inn, heavily disguised, and convinces the innkeeper that he is being framed for the murder. She agrees to hide him. If the PCs ask the innkeeper about Gregory after this occurs, she gives them the location of his house—but she also tells the PCs (untruthfully) that Gregory has been away from town on a trip for the last several days.”
Random Encounters: Even in an adventure driven by events, an encounter unrelated to the flow of events can serve to emphasize (or distract from) the ongoing plot. See Table 3–28: Urban Encounters, page 102, for an example of an event-based random encounter table.
Eventually, each adventure comes to an end. A climactic encounter places a nice capstone on an adventure, particularly if it’s one that the players have seen coming. (If the ogres they have been fighting have been referring to a dragon, then an encounter with the dragon is a suitable ending.)
Many adventures require a denouement—some wrap-up to deal with the aftermath of the final encounter. This can be the time when the PCs discover what treasure is in the dragon’s hoard, a dramatic scene in the king’s court in which he thanks the adventurers for slaying the dragon and passes out knighthoods all around, or a time to mourn those comrades who did not survive the battle. Generally, the denouement should not take nearly as long as the climax itself.
As with movies and books, adventures sometimes deserve sequels. Many adventures lead directly into new adventures for the PCs, relating to what they have accomplished or discovered. If the characters just destroyed the fortress of the evil overlord, they may find clues within the fortress that betray the identity of a traitor on the town council who has been secretly aiding the warlord. Perhaps the overlord’s orc minions fled the site—where did they go? (Orcs, no matter where they go, are sure to cause trouble!) Suppose bandits attacked the adventurers while they were on their way to the overlord’s fortress—going back now and finding the bandits’ lair is an adventure of both justice and vengeance.
As interesting as it is to talk about adventures (and the stories behind them), the game is really composed of encounters. Each individual encounter is like its own game—with a beginning, a middle, an end, and victory conditions to determine a winner and a loser.
Just as with motivations, encounters can be tailored specifically to the PCs or not. A tailored encounter is one in which you take into consideration that the wizard PC has a wand of invisibility and the fighter’s AC is 23. In a tailored encounter, you design things to fit the PCs and the players. In fact, you can specifically design something for each PC to do—the skeletal minotaur is a challenge for the barbarian, another skeleton with a crossbow is on a ledge that only the rogue can reach, only the monk can leap across the chasm to pull the lever to raise the portcullis in front of the treasure, and the cleric’s hide from undead spell allows her to get to the treasure the skeletons are guarding while the battle rages.
A status quo encounter forces the PCs to adapt to the encounter rather than the other way around. Bugbears live on Clover Hill, and if the PCs go there, they encounter bugbears, whether bugbears are an appropriate encounter for them or not. This kind of encounter gives the world a certain verisimilitude, and so it’s good to mix a few in with the other sorts of encounters.
If you decide to use only status quo encounters, you should probably let your players know about this. Some of the encounters you place in your adventure setting will be an appropriate challenge for the PCs, but others might not be. For instance, you could decide where the dragon’s lair is long before the characters are experienced enough to survive a fight against the dragon. If players know that the setting includes status quo encounters that their characters might not be able to handle, they will be more likely to make the right decision if they come upon a tough encounter. That decision, of course, is to run away and fight again another day (when the party is better equipped to meet the challenge).
A monster’s Challenge Rating (CR) tells you the level of the party for which that monster is a good challenge. A monster of CR 5 is an appropriate challenge for a group of four 5th-level characters. If the characters are of higher level than the monster, they get fewer XP because the monster should be easier to defeat. Likewise, if the characters are of lower level than a monster’s Challenge Rating, the PCs get a greater award.
Parties with five or more members can often take on monsters with higher CRs, and parties of three or fewer are challenged by monsters with lower CRs. The game rules account for these facts by dividing the XP earned by the number of characters in the party (see Rewards, page 36).
Obviously, if one monster has a given Challenge Rating, more than one monster represents a greater challenge than that. You can use the Encounter Numbers table to determine the Encounter Level of a group of monsters, as well as to determine how many monsters equate to a given Encounter Level (useful in balancing an encounter with a PC party).
To balance an encounter with a party, determine the party’s level (the average of all the members’ character levels). You want the party’s level to match the level of the encounter, so find that number in the “Encounter Level” column. Then look across that line to find the CR of the kind of creature that you want to use in the encounter. Once you have found it, look at the top of that column to find the number of creatures that makes a balanced encounter for the party.
For example, suppose you want to send ogres against a 6th-level party. The entry on ogres shows that they are CR 2. Looking at the “6” row in the “Encounter Level” column, you read across to the “2” entry and then check the top of that column to find that four CR 2 monsters make a good 6th-level encounter. To determine the Encounter Level of a group of monsters, reverse these steps (begin with the number of creatures, read down to find the CR for the creature, then look left to find the appropriate EL).
In general, if a creature’s Challenge Rating is two lower than a given Encounter Level, then two creatures of that kind equal an encounter of that Encounter Level. Thus, a pair of frost giants (CR 9 each) is an EL 11 encounter. The progression holds of doubling the number of creatures for each drop of two places in their individual CR, so that four CR 7 creatures (say, four hill giants) are an EL 11 encounter, as are eight CR 5 creatures (such as shadow mastiffs). This calculation does not work, however, with creatures whose CR is 1 or lower, so be sure to use the Encounter Numbers table for such encounters.
Mixed Pair: When dealing with a creature whose Challenge Rating is only one lower than the intended EL, you can raise the EL by one by adding a second creature whose CR is three less than the desired EL. For example, a DM wants to set up an encounter with an aboleth (CR 7) for an 8th-level party. Two aboleths would be EL 9, and she wants an encounter of EL 8, so she decides to give the aboleth a companion or pet to raise the encounter to EL 8. Checking the Encounter Numbers table, she finds that the entry for 8th-level encounters in the “Mixed Pair” column is “7+5.” This means that a CR 7 monster and a CR 5 monster together are an EL 8 encounter.
In general, you can treat a group of creatures as a single creature whose CR equals the group’s EL. For example, instead of having the PCs encounter one CR 4 creature (say, a brown bear), you could substitute two CR 2 creatures (a pair of black bears), whose EL together is 4. However, creatures whose CR is far below the party’s level often provide no challenge at all, so don’t substitute hordes of low-CR creatures for a single high-CR creature.
Some monsters’ CRs are fractions. For instance, a single orc (CR ½) is not a good challenge even for a 1st-level party. This means that you should either calculate XP as if the orc were CR 1, then divide by 2, or treat each pair of orcs encountered as a CR 1 monster.
Encounters with more than a dozen creatures are difficult to judge. If you need thirteen or more creatures to provide enough XP for a standard encounter, then those individual monsters are probably so weak that they don’t make for a good encounter. That’s why the Encounter Numbers table doesn’t have an entry larger than twelve for “Number of Creatures.”
| Encounter Level | Number of Creatures | Mixed Pair | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5–6 | 7–9 | 10–12 | ||
| 1 | 1, 2 | ½ | 1⁄3 | ¼ | 1⁄6 | 1⁄8 | 1⁄8 | ½+1⁄3 |
| 2 | 2, 3 | 1 | ½, 1 | ½ | 1⁄3 | ¼ | 1⁄6 | 1+½ |
| 3 | 3, 4 | 1, 2 | 1 | ½, 1 | ½ | 1⁄3 | ¼ | 2+1 |
| 4 | 3, 4, 5 | 2 | 1, 2 | 1 | ½, 1 | ½ | 1⁄3 | 3+1 |
| 5 | 4, 5, 6 | 3 | 2 | 1, 2 | 1 | ½ | ½ | 4+2 |
| 6 | 5, 6, 7 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1, 2 | 1 | ½ | 5+3 |
| 7 | 6, 7, 8 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | ½ | 6+4 |
| 8 | 7, 8, 9 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 7+5 |
| 9 | 8, 9, 10 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 8+6 |
| 10 | 9, 10, 11 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 9+7 |
| 11 | 10, 11, 12 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 10+8 |
| 12 | 11, 12, 13 | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 11+9 |
| 13 | 12, 13, 14 | 11 | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 12+10 |
| 14 | 13, 14, 15 | 12 | 11 | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 13+11 |
| 15 | 14, 15, 16 | 13 | 12 | 11 | 10 | 9 | 8 | 14+12 |
| 16 | 15, 16, 17 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 11 | 10 | 9 | 15+13 |
| 17 | 16, 17, 18 | 15 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 11 | 10 | 16+14 |
| 18 | 17, 18, 19 | 16 | 15 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 11 | 17+15 |
| 19 | 18, 19, 20 | 17 | 16 | 15 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 18+16 |
| 20 | 19+ | 18 | 17 | 16 | 15 | 14 | 13 | 19+17 |
So, what counts as a “challenge”? Since a game session probably includes many encounters, you don’t want to make every encounter one that taxes the PCs to their limits. They would have to stop the adventure and rest for an extensive period after every fight, and that slows down the game. An encounter with an Encounter Level (EL) equal to the PCs’ level is one that should expend about 20% of their resources—hit points, spells, magic item uses, and so on. This means, on average, that after about four encounters of the party’s level the PCs need to rest, heal, and regain spells. A fifth encounter would probably wipe them out.
The party should be able to take on many more encounters lower than their level but fewer encounters with ELs higher than their level. As a general rule, if the EL is two lower than the party’s level, the PCs should be able to take on twice as many encounters before having to stop and rest. Two levels lower than that, and the number of encounters they can cope with doubles again, and so on. By contrast, an encounter of even one or two levels higher than the party level might tax the PCs to their limit, although with luck they might be able to take on two such encounters before needing to recover. Remember that when the EL is higher than the party level, the chance for PC fatality rises dramatically.
Many adventures reach their climax when the party encounters the mastermind behind the plot, or when they track a big monster, such as a dragon or beholder, to its lair. Unfortunately, encounters with single monsters can be very “swingy.” If the party takes the time to use the Gather Information skill and divination spells, they may begin the encounter immune to the monster’s most powerful weapons. If the party wins initiative, they can gang up on the monster and severely weaken it before it can act.
When planning adventures, consider some or all of the following points to make single monster encounters more enjoyable.
Sometimes, the PCs encounter something that’s a pushover for them. At other times, an encounter is too difficult, and they have to run away. A well-constructed adventure has a variety of encounters at several different levels of difficulty. The Encounter Difficulty table shows (in percentage terms) how many encounters of a certain difficulty an adventure should have.
| % of Total | Encounter | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 10% | Easy | EL lower than party level |
| 20% | Easy if handled properly | Special (see below) |
| 50% | Challenging | EL equals that of party |
| 15% | Very difficult | EL 1–4 higher than party level |
| 5% | Overpowering | EL 5+ higher than party level |
Easy: The PCs win handily with little threat to themselves. The Encounter Level for the encounter is lower than the party level. The group should be able to handle an almost limitless number of these encounters.
Easy if Handled Properly: There’s a trick to this kind of encounter—a trick the PCs must discover to have a good chance of victory. Find and eliminate the evil cleric with greater invisibility first so she stops bolstering the undead, and everything else about the encounter becomes much easier. If not handled properly, this kind of encounter becomes challenging or even very difficult.
Challenging: Most encounters seriously threaten at least one member of the group in some way. These are challenging encounters, about equal in Encounter Level to the party level. The average adventuring group should be able to handle four challenging encounters before they run low on spells, hit points, and other resources. If an encounter doesn’t cost the PCs some significant portion of their resources, it’s not challenging.
Very Difficult: One PC might very well die. The Encounter Level is higher than the party level. This sort of encounter may be more dangerous than an overpowering one, because it’s not immediately obvious to the players that the PCs should flee.
Overpowering: The PCs should run. If they don’t, they will almost certainly lose. The Encounter Level is five or more levels higher than the party level.
You have several options for making an encounter more or less difficult by changing the circumstances of the encounter to account for some feature of the PCs’ surroundings or the makeup of the party. For instance:
None of the above factors should necessarily be taken into account when assigning or modifying Challenge Ratings, but you should keep them in mind when designing encounters.
A really big basilisk with more hit points and a higher attack bonus than a normal basilisk is a greater challenge. If you use the rules found in the Monster Manual for increasing the Hit Dice of monsters, you should also increase the experience point (XP) award for the monster appropriately. See Advanced Monster Challenge Rating.
If a monster has levels in PC or NPC classes, see Monsters and Class Levels for how to determine its CR.
A fight between characters perched on a bridge made of skulls over a pool of bubbling lava is more exciting and more dangerous than that same fight in a nice, safe dungeon room. Location serves two purposes, both equally important. It can make a humdrum encounter more interesting, and it can make an encounter easier or much more difficult.
Arguably, the dungeon itself is a fairly exotic locale, but eventually the same old 30-foot-by-30-foot room starts to grow stale. Likewise, a trip through the dark woods can be interesting and frightening, but the tenth trip through is less so. Since this is a fantasy game, allow yourself the freedom to consider all sorts of strange locations for encounters. Imagine an encounter inside a volcano, along a narrow ledge on the side of a cliff, atop a flying whale, or deep underwater. Think of the exciting location first, and then worry about how and why the PCs would get there.
Situations within a location can have as much impact as the location itself. If a rogue has to pick the lock on the only door out of the top room of a tower that’s collapsing, it’s suddenly a much more exciting situation than just another locked door in a dungeon corridor. Create an encounter in which the PCs must be diplomatic while all around them a battle rages. Fill an underground cave complex with water for a different sort of dungeon adventure. Set a series of encounters in a large wooden fort—that happens to be on fire.
See the Interesting Combats section, page 17, for a short discussion that deals with this same issue.
Orcs with crossbows, behind cover, firing down at the PCs while the characters cross a narrow ledge over a pit full of spikes are much more dangerous than the same orcs being engaged in hand-to-hand combat in some tunnel. Likewise, if the PCs find themselves on a balcony, looking down at oblivious orcs who are carrying barrels of flammable oil, the encounter is likely to be much easier than if the orcs were aware of the PCs.
Consider the sorts of factors, related to location or situation, that make an encounter more difficult, such as the following.
Conversely, the first three conditions given above make encounters easier from the PCs’ point of view if they are the ones benefiting from the cover, elevation, or surprise.
Encounters, either individually or strung together, reward certain types of behavior whether you are conscious of it or not. Encounters that can or must be won by killing the opponents reward aggression and fighting prowess. If you set up your encounters like this, expect wizards and priests to soon go into every adventure with only combat spells prepared. The PCs will learn to use tactics to find the best way to kill the enemy quickly. By contrast, encounters that can be won by diplomacy encourage the PCs to talk to everyone and everything they meet. Encounters that reward subterfuge and prowling encourage sneakiness. Encounters that reward boldness speed up the game, while those that reward caution slow it down.
Always be aware of the sorts of actions you’re rewarding your players for taking. Reward, in this case, doesn’t just mean experience points and treasure. More generally, it means anything that consistently leads to success. An adventure should contain encounters that reward different types of behavior. Not everyone prefers the same kind of encounter, and even those with a favorite enjoy a change of pace. Remember, then, that you can offer many different kinds of encounters, including all of the following.
Combat: Combat encounters can be divided into two groups: attack and defense. Typically, the PCs are on the attack, invading monsters’ lairs and exploring dungeons. A defense encounter, in which the PCs must keep an area, an object, or a person safe from the enemy, can be a nice change of pace.
Negotiation: Although threats can often be involved, a negotiation encounter involves less swordplay and more wordplay. Convincing NPCs to do what the PCs want them to is challenging for both players and DM—quick thinking and good roleplaying are the keys here. Don’t be afraid to play an NPC appropriately (stupid or intelligent, generous or selfish), as long as it fits. But don’t make an NPC so predictable that the PCs can always tell exactly what he or she will do in any given circumstance. Consistent, yes; one-dimensional, no.
Environmental: Weather, earthquakes, landslides, fast-moving rivers, and fires are just some of the environmental conditions that can challenge even mid- to high-level PCs.
Problem-Solving: Mysteries, puzzles, riddles, or anything that requires the players to use logic and reason to try to overcome the challenge counts as a problem-solving encounter.
Judgment Calls: “Do we help the prisoner here in the dungeon, even though it might be a trap?” Rather than depending on logic, these encounters usually involve inclination and gut instinct.
Investigation: This is a long-term sort of encounter involving some negotiation and some problem-solving. An investigation may be called for to solve a mystery or to learn something new.
What adventure would be complete without treasure?
A close second in importance to experience points, treasure provides an important motivator for PCs to go on adventures. As with experience points, treasure empowers the PCs. The more they get, the more powerful they become.
The standard way to acquire treasure is to defeat enemies that possess it, guard it, or happen to be near it. In the Monster Manual, every monster has a treasure rating (indicating how much treasure it has, although for some creatures the rating is “None”). The tables found in this section enable you to determine the specifics. After referencing the level and kind of treasure (coins, goods, items) found in the creature’s description, roll on the appropriate row and columns of the proper table.
When generating an encounter dealing with monsters away from their lair (a patrol, a wandering creature, and so on), remember that a creature only takes what it can easily carry with it. In the case of a creature such as a displacer beast, that generally means nothing. The monster safeguards or hides its treasure as well as it can, but it leaves it behind when outside the lair.
Example: Gnolls that live in a dungeon often leave their lair to wage war on nearby orc brigands to steal treasure and food. The PCs encounter and defeat the gnolls while the bestial humanoids are on their way to raid the orcs. Each gnoll has a smattering of coins or gems on its person. The leader has the masterwork greatsword from the group’s hoard and uses it in the battle. The majority of the gnolls’ treasure, however, remains in their lair, guarded by a few gnolls left behind and two well-concealed pit traps.
Many monsters advance by adding class levels (see the Monster Manual). To determine treasure for monsters with class levels, first give them equipment. Use Table 4–23: NPC Gear Value (page 127) and use just their class levels to determine the value of their equipment. Then generate their treasure according to their monster entry and the rules under Building a Treasure, below. This may generate more items that the monster can use, and that’s fine (see Custom Treasures, below).
Table 3–5: Treasure has been created so that if PCs face enough encounters of their own level to gain a level, they will have also gained enough treasure to keep them apace with the wealth-by-level information found in Table 5–1: Character Wealth by Level (page 135). Just as gaining a level requires between thirteen and fourteen encounters of a party’s level, so too fourteen average rolls on the table at the party’s level will get them the treasure they need to gain the appropriate amount for the next highest level, assuming that the PCs expend some resources such as potions and scrolls during those encounters.
| Encounter Level | Treasure per Encounter | Encounter Level | Treasure per Encounter | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 300 gp | 11 | 7,500 gp | |
| 2 | 600 gp | 12 | 9,800 gp | |
| 3 | 900 gp | 13 | 13,000 gp | |
| 4 | 1,200 gp | 14 | 17,000 gp | |
| 5 | 1,600 gp | 15 | 22,000 gp | |
| 6 | 2,000 gp | 16 | 28,000 gp | |
| 7 | 2,600 gp | 17 | 36,000 gp | |
| 8 | 3,400 gp | 18 | 47,000 gp | |
| 9 | 4,500 gp | 19 | 61,000 gp | |
| 10 | 5,800 gp | 20 | 80,000 gp |
On average, the PCs should earn one treasure suitable to their level for each encounter they overcome. The key, of course, is “average.” Some monsters might have less treasure than average, some might have more, and some might have none at all. As you write an adventure, it’s okay to combine the individual treasures listed for each monster into one larger hoard. If a dungeon is home to a beholder and numerous bugbears, for example, you can take some or all of the bugbear treasure and add it to the beholder’s hoard.
Monitor the progress of treasure into the hands of the PCs. For instance, you may want to use lots of high-treasure or low-treasure monsters, yet still hand out a normal amount of treasure overall. The PCs needn’t have average treasure at every stage in their careers, but if an imbalance (either high or low) persists for more than a few levels, you should take gradual action to correct it by awarding slightly more or slightly less treasure.
| Type | Average Result |
|---|---|
| Gem | 275 gp |
| Art object | 1,100 gp |
| Mundane item | 350 gp |
| Minor magic item | 1,000 gp |
| Medium magic item | 10,000 gp |
| Major magic item | 40,000 gp |