Let's Play Solo!

I've now posted a new video: Let's Play: Solo! Session 09 interlude, below the graves.



That was unexpected, surprise is just so devastating at low level. :( I feel it was just mostly bad luck. My experience running 5E first level is there is usually one encounter where a character, or sometimes the party are really at risk of dying.

Overall as mentioned in the video I feel the tables are conservative on monsters appearing. I'll run one more playtest and then unless I change my mind - boost the CR 1/8s to 1d3+2 for 4 PCs and leave the 1/4s the same, the stirges stay the same, and the swords the stay the same too.

I posted a new video talking about how the playtest is going for the encounter tables as well as the tile tables and some ways to decrease the chance of TPKs.

Let's Play: Solo! Session 09a Avoiding Total Party Kills

I posted a new Side Quest Video on encounter making where I upgrade the 1st level SRD encounter tables to use monsters from the 5E 2014 Monster Manual:

Let's Play: Side Quest! Building 5E Monster Encounters 3

I just posted Let's Play: Solo! Session 10 interlude, operation rescue?


I was pretty pleased with the new Early Exploration - No Rooms table.

After some absence time, I watched the latest ones and commented.

No rooms table seems like way safer than previous ones. Nice to see the module is getting improved day by day.

Yeah it seems a bit safer. Though those encounters I went through in session 10 both were with monsters that do not have range attacks, so they have to close. Admittedly, the level 1 tables do have a *lot* of creatures like that.

I really have one more thing I think the tables/tiles need. I'm still mulling over how to implement a boss/treasure hoard encounter tile.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Griogre

I really have one more thing I think the tables/tiles need. I'm still mulling over how to implement a boss/treasure hoard encounter tile.

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At level 1, soloists tend to just run encounters until level 4. Only then run a table that rolls for a non-boss but strong monster with maybe 2-3 adds. But I can't remember which monsters apply. Maybe a CR1 one with 2-3 CR 1/8 or 1/4 ones. Without adding story elements, the game relies on rolls and it wasn't a thing I did for a long time.

I use some other ways to "rock" encounter difficulty besides the number of monsters that I've shown so far, though for a 1st Level "Boss" encounter I would just use a max number appearing normal encounter + one hoard treasure table roll. I would probably do the same for the two 2nd level "bosses" as well. The base 2nd level encounters have a much wider difficulty since you are not nearly as constrained by the action economy. Adds can also work, two "sweet spot" monsters worth of minions would work on average but I would not do that type of thing until after second level.

Third level is where things get interesting with more scope for what would be considered normal style "boss" type encounters. :)

Hmm. Just realized I was cheating on the encounter design as I always used TSAT tables and they are 2 monsters top.

HP of martials at 3rd level starts to soak enough damage,
Wizards get good spells,
Rogue at 2nd level gets their bonus action hide / diseangage
Clerics also get useful spells.

I suck at math but how is the probability of level up to 2nd in the first dungeon floor when considering the encounter tables?
CR 0s were 10 XP, while hardest ones goes up to 50 XP.

Should XP be considered on making the encounter tables?
Something like XP to danger level ratio.

The answer is complicated and is explicitly tied to a risk / danger level. More dangerous encounter tables will level the party faster - if they survive. That's why I'm testing the encounter tables I gave out because I wrote them conservatively as far as number of monsters appearing. Being too conservative, slows leveling and is boring; but having too may risky encounters - TPKs the party. The current encounter tables give out an average of 103 XP per encounter for a 4 man party so right now it should take about 12 encounters.

There are different ways of building encounters for solo systems. There are quest based and/or boss systems or ratchetting tension or difficulty over time systems. This particular system has an exploration theme so I don't want to cut short exploration because of a boss or particular room. I want exploration to end for a level when you run out of dungeon or the character's level.

Loosely, I expected the characters to level after about 10 average difficulty encounters when I did the tiles. As I mentioned in the 1.3 section of the modules Book:

"In the perfect world you would have a large enough dungeon to level your characters before finding the stairs down to the next level and having the level dead end everywhere. How many tiles would this actually be? Well, the number is determined by your game's encounter and experience tables. Often you need about 10 monster encounters for the more recent systems and quite a bit more for older ones."

A little further I say:

"The random nature of this system means your party will almost certainly level up before they find stairs down or have the dungeon dead-end everywhere.

I suggest when you party does level up, the next tile should be stairs down (RD1-14 End Stairs) and the rest of the dungeon level be finished by adding dead end corridors (RD1-12 End Hall) to any remaining openings."

So basically, you explore a level until you level the characters then if you have not already found the way down to the next level, you do. There is a possibly you will dead end your dungeon before that, though it is fairly low because of the start tile and early exploration tables - but if so you did, you would start another level and explore it.

What I still want to do is tune the encounter tables a bit more for faster advancement to try to get the number of encounters to around 10 or 11, and when the party is about to level have them place a "Boss" tile with stairs down, a "boss" encounter and hoard treasure if they have not already found the limit for that level.