Splitting the Party
"Order of the Stick: Don't Spilt the Party" Volume 4 available at Giant In the Playground (click on above image)
Everybody says "don't split the party"... Most of the time the reason they give is "bad things will happen", which they inevitably do. The real reason is that it's a potential nightmare when it comes to doing it in a table top session. It doesn't always go over well when you tell half of the group "I'm going to ignore you for a while."
As I've stated many a time, all my campaigns as of late have been "play by post", so it's actually rather easy to split the party: just make two separate threads. Short of cloning myself, that's not a readily available option at the table.
In my campaign there are two specific instances that I can think of where the party will be split. One of them is a skill challenge scenario so it's not that bad to handle (it's basically a skill challenge in which you can't see each other), but one is the single most complex encounter in my entire campaign. And it's an encounter that I, quite honestly, really like. In fact, it's probably my favorite encounter in the whole campaign.
So when it came time to write up that encounter for the module... what do I do? I already ran the encounter once in a PbP forum and it went rather well, but looking at the original design I have to wonder how would such an encounter be managed in a table top scenario.
Here are the elements, described in the most generic sense so as not to spoil anything:
- Five PCs.
- Around 20 NPCs, most of which are neutrals and/or minions. Only one or two would qualify as true allies, and that is compensated for by the encounter strength.
- Short of a better way of describing it, one "environmental effect" that has a broad scope and affects everyone in a large area (categorized as an "Elite Hazard", if you must know).
- Two areas of potential combat that are divided geographically. That "division" involves a good two to three hundred feet, the areas do not have line of sight or line of effect with each other, and there is some blocking terrain features between the two.
Everything is peachy until that last one, and then the whole table top scenario falls apart. And it's not just a matter of mechanics, but of "fun": there is only one DM after all, so certain players might begin to feel ignored while the action occurs in an area they're not even aware of. And trying to run both encounter scenes at the same time might be a rather confusing experience; heck, I had a hard time doing it using the MasterPlan encounter manager (I had both groups in the same set).
I find myself forced to redesign my favorite encounter to make it one area. I'm not thrilled at the idea, but the whole point of creating this campaign is so that others can run it. And I don't want to create encounters that are simply not usable at the table.
So has anyone out there ever split the party? Any suggestions on how a situation such as the above would work?
Overly Complex Encounters
"Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge" - Winston Churchill
Part of my problem designing a D&D 4e module is that I haven't played a live table top D&D game in over ten years. During that time, all the games I've been involved with are "play by post": I'm currently DM-ing several online games, and playing multiple characters in many more.
And the reason I can do so many concurrently is because of the nature of "play by post". The advantage of PbP is that all the mechanics involved in managing encounters is transparent to the players, so the players may not be fully aware of the amount of work the DM has to do. Since all my games are PbP and I have a multitude of utilities in order for me to do that management, I have the luxury of making some rather complex encounters. These may not translate well to a table top setting.
Several of the encounters in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of my campaign involve NPC allies. If it were one ally that's not a problem, but I use them a lot, and in once very specific case there are five PCs, five to six enemies and - last time I counted - twenty-three allies and/or non-combatants. I can't imagine what it would be like to handle the status of thirty-four creatures using pen and paper, dealing with things like rolling initiative over a dozen times. Heck, most people might not even own that many miniatures.
So there's my problem... I really like some of these encounters (the one I mention above is my favorite in the entire campaign), but some DMs might take one look at them and think "No way I'm going to deal with all that!" For the sake of publishing, I think I'm virtually forced to modify them so that they are manageable, so that DMs won't be dismayed at running them and elect to either reduce the complexity or skip the encounter entirely.
Another option I'm considering is possibly including two versions in the module, or at least enough descriptive text to explain how to simplify a seemingly complex encounter. But that would feel kind of odd... Including a "normal" version and a "use this if you're crazy" version of the same encounter.
But something interesting happened relating to all this... In addition to all the 4e campaigns I'm active in, I'm also active in one rather epic 3.5e campaign (also PbP). In that campaign we are a group of eight 8th level players currently fighting over ninety orcs, most of which are minions. As a player it doesn't appear that overwhelming, but I can see the amount of work involved in managing such an encounter. Even dealing with all the markers on the digital map is quite daunting sometimes.
But in 3.5e it seems almost... normal, as if that level of complexity was expected and commonplace. In 4e, it's ludricrous. I assume that's simply due to the nature of the 4e mechanic, and the new level of number crunching involved.
So has anyone out there run these sort of "epic" encounters where there are few against many, or perhaps a normal encounter that has a lot of NPCs just waiting to be turned in to collateral damage?
And the reason I can do so many concurrently is because of the nature of "play by post". The advantage of PbP is that all the mechanics involved in managing encounters is transparent to the players, so the players may not be fully aware of the amount of management the DM has to make. Since all my games are PbP and I have a multitude of utilities in order for me to do that management, I have the luxury of making some rather complex encounters. These may not translate well to a table top setting.
And there's the added benefit of time. It's much easier to do that much die rolling and encounter management when you don't have five people sitting across from you at the table wondering "well? Are you done yet?"
Several of the encounters in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of my campaign involve NPC allies. If it were one ally that's not a problem, but I use them a lot, and in once very specific case there are five PCs, five to six enemies and twenty-three allies. I can't imagine what it would be like to handle the status of thirty-four creatures using pen and paper, dealing with things like rolling initiative over twenty times. Heck, most people might not even own that many miniatures.
So there's my problem... I really like some of these encounters (the one I mention above is my favorite in the entire campaign), but some DMs might take one look at them and think "no way I'm going to deal with all that!" For the sake of publishing, I'm forced to modify them so that they are manageable, so that DMs won't be dismayed at running them, preferring to reduce the complexity or skip the encounter entirely.
I've been interested in getting a feel for live games once again, even if it was simply observing and not an active player. Maybe then I'll have a better idea of whether these encounters really are as complex as I fear them to be.
Toughening up Minions
There are various schools of thought about minions... Some people like them, some people hate them. Some use them to balance out an encounter, some will throw legions of them at a level one party just because they can.
In several of the starting encounters of my campaign, I use minions a lot. But I used them to give the story some scope, to show that you are facing something seriously evil with an absurdly large disposable army under its control. To the players they were never meant to be a threat, but rather they were an annoyance.
At first I thought a handful was enough; sending a fleet of minions at the party seemed like overkill. That was until one character in my campaign literally bowled over five of them in the first round, before any other creature even acted. By the time the monsters would have gotten to their spot in the initiative order, the room was empty.
So rather than just throw more minions at them (which would arguably unbalance the encounter) I decided to try something, and came up with the concept of a "tough" minion.
Here are the rules I put together:
- Creature starts with 10 hit points in the Heroic tier, 20 hit points in the Paragon tier and 30 hit points in the Epic tier. This is just enough hit points to be somewhat resistant to secondary attacks (for example, a monk will not be able to kill it with Stone Fist Flurry of Blows) and can even sustain attacks from other minions (in my encounter there were also ally minions), but most PCs could still knock them out in a single solid blow. And if the PC has a weak damage roll it might still be standing, which does make some sense if you think about it.
- Creature *does* take damage from a missed attack, but can never die from it. If the miss drops it to 0 hit points or lower, it stays alive with 1 hit point remaining.
- Creature has no healing surges of its own and cannot be healed in any way. It can benefit from temporary hit points, but it cannot recover from traditional damage.
- Creature can have vulnerabilities and resistances, similar to what a normal monster would have. For example, a Tough Decrepit Skeleton would have radiant vulnerability.
- Any damage the creature takes, even if it's a single hit point of damage, qualifies it as "bloodied". So it would be vulnerable to powers and feats such as Impending Victory.
- A critical hit on an attack roll kills it instantly, even if the attack doesn't normally cause damage. For example, if an Invoker critical hits it with Whispers of Defeat, it dies
- OPTIONAL: Double their XP value if you think they caused the players more trouble than they should have.
- OPTIONAL: Have the minion die automatically after two direct hits, also if you think they were more trouble than they should have been.
When the party faced the same amount of these "tough" minions, it was actually a little bit of a challenge, and weren't quite the cannon fodder they were originally designed to be. And they weren't much a threat to the party anyway, but they did go down swinging.
This also has an added benefit: you might be able to get away with making the players think they're not minions in the first round. If a player lands a weak blow and it's still standing, they might suddenly think that there's a serious threat and will begin to start burning off important resources.
There are a lot more minions to play with in my campaign... I'm going to continue using this idea and see how it works in the long run.
About the Author
Software developer and game designer in Miami, Florida. Currently working on content for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, Pathfinder, 13th Age and other systems.
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