[Oneiros]

I'm going to be running a one-shot this weekend using the KS PDFs. It's going to be four 34 point characters, with a short list of talents for players to choose.

Though I already have my NPCs/opponents picked out, I was just wondering how everyone goes about balancing encounters, i.e., how do you determine an encounter is likely to be easy, average or hard for a given group of X characters of X attribute points?

I know TFT has a lot of variability (aka "swinginess") in any given combat, and putting a scenario together is almost more art than science. I'm just wondering what everyone's general approach is. The ITL book doesn’t give a lot of guidance.

For the record, my adventure is a tower with four levels, each a mega-mega-hex in width. It's mostly submerged in a lake, with the roof sticking above water, but overall airtight, so interior floors are (mostly) dry.

Encounters include an octopus warrior guarding the roof, three "ghouls" who are actually prisoners succumbing to a curse (so it might not involve combat), and a final encounter with a 36 point wizard and two 15 ST water elementals (in a room with about a foot of water in it.) There's also a trap and a puzzle for the characters to deal with (i.e., I'm using a 5-Room Dungeon idea adapted from the web.)