Quote:
Originally Posted by Magic_Octopus
I'd like to run a one shot Dungeon Fantasy adventure, but I only have 2 players.
Could anyone give me advice on how to create reasonably challenging combat encounters for a party of 2? I plan on having them play a "fighter" and a "ranger" (these are not set in stone, but examples), both around 250-300 points.
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My game is 150pt low fantasy, not DF, but I do have a two-player party. The difficulty I find in balancing combat encounters is that the small party narrows the margin of error; the gap between "challenging" and TPK is very slim.
Most of the campaign has been urban social stuff, but there was a dungeon bash earlier. I relied on a few tricks to make it work:
1) Trickle-down hordes. A lot of the threat in the dungeon came from an unlimited supply of very weak monsters. The combination of low strength and limitless numbers allowed me to make very fine adjustments to the threat level; I'd start by hitting them with a handful of monsters, but then have a few more arrive every few seconds. If the PCs were cruising, I'd accelerate the monster arrival rate; if they were getting overwhelmed, I'd taper it back or stop entirely.
2) Bark not bite. If I wanted a scary solo monster, I'd go for something that was big and tough but slow and relatively incompetent. Double dagger weapons are good for this: an oversized halberd is intimidating and definitely dangerous if it hits...but it won't be swinging too often if the wielder is spending 50%+ of its time either re-readying or adjusting reach. Keeping the bad guy skill level low enough that they're using telegraphic attacks all the time also helps: the PCs are only going to get hit if they're very unlucky or very foolish.
3) Allow retreat and regroup. I designed the dungeon with a couple of monster-proof boltholes so that the PCs always had the option of running away, resting up and trying again. There were several instances of the PC fighter fending off mooks one-handed while dragging the unconscious PC mage back to the monster-proof shelter.
4) Territorial monsters. The two most genuinely dangerous monsters in the dungeon were both restricted to their lairs. One was a giant spider that wouldn't bother anyone outside of the room in which it had built its web; the other was a eldritch thing that was basically a huge immobile blob with a lot of tentacles. This meant that the PCs didn't have to take them on until they were prepared for the fight, and again allowed the option of retreat.
5) Allies. The dungeon included a few combat automatons that could be commandeered by the PCs if they were smart enough to figure out how. They didn't take on the two big bads mentioned above until they'd done this, and when they did it was the expendable automaton that was leading the charge.
6) Capture not kill. Almost all of the monsters were looking to capture defeated PCs, not just slaughter them. This allows for the possibility of regroup and rescue; think of Sam and Frodo's encounter with Shelob in LOTR for an example.