[DF] Advice on combat encounters for a 2-player party

[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.

[Michael Cule]

Well, I wouldn't go dungeon delving. I'd give them a 'mission orientated' adventure set in the surface world.

Given one of them is going to be a ranger how about making it something in the deep forests? A chieftain's daughter has been captured by orcs/bad elves/centaurs/I dunno and they have to sneak in and rescue her?

Don't ask me about advice for stats, I'm rubbish at that.

[Magic_Octopus]

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

Well, I wouldn't go dungeon delving. I'd give them a 'mission orientated' adventure set in the surface world.

Given one of them is going to be a ranger how about making it something in the deep forests? A chieftain's daughter has been captured by orcs/bad elves/centaurs/I dunno and they have to sneak in and rescue her?

Don't ask me about advice for stats, I'm rubbish at that.

Thanks for the suggestion! Sounds like a good idea.

But I wonder if someone could give examples of stats, how many orcs of what point value or some such... I'd like to give the duo a challenge without a TPK in the first encounter, but I don't have a lot of experience in this.

[lachimba]

GURPS Mirror of the fire demon?

[Magic_Octopus]

Originally Posted by lachimba

GURPS Mirror of the fire demon?

That's probably a great adventure, but it's for 4 or more characters. Do the scaling rules within work for a party of just 2?

[Dwarf99]

Originally Posted by Magic_Octopus

That's probably a great adventure, but it's for 4 or more characters. Do the scaling rules within work for a party of just 2?

Yep. The random encounter tables use n a lot, where n is party size.

[dripton]

I'm running a DF campaign for 2 250-point PCs: dwarf knight and elf wizard. They found an NPC cleric in the first adventure, who helps out with healing and undead.

So far (only 3 sessions) they've fought pretty wimpy monsters like skeletons and rats and mutant gnomes and spiders and non-exceptional humans and orcs. Plus a few tougher opponents like a giant praying mantis and a minotaur. And various traps that they've mostly bypassed with luck and the Levitation and Flight spells.

The knight is much better at straightforward melee combat than the wizard and cleric. (A scout, OTOH, is very effective at range, but kind of squishy up close.) That's not really a problem, as long as there's a variety of challenges so that everyone can be useful. With only 2 PCs, screen time isn't an issue.

My suggestions for a small party:

1. Tell everyone to take Luck. With only 2 characters, they're always one critical failure away from disaster. If they take Luck and save it for emergencies, that becomes much less likely.

2. Tactics aren't that complicated for a small group, but the main tactic is that the beefy knight needs to be front and center shielding her friends from the bigger bad guys. An opponent who's any threat at all to the knight's DR 6 and 16 HP and good defense rolls is a serious threat to the others.

3. Make sure they have some healing potions. Otherwise, without a cleric, all damage lasts a long time.

4. If there are a lot of opponents, don't get bogged down in bookkeeping. Make some of them mooks that go down after 1 hit, so you don't have to track too much stuff.

[CraigM]

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.

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.

[Magic_Octopus]

Originally Posted by CraigM

awesome stuff

Thanks, CraigM! Very good points and food for thought.

[Stormcrow]

The cliche is that dungeon fantasy is about killing things and taking their stuff, but really the optimal strategies are sneaking around things or talking to them and taking their stuff. Fighting is dangerous and should be considered the last resort.