Characters Pathfinder Roleplaying Game

Building Encounters

GameMastery Guide, page 39

One of the ironies of being a GM is that it’s not your job to create a fair fight between the PCs and monsters—if it were a fair fight, the PCs would lose half the time, and that makes for a very short adventuring career. Consider a “fair” fight between four 6th-level PCs and four 6th-level NPCs; the NPCs are a CR 9 encounter, which has a good chance of killing one of the PCs, but the PCs are likely to kill all the NPCs. This is how it should be—your job is to create encounters that are challenging, which means the PCs are expected to win, but should have to work for it. The following section gives advice on building encounters that are challenging, memorable, effective, and interesting.

In this section

  • Play to the PCs’ Strengths As a GM, you should know your players and their PCs, and create encounters that suit their play style and show off what their characters can do.
  • High- and Low-CR Encounters The game expects that for about half of the encounters the PCs face, the CR of the encounter is equal to the average party level (APL).
  • Solo Monsters vs. Groups of Monsters Sometimes there’s the temptation to use one powerful monster instead of multiple weaker monsters.
  • Winning Monster Combos Some monsters are best used in groups or with other creatures that complement or augment their abilities.
  • Don’t Stymie the PCs This is another way of saying “play to the PCs’ strengths,” but is worth reiterating. Part of the fun of playing is leveling a character and gaining new abilities.