Mid-Level Sabotage Missions: Difficulty Rating?

[Mylakka]

Hey there guys and gals,

Newbie DM here. I got conned into running a one-on-one Pathfinder for a friend of mine. Theme of the day is intrigue, sabotage, and spy-work. Basically, he's a level 11 Rogue/Sorcerer gestalt that is betraying his nation to join up with the Orcs. He'll get missions from his Orc contact to sabotage varying settlements, objectives or whatever to further the "Greenskin" nations.

One of my major concerns as a new DM is difficulty, and keeping it interesting. After all, I don't want it too easy or too hard. This is his sheet, here: http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetvie...heetid=1029325 Combat will certainly be a part of it, but I'm thinking traps, objectives to complete, sneak attacks, infiltration.. all that good stuff. My main question is how difficult should I make the enemies/traps/etc? Anyone have suggestions for missions to offer, or an ideal CR to look for?

I'm basically tossing myself in the deep end here, as I've always been intrigued by DMing but never took it up. Consequently I'm in a scramble to make it fun for both of us. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Mylakka

[icefractal]

Something you should definitely prepare for is the PC going in unexpected directions and running into people/situations you have to improvise. This can happen even with a more standard adventuring setup, and something like infiltration/sabotage in a populated area means it's almost certain to.

What I find useful for that is having some benchmarks around. Not full stats, but - for example - what kind of Spot and Sense Motive checks a given person is likely to have. Here's a skills baseline I used for a previous game - it was set in Eberron, so the assumption was that most people would be single-digit level, and a moderately optimized group - so change to suit your campaign:

Slightly Talented: +3 (2 ranks + 1 stat)
Professional: +8 (5 ranks + 1 stat + 2 tool)
Locally Famous: +17 (7 ranks + 3 stat + 2 tool + 2 magic + 3 feat)
Nationally Famous: +24 (9 ranks + 3 stat + 2 tool + 5 magic + 5 feats)
Nation/Guild's Best, organization secondary in that field: +37 (13 ranks + 7 stat + 2 tool + 10 magic + 5 feats)
Nation/Guild's Best, organization primary in that field: +56 (13 ranks + 8 stat + 6 other stat + 2 tool + 20 magic + 5 feats + 2 misc)

Those aren't exact, because different skills will have different peaks, but it's close enough for most skills, and it means I can quickly figure out - if a PC decides to sneak past a particular guard I hadn't statted up - what kind of range I should be in.

[jiriku]

Looking at his bonuses, when you are benchmarking DCs for skill checks, I'd say DC 23 for an easy challenge, 29 for a more difficult obstacle, 35 for a hard obstacle, and 41 for something you'd expect him to fail. Understand that his spell selection and social advantages will often allow him to succeed without rolling.

Combat challenges should be kept pretty light until you have a handle on it. I'd say design encounters according to the instructions in the DMG, but treat him as a party of four 8th level PCs. You may need to vary this situationally in order to challenge him, because with so many charm-type spells he can potentially conscript a lot of your NPCs to his cause. Don't worry overly about a stiff challenge, though. He's got all manner of teleportations and disguises and such available, so escaping a bad situation will be easy for him.

[Mylakka]

Thank you for the comments y'all. Definitely going to have to take notes, there are some good ideas here. Having a ready made stat block to pull from for an idea on Spot/Sense Motive/etc would certainly be handy. I'll have to combine your two thoughts and see how it goes. Not quite sure how I'll handle figuring out perception and such, but looks like +17 is around that level. Guess I need to go through more of these books hah. The NPC Codex seems helpful, at least. I suppose one of the better things I can do is collect a bunch of stat blocks for encounters, then mix and match.

Yeah, I figured I would keep combat pretty light to begin with and ramp up the difficulty. Don't want to overwhelm him immediately, but he might succeed in avoiding most combat anyways. Anyone have thoughts on traps, or mission ideas? Or CR/DC, etc? Further comments are most welcome. I still have a little while before I need to worry about it, but trying to acquire as much information as I possibly can. Forewarned is forearmed!