Game Mastering for Level 1

[Fizban]

Fizban's word wall two posts above this is mostly true.

Don't act like you don't do it either, I've read some of your recent posts

It should be noted, however, that the DMG guidelines suggest that 15% of encounters should be of a higher EL than the party (+1 to 4) and 5% should be overwhelmingly dangerous to them (+5 or more).

Indeed. They're also flagged as "one PC might very well die" and "this sort of encounter may be more dangerous than an overpowering one because it's not immediately obvious to the players that the PCs should flee." In short, to reduce the lethality of low level adventures, reduce the lethality of low level adventures. I just look at 1st level adventures which like to end with Ogres and other stuff that can one-shot most of the party when they're already low on resources and think, "really?"

Also of note is that the XP table gives the same XP for levels 1 through 3 so having that 1:5 encounter substantially shortens the time you spend at level 1. A CR 3 foe at level 1 will give you 1/4 of the xp to make it to 2 if you're in a party of four. Taking the 13-1/3 encounters necessary to get from 1 to 2 on CR 1 foes would be an absolute slog.

If I'm essentially gambling my characters' lives in every encounter at that level anyway, I'd rather make the larger bet and get it over with, one way or the other. After all, you don't necessarily have to kill everything to get the XP. In a lot of cases, mere survival is good enough to have overcome the encounter.

This is also probably a fair part of it. As for whether its a slog, that's always up to description and pacing, but if you're relying on combat in the combat-based game then you're probably gonna want a larger range. Which means gambling, and indeed you might as well go big or go home then.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Don't act like you don't do it either, I've read some of your recent posts

I most certainly do. Didn't intend it in a derogatory fashion, merely descriptive.

Ironically enough, just before those big posts in the "quadratic fighter" discussion, I was commenting to a friend that has to write some essays for a degree he's working at that I would find writing large papers to be a pain the back-side.

[False God]

Part of this issue comes down to the fact that often at low levels, the DM and the players aren't exactly sure what they can handle. A well optimized and coordinated party, even at level 1, can "punch up" quite well. The DM has a guideline on their side saying "if your PCs are XYZ level they can handle ABC monsters." It's a rough guide but it's something. The PCs on the other hand don't. They have no idea if they can take that troll, if they can beat those rats, if they can kill those kobolds (assuming they're not metgaming). And they may not know until they're dead.

And optimized monsters can make the problem even more difficult, even if they don't get class features, simply "playing smart" can cause monsters to be massively more difficult.

Which can lead to parties running away from things they can take, and attempting to take things they should run away.

There really should be some mechanic for PCs to gauge fights.

[Kelb_Panthera]

There really should be some mechanic for PCs to gauge fights.

There is. The sense motive skill can be used to guage the rough level of threat presented by a foe. Complete Adventurer 102.

If you're stuck in a core environment then you're right but I have to ask; why on earth are you stuck in a core 3e game? It's been over a decade and 2 new versions of the game, 4 if you count PF 1e and 2e.

[False God]

There is. The sense motive skill can be used to guage the rough level of threat presented by a foe. Complete Adventurer 102.

The problem is this comes down to the following, all of which are out of the player's control:
A: Does the DM allow this book? Complete with variants: The DM allows this book, but not this rule. The DM allows this book and this rule, but doesn't tell anyone about it (there's a lot of rules to know!). The DM allows this book but isn't aware of this particular rule.
B: The DM is very begrudging with information. Complete with variants: The DM answers questions like a Jedi. The DM thinks its cute to give you information that is basically useless. The DM roleplays your character for you and each character gets a different idea of how challenging the enemy is.
C: It's one of those weird rules that can produce wrong information.
D: It targets only a single opponent.
E: Its information is contextual.
F: It relies on the DM.

The big issue is it relies on is the DM. The DM doesn't have perfect knowledge on if something is a challenge for you or not. They probably won't for several encounters and a couple levels. Secondly, it doesn't actually reveal the CR of the encounter, it reveals how close on the basis of HD the single enemy is to yourself. HD=/=CR. By this chart, a 1HD creature (like a badger) is a "fair fight". But only for you, not for your party. 2 Badgers is a CR 1 fight, same as the party. But each party member would see a badger as a "fair fight", and 4 badgers would be a CR 2 fight. Which even the Encounter Calculator lists as a "Very Difficult" fight.

It does worse than giving no information. It gives bad information.

If you're stuck in a core environment then you're right but I have to ask; why on earth are you stuck in a core 3e game? It's been over a decade and 2 new versions of the game, 4 if you count PF 1e and 2e.

Core only really isn't the issue. The issue is that there's no way for a player to gain accurate information. The Sense Motive option gives information on a completely different scale. It's like asking for the weight of a car in pounds and telling me how many apples it weighs.

[Kelb_Panthera]

The problem is this comes down to the following, all of which are out of the player's control:

Player control of anything but his own character is pretty minimal. Nothing for that but to accept it.

A: Does the DM allow this book? Complete with variants: The DM allows this book, but not this rule. The DM allows this book and this rule, but doesn't tell anyone about it (there's a lot of rules to know!). The DM allows this book but isn't aware of this particular rule.

I at least tacitly acknowledged this in my comment on core-only games. The completes are typically the first additions and -no one- knows all the rules. The GM not being aware of a thing isn't any more of a criticism against this than it is any other spell, feat, or class ability in the game.

B: The DM is very begrudging with information. Complete with variants: The DM answers questions like a Jedi. The DM thinks its cute to give you information that is basically useless. The DM roleplays your character for you and each character gets a different idea of how challenging the enemy is.

This is twisting the rules for the skill use to deliberately screw the player(s). It's something the GM can do to literally anything.

How much of a threat is that foe? Roll sense motive. It's (one of the five categories given.)

C: It's one of those weird rules that can produce wrong information.

And? Your character's ability to assess a threat isn't any more perfect than yours. You can increase ranks as you level and there's even a feat if you're really worried about it. If you get good at it later on, your likelihood of being wrong can be quite small.

D: It targets only a single opponent.

Description alone should be enough to give you, the player, some intuition on which foe in a group is likely the most dangerous of that group. If he's a major threat, the whole encounter should probably be fled. If he's not, it may be doable. If he's in the lowest categories, then it should be a fairly typical challenge.

Yeah, it's dicey at level one but so is literally everything. Few things have bluff at all and cha isn't generally massive on low CR opponents. Your odds should be better than even if you actually put ranks in the skill.

E: Its information is contextual.

I'm not sure how this is even a criticism. Of course it is. It would be regardless of the mechanism through which you got it.

F: It relies on the DM.

Everything does. No DM, no game. Any mechanic through which you gather information about your foes would be dependent on the GM unless the mechanic you choose is to simply memorize monster stats and metagame. Which I think we agree is an undesirable option?

The big issue is it relies on is the DM. The DM doesn't have perfect knowledge on if something is a challenge for you or not. They probably won't for several encounters and a couple levels. Secondly, it doesn't actually reveal the CR of the encounter, it reveals how close on the basis of HD the single enemy is to yourself. HD=/=CR. By this chart, a 1HD creature (like a badger) is a "fair fight". But only for you, not for your party. 2 Badgers is a CR 1 fight, same as the party. But each party member would see a badger as a "fair fight", and 4 badgers would be a CR 2 fight. Which even the Encounter Calculator lists as a "Very Difficult" fight.

It doesn't give you the exact CR but it does give you a window that you know that CR is in. Since your HD are equal to your level with most characters, you can see where that CR is relative to your level and it even says the GM should make an adjustment up or down if the foe is particularly vulnerable or resistant to your preferred method of combat.

If you look at a badger and say to yourself, "I could maybe take that in a fair fight," and then you see there are 3 more of them, you'd have to be just this side of brain-dead not to realize that the encounter on the whole represents a serious threat.

It does worse than giving no information. It gives bad information.

Only if you lose the opposed roll by 5 or more. Neither the DM nor any game mechanic can be blamed for a player's inability to correlate different pieces of information he has at his disposal.

Core only really isn't the issue. The issue is that there's no way for a player to gain accurate information. The Sense Motive option gives information on a completely different scale. It's like asking for the weight of a car in pounds and telling me how many apples it weighs.

If you know about how much an apple weighs and you're given the weight of a car in apples, you can get a decent estimate of how much the car weighs. Low level play is all about playing the odds. If you want certain, you shouldn't be playing a game with dice in the first place.

The only criticism you've levied here is that the GM might decide to screw with you or be incompetent. That's true for literally every aspect of the game in its entirety. The mechanic through which you determine if a situation is a threat or not is completely irrelevant in that case.

Availability of this option is the only thing that's really a question worth addressing here.

[Fizban]

I most certainly do. Didn't intend it in a derogatory fashion, merely descriptive.

Ironically enough, just before those big posts in the "quadratic fighter" discussion, I was commenting to a friend that has to write some essays for a degree he's working at that I would find writing large papers to be a pain the back-side.

Knowledge+passion= spontaneous walls of text. The catch with essays for school is that you're writing them either to help gain, or demonstrate recently gained knowledge, rather than something you've already been doing for years, so it's just not as easy. And being told to do something now instead of deciding on your own time that you want to do something doesn't help.

The big issue is it relies on is the DM. The DM doesn't have perfect knowledge on if something is a challenge for you or not. They probably won't for several encounters and a couple levels.

Ehhhhhh, depends on how fresh the DM is. The DM has all the information, part of their job is making sure encounters are of appropriate difficulty, therefore the more experienced the DM the better they should be at estimating it. It's not hard to check the PC's stats against your monsters.

But you wish for something fully within the players' control?

Everything does. No DM, no game. Any mechanic through which you gather information about your foes would be dependent on the GM unless the mechanic you choose is to simply memorize monster stats and metagame. Which I think we agree is an undesirable option?

Well by some accounts metagaming was indeed the desired result of previous editions. . . but yeah.

Anyway, fully player dependent evaluation of monsters is still possible unless the DM is deliberately refusing basic visual information. Humanoid foes? You can see the weapons and armor they're using, those stats are all in the PHB, you know exactly what the base values are from them. Same with size bonuses. Need more info? "Hey, does that guy look stronger than Bob the fighter?" Now you have some idea of their attack and damage bonus. Natural armor also has visible descriptors. Natural weapons follow the same size patterns as weapons, which you can deduce once you've seen a few of them, allowing you to guess at the dice for those (oh it's a Large wolf, the wolf we fought had a d6 bite, this probably has d8 [of course the Dire Wolf's real threat is the mega strength bonus]). Sure you can't guess at magic or supernatural abilities right off the bat, but level appropriate foes for 1st level parties are not the type with tons of magic- they're pests. And with humanoids being the most common, you have half their statblock just by looking at them.

As for the Sense Motive evaluation, well it's one of the reasons I decided Fighters should have Sense Motive. The imprecision of the base effect is annoying until you have enough bonus, but the real killer is the standard action activation: combine with impatient players that must A-move every turn and the possibility that a hard fight could turn into a loss because you spent an action trying to figure out how hard it was, well that's a bummer. I've considered giving Fighters an extra set of bonus feats from a special list of "non-offense" feats, in order to get them to take defensive/information/etc feats, and again the Combat Intuition feat is a big part of that reasoning. But my list of prospective players is low enough power that I need to keep a reign on my buffs rather than pushing the op level even further past them.

[Yahzi Coyote]

Hey all, I was just wondering if anyone here has any tricks for DM’ing a good game starting at level 1.

I do. I wrote up an adventure called Humble Beginnings (available on DriveThruRPG for free) which I used to start my current campaign at level 0. It worked great! You can read the recap on my blog or here on GitP (just search for World of Prime Campaign Journal).

The players started with 1 stat at 12 and the rest at 10, 1 point in a peasant profession craft skill, and 4 hps. They fought little goblins with sticks and rocks and worked their way through five sub-class levels, gaining a hit point or a skill rank with each advance. It was a great way to introduce the new players to D&D, the group to each other, and the players to my world. And now the party is still going strong, almost 2 years later. That common origin from dirt farmer to hero really bound them together.