Encounter Design

The most common type of encounter is a combat encounter, where the PCs face other creatures. Combat encounters are strictly governed by rules; the guidelines that follow will help you build combat encounters that pose appropriate challenges for your group. Building hazard encounters works the same way.

To build a combat encounter, first decide how the encounter fits in the adventure as a whole. Then, estimate how much of a threat you want the encounter to pose, using one of five categories below.

Trivial-threat encounters are so easy that the characters have essentially no chance of losing. They're unlikely to spend significant resources unless they're particularly wasteful. These encounters work best as warm-ups, palate cleansers, or reminders of how awesome the characters are. A trivial-threat encounter can still be fun to play, so don't ignore them just because of the lack of challenge.

Low-threat encounters present a veneer of difficulty and typically use some of the party's resources. However, it would be rare or the result of very poor tactics for the entire party to be seriously endangered.

Moderate-threat encounters are a serious challenge to the characters, though unlikely to overpower them completely. Characters usually need to use sound tactics and manage their resources wisely to come out of a moderate-threat encounter ready to continue on and face a harder challenge without resting.

Severe-threat encounters are the hardest encounters most groups of characters have a good chance to defeat. These encounters are appropriate for important moments in your story, such as confronting a final boss. Use severe encounters carefully—there's a good chance a character could die, and a small chance the whole group could. Bad luck, poor tactics, or a lack of resources can easily turn a severe-threat encounter against the characters, and a wise group keeps the option to disengage open.

Extreme-threat encounters are so dangerous that they're likely to be an even match for the characters, particularly if the characters are low on resources. This makes them too challenging for most uses! Use an extreme encounter only if you're willing to take the chance the entire party will die. An extreme-threat encounter might be appropriate for a fully rested group of characters that can go all-out, for the climactic encounter at the end of an entire campaign, or for a group of veteran players using advanced tactics and teamwork.

Variety in encounters is essential to let players try new tactics and give different PCs chances to shine as they face foes with weak points they're uniquely suited to exploiting. Consider the following forms of encounter variety.

• Theme: Look for ways to include varied creatures and locations. Even if the PCs are fighting the undead privateers of the Corpse Fleet, they should encounter other creatures, too!
• Difficulty: A string of moderate-threat encounters can feel flat. Use low- and even trivial-threat encounters to give PCs chances to really shine, and severe-threat encounters for especially powerful enemies. Extreme-threat encounters should be used sparingly for enemies who match the threat posed by the PCs and have a solid chance of beating them! The adventure recipes on page 68 include a mix of combat difficulties that can be useful to look at.
• Complexity: Many encounters should be simple. Save complexity for important or memorable fights.
• Encounter Composition: The number of creatures per encounter and their levels should vary. Higher-level single enemies, squads of enemies, and large numbers of lackeys all feel different.
• Setup: Not all encounters should start and end the same way. PCs might sneak up on unprepared enemies, get ambushed by foes hunting them, enter into a formal duel, or find a diplomatic overture fails and turns into a fight. On the other side, enemies might all be taken out, retreat, beg for mercy, or even shift the encounter to a chase or transform into another phase.
• Terrain: Encounters should account for different types of movement and ranged weapons. Elevation can increase range in close quarters. Adding a hazard, cover, or other terrain features changes a combat and can make a familiar map feel dynamic.

Choose compelling settings for your encounters. When encounters take place in a building or space station, the most significant environmental features originate from the occupants, both past and present. Think about their tastes, biology, or wealth. These features could be natural, such as the sickening decay of partially frozen prey in the snow cave of a predator. They could also be chemical, such as a cloud of poisonous gas, or magical, such as a strange electric current that arcs between a computer console and the walls and occasionally leaps out at passersby.

In some cases, you'll have a location in which an enemy always appears, and you can design your location to suit that specific creature. Other times, an encounter might appear in a variety of places, such as a security guard or wandering driftdead. In these cases, you'll need several terrain and structure options so there's something interesting about the environment no matter where the battle takes place.

Every encounter should happen for a reason. Consider a creature's motivation to fight. Is it defending its home? Robbing to enrich itself? Following sadistic impulses? Simply being paid to fight? You might realize a creature doesn't have a compelling motivation or that the PCs have done something that eliminates the impetus to fight. In that case, the encounter doesn't need to happen! Your game might be more satisfying if the PCs' clever actions avoid the fight—provided you award them XP accordingly.

While you can certainly create enjoyable encounters by placing a group of opponents in a square room with little else, you have numerous tools to create encounters that are more interactive and dynamic. These tools can challenge your players to invent new strategies, inspire interesting character decisions, and make your setting richer.

No encounter needs to use all of the elements presented here, and not all encounters need more than one or two. The more complex a dynamic encounter is, the longer it takes to run and the more demanding it is. In general, these tools are perfectly suited for boss encounters, for memorable foes, and as a spice to add throughout your campaign however often works best for you and your players.

Details on how to run a social encounter, and the differences between a social and combat encounter, appear under Social Encounters. The setup for a social encounter tends to be less detailed. For the NPCs involved, you'll just need statistics for their social skills, Perception, and Will. These use the non-combat level of the creature, based on the creature's social skills, not its combat level. You determine the challenge of a social encounter based on this non-combat level.

You also need to decide the objective or consequences of the social encounter—what the PCs can achieve and what happens if they fail—and the form of the challenge. It might be an online debate, a private meeting with a powerful person, or some kind of contest. Just like with combat encounters, think about the environment, with a particular eye toward the other people around. Is there a moderator the PCs can sway? Are they in an expensive private room in the hottest nightclub or at a crowded coffee shop? Is the atmosphere oppressive? Hopeful?

You might find the PCs' goals end up being quite different from what you initially thought they would be. Fortunately, social encounters are adaptable. Thinking of their likely objective helps you construct the scene in your mind more easily but shouldn't limit you.

The standard rules count treasure over the course of a level, rather than dividing it up by encounter. If you need to select treasure for a single encounter, such as in a sandbox game, you can use the table above. It takes the treasure budget for each level and breaks that down per encounter based on the encounter threat, similar to how XP varies by threat. The final column shows extra treasure you should award if you build an entire level this way. Unlike the standard table, this doesn't include items by item level, as the value doesn't cleanly break down for most single encounters. It's recommended you still give out those permanent items, but you'll need to borrow from other encounters' treasure to account for their value. Include encounters against creatures without treasure to account for this.