I may have not explained myself properly. I understand those are the key "items" to make a very creative and dynamic encounter. My question was, once you have all the ideas and mechanics in mind, how do you go about putting NUMBERS down on enemy sheets, cause it's not as simple as doing it in an "empty room" environment, where you can average rolls and mathematically pin-point the difficulty of the encounter.
Hi guys,
I'll start by saying that I'm not posting this to ask for basic balancing tips, as I've that down already. I can create encounters that are mathematically aimed towards a specific difficulty level, as long as they are creative but not insanely complex. Big action oriented guy, minions, multiple medium guys, spicy terrain, simple lair actions, sure.
Now, I love actual plays (D20 veteran), but how dahell do DMs like Brennan and Matt balance their insanely creative final bosses? This fights have VERY swingy terrain features that can straight up murder you, powerful lair actions, powerful spellcasters (a personal bane to balance i have no idea) AND change something basically every turn.
I really wouldn't know where to start to put down the actual numbers for anything here, there are so many variables opposed to a couple damage variables you can average to make a very educated guess on the actual difficulty it will pose. These fights come up very swingy thanks to all these impediments, without really giving you the chance to average down any expected DPS by the party, and that's just to decide the enemies' HP...
How do you put the numbers down on sheets here?
I think both approaches are good for different type of mechanical avenues.
I prefer "Roll then Go" for combat, as you try your best to fight and spend whatever amount of successes you gathered for whatever result you deem best in the situation, avoiding "you just missed" scenarios where you fail cause you wanted a very difficult, specific outcome and the DC was set high accordingly. Same for investigation and perception, cause I want to know what your character, with its qualities, makes of the situation, not what you make of it, this is not a puzzle game, your wits can't surpass your character's.
On the other hand, I prefer "Go then Roll" for social tests, cause rolling first just breaks conversation flow, so we use the roll to determine how convincing your character was; his body language, eye contact, demeanor, cadence; these are all things that, altho you can be a great actor and do perfectly, still come down to your character's charisma, not yours; same goes for outside influence, like horror stuff, as it might not scare you, the player.