The good news is, you don’t need wonky calculators or bizarre algorithms to build encounters in Pathfinder. It’s an easy-peasy three-step process and can be done with a pocket calculator or even just a rough eyeballing. There’s a nice summary right here on the d20pfsrd site, but I’ll go ahead and write it up here anyhow.

Step One: Average Party Level

This is just what it sounds like, the average level of every member of the party, rounded to the nearest whole number. (So, for example: Ftr 3, Clr 2, Rog 3, Wiz 3 = 11/4 = 2.75 = 3.) There is one wrinkle to this:

• If the party is 3 or fewer characters: APL = APL-1.
• If the party is 6 or more characters: APL = APL+1.

For the purposes of building an encounter, the “party” consists of any characters who are going to help the PCs. So if the local constabulary is going to come running to the PCs’ aid (say, four level 3 warriors), they should be factored in. Thus, using the sample party above, the final APL would be (Ftr 3, Clr 2, Rog 3, Wiz 3, 4*{War 3} = 23/8 = 2.9 = 3, +1 for being 6+ characters =) 4.

“Well hold on,” you might say. “All those disposable NPCs only add an effective +1 to the APL? But I want a big fight that will tear them up!” Well that’s easy enough to deal with. If you’ve got a party full of redshirts that you don’t mind obliterating in order to make the encounter big and dramatic, you simply up the challenge rating (CR) in the next step.

Step Two: Challenge Rating (CR) and XP Budget

Encounters are rated as “Easy,” “Average,” “Challenging,” “Hard,” or “Epic.” In any given adventure, most (but not all) encounters should be either Average or Challenging, with a few Easy ones thrown in for variety, then trending towards Hard as you build up to a climactic finish. You should only use Epic encounters very sparingly, because they will almost certainly kill PCs.

Once you’ve determined the APL in Step One, determining the encounter CR is easy:

Thus, for our example APL 3 party, an Average encounter would be CR 3, while a Challenging encounter would be CR 4. An Epic encounter would be CR 6 and might very well be a TPK.

Once you know the CR, you then use that to figure out your XP budget. You’ll use the XP budget to “buy” critters or hazards to put into your encounter.

So for our sample party, a Challenging encounter (CR 4) would have a budget of 1,200 XP.

Step Three: Build the Encounter

From here, you simply “buy” critters, hazards, skill challenges, etc. with your allotted XP budget, starting with the most expensive item first. Everything than can be an encounter element should have an XP value (listed right in the stat block for things that have a stat block). For instance, say you wanted our sample party to have a Challenging encounter with an ogre and his goblin cronies. Your XP budget is 1,200, so you might then build the encounter like so:

Yes, it sneaks over budget, but not by much, and you can always mitigate that with environmental conditions (perhaps the goblin cronies run away at 1/2 or fewer hit points or as soon as one is killed, for instance).

Encounter Design Philosophy: More Bang for Your XP Buck

The way the d20 system in general works (and to some extent, the way all tabletop RPGs work), you’re almost always worse off outmanned than outgunned. So don’t use a single CR 4 opponent to build a CR 4 encounter, because the PCs will quickly swarm over it and stomp it to jelly unless you’ve really beefed it up. Instead, think in terms of encounters with multiple foes, such as the ogre and goblins example above. Granted, the goblins in the example are mostly speed bumps that will probably die in the first round or two– but that gives the ogre another round more than he would have had to be interesting on his own.

Remember also, that Average and Challenging encounters aren’t there to actually defeat your players. They’re there to whittle ‘em down. “Resource management” is a big part of the D&D/Pathfinder game system. It’s not the ogre that finally defeats a PC… it’s the cure spells the party ran out of in the last room.

More Encounter Design Philosophy: Making the Most of Minions

One downside of XP budgets is that you always run out of XP way before you have what you feel like are enough critters. Especially after you’ve noticed that critters that are a CR of 2 or more levels below the APL tend to have a really hard time hitting PCs with much of anything. What to do? We need some “minion” rules for this!

…Well, no, not really. It actually works fairly well with just a bit of tweaking.

First, if you have 9 kobolds swarming over a PC, for the love of Mike, don’t roll nine d20s hoping one of them will get the 20 they need to hit that PC. Have six kobolds use Aid Another instead of attacking directly: suddenly you have three kobolds each with +6 to hit, which is much more dangerous!

Second, use your minions where they’re most effective, i.e., going after the squishy party members. Nine kobolds swarming a fighter = nine soon-to-be-dead kobolds. Nine kobolds swarming a wizard = a wizard who’s in trouble. Three kobolds grappling a wizard with +6 = a wizard who is completely shut down.

That said… don’t bother adding elements that are CR-5 or lower to an encounter. Or if you do, treat them like flavor text and don’t actually bother with the math involved.

Rewards (Experience, Treasure, etc.)

This depends on your campaign model. The default is to divide the XP value of the encounter equally among those who participated in it. To keep characters in the general vicinity of the expected wealth per level, you should also either place treasure in the encounter (“Loot the bodies, yay!”) or arrange for the party to receive the appropriate amount of treasure as a quest reward (“The ogre and his goblin cronies didn’t have anything but fleas, but the duke had a price on their heads of 1,000 gp!”). The amount of treasure each encounter earns varies depending on the Slow/Normal/Fast XP option chosen for your campaign, and that info can be found here.

And There You Have It!

Really, that’s it in a nutshell. Very simple– much simpler to do than it actually was to write down. There’s more nuances and all sorts of add-on topics, particularly on the topic of ad-hoc APL or CR adjustments for terrain, gear, etc., but most of those boil down to judgement calls anyway. If you’re fighting ice giants in a lava pit, guess what: their CR is actually much lower than it would be if you were fighting them in a blizzard, and you should adjust accordingly. Similarly, if that ogre is armed with a +4 vorpal humanslayer… he’s probably higher than CR 3.

So get on out there and build some encounters!

-The Gneech

That said, I did feel some glimmerings of interest today, as the Critical Hits Twitter feed live-tweeted a chat happening on the WotC website. You can find a pretty good summary of the key points on Trollish Delver, except for what I actually thought was the most potentially interesting aspect of it: namely the concept of modular design.

The model the development team is going with is a very simple, streamlined “core game,” with all sorts of add-on “modules” you can use or ignore at will. Like a crunchy, tactical game? Add the “miniatures mode” rules. Prefer a skill-heavy, intriguey game? Add the “story mode” rules. etc.

This is a big, ambitious idea and in a lot of ways the perfect cure for what made 4E such a debacle, if they can pull it off. My experience with 4E was that it “allowed” other modes of play beside miniature-pushing, but it certainly didn’t “support” or “encourage” them. This also dovetails nicely with the points mentioned in the Trollish Delver summary about getting away from “copy-and-paste” characters and making a broader, more diversified art style.

There was a definite vibe in 4E that “All OTT Action All the Time! With Flying Chainsaws and Explosions and Veins Popping In Your Forehead!!!” was the only way to play the game, and everything else was doin’ it wrong — much to the annoyance of the large swaths of gamers who (like me) didn’t particularly want to play it that way.

Anyhow, I’m not exactly ready to jump back on the D&D train yet. As I say, my issues largely stem from a fundamental distrust of WotC, who in response to directives from Hasbro freaked out and blasted the game I once loved into something barely recognizable. Honestly, I don’t like there being as much money involved in D&D as there is, because that always causes people to turn greedy and stupid.

However, I am warming up to at least the concepts driving the new edition. It’d take a lot to make me willing to switch from Pathfinder at this stage, especially given the fact that I’m not actively running anything at the moment, but I am now at least interested in hearing more about it.

-The Gneech

But she did have one entertaining thing happen recently. You see, Lachwen is from northern Mirkwood originally, i.e., the kingdom of Thranduil (Legolas’ father), and the elves of Mirkwood are some pretty hearty partiers. (See also Bilbo’s adventure riding the wine-barrels out of Thranduil’s halls.) Lachwen is no exception to this.

So when some dwarves invited her to toast their comrade Nykr, fallen in the depths of Moria, naturally she was happy to join in!

What she was not expecting, was that just how many friends Nykr had — and that they would all want to drink with her, one at a time. In rapid succession.

Even a hardened veteran of the Drinking Wars of Mirkwood can only take so much. The lesson learned here: be wary when offered a drink by a dwarf, or you might wake up in the crazy cat-lady of Bree’s house, mysteriously missing your pants.

-The Gneech

Warning: Bad fic ahead.

Describe your character from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know them.

Toby and I were on the road from Ost Guruth to Bree; it was a risky trip, we knew, but we had a wagon full of pristine hides and we knew the Bree auction house would get us the best price. We were almost to the Forsaken Inn, when the howling of wargs chilled our blood. Over the hill a pack came swarming, some being ridden by goblins, and we ran for our lives, abandoning the cart in our panic.

We scrambled our way up a rocky cleft, goblin spears striking the cliff walls to either side of us; Toby’s short hobbit legs made it a lot harder for him, so I practically lifted him into the air and shoved him over the precipice. “Wait!” he shouted. “There’s–” but I couldn’t stop to listen, there was a warg right on top of me! I just barely had time to heave myself over the top and into the canyon beyond, kicking the hairy beast in the face to give myself the last push over.

I turned back and glanced over the edge: the wargs were not following, even though they could easily make the leap. Instead, they were circling below. I said as much to Toby, but he didn’t seem impressed.

“Uh … I don’t think our situation has improved,” he said, pointing into the ruddy brown, dusty valley. In the shadows, gleaming green eyes — in nauseating sets of eight — glistened at us. Chittering and making what almost sounded like vicious chuckling sounds, a half-dozen obscenely huge spiders were slowly but visibly closing in on us. We couldn’t go back, we couldn’t go forward.

“You and your pristine hides!” I said.

“I wanted to sell them in Ost Guruth!” Toby shot back.

The nearest spider was dangerously close, now; I could smell its disgusting venom and hear the click-clicking of its feet on the rock. I pulled out my dagger, a futile gesture of defiance, determined to slay at least one of the monstrous things before they overwhelmed us — when suddenly and as if out of nowhere, the horrid thing burst into flames before my eyes, squealing and thrashing in agony!

“Hey, you two need a hand?” called a feminine voice. Off to our right, seeming to shine with her own internal light, an elf-maid stood with her hands on her hips and her head cocked to the side, as if amused by the whole thing. She wasn’t like any elf I’d seen before … instead of regal and elegant, she was rough-edged and almost arrogant, with a bright motley of clothes and a shining winged circlet on her head. But for the leaf shape of her ears, I would have assumed her to be of the race of men.

The spiders, enraged by the interference, turned from us and converged on the elf, whose expression turned into a predatory grin as she crouched for battle. Reciting something in elvish that I couldn’t catch, she held a stone between herself and the closest spider — a flash of lightning arced from the stone into the beast’s body, causing it to jerk and smoke. Then she turned to another, pulling a small vial of something out of the satchel at her side and hurling it at the beast, which like the one at the beginning burst into flames.

Within moments, it was over, and the elf-maiden was stepping over the charred spider corpses to come over to us. “You two okay?” she said. “I’ve got some medicine here if you need it.”

“That was amazing!” cheered Toby. “I’ve never seen anything like it!”

“Eh, it’s no big deal,” said the elf-maid, with a shrug. “I’m from Mirkwood … if there’s one thing we know, it’s how to kill spiders.”

“We owe you our lives,” I said.

“Oh, heh, don’t worry about it,” said the elf. “I’m sure you’d have done the same for me. But we oughta get out of here before more show up. We’re not far from the Forsaken Inn, I’ll go with you that far.”

“But what about our wagon?” said Toby. “This whole trip will be for nothing.”

“Was that your wagon in the road?” said the elf. “I guess it’s a good thing I blasted those wargs and goblins, too, then! C’mon, we’ll go pick it up. It’s a bit of a mess, though, sorry!”

Toby looked like he was about to pass out. “You saved our wagon, too? Please! Tell me your name, so I can write a song about your great deeds!”

“You write songs?” I said to Toby.

The elf-maid laughed. “Wow, a song about me? That’d be great! My name’s Lachwen. C’mon, let’s go!”

-The Gneech

First and most obvious, is to use the “slow progression” XP chart. Leveling back in the old days took forever, and a new level was a big deal when it finally hit.

Second, and related to the first, is to institute Class Training. Once upon a time, you didn’t hoard gold in order to purchase magic items, you had to spend it in order to go up a level. As I recall, none of the games I was ever involved in actually used that rule, because you had to earn the XP and spend the money for training, which seemed like paying for the same ground twice. But from a game-design point of view it does have some interesting wrinkles, not the least of which is that giant gems behind obvious deathtraps suddenly become enticing, instead of something that the players shrug at and move on as not being worth the time expenditure. (“Let’s go find some monsters to crack open for XP, shall we?”)

In order to avoid the “paying for the same ground twice” feeling, my house rule is very simple: between adventures the players can “trade in” treasure, at the rate of 1 GP = 1 XP, on “training.” Whether that training was actual drilling at the martial arts academy, studying tomes in the library, or blowing it all on ale and wenches, doesn’t really matter. The point is that treasure is now actually useful for something besides just buying another +1 for your battleaxe.

Third, and this one is a little more out there, is that a character may not progress past 10th level in any single class. At 11th level, should the game reach that point, they can multiclass, or they can take prestige classes as desired, but 10 is the cap for every class. This means that a lot of upper-end class abilities are just not available, and unless you are in a prestige class that gives the “+1 spellcasting level” there is no way to ever get a 6th-level or higher spell. It also mucks around with spell penetration at higher levels, so if that becomes a problem I’ll probably either nerf critter SR or provide some other way around it, but we’ll get to that later.

The next step, for me, is to create a bunch of hooks and/or adventure sites ranging from levels 1-5. Back when the model was “the DM has a signature dungeon,” you’d pretty much create a single dungeon where the first level had critters with 1-2 hit dice, the second level had critters with 2-4 hit dice, and so on downward, and the players would either fight, sneak, or negotiate their way through going up or down … and the GM would repopulate the place periodically to account for the new vacancies in dungeon population created by rampaging PCs. I have in mind to get around this by having a small handful of thematic “dungeons” where most of the action will take place, and the PCs can bounce around from one to another as they see fit. As they “get to know” these dungeons I’ll add new locations and probably toss in the occasional “big event” adventure for variety.

The key to it all, however, and something I’ll need to make sure to impress on the players, is that they’ll be the ones driving the campaign plot, in as much as there is one. As such, I may institute something similar to the “goal” mechanic from Ghostbusters: each character has a self-defined but explicit and measurable goal, and when they achieve something related to that goal, they get a bonus reward (probably in the form of XP). For example, a wizard might have the goal of “study magic phenomena,” and whenever they encounter something weird (like a magic fountain randomly tucked into a dungeon room for no apparent reason) they get an XP bonus for figuring it out. A fighter might have “defeat notable foes” and get bonus XP for fighting bosses, that kind of thing. Knowing the players’ specific goals can also give me ideas for encounters to throw at them. If the paladin has “slay demons” as their goal, I know I need to put demons into the game; if the rogue has “pick pockets” as their goal, I need to put them into situations where pocket-picking is feasible. That kind of thing.

I’m hoping this will be fun and a bit different. I’m also hoping that this will get me back in my GMing groove again for a while, ’cause I always miss gaming when I don’t get enough.

-The Gneech

[1] As for exactly what that entails, the definition is pretty vague. But my interpretation is mainly that instead of coming up with plotted adventures, I simply create a setting and a handful of “adventure locations” and let the players figure out where they want to go and what they want to do there.)

So wish your local GM a happy Gamemaster Day! It might save you from a TPK.

-The Gneech