Managing a campaign in Dungeons and Dragons can be a confusing thing at times, as tightly bound to luck and chance as DnD is, it can be difficult to scale challenges appropriately. Often times as well, a challenge that causes a TPK will be blamed on the GM, as will the lack of a challenge. This can make it frustrating before understanding how to accurately tell what kinds of challenges are right for your party.

COMBAT

The most obvious item that the average GM would have to pay special care to is combat. After running my first few campaigns I found that when dealing with low level characters, luck and chance have more control over battle than any other factor.

For example, my very first campaign, the party of a Fighter, Mage, and an Archer encounter a Dire rat. This is a typical enemy for low level characters on the surface, low CR and very few hit points. The problem however comes from it’s size and other modifiers making it’s armor class 15, for a lvl 1 character, the most one might have as a to hit modifier would be between 1-4 on average, making the odds of actually hitting the enemy drop to 30-50% After several rounds of combat, the mage finally ran out of fire spells and resorted to magic missile which in 3.5 could not miss, only then did the beast fall.

During the same session towards the end, the party had reached lvl 3, and were faced with a young black dragon, intended to fight the party for a few rounds before fleeing, giving a powerful challenge but not enough to wipe the party. It was dead in two rounds. The fighter and archer both rolled max critical hits, and the mage got near max damage with his spells.

In the case of combat, you need to run both the best and worse case scenarios, and make sure that both are survivable. The players probably won’t complain about winning a fight by rolling 8 twenties, but you can be sure they will be frustrated if rolling nothing but 1-5 for a few rounds causes them to die. On the other hand, if they are not challenged, it won’t be a memorable experience.

Some good tips for making encounters that are challenging while keeping death at minimal risk until you want to raise the stakes some are;

1. Keep max damage below half health: If your player’s melee character has 18 HP, monsters that can hit for 2d6 1d10 or numbers such as that can mop the floor with your players in only a couple rounds of bad luck, if you are using a random crit chart, try to use one, or modify one so that set damage effects are not high enough that it could cause a player to go unconscious from full health.

2. Bear class in mind: Try to consider what classes are in the campaign, and try to include enemies your players are ‘good’ against. If your ranger takes a preferred enemy for goblins, throw in some goblins, if you have a cleric, try to use some undead, and if there is a mage, include some tiny enemies for him to shoot down with magic missile.

The players will only become frustrated if they have bonuses and buffs to help them defeat every kind of enemy except the ones you are using. As a bonus, enemies the party is good against can be stronger than normal to make up for the party’s buffs, giving more exp as well as a feeling of ‘I’m glad I invested in that skill’ for the players.

3. Escape clause: Until you are ready for a final showdown, or a battle that is a do or die moment, make sure there is a way out for the players, and for enemies you don’t want to have killed off. Instead of wiping the party, knock them out but not kill them, then tell them that they have been captured and taken to a dungeon, don’t overuse it, but that sort of plot can be a good safety net to keep the game going.

PUZZLES

First and foremost, don’t be too clever. Complex and intricate devices for a puzzle will take so much discription that you will basically tell them exactly how to solve the puzzle by describing what things they can interact with, or while avoiding doing that won’t tell them nearly enough to actually be useful. Players have the bizarre habit however of picking up anything. Seriously. I mean it, put a freaking pebble into a large ornate chest and I guarantee you somebody will pick it up, and have it on their character sheet for the rest of the game. Puzzles involving rubbing magic mcguffins against doors tend to work fairly well in DnD games, but can get predictable.

The most important thing you can do, is consider the way your players think, for a few examples;

Locical thinkers: If your players, or the decision making player tends to weigh logic into decisions, puzzles should probably be put into the format of pattern recognition, or matching two related subjects (placing a lute into hands of the statue of a bard) with a few anti-logic puzzles here and there where the obvious answer is wrong (door with lever directly beside it that activates trap, door is unlocked.) to keep the players guessing a bit.

Violent thinkers: Puzzles should be kept pretty simple with this lot, lighting torches, and basically anything that you could solve through brute force, but try to keep an alternate subtle puzzle available for them to choose, if they notice it and solve it, have the result a little better than the brute force method to try to encourage more thinking.

Abstract thinkers: If your players try some of the most bizarre random things, you might as well not even try to make sense, make sure the important parts aren’t too breakable and they’ll figure it out in a more entertaining way than you might intent.

A good understanding of your players is just as important as their classes and the game rules. After a little practice it will become easier to learn the balance between safety and challenge to create an adventure that keeps your players on their toes.