9 Ways to Balance Encounters
These are some of my own personal guidelines to planning just the right encounters for my games. #1 Never put balance first. Sure, sometimes you want a balanced encounter. Or at least to know which side in an encounter is favored and by how much. Sometimes it's desirable to design an encounter within a certain range of difficulty. Fair enough. The pitfall to watch out for--one that's rarely given any consideration--is the rules-first attitude where the story and/or genuine portrayal of the game world become secondary. When you think in terms of "What monster can I put here to deplete 20% of the party's resources?" rather than in terms of "What monster can I put here that will really make the adventure pop?" the game suffers. If the ideal encounter story-wise is too tough mechanically, you can always write in extra resources, benefits, or advantages to help the party. Likewise, if it's too easy, you can always adjust by including spe