It's a problem every Game Master faces at some point: how to keep the game moving when not all players are present. To some extent Pathfinder is set up to handle this. If you're doing by-the-book encounter generation then you know that encounter challenge ratings are for a range of party sizes and not specific numbers. For instance a party of 4 or 5 people generally have the same challenge ratings, a party 5-6 have a higher one, etc. Often with one player out normal encounters don't get much more difficult, but what about encounters designed to be challenging?
As soon as you pit your diminished party against an encounter that's rated "Hard" or "Challenging" against their full strength you quickly start running into problems. Suddenly that 1-player disadvantage turns into a huge power gap that can turn a fun but challenging encounter into a desperate struggle to survive. This article will outline some techniques to help balance a 1- or 2- player disadvantage and how to apply them depending on what's missing from the party. If more than 2 players are missing, you should probably postpone your game. These tricks can only stretch the encounter rules so far before they risk breaking the game. Also remember that these techniques can be used in reverse to increase difficulty if you feel your party are having too easy a time or if someone's friend wants to join for one game.
Enemy Hit Points
Quite simply, give enemies more or less HP. This is by far the easiest way to adjust encounter difficulty. It can be used to increase or decrease difficulty based on party size and falls within the rules perfectly because most enemies have hit dice that represent a range of possible HP values. The fact that most GMs use the average HP printed on the stat block does not negate the fact that individual enemies may have more or less HP as long as it's a possible outcome from rolling the enemy's hit dice.The key factor that enemy HP changes is the expected length of the encounter. A enemy with more HP will take more turns to kill, require more attacks, more spell slots, and more healing. If your party is missing damage dealers this is a very easy way to help balance them out. This is less useful with missing support or healing characters because if your damage output is still high you'll probably have time to heal after the encounter is over.
Enemy Gear
This only applies to enemies that wear gear, obviously. If your party is missing healing or support characters, one option is to adjust what gear the enemies are using. With HP adjustments the aim was to control how long the fight goes on for but with gear adjustments the goal is to keep the fight duration the same and instead alter the amount of damage the party take or the party's chances of damaging the enemies. This can make up for the Bless spell from the absent paladin or an application of Channel Energy from a missing cleric. Usually just changing one carefully-selected item is enough to adjust the difficulty. Choosing how to adjust gear can be more difficult than changing HP, however, because gear changes can alter far more numbers and aren't nearly as easy to do on the fly or justify in-universe. For that reason I only recommend using this if you have sufficient time to prepare.Enemy Number
An obvious way to make an encounter harder or easier is to change the number of enemies encountered. This is easier at low levels when enemies with fractional CRs are common and much more difficult when dealing with packs of CR 5 monsters. The addition or removal of a single enemy can drastically change the difficulty of an encounter, especially when terrain and movement are considered. For this reason I don't recommend just adding or removing a member of a monster pack.What you can do, however, is alter how long an enemy is in the fight for. This can be done through HP adjustments to just one or two combatants but can also be done by making them cowards. Having an enemy flee combat both limits the duration of the fighting and introduces the exciting possibility of chasing them down or having them go get reinforcements, effectively turning one encounter into two smaller encounters with a short break in between. This can be useful for any party composition, but don't get carried away and string together more than two encounters or you'll risk tiring your players and their characters out too quickly.
Favourable Terrain
As I've described before I like to set up encounters in arena-like spaces and rooms with lots of random set dressing to provide obstacles and cover. This makes battles more dynamic and invites players to come up with novel tactics for overcoming enemy positions. The availability of good cover (especially when fighting ranged attackers) can significantly alter the balance of an encounter.For example, if your party's primary melee tank is missing you might rebalance an encounter by adding difficult terrain between the party or the enemies that the enemies must cross to engage the party, giving your remaining attackers an extra round to deal damage before the enemies can close to attack their squishy hides.
Another example might be removing some cover from the enemy's side so it's easier for your ranged attackers to hit them.
If your party is missing its ranged attackers you might remove obstacles from both sides to make it easier for your melee characters to close in.
In any case, these kinds of alterations will alter both the fight length and the enemy's opportunities to do damage, thus giving great flexibility to deal with any deviation from the planned party size.
Favourable Circumstance
For non-combat encounters, how do you deal with missing someone with necessary skills? For instance, what if your best diplomat is absent? Logically you'll want to reduce the DCs of these skill-based encounters to a level such that someone who is present can succeed. The problem then is how to make it not seem artificial. The easiest way for that is to come up with some in-universe circumstance that explains why it's easier. Maybe the shopkeeper the party want to haggle with is of the same race or alignment as the player elected to do the haggling, or maybe a festival in town is distracting the city guard enough to make infiltrating the castle vault easier. Use your imagination and the possibilities are endless.Double Rolling
Do not use this if you can avoid it because it makes the game less fun. Sometimes when all-else fails you just need to fudge it. Unlike the other techniques which are all numeric changes, this one is the GM playing games with the enemy's luck. Double rolling is exactly what it sounds like: roll two D20s for enemy skill checks, attack rolls, etc and pick the result you want. This has the potential to give the party or the enemies miraculously good luck and tip the balance in the favour of the group you want to win. Obviously this must be used sparingly as it takes a lot of the excitement out of encounters if one side always does poorly. And it's, y'know, cheating. Doing this requires no preparationat all, is not particularly suited to any party configuration, and can change from encounter to encounter if people have to leave mid-game.Upcoming Articles
World Building: Zooming Out From Region to Realm - More basic geography and defining nation-statesAt The Table: Complex Skill Checks - Dice rules for performing more complex actions
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