Quadded Statblocks to Enable Variable-Difficulty Adventures (5e)
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Adventures are great. But they're always limited. "For 4th-Level PCs" will be pointlessly unusable for a 16th-level party. "Designed for a Party of 10th-12th Level" will outright TPK a gaming group of sixth-level PCs. And so on.
This work proposes a new way of adapting roleplaying game adventure content to a variety of challenge and difficulty levels. This framework can be used to take an adventure¸ traditionally designed for an adventuring party of a certain level or narrow range of levels¸ and make it playable and enjoyable for a group of PCs of any level.
Although the nuts and bolts and language of this document have been constructed to correspond to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game (PFRPG) system¸ this approach will work similarly for any roleplaying game system. Mechanically¸ the adjustments that will have to be made will vary from RPG system to RPG system¸ but the general approach of "quadding" remains the same.
This approach is provided free of charge¸ for two reasons. First¸ I genuinely feel that this is a useful¸ interesting alternative to other methods¸ and it's worked really well for me over the decades as a GM myself.
Second¸ as a means of introducing GMs and players alike to the concept¸ since it's used heavily throughout all Infinium Game Studio RPG products.
Enjoy!
Quadded Statblocks is a pen-and-paper gaming concept that is used to power all games from Infinium Game Studio¸ including the upcoming Dark Obelisk: Berinncorte¸ a massive city-based adventure and the first component in an ongoing Adventure Path.