I recently designed a similar encounter and pitted it against 2 5th-level PCs, a good starting point is to think of the the worst-case scenario first. It's trivial to design an encounter that is difficult if the two factions (the two NPCs) join forces to take on one stronger faction (the PCs), but that is also able to provide a challenge if they started turning on each other. Throw in some extra XP for doing the smart thing if you want. You can design the new encounter before the session the same way that you would make any other simple two-sided encounter. In the case the players wait for one side to lose before they jump in, just decide what a regular two-sided encounter would be, and say that's how many enemies survived. For the losing side, a simple "don't kill us and we'll help you" could suffice. Keep in mind that allying with the stronger side might be harder for your players to do as that side has slightly less incentive to comply. You would add that to the count of dead bodies on the other side. Make sure that, in the case of helping one side win, they get some extra XP for the tactical decisions made and the Charisma checks needed to establish the alliance. The different results possible are: avoid fight, help the weaker side, help the stronger side, or kill all. Intelligence itself should be rewarded.Įither way you choose to balance the encounter, make sure to determine different XP rewards based on the results. The encounter that results from a smart choice doesn't even have to be Hard. Or they can just wait in the shadows until one side wins, and then execute the remainder.
They could even attempt peace negotiations, in which case they would likely be ignored, unless a few enemies from either side break off from the main fight to get rid of the nuisances. The players could instead try to just sneak past the fight, stealthily thin down both sides (reducing their numbers) before entering the fray, or ally themselves with one side. This would discourage making themselves targets of all the available enemies. If you want your PC's to take an alternative course of action, you should make the encounter dip well into Deadly (again balancing for the case that all NPC's would attack only the players). The others that aren't attacking you are still in a furious battle.", or "As you're about to be killed, your enemy gets distracted by a sword swinging towards his head from his side. Instead just say "During this round, the first side lost X people while the second side lost Y people. You don't have to strictly simulate that combat. You throw in some NPC on NPC combat to adjust the difficulty whenever the fight starts going really bad for the players.
As the fight progresses, you have your PC's targeted depending on how much attention they're drawing. If you want your PC's to jump into the fray and take both groups on, you'll make it so that having all enemies fight the PC's exclusively would be on the high end of Hard, or the low end of Deadly. In this scenario, you should balance the encounter for the way you wish it to be resolved. One can also combine different approaches with battle to place themselves into an advantageous position. There are multiple ways to succeed in an encounter, and often are the non-combat ways the most flavorful. An "encounter" isn't necessarily "battle".
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