Questions from beginner

[JLV]

Hi folks.
We are about to start a 4e Campaign with me as a DM and sice we are new to to 4e, I'd like to ask you a few questions:

1) According to treasure parcels, the characters gain magical items as they progres. My question is: are monsters getting tougher to reflect this? Or do they need some kind of boost to remain challenging?

2) Are there any overpowered monsters? I mean if there are some monsters too powerfull on their level (like level 2 something being able to kill level 5 character without much effort). I don't want to ruin the fun by killing the entire party during their first adventure (or even encounter).

3) The monetary treasures - isn't that too much? I looks to me like they will have almost unlimited supply of money meaning they will be able to buy almost everything...

[ValhallaGH]

1) Oh yes. Oh heck yes. Monsters get tougher faster than heroes do, since they get +1 per level and heroes get about +0.8 per level. Though monster damage is (thankfully) fairly tame, meaning that they're most likely to one-shot a PC at levels 1 and 2; afterwards, PCs have too much hp to be dropped in a single hit (though there are other dangers).

2) Not very many. I'm unable to recall specific ones at the moment. Hopefully someone can step in with that information.

3) They have to purchase rituals, pay for their use, and pick up assorted potions, stays at inns, and whatever else they need to keep their characters alive and functional.
Also, excepting general equipment, prices for items climb fast. Split amongst the party, not it's not a lot of money.
One of the reasons so much money is given is so that characters can purchase one or two low-level items to supplement their basic supply of weapon / armor / neck slot / one other provided by the DM and treasure parcels.


Give it a couple of sessions and see what you think then.

Good luck.

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, the Needlefang Drake Swarm is WAY overpowered. That's the most infamous one. In general the monsters are pretty well balanced to the level they appear at and if you follow the guidelines in the DMG for building encounters you shouldn't have too many problems. The more likely way you end up overpowering the PCs is just by using a very synergistic set of monsters in a tactical situation that disadvantages the party. If you're building all your adventures from scratch right from the start I'd just advise making 2-3 weak encounters to start off with. The players will need a couple combats to figure out the rules anyway.

Oh, and Kobolds are really worthless, you can throw level+5 worth of those babies at the party right from day one! (Just kidding, actually Kobolds are kind of hard to deal with, though not really overpowered, lol). Running the "Kobold Hall" adventure in the back of the DMG and/or Keep on the Shadowfell probably isn't a bad idea to start off. KotS has a few TOUGH encounters, but most parties manage to survive them.

[Fanaelialae]

2) There are a few critters that are a bit over/underpowered, but I think they've fixed most of them in the latest update document. You can download it at the WotC site:
Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Official D&D Updates)

[eamon]

Originally Posted by JLV

1) According to treasure parcels, the characters gain magical items as they progres. My question is: are monsters getting tougher to reflect this? Or do they need some kind of boost to remain challenging?

Monsters do get tougher to reflect magic item use by PC's. It is assumed that PC's get about one level+1 to level+5 item of their choice (or similarly appropriate) to keep up with monsters. I suggest you start at a low level, however; balance is best there. It's important to note that selling items is very inefficient in the base rules, so whatever the PC's find is generally what they'll need to use - they don't find enough money to equip themselves. If you just want basically balanced gameplay, the "big three" items (a magic weapon or implement, a set of magic armor, and a magic amulet of protection or other neck slot item) are the three items you should in any case ensure to include enough of. The rest is gravy.

(I personally don't like the idea of needing to tailor items to match the PC's, and would rather let them figure that out by buying and selling stuff - if you want to try that, I've got a house rule in my sig that enables randomized loot without having a big impact on balance).

2) Are there any overpowered monsters? I mean if there are some monsters too powerfull on their level (like level 2 something being able to kill level 5 character without much effort). I don't want to ruin the fun by killing the entire party during their first adventure (or even encounter).

There are quite a few overpowered monsters, and there are also quite a few monsters that don't deal enough damage (in the printed version of the books). There have been many errata:

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Official D&D Updates)

In particular, quite a few monster manual 1 brutes were errata'd to do more damage. Even post errata, there are a few monsters that are a bit over the top unfortunately, so some common sense and on-the-fly-flexibility can't harm. My philosophy on this is that if I intended or even described (post monster-knowledge check) a monster as a surmountable challenge, then it's a bigger cheat to turn that into a lie than it is to keep to abilities that cause problems. Wraiths are nasty, and I've heard harsh things about

But I don't want to exaggerate; overall, monster balance is much more predictable than in 3e or 3.5, for instance.

3) The monetary treasures - isn't that too much? I looks to me like they will have almost unlimited supply of money meaning they will be able to buy almost everything...

No; over the course of 5 levels the price of level equivalent item rises by a factor 5 (!). This exponential increase means that the money they saved several levels ago quickly becomes spare change compared to the current cost of an item. By the by, I've seen some people misread the treasure section; the total monetary treasure value is intended to be in addition to the found magic items, not to be a sum total value of items+gold.

Incidentally, 4e is pretty robust to a bit of an item imbalance, so don't sweat it too much. If your party has half the wealth they should have, or twice as much, it won't have any major impact. I doubt you'd even much notice ;-).

[abyssaldeath]

The Giant Crayfish is overpowered for a 4th level solo. It's from the RPGA Village of Hommlet adventure.

[eamon]

Originally Posted by AbdulAlhazred

Yeah, the Needlefang Drake Swarm is WAY overpowered.

Originally Posted by UpdateNov2009.pdf

Needlefang Drake Swarm
Page 90: In the swarm of teeth power, replace “1d10 +
4” with “1d6 + 2” and “2d10 + 4” with “2d6 + 2.” In
the pull down power, add “1/round” after “minor” and
replace “+7 vs. Fortitude” with “+3 vs. Fortitude.” This
change adjusts the power level of the creatures.

They fixed that ;-). At least, they tried, haven't used the errata'd version yet! Wraiths haven't been fixed yet, though.

[AbdulAlhazred]

Originally Posted by eamon

They fixed that ;-). At least, they tried, haven't used the errata'd version yet! Wraiths haven't been fixed yet, though.

Yeah, they did nerf the Needlswarm down a good bit. I don't know if it is actually balanced now or not either. I suspect at best it is still a tough customer (all swarms are it seems). I'd advise starting DMs to probably avoid swarms at first, at least until they've run a number of encounters and get a feel for things.

Oddly I didn't really have problems with wraiths. They have weak defenses, do fairly limited damage, and don't have any particularly strong powers. If it comes to the point where they're using Spawn Wraith then the party is already in sheep dip and probably going down anyhow.

Basically as long as you have a cleric in the party wraiths are only mediocre monsters. If you have a party full of melee strikers then you could be in trouble.

[eamon]

Originally Posted by AbdulAlhazred

Oddly I didn't really have problems with wraiths. They have weak defenses, do fairly limited damage, and don't have any particularly strong powers. If it comes to the point where they're using Spawn Wraith then the party is already in sheep dip and probably going down anyhow.

Wraith nastiness is due to the combo of insubstantial+weaken+regen which effectively gives them regen 10-20 (and of course much more hit points). They've not much fewer hit points than a normal lurker of that level, so that combo gives em easily twice as much hit points as they should have to start off with - and that's before the regen. If you have an encounter with many wraiths, that's nasty; few aren't really a problem since the regen really works best if they can't be taken down fast. Since they're phasing and have an encounter multi-shift they're hard tactically to pin down. And, of course, they're written to be used with Mad Wraiths, which is what I kind of assumed - the dazing aura and the pseudo-dominate attack work very very well with wraiths, since wraiths do extra damage with CA (from daze) and since the mass-daze means that getting tactical advantages to work is pretty much hopeless. And when the pseudo-dominate attack forces a PC to move and attack an ally, he'll probably provoke a bunch of OA's (with CA) adding to all around nastiness. 2-3 mad wraiths and 5-6 wraiths are much more difficult than their XP suggests. Compare, for instance, to Lizardfolk (an easy comparison since they too have a level 5 lurker and a level 6 controller to make a similar encounter mix).

As a player, I had an encounter with em; it started of with an avenger critting his high-damage anti-undead power, and the party had two paladins with their handy radiant damage challenge (and lots of healing+high will), warlock with dire radiance, and in general not an underpowered party, and it wasn't even close. The DM forgot the regen(!), constantly violated the radiant-damage dealing marks, and the PC's rolled excellently and even then the combat would have been a resounding TPK (barring the DM's "whoops" intervention). I did get the impression that in particular wraiths get nasty when supported by several mad wraiths; that makes suppressing the aura almost impossible; everyone was dazed almost the entire encounter and every damage dealer was weakened almost all the time too.

What was the encounter composistion like that you didn't experience this trouble?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Originally Posted by eamon

Wraith nastiness is due to the combo of insubstantial+weaken+regen which effectively gives them regen 10-20 (and of course much more hit points). They've not much fewer hit points than a normal lurker of that level, so that combo gives em easily twice as much hit points as they should have to start off with - and that's before the regen. If you have an encounter with many wraiths, that's nasty; few aren't really a problem since the regen really works best if they can't be taken down fast. Since they're phasing and have an encounter multi-shift they're hard tactically to pin down. And, of course, they're written to be used with Mad Wraiths, which is what I kind of assumed - the dazing aura and the pseudo-dominate attack work very very well with wraiths, since wraiths do extra damage with CA (from daze) and since the mass-daze means that getting tactical advantages to work is pretty much hopeless. And when the pseudo-dominate attack forces a PC to move and attack an ally, he'll probably provoke a bunch of OA's (with CA) adding to all around nastiness. 2-3 mad wraiths and 5-6 wraiths are much more difficult than their XP suggests. Compare, for instance, to Lizardfolk (an easy comparison since they too have a level 5 lurker and a level 6 controller to make a similar encounter mix).

As a player, I had an encounter with em; it started of with an avenger critting his high-damage anti-undead power, and the party had two paladins with their handy radiant damage challenge (and lots of healing+high will), warlock with dire radiance, and in general not an underpowered party, and it wasn't even close. The DM forgot the regen(!), constantly violated the radiant-damage dealing marks, and the PC's rolled excellently and even then the combat would have been a resounding TPK (barring the DM's "whoops" intervention). I did get the impression that in particular wraiths get nasty when supported by several mad wraiths; that makes suppressing the aura almost impossible; everyone was dazed almost the entire encounter and every damage dealer was weakened almost all the time too.

What was the encounter composistion like that you didn't experience this trouble?

It was a while back. As I recall it was 3 Wraiths, a couple Blazing Skeletons, a Boneshard Skeleton, some regular skeletons, and a few Decrepit Skeletons. It was a pretty tough encounter vs 5 level 4 PCs but the STR cleric got to go first oddly enough. So the wraiths ended up spending a couple turns immobilized while the starlock burned them down pretty well. One wraith became quite annoying phasing in and out of the room and that was about it. They do take a while to kill and I guess I can see an encounter with many wraiths and mad wraiths being nasty though a clever party that isn't pressed for time should be able to work around it. That's the thing with mindless undead, just focus fire on a couple of them and if things aren't going as you want once those are down then pull back and regroup. Its not like the undead are going to adapt to your tactics or set up better defenses. I suspect this is why wraiths are as they are, they stand up well against those tactics. A party that insists on duking it out toe-to-toe with mindless undead until one side or the other drops, they need to learn better tactics.

[eamon]

Originally Posted by AbdulAlhazred

It was a while back. As I recall it was 3 Wraiths, a couple Blazing Skeletons, a Boneshard Skeleton, some regular skeletons, and a few Decrepit Skeletons. It was a pretty tough encounter vs 5 level 4 PCs but the STR cleric got to go first oddly enough. So the wraiths ended up spending a couple turns immobilized while the starlock burned them down pretty well. One wraith became quite annoying phasing in and out of the room and that was about it. They do take a while to kill and I guess I can see an encounter with many wraiths and mad wraiths being nasty though a clever party that isn't pressed for time should be able to work around it. That's the thing with mindless undead, just focus fire on a couple of them and if things aren't going as you want once those are down then pull back and regroup. Its not like the undead are going to adapt to your tactics or set up better defenses. I suspect this is why wraiths are as they are, they stand up well against those tactics. A party that insists on duking it out toe-to-toe with mindless undead until one side or the other drops, they need to learn better tactics.

The absence of mad wraiths really matters; that dazing aura is not a joke. There's not much room left to tactically maneuver with that around. I'm not sure wraiths count as "mindless", but in any case their tactics suggestions are that they like hit and run tactics (using phasing) and will retreat when bloodied until they regenerate enough hitpoints. That's impossible to stop when the party is dazed (hard enough to do otherwise). I'm pretty sure that the encounter makeup really mattered here. Skeletons don't have any particularly tactically tricky features for this (although the boneshard's bloodied+dead-burst-thingo is nasty). A few wraiths are focusable, 6 get really tricky because when a bloodied one backs off the rest aren't somehow terribly vulnerable due to it (also, for the wraiths really to work well, they want to weaken every significant damage dealer; that requires a certain number of them). The mad wraiths are the icing on the cake that make a coordinated response very hard.

So, I expect you wouldn't have had as much issues because only a few wraiths just don't expose their particular brand of synergy so well.

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, I think that's a pretty reasonable analysis. I would go a bit further and say that as a general principle playing an encounter with a whole bunch of the same monster will tend in this kind of direction. Consider an encounter with 4 Carrion Crawlers vs a level 7 party. It gets pretty ugly. Maybe not quite to the degree that the wraiths will but it still makes a pretty rough time for the PCs. There are plenty of monsters this won't be true of, but DMs are well advised to be careful when they deploy a bunch of one monster type, especially controllers or anything with strong condition generating attacks.

[JLV]

Thanks for your advices.

The swarm thingies seem pretty nasty to me, so I decided to use them later (if ever).

I have another question: If I'm attacking someone from behind, do I get combat advantage? I'm little confused here:
I get CA if the defender can't see me (and common sense says he can't see me because I'm attacking his back).
But the line of sight rule says to pick a corner and trace an imaginary line to the target. So if the attacker is behind, the defender can clearly pick a corner and trace that line, so he has line of sight = he can see me = no CA... How does it work?

[Dr_Ruminahui]

In 4th ed., creatures have no "facing" - so, in a combat situation, they are assumed to be turning and looking equally in every direction. Which perhaps isn't realistic, but does simplify actually running combats.

So no, one does not get combat advantage for being behind someone - your view on how line of sight (LOS) works seems correct.

That said, it is a DM's discretion on how facing works outside of combat - for example, one can stay hidden even if in LOS, if the target is distracted. IMHO, a good DM should take such into account when determining if you surprise an enemy - an enemy SHOULD (in most circumstances) be easier to surprise if you come up from behind them - and suprise DOES grant combat advantage.

So, in short, creatures have no "front" or "back" ruleswise, but a DM can (and arguably should) rule that in certain circumstances a given creature does have a facing and have that facing effect how easily it is to surprise said creature.

[eamon]

Out of combat, it may make sense to assume that a particular creature or group of guards is all facing one way. In combat, creatures are all assumed to be frantically looking about, listening closely and generally have awareness of everything that goes on around them - in all directions.

To represent the fact that it's hard to simultaneously pay attention to diametrically opposed threats the game uses the "flanking" mechanic; if you're being threatened by two creatures on opposite sides, then these two creatures have Combat Advantage against you (see the PHB combat section for more detail).

Note that in this edition, all creatures normally threaten, regardless of what weapon they have (or even if they have a weapon at all) - you only cease to threaten when you can't take Opportunity Attacks at all anymore, such as when you're unconscious or dazed. Attacking unarmed with a terrible attack bonus (say, a weaponless wizard) suffices for Opportunity Attacks and thus flanking.

[AbdulAlhazred]

Originally Posted by JLV

Thanks for your advices.

The swarm thingies seem pretty nasty to me, so I decided to use them later (if ever).

I have another question: If I'm attacking someone from behind, do I get combat advantage? I'm little confused here:
I get CA if the defender can't see me (and common sense says he can't see me because I'm attacking his back).
But the line of sight rule says to pick a corner and trace an imaginary line to the target. So if the attacker is behind, the defender can clearly pick a corner and trace that line, so he has line of sight = he can see me = no CA... How does it work?

Within an existing combat situation you'll just need to find a way to become hidden before you attack. This won't always be possible of course, but there are items and powers which can make it a lot easier to achieve. So if you're a sneak attacking rogue kind of character you'll probably want to get things like Deft Strike, Fleeting Ghost, Shadow Stride, and one or two items that help you hide.

[ValhallaGH]

Originally Posted by JLV

I have another question: If I'm attacking someone from behind, do I get combat advantage?

Yes.

The problem is that characters rarely have a "behind" side during combat, because they are at maximum situational awareness. Outside of combat, and the PH / DMG discuss this, characters have a "behind", allowing them to get stabbed in the back / have their throats cut (hooray for conditional minions.* Hooray!).

*Conditional minions are opponents that are minions while they are unaware of you but full monsters when they are aware of you. This allows for, and rewards the party for, a stealthy advance upon the stronghold that silently kills the guards but has to fight like crazy once the guard force is alerted. One of the major advantages to the "minions are just like other monsters, except for 1 hp and immunity to miss damage" mechanics of 4E.

[AbdulAlhazred]

Originally Posted by ValhallaGH

Yes.

The problem is that characters rarely have a "behind" side during combat, because they are at maximum situational awareness. Outside of combat, and the PH / DMG discuss this, characters have a "behind", allowing them to get stabbed in the back / have their throats cut (hooray for conditional minions.* Hooray!).

*Conditional minions are opponents that are minions while they are unaware of you but full monsters when they are aware of you. This allows for, and rewards the party for, a stealthy advance upon the stronghold that silently kills the guards but has to fight like crazy once the guard force is alerted. One of the major advantages to the "minions are just like other monsters, except for 1 hp and immunity to miss damage" mechanics of 4E.

Any monster this trivial should just be a minion, PERIOD. Either its cannon fodder and there mostly for show (minion), or its something that should take SOME amount of effort to kill (non-minion). Low level mooks aren't that hard to kill anyhow.

[Stuntman]

In my experience the effectiveness of creatures varies depending on the party make up. I ran a party that has one burst or blast encounter attack and nearly got slaughtered by swarms.

[jbear]

Don't write off swarms though.

They add a very fun element to the game. Their is nothing wrong with danger and pushing your players to their limits. If you want to give your players a warm up easy period, great. But don't write off swarms definitively. There's nothing like a few good rat swarms dropping down on your players as they sludge through sewer tunnels!