D&D 4E New Campaign, New DM, New to 4E

[the-golem]

As the title suggests, I am relatively new to 4E, but I have been playing D&D since just after 3E was released. (To be frank, I like the feel of 4E more than 3E, but that's a topic for another time.)

I was just nominated DM to start a new campaign with my role-playing group, and since I'm particularly infatuated with WoG, my first official act as DM is to place the campaign in this setting.

Since WotC hasn't yet published any Greyhawk 4E materials, I resorted to my old TSR supplements and things, and I'm rather taken with WGQ1: Patriots of Ulek. However, since I came onto the D&D scene just after the fall of AD&D 2E, I never really grasped the rules of that edition very well.

To summarize, I was wondering if anyone had success in converting old adventures into the new 4E ruleset.

I would appreciate any tips or comments you send my way.

 

[Rothe_]

Few pointers:

4e combat is centered around party vs. group of monsters, more than party vs. one monster.

Old adventures used to have more encounters with just a couple of monsters vs. the party.

You can still keep them almost as they are written (Flavor wise) but sometimes you need to convert some monsters to elites and solos if you want to keep their numbers down (for story reasons).

If there is no need to have only a few monsters, try to make the fights with the 4e guidelines: about 5 standard monsters, although you can replace 2 with an elite or one with a bunch of minions etc. You can also replace some monsters with traps.

Try to avoid lone solo monsters, even though the name suggests to use them "solo".
Instead, you should always have weaker supporting monsters and/or terrain elements that make the fight more interesting.

Pacing is also one thing that changed. You'll need to avoid having only a single encounter per day, especially if the players can guess that this is the way it will be.
These situations lead to PC nova effect where they will use all daily powers and that will just require a ridiculously tough encounter to challenge them.

You can make these kind of tough encounters, but I recommend having such an encounter in waves (with more than 5 monsters) instead of raising the monster level really high. Raising monster level will slow the fights a lot since their defenses get to be too high.

Making a single fight in a day using waves and adding in a possibility for short rest in between is workable, but you have to plan for it.

Minions are a nice tool for the DM to represent all those low level enemies in the old adventures. For xp, I recommend halving it (or reducing it by 1/3), since minions are bound to get killed easily and very rarely 4 minions are equal in threat value to a single standard monster. Still, minions are tons of fun for the players - use them, the players will like you for it. Minions also work really well in encounters with "waves", since you can even make some encouters with endless waves of minions coming until the PC's kill their leader, or disable the doomsday device or whatever.

 

[the-golem]

Such a rapid response.

Wow. I'm astonished at recieving such a rapid response, first of all. Thankyou for such a speedy, and lengthy reply.

First, since I'm pretty new to 4E, I'm not sure I totally grasp the difference between Minions, Solos, Elites, and whatnot.

I guess Minions are equivalent to the old "1/3" or "1/2" level monster seen running around, such as, I dunno, average Kobolds in a den (as opposed to the ones trained for war )

Since I always learn best by example, I'm going to grab an example from the adventure module, and see if I can fathom what to do here. One of the encounters calls for 6 Orcs, and 8 Wolf-mounted goblins (thus 8 goblins and 8 wolves.

Orcs (6): Int Average; AL LE; AC 6; MV 9; HD
1; hp 6;THACO 19; #AT 1; Dmg 1-8;S A Nil;
SD Nil; SZ M; ML 11; XP 15

Goblins (8): Int Low; AL LE; AC 6; MV 6; HD
1-1;hp 4;THACO 20; #AT 1; Dmg 1-6;S A Nil;
SD Nil; SZ S; ML 10; XP 15

Wolves (8): Int Semi; AL N; AC 7; MV 18; HD
2 + 2;hp 14;THACO 19;# AT 1; Dmg 2-5;S A
Nil; SD Nil; SZ S; ML 10; XP 65
​

Since I want to make it slightly challenging, but not overly easy, I wouldn't simply make them all minions.

My initial thought is to have the orcs as Level 1 Skirmishers, and have the goblins all be minions .. Not sure with the wolves though. My inclination is to treat them like horses, If the rider is killed or knocked off, most would run off.

This feels like its turning out to be a rather incoherent reply. Maybe I should have waited until morning.

I think it would be reasonable to assume that if that if the characters take to long to defeat the initial encounter, they run the risk of alerting a wandering war party or somesuch.

 

[Rothe_]

Assuming 1st level PC's.

I would make part of the wolf raiders as minions and same with the orcs.

So, the encounter could be:

2 x Orc (standard monster of level 1-2)
4 x Orc grunt (minion)
6 x goblin wolf raider (Minion, combining rider and mount, one hit drops both)
2 x goblin raider (standard monster riding a wolf mount)
2 x wolf (standard lvl 1 wolf mount)

That nets you 6 standard monsters and 10 minions.

Tough encounter, but not impossible if you make it in two waves. Second wave could come a couple of rounds late. I'd keep almost all of the enemies as 1st level if you have a 1st level party.

Your wolf riders could even make for entertaining "trick" minions. When you hit them, they make a save and if they succeed, the wolf or the goblin keeps fighting (the other part got "killed").

 

[MrMyth]

First, since I'm pretty new to 4E, I'm not sure I totally grasp the difference between Minions, Solos, Elites, and whatnot.

I guess Minions are equivalent to the old "1/3" or "1/2" level monster seen running around, such as, I dunno, average Kobolds in a den (as opposed to the ones trained for war )

Just to give a bit of insight into the philosophy of Minions/Solos/etc: Minions are to represent monsters that are trivial for the PCs to defeat. At low levels, this might be the average kobolds who aren't exceptional warriors or raiders. When the PCs are level 10, however, even those war-trained kobolds aren't much of a threat - why not represent them as minions now, as well?

In prior editions, the way this was represented was by simply having the monsters be much lower level. The problem is, fifty "1/3 level" kobolds aren't even a speedbump for a high level a character, since their attacks can only hit on 20s, and any attention the PCs turn upon them will vaporize them. In 4E, having Minions allows for level-appropriate monsters that still have a decent chance at hitting or avoiding attacks - but do relatively small damage and can be taken out with a single well-aimed shot. Think of the epic war scenes from the Lord of the Rings movies (or other similarly cinematic moments) where orcs are dropping like flies to the heroes. Those are Minions - enemies that can still be a threat in large quantities, but who fall to a single dramatic blow.

Elites and Solos are basically the other end of the scale. If you want a challenging single monster, rather than having one enemy 5+ levels above the party (who they simply can't hit at all), you have a level appropriate enemy with more hitpoints and more abilities, who can unleash as much threat in one round as an entire band of orcs. Elites might be powerful leaders - the Orc King, who stands as a powerful threat even while accompanied by a number of regular orcs (his bodyguards) and a small army of orc minions. Whereas a solo might be one truly intense foe, such as a Dragon or Beholder. (Though even with solos, it can keep the fight interesting to still have a few minions around, or simply make sure there is entertaining scenery or terrain.)

The important thing is to realize that the stats are designed to represent how the monsters interact with the PCs, rather than how the monsters interact with each (or the rest of the world.) At epic levels, PCs might be on their way to fight the Storm Giant Emperor, and cleaving through countless lesser giant minions - but the fact that a hill giant minion only has '1 hp' for the PCs doesn't mean that a stray farmer can chuck a rock at it and kill it on a lucky hit. The '1 hp' represents how easy the hill giant is for the party to kill. The DM doesn't need stats for how easy it is for a farmer to kill a hill giant, since that is basically his decision anyway!

 

[Camelot]

If you want to go about creating your own monsters, the DMG and DMG2 have good guidelines for doing that. A huge difference 4e made from the other games is that monsters aren't fully statted like PCs. There is just enough info on a monster stat block for the PCs to interact with. Like Mr. Myth said, the monster stats are for the PCs to interact with, but nobody else. If you want a monster and an NPC to interact, you can have them do whatever the story requires.

If you don't want to create your own monsters (which would be hard if you've never played 4e before), you can use some from the MM. Here's my idea for a similar encounter to what you suggested for 5 1st level PCs.

2 Goblin Cutters (Level 1 Minion, MM 136)
1 Goblin Sharpshooter (Level 2 Artillery, MM 137)
2 Gray Wolves (Level 2 Skirmisher, MM 264)
1 Orc Raider (Level 3 Skirmisher, MM 203)
2 Orc Drudges (Level 4 Minion, MM 203)

This equals about a level 2-3 encounter. A good challenge for the PCs, but not too hard to overcome. Use the mount rules in the DMG (page 46) to put the goblin cutters each on a gray wolf. Since the goblins are minions and the wolves are not, the goblins will go down before the wolves, but the wolves can keep fighting. I usually avoid mounts in combat, as they can get confusing and detract from each monster's actions, since the mount and rider share a set of actions. If you do have the goblins riding the wolves, don't inflict a penalty to the wolves attacks like the DMG says. That's for characters; monster don't get feats, so if you want those goblins to me trained in mounted combat, go for it.

It's good to have varying monster roles, providing options for the characters, which is why I included the goblin sharpshooter. If you want to include more monsters, do what Rothe said and have them come in two waves, so the PCs can get a short rest in between.

I don't think Mr. Myth mentioned this, but 4 minions are supposed to equal 1 standard monster of the same level. I don't know how that works mathematically, but I trust the beach mages' calculations.

 

[KarinsDad]

If you don't want to create your own monsters (which would be hard if you've never played 4e before), you can use some from the MM. Here's my idea for a similar encounter to what you suggested for 5 1st level PCs.

2 Goblin Cutters (Level 1 Minion, MM 136)
1 Goblin Sharpshooter (Level 2 Artillery, MM 137)
2 Gray Wolves (Level 2 Skirmisher, MM 264)
1 Orc Raider (Level 3 Skirmisher, MM 203)
2 Orc Drudges (Level 4 Minion, MM 203)

This equals about a level 2-3 encounter. A good challenge for the PCs, but not too hard to overcome.

The suggestion here to use precreated monsters is good.

The suggestion here to use an encounter between n+2 and n+3 (this is a level 3+ encounter) in difficulty is not as good.

When people first start playing 4E, they are unaware of many of the nuances that allow PCs to be tactically effective. These nuances are learned by playing the game and typically not just by reading the PHB.

This NPC makeup above is probably deadly to most first time playing 4e players and shouldn't be used. Even Rothe_'s NPC suggestion is on par with this (except for the waves which might help) and is a really tough encounter for newcomers as well.

The DM should start with level n encounters and gradually use slightly stronger encounters if desired until the players are comfortable with the rules. If the DM wants a lot of foes, he should use a lot of minions. As time goes on (possibly in encounter 6 or 7), a tougher encounter like this can be used.

The entire purpose of minions is to swarm the PCs with a lot of foes. The DM should be willing to use them for that purpose.

But the DM should be careful using more powerful encounters until the players are more familiar with the game system, especially if both the DM and the players are unfamiliar with 4E.

 

[Camelot]

I absolutely agree. I did not intend for you to use that as your first encounter; I assumed it would come later. I like to use an escalating style of encounters, with the first encounters of the day being very easy, and building up the tension as the encounters get more and more difficult.

If your players have never played 4e before (and you have neither), my suggestion is to start with a skill challenge. This is a new concept to 4e, so it will introduce it to the players, but when used at the beginning of an adventure, doesn't suggest much urgency, so tension has a lot of room to build.

One option is to run a skill challenge where the PCs are looking for a ruin or dungeon or something. One I plan on doing for a group that has never before played 4e is a sort of "game show" that a merchant is doing for publicity. He has the PCs use various skills, and drops information about the campaign setting and (coincedentally) monsters that the PCs will later face.

Follow up the skill challenge with an easy encounter, even if it is below the PCs' level (like 3 or 4 standard monsters). This will teach them how to fight without threatening them. Then when they get better, you can ease them into harder and harder encounters.

 

[Truename]

Since I want to make it slightly challenging, but not overly easy, I wouldn't simply make them all minions.

Something hinted at, but not stated outright, in the other responses: Use the DMG encounter budgets. 4e is very well balanced, so for level 1 PCs, an N+0 (level 1) encounter will be easy but not a cakewalk, N+1 (level 2) will be somewhat challenging, N+2 (level 3) will make 'em work, and N+3 (level 4) could be quite challenging.

So, decide your difficulty level (N+1 or N+2, from what you're describing) and pick monsters to fill that encounter budget. If you want to keep the same numbers of monsters as in the 2e adventure, just mix and match standard monsters and minions until you hit the right combination of difficulty and number of monsters.

It's quite magical how well this works, especially at lower levels.

 

[the-golem]

First, I'll adress some comments. My threat title was perhaps a bit vague, allow me to clarify somewhat. While it's true that my experience of 4E isn't all that great, the rest of the players have been going at it for something over three months. I believe one of them told me August or September, of 2009. In conclusion, I'm reasonably sure that the players are more in tune as to what is possible or capable than I am. How capable of a DM I am remains to be seen. I might start a story hour, If I like how things turn out. I'm already working on the documenting the whole escapade.On to more serious business.

While I realize that multiple encounters (before an extended rest) are quite possible in something like a dungeon, how does this really work in an overland environment?

Here's what I mean: Let's assume the adventuring party is en route from A to Remote location B, and the whole process would take a week of overland travel. Although this is the time of war, I think it's rather improbable to encounter that much opposition in their travels.

Maybe I should seek clarification of the rules. Sometimes I'm a bit slow on the uptake. An example:

Encounter 1: Party travels a few miles, run across a skirmish between some orcs and some human military. After assisting the troops, they continue on their way.

Encounter 2: After a few hours, the adventurers notice smoke in the distance, and rush off to see what it is, when lo-and-behold, a goblin horde is terrorizing and ransacking a quaint village.
​

Now, considering that they aren't in fight-after-fight, would their overland travel count as an extended rest, or should I really thing of rest along the lines of sleeping?

Somehow, I feel as if I've answered my own question. My apologies if these things all seem to be crystal clear to you wonderful gurus of knowledge. However, I always like to be sure I understand something correctly before throwing it out there for the PCs.