What's wrong with Epic Tier and how do we fix it?

[Vayden]

Hey all, Vayden here. Big 4e fan, love the game, etc. I've run two heroic tier campaigns, and am running a low-paragon tier and and a mid-epic tier one at the moment, for two very different groups. I've played in 2 paragon campaigns and 3 heroic ones, with 3 different DMs.

I think it's safe to say I know the game pretty well at this point, and I feel pretty confident in saying I'm a damn decent DM at all times, and quite good occasionally when I hit a good riff. And I love the game at heroic and low-paragon - it takes a tiny bit of tweaking here and there (see my Grindspace thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4th...rindspace.html), and it certainly doesn't do everything, but by and large it's a dream to run.

That being said, my experience with Epic play so far has been unbelievably frustrating for me. The monsters have so many hit points that even 6-7 players doing 30-90 damage a hit take forever to drag down a big monster, the monster's defenses make them extremely hard to hit unless the characters are A) lucky or B) working like a well-oiled machine (which you can't rely on all parties to pull off). However, the monsters don't really pose much of threat because their attacks do such meagre damage in comparison to the player's hp/healing/temp hp stockpile of tricks.

Now I'll admit that the party for the epic campaign is a bit defense oriented, and definitely not the most skilled group of players I play with in terms of tactics. Still, everything I've tried so far just turns into the monsters slowwwwly trending towards 0 hp while the party waltzes along - I haven't even knocked one of them unconscious yet in 7+ encounters, and I've racked up 2 TPKs and 3 almost TPKs in the heroic/paragon games I've been running (not that TPKs are necessarily your thing - just letting you know that my DMing style tends towards the brutal).

My conclusion is that the monster math does not level correctly in order to maintain that nice level of drama that 4e combat provides at all of the other levels I've played it at. However, I know I'm not as mathematical as some of the minds on these boards, so I come looking for assistance. My initial thought is to lower all defenses by 1 for 21-25 level monsters, and 2 for 26-30 level, to reduce all hitpoints by 1/3 to 1/2 depending on the monster, and to flat out double all monster damage. Does that sound good to the math gurus?

Anyone else playing Epic and feeling the same way? How are you approaching it? Am I wrong? Help me out here - I want to make these combats match the high expectations the rest of 4e has given me.

[Nymrohd]

What monsters are you using? Epic level monsters seem to be more hit and miss in design tbh. One thing I believe should have been changed from the start is the x5 hp of solos on paragon and epic instead of x4 as is in heroic; reversing that seems a rather harmless trick. Also the problem with one-shots or games that start at high levels is that players never got to learn to cooperate. I think this is a big reason why that group makes combat seem even more grindy than usual.

Also pet peeve with epic level characters: too many dice! Especially when you get a critical the players need to roll so many dice it is not even funny. I have not played at epic yet, but I expect players would be forced to buy a lot of extra dice to speed the game up.

[Vayden]

So far . . . Marilith, Hezrou, couple of other demons/devils, Greater Flameskulls from Winter of the Witch, lvl 28 Blue Dragon, lvl 23 Vampiric Dracolich, lvl 29 Dragonborn Annihilator from Draconomicon, lvl 26 Lich Vestiges, and a handful of others. The dragons attacked as a pair and got steam-rolled, the Annihilator attacked with about 15-20 vestiges, and neither side really got hurt at all, and everything else got mulched up pretty quickly.

[Plane Sailing]

Actually, the parallel thought I was having in this thread might bear on the matter EN World D&D / RPG News - Powered by vBulletin

Specifically - what if you gave the epic creatures bonus damage on a crit (like the PCs get bonus damage on a crit)?

If they have the power equivalent of a +5 or +6 weapon 'factored in' to their abilities, why not give them a bonus +5d6 or +6d6 damage on a crit (perhaps making it d8's for Brutes or Lurkers)?

Obviously not the whole solution, but perhaps part of a solution?

Cheers

[Vayden]

Originally Posted by Plane Sailing

Actually, the parallel thought I was having in this thread might bear on the matter EN World D&D / RPG News - Powered by vBulletin

Specifically - what if you gave the epic creatures bonus damage on a crit (like the PCs get bonus damage on a crit)?

If they have the power equivalent of a +5 or +6 weapon 'factored in' to their abilities, why not give them a bonus +5d6 or +6d6 damage on a crit (perhaps making it d8's for Brutes or Lurkers)?

Obviously not the whole solution, but perhaps part of a solution?

Cheers

I like that idea Plane. Consider it stolen. Another idea one of my friends instituted for all levels of play is giving minions more damage - take their flat damage and add a die to it - d6, d8, d10, whatever fits the circumstances. (He actually added 2d8 - those were some scary minions, let me tell you.)

PS - I think your link is broken.

[Celebrim]

Originally Posted by Plane Sailing

Specifically - what if you gave the epic creatures bonus damage on a crit (like the PCs get bonus damage on a crit)?

If they have the power equivalent of a +5 or +6 weapon 'factored in' to their abilities, why not give them a bonus +5d6 or +6d6 damage on a crit (perhaps making it d8's for Brutes or Lurkers)?

Obviously not the whole solution, but perhaps part of a solution?

Cheers

Speaking from my experience with 1st edition, the fact that the monsters didn't follow the same rules as PC's generally didn't matter that much at low levels of play. In particular, because the monster HD progression was highly compressed at low levels - incremental improvements at 1/2 HD, 1-1 HD, 1 HD, 1+1 HD, and 2 HD - low HD monsters tended to do a good job of keeping pace with low level PC's. A 2 HD monster had a THAC0 comparable to a 5th level fighter (sans magic items which at that level weren't that significant anyway).

But as the PC's progressed in level and power, the fact that the monsters (mostly) didn't have ability scores and other things PC's had increasingly hampered the monster, not necessarily just because the players might have found a way to progress their ability scores but so many of their magic items granted the characters bonuses the monsters simply didn't have. A 16 HD monster had THAC0 inferior to a 16th level fighter (sans magic items), and when you factored in magic items, strength bonuses and the like it was just no contest.

Eventually, the fact that the PC's were high hit dice monsters that also had +5 (or more) to hit, +5 (or more) to damage, +5 to saving throws, bonus hit points per hit die, and so forth easily overwhelmed even the mightest monster in the monster manual.

By late 1st edition, when I was beginning to be frustrated with 1st edition at every level of play, I started granting attributes like Str and Dex to every monster just to keep some sort of parity between the players and their foes over a longer range of play.

If there are abilities that the PC's are consistantly gaining that doesn't have some parallel in the monsters stats, then that's definately a problem. In 4e's case, the PC's have been gaining feats and magic all along the way. I don't know alot about 4e, but it seems like enhancing your critical was a big portion of both, so it seems to me like criticals is an area a gap would open up that escaped the design team. I wouldn't be surprised if there were others.

[Primitive Screwhead]

Plane Sailings link should be fixed here

...and I like the idea of using the Monster Magic Threshold as a way to add damage to the critters crits!

[Jack99]

Originally Posted by Celebrim

I don't know alot about 4e

Okay.

but it seems like enhancing your critical was a big portion of both

Crits are not that important.

so it seems to me like criticals is an area a gap would open up that escaped the design team.

Considering your self admitted lack of knowledge about 4e, can you see how comments like these seem biased and based on nothing more than a dislike of 4e?

I wouldn't be surprised if there were others.

Since you obviously don't know alot about 4e (by own admission), why is that?

[Spatula]

I think you're reading a bit much into Celebrim's comments. He's simply pointing out how PCs outstripped the monsters in 1e and throws out the possibility of extra crit damage for monsters (already mentioned by PS) as one potential issue of difference.

The low damage of monsters is something that I've noticed before. I recall that the MM errata boosts the damage output for a bunch of creatures, but I don't remember exactly which ones. But also if you look at the table of monster damage output by level in the DMG, many if not most of the creatures in the MM fall well short of the suggested low end damage for their level. And there's nothing in the DMG or MM to explain this discrepency. In theory an attack that just did damage would be around the high end, damage + minor rider would be around the middle range, and damage + strong rider would be at the low end... or apparently not, but we aren't clued into the details of the monster design process.

[Jack99]

Originally Posted by Spatula

I think you're reading a bit much into Celebrim's comments. He's simply pointing out how PCs outstripped the monsters in 1e and throws out the possibility of extra crit damage for monsters (already mentioned by PS) as one potential issue of difference.

Sorry, but I disagree.

The low damage of monsters is something that I've noticed before. I recall that the MM errata boosts the damage output for a bunch of creatures, but I don't remember exactly which ones. But also if you look at the table of monster damage output by level in the DMG, many if not most of the creatures in the MM fall well short of the suggested low end damage for their level. And there's nothing in the DMG or MM to explain this discrepency. In theory an attack that just did damage would be around the high end, damage + minor rider would be around the middle range, and damage + strong rider would be at the low end... or apparently not, but we aren't clued into the details of the monster design process.

Yes. I agree that damage on some monsters is probably on the low side. But giving them a bonus on crits won't do the trick, THAT is my point. Crits are simply too little a part of a monsters overall damage for such a change to have the desired effect. Now, it's a fun rule, and I have even thought about using it myself for a while (but I am not houseruling until the first campaign is over), but it's not the way to go IF there is an issue with the epic tier.

Regarding that, I do not see why (mathematically) there should be one, but I am reserving judgement until we (as in my group) have actually played a real campaign in the epic tier.

[UngeheuerLich]

Just let the monsters use their treasure (don´t forget to distract the treshold)

this should at least easily fix humanoid monsters which can use weapons...

[FourthBear]

Originally Posted by Vayden

My initial thought is to lower all defenses by 1 for 21-25 level monsters, and 2 for 26-30 level, to reduce all hitpoints by 1/3 to 1/2 depending on the monster, and to flat out double all monster damage. Does that sound good to the math gurus?

I think that directly changing the monster's damage and hit points is the way to go. One of the advantages of 4e's more transparent math for generating opponents is the ability to spot and correct problems exactly like this. My guess is that the designers figured that by the time that characters got to Epic, they would have more frequent uses of Daily and Encounter resources and that bonuses to hit from those and similar sources would be more common. However, I don't think most Leader powers give out enough bonuses to hit at every tier. And, of course, that depends strongly on party composition. As to monster damage, I think this may be a case of the monster designers not following the DMG's own suggestions. According to the table on page 185 of the DMG, at 25th level, a monster's basic attack should be doing 3d8+9 points of damage and its special attacks 5d10+9. A quick flip through the MM shows that many monsters at or near this level have far lower damage expression.

In any case, if you and your table are noticing that Epic play is dragging on for too long, your changes are almost certainly well founded, not matter what party composition you've got.

[Runestar]

Seems like a circular problem. You need the leader's bonuses to hit more consistently, yet leader powers tend to be dependent on them hitting first before you can get the bonuses...

[Cadfan]

Giving monsters the player critical hit bonus damage won't change anything.

First, the problem you complained about was monsters taking too long to die. Increasing the damage they deal has nothing to do with that.

Second, boosting monster critical hit damage like this has a mathematically negligible effect on monster damage per round, while simultaneously making combat more erratic. At epic tier, this change is about like increasing monster damage by 1 per attack.

[FourthBear]

Originally Posted by Runestar

Seems like a circular problem. You need the leader's bonuses to hit more consistently, yet leader powers tend to be dependent on them hitting first before you can get the bonuses...

Yes, I would definitely agree that this is a problem as well. In fact, I think it leads into a more general issue with the powers so far: they have too little effect on a miss. In the previous editions of D&D, it was a very low probability at higher levels that the warrior types would end up accomplishing nothing in a round, IME. Especially in 3e, multiple attacks and high initial attack bonuses practically guaranteed a hit with your first strike. So the effect that most of the time, rolling poorly simply meant that you missed with two out of three attacks. This mostly meant your warriors were accomplishing some kind of progression for victory every round. Your spellcasters often used spells that caused half damage on a save or high gamble effects that had a low probability of success, but shut down opponents completely (this is complicated by spell resistance).

In general, I like the way that 4e has cut down on multiple attacks and pushed the attack bonus/defenses such that they scale better with level. However, with the current mix of powers, it can result in frustration when a rash of low die rolls comes around. While that's not necessarily a bad thing, I think there have been enough complaints about wiffs, grinding combats and the like to take another look at the math and power mixes. As you noted, Leaders can provide to hit bonuses to others, but very often these depend on the Leader hitting in the first place, resulting in uneven cascades. I think that in general, more 4e powers at the will and encounter frequencies should have some positive effects on a miss.