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One of the problems with 4e is that throwing higher level monsters at the party doesn't really increase the challenge because their characters are more likely to die, but mostly has the effect of extending the combat (aka grind).
This is especially so for higher than party level Soldiers, Elites and Solos.
Stalker0 has a great post on how to avoid grind by using monsters of the PC's level...but just more of them in order to make higher level encounters.
Still, it'd be nice occasionally to send them up against monsters that are truly bad-ass...where the PC's could take them out, but are likely to get very hurt doing so first.
Anyone have any good ideas how to go about this?
Brutes and Artillery are okay, but even then, they're not necessarily truly frightening unless they're either getting extra actions or doing extra damage.
I suppose one way is to move the damage track from the Low or Med damage to the high (on page 185)...or even move damage from the 'Normal' table to the 'Limited' table.
I just find that my PC's rarely are being challenged defensively...they rarely seem to need to spend a Second Wind and I don't think I've dropped one unconcious in months.
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I just find that my PC's rarely are being challenged defensively...they rarely seem to need to spend a Second Wind and I don't think I've dropped one unconcious in months.
Could you expand on that, maybe with a few examples of what level classes you have and what specific encounters were so easy that they didn't even have to use their second wind? Because either you have some very gifted players, or something is definitely off. While combats are different from past editions, I find that I have had no problems downing players regularly.
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I find that swarms scare my PCs. The new lamia works pretty well along with the spider swarm. I end up adding the swarm template to alot of small creatures in my game just to make my PCs squirm a bit. It does get a little boring every now and again though... "Ugh, another swarm?"
I read in another thread here one time (I'm waay too lazy to go find it and make a link) a good solution. Cut HPs in half, and double monster damage. It's worked for my group.
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The thing I found that scares my players most is me saying things like thats hits a 40 against AC when rolling for monster attacks.
Actually with my group, i've found they don't use second wind that much, and only occasionly go unconscious. However they are still being challenged. They've had battles where they they blow through all their dailies in one encounter.
Also i've often found the players idea of a difficult/challenging encounter can be quite different to mine.
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Monsters that uses focus fire or synergizes each other.
This. If you want to see a player nearly wet themselves, get a bunch of skirmishers past a defender and have them flank a ranged striker or controller. Or, find ways to bunch up PC's with push pulls and slides, then start dropping AOEs on them. I've found that nearly any monster set can scare the stripes off a zebra if strong tactics are used.
Wik threw an encounter at our group recently that just wiped the floor with us. I believe it consisted of vine horrors in the controller, artillery, and soldier roles.
Here's what was so scary about the fight:
1) Area effects that pinned us down.
2) Artillery that could pound us with impunity while we were immobilized.
3) Walls that blocked us into a little shooting gallery, but the monsters could get through.
4) More conditions than we had the ability to deal with.
It wasn't the first time we got plastered in a fight - I still hate spiked devils. Bloody flying artillery...
-blarg
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Wik threw an encounter at our group recently that just wiped the floor with us. I believe it consisted of vine horrors in the controller, artillery, and soldier roles.
Of course, IIRC, he was treating an encounter power as an At-Will. That would do it.
I don't know that that so much scares me as irritates the hell out of me.
Brad
I gotta agree, stun (while it isn't quite in the 3e mold of go play some xbox for a while) is still rather unexciting. Daze, on the other hand, gives a lot of the scariness of stun, while keeping the player in the fight.
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Of course, IIRC, he was treating an encounter power as an At-Will. That would do it.
True, that. It did suck to be on the receiving end, but it only really meant that they used it a couple times more than they were supposed to.
The main thing that was nasty about that fight was the combo of controller + artillery + blockers. Most of the party spent the majority of that fight suffering from blindness, immobilization, and ongoing damage. (In addition to free potshots at range.)
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Yup. Two games ago, the foe started yelling out "The warforged. Kill the warforged first." And every bad guy concentrated their fire on that PC until they dropped. "The dragonborn. Drop the dragonborn next." This scares the players, and makes for a fun tactical challenge: how do the defenders stop them from hitting a known target?
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Sometimes I do that against the Fighter, just because the monsters get pissed off at him. Highlights his abilities.
I find that monsters who have abilities that work well together (anything that slows with a ghoul, for example) are scary.
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I've not yet seen her in play, but she looks damn scary on paper. Anybody use her Level-35-Solo-Brute-awesomeness and five separate initiative counts per round yet?
Take Kobolds for example.
Kobolds aren't going to build their fortresses to human proportions; they are going to build their fortresses to kobold proportions.
Tight corridors that force medium creatures to squeeze.
Low ceilings that force medium creatures to drop prone and crawl.
Focusing fire can be especially scary if you do it right.
The paladin in my party got ripped to pieces by a mob of zombies that decided to gang up on him. Everybody was terrified by that.
Our GM threw wights at us, with some artillery/leader support. Losing a healing surge every time you get hit gets painful in a hurry, especially when your primary defender is low-AC/high-HP.
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