D&D 4E 4e Encounter Design... Why does it or doesn't it work for you?

One reason for my love of 4e is because I find 4e encounter design to be very cinematic, plot oriented, and goal oriented. I've never felt a previous edition was able to capture this, though after having played 4e, I think I have a much better understanding of this type of design, so I could probably apply what I've learned in 4e, to other systems (D&D or non-D&D).

4e taught me action economy, and how many things a PC's should be allowed to do in a round to feel like their are contributing meaningfully to an encounter. All of this has impacted my encounter design through the years.

I absolutely love the flexibility of intermingling combat, skill challenges, and various other game mechanics into an adventure. I can create dynamic scenes, have automated logic in my encounters to trigger events, actions of enemies, allies, and so on.

I love the tools 4e provides for encounter design. Monster roles allow a brute to feel very different than an artillery, and the range from minions to solos of varying levels you can use creates granulated difficulties of foes. Swarms are a fantastic tool for resolving many different environmental or monstrous elements.

Incorporating terrain, terrain powers, and other story elements into encounters is seamlessly done. It is possible to create dynamic encounters by varying round lengths, inserting end of round events, and the like.

I can create encounters on the fly, with only about 3-4 numbers in front of me, which means I can incorporate much more freedom to the PC's choices, without cornering them onto a railroad to make sure the encounters I designed don't go to waste. Also when they do something unexpected, I don't have to squirm in my seat because I didn't prepare a contingency for their plan, I just make it happen on the spot.

I've pushed the envelope in every aspect of encounter design. I feel the freedom to imagine up any situation the PC's can get themselves into, and can come up with a set of mechanics to resolve the conflict.

Things like abstract combat are easily handled through expenditure of healing surges, if certain scenes don't require a whole lot of attention. For instance the PC's might storm the orc hold, cut their way through the ranks of orcs to get to the throne room to face the orc leader. I'm not going to set up a half dozen fights to depict everything they do in their assault. We roleplay our way through the hallways and courtyards, jumping over walls, ambushing guards, and so on, and I might only run 1 actual encounter with a map once they reach the throne room, but the path they had to cut through the enemy will certainly deplete their resources.

Flexibility of 4e encounter design is limitless once you understand action economy, damage expressions and hit points, and PC resources.

DerekSTheRed said:

I didn't say you couldn't do the sentry, just that it didn't feel natural to me. My dungeon crawls are designed as multi day mini campaigns not a series of encounters. The problem is not just the encounter design system but also the focus on encounters and resources tied to them. I hoping D&D Next will keep the good and get rid of the bad by focusing on the adventure day.

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How would say 1e AD&D be any different here. The party can easily defeat the 2 orc sentries, but if one of them alerts the 4 other sentries off-duty down the hall then its a very dangerous fight with 6 orcs. IME the difference is only that in AD&D the party had a caster with a nuclear option like Sleep in his back pocket to 'fix' at least one such problem per day (and the party would simply beat feet once that was expended usually).

Now, nothing says 4e parties can't get hold of 'get out of jail free card' type stuff either. They certainly can. Anyway, either way, the question is why wouldn't 1e have basically the same issue overall?

Stormonu said:

Yep, pretty much - it's very difficult to carry consequences from one encounter to another and I've not seen where 4E makes use of the outcome of one encounter to affect other encounters - each is isolated so you don't see things like wars of attrition as you do in, say Caves of Chaos (where can, for example, lure a patrol of goblins out and bushwhack them, then have fewer opponents to face in the various rooms).

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I would think this scenario would work PERFECTLY in 4e. You still have resources to keep track of and husband. I don't really see why anything much would change. In either game you want to make sure you use the least resources possible to get the job done. There will certainly be more goblins in that cave and you need to save some for the next batch.

I think Mengu has it pretty much right.

What 4e taught me is to make story be in everything. Each combat has a plot to it. The patrol encounter with the goblins isn't boring because "4e fights are boring", it is boring because you dropped 5 goblins into a static situation and left everyone to just fight it out to the death.

STORY, ADVENTURE! What adventure movie or novel would have such a pointless fight? It would either be color (5 minion goblins, over in a round), or there would be some sort of plot point to it. The goblins have some information, they can't be allowed to escape, there's a forest fire raging, reinforcements will arrive in 5 rounds, the goblins set some traps and have orders to capture a PC, Bart Snaggletooth is an infamous goblin captain and if you kill him the other 10 will run! Now maybe combine a couple of these, etc and you can have a decent encounter. Get even more clever and things might be even more fun (the patrol has something that the PCs want, but they could get it without fighting or without killing all the goblins). I can go on all day.

What 4E would have trouble with is:

There are two goblin sentries outsie; the party knows there's four more in the next room.

Party takes out the two. Rather than advancing, they wait for the next set of guards to come on duty and bushwhack 'em. Having now done a fight with two, then two more, they rush the last two.

Stormonu said:

What 4E would have trouble with is:

There are two goblin sentries outsie; the party knows there's four more in the next room.

Party takes out the two. Rather than advancing, they wait for the next set of guards to come on duty and bushwhack 'em. Having now done a fight with two, then two more, they rush the last two.

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Unless there are magic soundproof walls between these rooms, this scenario makes no sense. Why are the 4 goblins next door sitting there while combat rages on the other side of the door?

But even that aside, what's the problem? What is 4E having "trouble" with here that other editions wouldn't? Just sounds like a silly scenario to me, no matter the edition.

dkyle said:

Unless there are magic soundproof walls between these rooms, this scenario makes no sense. Why are the 4 goblins next door sitting there while combat rages on the other side of the door?

But even that aside, what's the problem? What is 4E having "trouble" with here that other editions wouldn't? Just sounds like a silly scenario to me, no matter the edition.

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This is not a "silly scenario", it's actually a valid tactic back in Keep on the Borderlands/Caves of Chaos and highlights a difference of playstyle in 1E/2E and 4E. The main goblin chamber in the goblin caves has in the neighborhood of 12 goblins in it - far more than most parties can handle all at once. Any wandering monster patrols the party encounters/kills in the halls of the warren are subtracted from the number in that room. A cunning party could draw out the goblins in small numbers and eliminate them this way rather than face all of them at once. Stealth kills (sneak attack or other one-shots; these are goblins after all) could also mean no sounds of battle were the sentries and remaining goblins in adjacent rooms.

I don't see 4E's encounter design handling this sort of tactic very well, and would probably try and model it as a Skill challenge. I'd somewhat feel for the DM whose players did this spontaneously; I'd imagine many DMs would chafe at the party "destroying" the planned encounter in the goblin room.

@Stormonu

My PCs in my 4e game (same archetypes as they have played forever) are:

Rogue (Dex primary, trained Stealth)
Bladesinger (Dex secondary, trained Stealth)
Druid (Dex secondary, trained Stealth)

What you are describing is their primary modus operandi for every engagement. Forever. From Basic onward. They have continued this from the inception of 4e to-date. No problems. At all. Not for me GMing it. Not for them executing it. I'm not sure where the problem you're envisioning would arise. Extra-encounter strategic play is entirely viable in 4e. Cloak and dagger, skulking, reconnaissance, taking out scouts, etc...still fully viable and supported.

The only area where 4e is different than its predecessors here is that its resource schemes (specifically its high level, potent spells) are bounded and siloed such that it does not allow strategic play to uniformly circumvent plot arcs/investigations/adventures thus narrowing the scope of play and turning Paragon/Epic tier play into rock/paper/scissors games.

Manbearcat said:

@Stormonu

My PCs in my 4e game (same archetypes as they have played forever) are:

Rogue (Dex primary, trained Stealth)
Bladesinger (Dex secondary, trained Stealth)
Druid (Dex secondary, trained Stealth)

What you are describing is their primary modus operandi for every engagement. Forever. From Basic onward. They have continued this from the inception of 4e to-date. No problems. At all. Not for me GMing it. Not for them executing it. I'm not sure where the problem you're envisioning would arise. Extra-encounter strategic play is entirely viable in 4e. Cloak and dagger, skulking, reconnaissance, taking out scouts, etc...still fully viable and supported.

The only area where 4e is different than its predecessors here is that its resource schemes (specifically its high level, potent spells) are bounded and siloed such that it does not allow strategic play to uniformly circumvent plot arcs/investigations/adventures thus narrowing the scope of play and turning Paragon/Epic tier play into rock/paper/scissors games.

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I would say there are 2 points where Stormonu might be having his issue. 1 would be encounter powers, if you can refresh those then that's a fairly decent, but not usually overwhelming, advantage for the PCs. 2 would be just that if you fight out each of these skirmishes it can take longer than you'd like.

I would suggest a compromise is generally logical. As dkyle says it is hard to imagine a fight going on nearby that isn't heard. It is POSSIBLE, but a tougher thing than the basic ambush. So, what happens? The 4 other goblins scramble to find their weapons, shields, shoes, whatever, wake up, get set, and come in. Given 6 second rounds imagine if you're caught flat and have to react, 30 seconds is 6 rounds and that's pretty quick to go from kicking back to headed into a fight. Realistically that means the party gets say 4-6 rounds, then the second wave hits. This will be a NICE advantage to them, but not totally make things just silly. You can also have some SC to allow for a totally silent kill, bait the sentries away for extra rounds, etc. In other words you can make it an interesting situation that is worth playing out and should still be challenging.

Finally, if the DM knows this stuff is going to happen because he has a reasonably cautious and tactical group that thinks ahead, just up the level of challenge of stuff somewhat. That's what you would do in any other edition at some point, just let the party find its own level of challenge. Make it 3 sentries and 5 reinforcements or whatever.

Proof that 4e is not limited by encounter design guidelines:

Our party found a room full of people frozen in ice in a villain's fortress. Some of them had thawed out and were extremely confused. We interrogated them and tried bribing them for information, and since our party is full of amoral sociopaths, the guys thought it would be best to run as fast as they could away from us. I decided to chase after them to stop them from getting away (with my money that I had given them, no less), so the DM groaned, asked if we were really going to attack these guys, and quickly gave them stats and sketched out a battlemap. The "fight," such as it was, lasted about two rounds, after which one of them was dead -- if memory serves -- and I got my money back.

I would have been fine just roleplaying the conflict or making it a skill challenge, but either way the DM was able to quickly throw something together as a result of our impromptu acts of violence.