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

Kamikaze Midget said:

First, it's difficult to zoom out from the encounter level, because everything is balanced on the encounter metric. Traps, for instance, have this problem where what they do in 4e (and in 3e, which had some of the same ideas), is pointless. "Oh no, I took some damage, gotta sleep and get it back!"

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This is indeed a problem. It is, however, a problem with the 4e Extended Rest model - the main houserule I use is that you can only take an extended rest in a place of safety (like a friendly town or a home base). That brings attritional HP back in as atttritional healing surges and makes the PCs question whether to waste a week going home or to push on.

However that house rule can be made in a single half line bullet point. It isn't "hard to remove". The problem isn't the damage it's the "sleep and get it back" - a problem that D&D has had with casters ever since it left the dungeon (no one could take that many wandering monster rolls, so in practice you went back to base camp; this was part of the point of wandering monsters). To fix it, change the "sleep and get it back" part.

Because there aren't concrete resources outside of the encounter, it makes it difficult to do anything outside of the encounter framework, and PC's also lack meaningful and variegated contributions outside of an encounter.

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And this is utterly untrue in my experience. You can make a 4e fighter who's about as competent as a good 3.X rogue at rogue stuff without and the skills are all meaningful (Use Rope, I'm looking at you). There are more concrete resources in 4e outside the encounter for 4e PCs than in any other version of D&D - all that is missing is the sheer power and flexibility of the most useful spells to re-write the game world.

To take one example, a first level human fighter with both rogue multiclass feats can have training in Stealth, Thievery, Perception, Athletics, Streetwise, and Intimidate. In 3.X terms this would be significant ranks Hide, Move Silently, Open Lock, Disable Device, Sleight Of Hand, Spot, Listen, Search, Climb, Jump, Swim, Gather Information, Knowledge (Local), and Intimidate - or 14 different skills, all of which are useful to rogues. 4e Fighters are notoriously skill poor- but a 3.X rogue going flat out has major problems having as much out of combat competence as a 4e fighter who's going flat out even before the fighter starts in on the utility powers.

Class for class, there's no contest between any 4e class and its 3.X equivalent in terms of out of combat ability that doesn't involve simply throwing magic at a problem. And in 4e any class, with a single feat, can gain the ability to throw (ritual) magic at a problem.

Second, it marginalizes alternative encounter resolutions. Because the game is focused on that rising-action narrative arc, and every PC ability is focused on that as well, it encourages you do solve every encounter via the metric of damage and healing.

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Welcome to D&D. 4e is the only version of D&D with a general scene resolution system that doesn't revolve round killing people. Which means if the group is inclined to be creative, 4e is the only version of D&D that actively supports the idea of solving encounters through methods other than (a) damage and healing or (b) snapping your fingers and making the encounter irrelevant with a spell.

As for the idea that "every PC ability is focussed on that as well", this is both untrue and pure edition warring. The skill system is not focussed on that - quite the reverse. And skills are PC abilities - and abilities every PC has. The ritual system is a system that can not be used in combat. And doesn't generally do damage or healing. Many utility powers can't be used in combat. For that matter my current 4e character has three utility powers at 6th level (four if you count Words of Friendship) - not one of which has a significant combat use. Plus an extremely broad range of skills.

Now kindly stop spreading misinformation please. For someone who isn't an enworld moderator to edition war by spreading objectively false information about 4e would be bad enough.

And no, you don't get to hide behind making absolute statements that are absolutely false and then claiming "there's exceptions to them, always" when the exceptions include literally every single non-magical PC in the game, and the second biggest system in the game. At least not unless you want to go right out on a limb and say "In D&D only spellcasters can make 'meaningful and variegated contributions outside of an encounter'".

Stormonu said:

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.

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You've changed the scenario from what you originally posted.

But still, the wandering monster rules are pretty silly if the goblins are just blindly going on the same patrols even as their numbers dwindle to nothing. Why doesn't the next patrol notice when the previous ones don't return?

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.

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No, 4E's encounter design guidelines do not provide their full predictive power when an encounter is broken up like that. But all other editions have just as much "trouble" with this scenario, in regards to solving the problems 4E's encounter design guidelines try to solve. Your scenario is not a problem unique to 4E, just one that stands out, since 4E actually solves the problems of encounter design in many cases, whereas older editions barely even try.

But in any even, if the GM sets up a scenario like the one you describe, he is clearly not concerned with the room of goblins being a well-balanced set-piece encounter, if he has subsets of them wandering off at regular intervals. He's setting up a situation outside the domain of the encounter design guidelines to begin with.

Neonchameleon said:

Welcome to D&D. 4e is the only version of D&D with a general scene resolution system that doesn't revolve round killing people.

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The only one with an explicitly stated system for that, yes.

Mind you, previous editions (3.x, specifically) did give GMs guidance about awarding XP for things other than combat, and the skill system to go ahead with scenes that didn't involve combat was there. And we talked about doing so endlessly around here in the 3.x era. To be honest, Skill Challenges were merely a codification of things folks had been doing for... decades, I imagine.

Neonchameleon said:

This is indeed a problem. It is, however, a problem with the 4e Extended Rest model

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HP is a resource. For HP to be balanced within the encounter, it needs to come back at the end of every encounter. If it didn't, the encounters wouldn't be balanced (they'd assume a level of HP that may actually vary depending on what part of the recharge cycle you have the encounter on). The design doesn't really care if you do that via wands or potions or hit dice or healing surges. The only reason 4e even has an "extended rest" is to give a nod to the fact that, pre-4e, the game was not as tightly defined around the encounter. 4e could be played with a "you gain all your hp back at the end of the encounter" hand-wave without any major hiccups -- 3e, too, but the only major difference between wands of CLW and healing surges is the implied flavor and control of the resource.

If you limit HP loss to the individual encounter, you make HP something that cannot be truly affected outside of the encounter. It's something that was discussed in the "Exploration Rules" thread at some length -- you can't have falling down a cliff deal HP damage in a game where you can heal all your HP easily, because then it becomes irrelevant.

So I don't see it as a localized "extended rest problem." It's a problem IMO because HP are defined as something you use in one encounter, rather than over the course of several.

Neonchameleon said:

You can make a 4e fighter who's about as competent as a good 3.X rogue at rogue stuff without and the skills are all meaningful (Use Rope, I'm looking at you).

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Yeah, but it's still just roll the dice to see if the DM lets you win. Which doesn't work for everyone (and doesn't work for me). I want a rogue to have as unique a contribution when they're exploring the dungeon or chatting up the townsfolk as when they're killin' goblins, and 4e defines rogues mostly in terms of how they kill goblins. It's meticulously balanced for that, but that's not what I've ever found most interesting and fun and engaging about my D&D games.

Neonchameleon said:

Welcome to D&D. 4e is the only version of D&D with a general scene resolution system that doesn't revolve round killing people.

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And yet every game of 4e that I have played has had a MUCH bigger percentage of the time dedicated to combat than any of the things I find so much more fun, because 4e does not make them as fun or as interesting as earlier e's made them. I'm sure the first reaction will be "YOU'RE DOIN' IT WRONG!" but that's the thing with any sort of design: if your users are doing it wrong, then the blame still falls on your design. Good design makes it hard to do things wrong and easy to do things right. Whenever I enter a skill challenge, I feel like I'm doing something that the game doesn't really want me to engage in, because none of my most interesting, varied, and character-defining abilities come into play.

Skill checks are not a robust enough mechanic to hang 2/3rds of the game on for me.

Neonchameleon said:

This is indeed a problem. It is, however, a problem with the 4e Extended Rest model - the main houserule I use is that you can only take an extended rest in a place of safety (like a friendly town or a home base). That brings attritional HP back in as atttritional healing surges and makes the PCs question whether to waste a week going home or to push on.

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There's more you can do to address this.

The Rest mechanic can be fiddled with, like any element in D&D. For instance, the rest mechanic simulates a day. The extended rest is "bedding down for the night", so to speak. But you could say, "For this adventure, you can't get the benefits of an extended rest, regardless of how long you try to". For instance, they could be traveling through a place that isn't condusive to rest (like a haunted swamp where their dreams are haunted and they are always on edge). This way they only get one use of that daily power per adventure.

This option is useful when for instance due to the constraints of the plot, the PCs would only be having one encounter per day (like traveling along the roads, or other situations where there is a natural lengthy downtime between encounters).

Kamikaze Midget said:

If you limit HP loss to the individual encounter, you make HP something that cannot be truly affected outside of the encounter. It's something that was discussed in the "Exploration Rules" thread at some length -- you can't have falling down a cliff deal HP damage in a game where you can heal all your HP easily, because then it becomes irrelevant.

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I think things are called differently. Because Healing Surges are the real Hit Points. Your hit points can go up and down, and all you need to do is spend another surge to get more. But when you can't spend a surge, you can't get any hit points, and if you have no surges to spend, you can't regain any.

Surges are the between-encounters mechanics. They're not analogous to Wands of CLW because there are 50 charges to a wand, and you can suck down as many potions as you can afford. If you have too many encounters on an adventuring day, you will die because surges are finite. If you can't get an Extended Rest, you're boned.

And yet every game of 4e that I have played has had a MUCH bigger percentage of the time dedicated to combat

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And yet every game of D&D that I have played has had a MUCH bigger percentage of the time dedicated to combat.

Kamikaze Midget said:

HP is a resource. For HP to be balanced within the encounter, it needs to come back at the end of every encounter. If it didn't, the encounters wouldn't be balanced (they'd assume a level of HP that may actually vary depending on what part of the recharge cycle you have the encounter on). The design doesn't really care if you do that via wands or potions or hit dice or healing surges. The only reason 4e even has an "extended rest" is to give a nod to the fact that, pre-4e, the game was not as tightly defined around the encounter. 4e could be played with a "you gain all your hp back at the end of the encounter" hand-wave without any major hiccups -- 3e, too, but the only major difference between wands of CLW and healing surges is the implied flavor and control of the resource.

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No, the major difference is that healing surges are an actually constrained resource, that enable precisely the kind of gameplay you are looking for, and wands of CLW are an effectively unlimited resource to any party with sufficient system mastery, that prevents the kind of gameplay you are looking for.

HP is primarily an encounter-duration resource in 4E, yes, but that's why we have healing surges, to be a longer term resource that allows for attrition over the course of the adventure.

So the trap isn't there to merely deal damage, and weaken the group's HP totals in advance of an encounter an hour late; it's there to potentially require spending a healing surge, requiring more careful play later in the day.

If you want a trap to cause the party to have less HP for the next encounter, that's trivial; just make the trap the first opening "surprise" of an encounter!

Yeah, but it's still just roll the dice to see if the DM lets you win. Which doesn't work for everyone (and doesn't work for me). I want a rogue to have as unique a contribution when they're exploring the dungeon or chatting up the townsfolk as when they're killin' goblins, and 4e defines rogues mostly in terms of how they kill goblins. It's meticulously balanced for that, but that's not what I've ever found most interesting and fun and engaging about my D&D games.

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4E's skill challenges aren't perfect by any means, but they do come closer to reducing "roll to see if the DM lets you win" than any other edition of D&D, by placing skill rolls in a well-defined mechanical context.

I don't really understand what you've finding fun and engaging in your non-4E games that's non-combat, and not "roll to see if the DM lets you win", that 4E can't also do. Skills pre-4E are pure DM-fiat. The only major non-DM-fiat non-combat pre-4E is Spells, but 4E has Rituals that perform largely the same non-combat role Spells did pre-4E.

It seems like your problem with 4E is that there's so much going on with combat, that non-combat looks anemic, even though 4E has just as much, if not more, real non-combat mechanics than past editions.

Umbran said:

The only one with an explicitly stated system for that, yes.

Mind you, previous editions (3.x, specifically) did give GMs guidance about awarding XP for things other than combat, and the skill system to go ahead with scenes that didn't involve combat was there. And we talked about doing so endlessly around here in the 3.x era. To be honest, Skill Challenges were merely a codification of things folks had been doing for... decades, I imagine.

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Indeed they are nothing all that surprising or unique. OTOH if and when people complain about what a SYSTEM does or doesn't do then they of course are talking about what the rules of that system do and don't include.

Honestly I don't think previous editions of D&D were any more incapable in creating OO-combat 'encounters' than in-combat ones. In both cases there wasn't really a system (before 3e who's system is a bit wonky). In AD&D you just made stuff up and it was mostly a guess on the DM's part as to how to run it or how tough it was, combat or not. To be fair I don't recall GENERALLY having some horrible problem with doing that, the rules were pretty swingy anyhow so it was probably of dubious value. 4e has its tighter encounter design, which makes the whole thing both more appealing and useful.

I think the extension to non-combat encounters of a formal system was a logical evolution. It isn't exactly perfectly executed in early 4e, but it has gotten pretty good over the last 4 years. I think a lot of DMs just haven't really adapted, maybe they don't need to. A lot of them didn't seem to adapt in terms of combat encounters either.

4e's DMG's only one real flaw was in terms of not providing a vision of what happens when you pull it all together. I think that WotC actually has lacked that vision for most of 4e's life and that's a major reason they're failing with the product now. It took a year probably of DMing it to fully grasp all the dimensions, but when you start combining the various elements in certain ways you do get some very cool results. People just really need that demonstrated. A much better sample adventure would have been the ticket I think. Kobold Hall is actually pretty good for early 4e adventures, but it doesn't even scratch the surface of the game and demonstrates some bad ideas too.

Rechan said:

I think things are called differently. Because Healing Surges are the real Hit Points. Your hit points can go up and down, and all you need to do is spend another surge to get more. But when you can't spend a surge, you can't get any hit points, and if you have no surges to spend, you can't regain any.

Surges are the between-encounters mechanics. They're not analogous to Wands of CLW because there are 50 charges to a wand, and you can suck down as many potions as you can afford. If you have too many encounters on an adventuring day, you will die because surges are finite. If you can't get an Extended Rest, you're boned.

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If you look at the problems you face in 4e if you convert healing surges to simply a bigger pool of HP, you come to see how the two differ in psychology, even if mathematically you're spot on.

And yet every game of D&D that I have played has had a MUCH bigger percentage of the time dedicated to combat.

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Just because 4e has some flaws in its design doesn't mean other editions are perfect, either. Certain ways are better for certain people. Like I discuss in the article, modularity is the important bit here. You shouldn't HAVE to give up a mechanic that works for you, and neither should I.

4e tries to make me, and it's one of the points I struggle with in the game.

dkyle said:

No, the major difference is that healing surges are an actually constrained resource, that enable precisely the kind of gameplay you are looking for, and wands of CLW are an effectively unlimited resource to any party with sufficient system mastery, that prevents the kind of gameplay you are looking for.

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Actually, neither provides the kind of gameplay I'm looking for, because both treat HP as an encounter resource rather than as an adventure resource, and I'm not looking to have people healed up to full HP after every encounter.

But by the numbers, CLW are not an unlimited resource. Plentiful, but there's wealth by level, and treasure is awarded based on encounters, and magic items can only be sold in towns of certain sizes, etc. But that's a pretty arcane rules interaction and anyway is besides the point -- both treat HP as an encounter resource, which makes a problem with affecting HP outside of encounters.

HP is primarily an encounter-duration resource in 4E, yes, but that's why we have healing surges, to be a longer term resource that allows for attrition over the course of the adventure.

So the trap isn't there to merely deal damage, and weaken the group's HP totals in advance of an encounter an hour late; it's there to potentially require spending a healing surge, requiring more careful play later in the day.

If you want a trap to cause the party to have less HP for the next encounter, that's trivial; just make the trap the first opening "surprise" of an encounter!

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Those miss the point. HP is the tool with which one models "damage" and "life-threatening injury" in D&D because it's one of the few things that can actually kill your character permanently (running out of surges does not, unless you also combine it with HP damage).

But HP cannot be used for that when HP are an encounter resource because life-threatening injuries that are not also part of encounters cannot use HP to model the damage they do.

That's a pretty strong disconnect. It's something that 5e is still struggling with, because it wants to preserve HP as this easily-recovered resource, which isn't letting it be used to model damage and life-threatening injury, because those things are mutually exclusive.

4E's skill challenges aren't perfect by any means, but they do come closer to reducing "roll to see if the DM lets you win" than any other edition of D&D, by placing skill rolls in a well-defined mechanical context.

I don't really understand what you've finding fun and engaging in your non-4E games that's non-combat, and not "roll to see if the DM lets you win", that 4E can't also do. Skills pre-4E are pure DM-fiat. The only major non-DM-fiat non-combat pre-4E is Spells, but 4E has Rituals that perform largely the same non-combat role Spells did pre-4E.

It seems like your problem with 4E is that there's so much going on with combat, that non-combat looks anemic, even though 4E has just as much, if not more, real non-combat mechanics than past editions.

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I like 4e just fine. But it's worse for me for non-combat for one big reason that I point out in the article:

there are not rules where I want them.

Pre-4e there were rules that played to the archetype. Fighters could bend bars and lift gates. Wizards could charm people. Clerics could command. Rogues could hide in shadows. These were important abilities because other characters didn't really get these capabilities -- they were exclusive to your archetype. Their exclusivity was part of their power. More so than their raw bonus. Okay, Rogues can have the highest Stealth, but everyone else can hide in shadows too, with reasonable success chances, so now my rogue isn't unique, so his ability to hide isn't special, it's the same as everyone else, just more likely to succeed.

The "grounded in believability" aspect of the rules helped make for interesting interactions of these abilities, too. Hiding in shadows was a good tactic against humans, but bad for anything that lived in shadows. Commands were useful for temporary reprieves, but had interesting possibilities in interpretation. Charms were useful to varying degrees, but also bad against elves. Breaking down barriers was good in a dungeon or in a locked room, but it attracted attention.

In 4e, a skill check does whatever it needs to do to count as a "success," regardless of what skill it is or what character type you're playing as or what situation you find yourself in. It is removed from the actual activity and abstract, grounded in the balance of the game rather than the circumstances of the imaginary world.

Again, other editions aren't perfect, and I wouldn't say that everyone needs to play with them. But it's not right to say that 4e is obviously better in this regard. It isn't. It tried to be, but for a lot of players (like me), it failed. Denying that failure isn't going to improve anything. It works for others, and that's fine, too, but just because it works for you doesn't mean it has to work for everyone.

Tony Vargas said:

The 'skulk past scouts/sentinels' scenario is one best handled, in 4e, as a skill challenge. With a partial failure, you can pull it out of the fire by ganking them fast enough - and they should likely be minions or just a single standard, because the SC counts as some 'standard monsters.' With complete success they never see you. With complete failure they get off the alarm before you can even attack them, and complications ensue.

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Yes, I agree, and that's a problem. I am playing a rpg. If I wanted a separate minigame to prop up in a normal tactical situation, I'd be playing Final Fantasy.

One GOOD thing with these rules, however, is that is is easy to turn a regular encounter into a social encounter. My players try to talk their way past the kobolds? If the Kobolds were a CR 3 combat encounter, I readily replace it with a CR 3 social skill challenge, and balance/xp is maintained.

But turning 2 kobold guards into a a level 1 stealth challenge isn't very interesting. At least not to me.

Edit: Also, there are a lot of stealth and maneuver oriented powers in 4E, none of which were written for use in skill challenges. There are few socially oriented powers and those were written for skill challenges. That also made stealth challenges less attractive than social challenges.