JohnSnow
Hero
Well, I don't know if this will help, but I tend to design 4e encounters more closely to the way I designed 1e and 2e encounters.
Rather than putting out 1 monster for PCs to beat up (did anyone actually do that in 3e?), I come up with groups. The DMG encounter templates help, as do the suggested encounters in the MM, and the theme templates in DMG 2 will probably come in handy. However, I mostly just go through something like:
"Okay, the party encounters a goblin raiding party attacking a farmhouse. That means I need a couple different types of goblins and maybe some wolves. I want 1 guy with a ranged weapon, maybe a spellcaster, some close up types, some easy-to-kill ones, and some wolves."
Then, and only then, do I pull out the Monster Manual. I tend to use pre-made monsters, rather than doing a lot of customizing. But the Monster Builder makes it pretty easy to adjust things, so I do that sometimes. For terrain, I just think of movies I've seen and try to sprinkle the area with some cool stuff that PCs and NPCs can interact with.
I admit it's harder to improvise those things truly "on the fly," but I've always found I tend to do "no prep" only when I'm running wilderness adventures (I can't just "wing" a dungeon). For wilderness encounters, I try to keep some "stock encounters" handy, like an ambush that occurs in advantageous terrain. Or a set of ruins the PCs find themselves in. If I know I have a session coming up where the PCs are going into the wilderness, I find it can be helpful to spend a few minutes with my Dungeon Tiles coming up with cool set pieces that I can fall back on (an ambush site, a ruined fort or temple, etc.).
My two cents.
Rather than putting out 1 monster for PCs to beat up (did anyone actually do that in 3e?), I come up with groups. The DMG encounter templates help, as do the suggested encounters in the MM, and the theme templates in DMG 2 will probably come in handy. However, I mostly just go through something like:
"Okay, the party encounters a goblin raiding party attacking a farmhouse. That means I need a couple different types of goblins and maybe some wolves. I want 1 guy with a ranged weapon, maybe a spellcaster, some close up types, some easy-to-kill ones, and some wolves."
Then, and only then, do I pull out the Monster Manual. I tend to use pre-made monsters, rather than doing a lot of customizing. But the Monster Builder makes it pretty easy to adjust things, so I do that sometimes. For terrain, I just think of movies I've seen and try to sprinkle the area with some cool stuff that PCs and NPCs can interact with.
I admit it's harder to improvise those things truly "on the fly," but I've always found I tend to do "no prep" only when I'm running wilderness adventures (I can't just "wing" a dungeon). For wilderness encounters, I try to keep some "stock encounters" handy, like an ambush that occurs in advantageous terrain. Or a set of ruins the PCs find themselves in. If I know I have a session coming up where the PCs are going into the wilderness, I find it can be helpful to spend a few minutes with my Dungeon Tiles coming up with cool set pieces that I can fall back on (an ambush site, a ruined fort or temple, etc.).
My two cents.