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

[Manbearcat]

When the encounter, or series of encounters, is nearly finished, I want both sides to be down to their last hit points and on their last reserves where a good roll of the dice by one side or the other can swing the battle. With 4E, my bad guys were on their last reserves well before the PCs in most every battle.

Have you considered just making your encounters more difficult as a baseline (a la my posts upthread)? My "standard/default" encounters are PC level + 2. My boss encounters are PC level + 5. Can you not go that route?

 

[CroBob]

When the encounter, or series of encounters, is nearly finished, I want both sides to be down to their last hit points and on their last reserves where a good roll of the dice by one side or the other can swing the battle. With 4E, my bad guys were on their last reserves well before the PCs in most every battle.

When the PCs in my 3.5E game faced off against a lich that was also a 19th level archmage, at the end of the combat my lich had used all of its level 6, 7, 8 and 9 spell slots, and well as every quickened and otherwise metamagicked spell. Several PCs had either been dropped below 0 and healed, or been killed outright and then revivified.

Or, the time after that when the party had a final showdown with a long running drow nemesis and a group of other drow. Both sides had several combatants that were down to less than 10 hit points (when both sides were level 17). Finally, in what looked to be the end of the combat, the PC cleric managed to cast Mass Heal and get most of the party (I think 5 or 6 of the 8 PCs)... and the party's dwarf fighter managed to land a critical hit on the drow priestess who was about to do the same for her side, dropping her and essentially ending the combat.

It's like that Die Hard feeling - the PCs get beat up, thrashed within an inch of their lives, but they barely win in the end.

Well, I surely can't empathize with that. I tend to prefer many unimportant fights, where the PCs aren't necessarily up against anything that could kill them without extraordinary luck. I prefer the grueling fights you describe to be the odd man out, saved for bosses and what-not.

However, our differing tastes doesn't mean I lack any advice. It sounds to me like you simply need to make the fights more challenging. That shouldn't be a problem in the slightest, as I thought of three ways to do it just now;

The most obvious option to me is to simply use more monsters per fight. The bad guys get more actions, and the PCs have to work through more total HPs. This option isn't too attractive, though, because it will slow combats down.

You could also simply use monsters higher level than the PCs. This option is better than the first, since higher level monsters are necessarily tougher and deal more damage, but it won't necessarily slow down combat. 4E is designed under the assumption that truly difficult battles are the rare boss fight type, not the norm, so this is basically just a way of countering that philosophy.

The option I think is most attractive is to simply improve the monsters' damage output. The combat won't get slowed down because of more monsters, it won't take any longer to beat them, since their defenses and HPs are the same, but it will drain the PCs of their precious HPs faster. Maybe add a s4 to all of their attacks, or a flat bonus equal to half their level, or something. Play with it until it works.

 

[LostSoul]

Well, there are of course other alternatives. Mine would be to have a 'map' of some sort (maybe not needing to be as detailed as a full dungeon map) and let the consequences of the various SC checks drive where the PCs decide to go. When they fail they make some sort of choice, miss some sort of sign, or make some mistake that narratively takes them closer to the less desirable course of action. This may not always be a movement on the map, but it often would be. The map then dictates what they see next as they move around.

I was thinking about this a little more in terms of the choices that the players are making.

In this post I talked about a skill challenge that I ran. The choices the player made in that case could probably be boiled down to "Which skill do you use?"

Now I use a different skill list in my game, but I don't think that matters much. So why did that skill challenge work?

My gut feeling is that it's because we paid attention to the details of the character's actions, and the consequences flowed naturally from those details. The choices the player made were of the most basic sort - "What does your character do?" - and the skill challenge structure informed the point at which she'd be successful.

[sblock=The same example with more detail]To recap, the PC wanted to gather townspeople to feed to vine horrors in exchange for information about a nearby hex.

The information she was looking for was tied to the reward system. She wanted to discover what happened to an ancient city of steel and glass, built by her ancestors (Bael Turothian). A very dangerous place. Pursuing this "Goal" is one of the main sources of XP in the game - I've divided encounter XP awards by 10. Is that important or not? I wonder.​

First: The player stated that she wanted her PC to head to the town's gardens, a series of small, fenced-off gardens on a mountain plateau where they are able to grow food. The player said that her PC was specifically looking for an older villager who could use some help.

This was the fictional set-up for the "find a mark" roll. We added up the modifiers for the roll: Charisma, as she was using "Social power, force, or presence" (a little weak but whatever); her full "Apprentice: Procurer" skill - as part of her background, she worked for a warlock, and at his command she would break into places and steal ritual components, kidnapping marks off the street, and rob graves; and a +2 situational modifier for going late in the day when most people had already started dinner.

She rolled against the DC of the town (bigger towns = more people = higher level), got a "Stunning Success" (she hit the Hard DC for that level), which meant that her action was successful (finding an older villager who could use some help) and another benefit.​

She found and old guy looking for help, and - fortunately - he was in a small, fenced-off garden covered in vines, well-hidden from prying eyes.

She offered help; the old guy was happy to see her and happy to accept her aid. No roll necessary.

Her default Reaction in town is "Looking to make friends" for all the things she's done during her adventures over the past month. This is why there was no roll needed; the guy already likes her. The Reaction also set the number of successes needed - 2. I prefer low-complexity skill challenges.​

Instead of helping the old guy, she bashed him over the head with her "flail". (It's actually a long chain with a ball at the end; as part of her devilish ancestry - chain devil blood - she can control chains with a skill check. It's a skill she has.) He was still on his feet after that, so she choked him out while he tried and failed to hit her with a hoe.

So it seems that this little combat wasn't part of the skill challenge.​

Then she threw the guy into a wheelbarrow (random roll to see if he had one; d6: 1-3 no, 4-6 yes; he did), covered him with her cloak, and went back to her place. I called for a check, again against the DC of the town, and she succeeded. At night she took the wheelbarrow out of town, making another check, and succeeded again.

These two rolls were the skill challenge, then. If she had done something like this in the previous month - when her Reaction defaulted to "Uncertain, cautious, and wary" - I'd probably have thrown some curious NPCs in her way. When she did some kidnapping in the previous month, that's exactly what happened.

So looking it over you could probably boil down the skill challenge to "What do you do?" "I roll my Stealth." Maybe it's the texture I've added to skill checks that made it work? Maybe the fact that it was player-initiated and player-driven? I'm not sure. Any thoughts?​

[/sblock]

 

[Blackbrrd]

After playing a few skill challenges, on the later part of one, the most descriptive play some of our players managed was a yawn. Of course, we are skilled enough to give such a description if required, but that does not mean we're having fun. A set of rules that encourages yawns is not a good one. Saying its a fault with the players is just being rude.

I get feeling of purism here - "either like all of 4E, or drop dead". That is bad for discussion. Don't get me wrong. I may appear very anti 4E here, but that's because only my anti-4E statements get challenged and need to be defended. In other venues I get talked down because I am not bashing 4E "hard enough".

There are good parts of 4E, and definitely good ideas in 4E (tough often badly implemented). But talking down to anyone here who even mutters of criticizing 4E won't get you anywhere except ignored.

Well, I have found the discussion here pretty civil. You did say: " it was simply impossible to keep dramatic tension up with so many die rolls and no decisions to make except 'what skill to roll next'". That sounded like you were doing straight up dice rolling. Which is probably why you got that response.

If you look at the majority of the posts here, I think you will find that they are a bit more reasonable, talking about the subject of the thread, 4e and encounter building and not people doing it wrong. It's more about talking why people are having problems with 4e - and suggestions from DM's or players that have found a way to run for instance skill challenges in a more interesting way.

Anyway, in my opinion, part of the problem is how skill challenges are presented both in premade modules and the PHB/DMG as noted earlier in the tread. Pemerton quoted both here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-pa...n-why-does-doesnt-work-you-9.html#post6052282 The relevant rules are spread over two different rulebooks and three different sections. Not good.

In addition, I do think that the rules as presented are a bit narrow. I think they should give examples of players coming up with ideas that make the skill challenge irrelevant, or changes it completely. 4e isn't a computer game, but a role playing game.

Presentation is what I find as the weaker point of 4e. The modules that should have helped open the DM's eyes instead made me want to poke my eyes out.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Have you considered just making your encounters more difficult as a baseline (a la my posts upthread)? My "standard/default" encounters are PC level + 2. My boss encounters are PC level + 5. Can you not go that route?

I had a big group, so my standard encounter was usually Level+2 or +3, and boss encounters were usually level+4 or +5. And, I'd usually do a pretty good amount of damage those first two rounds, but then there would be nothing left in the tank for the rest of the fight. And, I did a lot of variety, too, different terrains and hazards and whatnot.

And, the problem was that if I added more monsters to the fight, the fights would take too long. If I bumped up the levels of the bad guys, I'd run the risk of making the individual bad guys too powerful. Adding 2 more levels to an Elite Brute that's already level+4 is making something that will likely almost never miss.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

When the encounter, or series of encounters, is nearly finished, I want both sides to be down to their last hit points and on their last reserves where a good roll of the dice by one side or the other can swing the battle. With 4E, my bad guys were on their last reserves well before the PCs in most every battle.

When the PCs in my 3.5E game faced off against a lich that was also a 19th level archmage, at the end of the combat my lich had used all of its level 6, 7, 8 and 9 spell slots, and well as every quickened and otherwise metamagicked spell. Several PCs had either been dropped below 0 and healed, or been killed outright and then revivified.

Or, the time after that when the party had a final showdown with a long running drow nemesis and a group of other drow. Both sides had several combatants that were down to less than 10 hit points (when both sides were level 17). Finally, in what looked to be the end of the combat, the PC cleric managed to cast Mass Heal and get most of the party (I think 5 or 6 of the 8 PCs)... and the party's dwarf fighter managed to land a critical hit on the drow priestess who was about to do the same for her side, dropping her and essentially ending the combat.

It's like that Die Hard feeling - the PCs get beat up, thrashed within an inch of their lives, but they barely win in the end.

Which is EXACTLY what 4e excels at. I don't know how you can get that out of 3.x AT ALL, let alone reliably when the game is 90% rocket tag with insta-gank and your average BBEG gets melted by a bad die roll on round 2.

I can soft land the party whenever I want on 2 minutes notice pulled from my back pocket at 0 surges each and a handful of hit points with clockwork precision. YMMV, but that's how it stacks up from where I'm sitting.

Realistically you will of course get flukes in any system with dice. I ran a solo dragon encounter the other day that was a pretty nice interesting setup and the bad guy just plain rolled about 12 3's in a row and it was a cake walk. It was still fun due to whatever else was going on there in story land, but you will get those kind of fights once in a blue moon. Otherwise I do find that a day's adventuring in 4e will put the PCs on the edge of badness but not actually gank them mostly. Of course if someone slips over that edge once in a while its all just par for the course.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Well, I surely can't empathize with that. I tend to prefer many unimportant fights, where the PCs aren't necessarily up against anything that could kill them without extraordinary luck. I prefer the grueling fights you describe to be the odd man out, saved for bosses and what-not.

However, our differing tastes doesn't mean I lack any advice. It sounds to me like you simply need to make the fights more challenging. That shouldn't be a problem in the slightest, as I thought of three ways to do it just now;

The most obvious option to me is to simply use more monsters per fight. The bad guys get more actions, and the PCs have to work through more total HPs. This option isn't too attractive, though, because it will slow combats down.

You could also simply use monsters higher level than the PCs. This option is better than the first, since higher level monsters are necessarily tougher and deal more damage, but it won't necessarily slow down combat. 4E is designed under the assumption that truly difficult battles are the rare boss fight type, not the norm, so this is basically just a way of countering that philosophy.

The option I think is most attractive is to simply improve the monsters' damage output. The combat won't get slowed down because of more monsters, it won't take any longer to beat them, since their defenses and HPs are the same, but it will drain the PCs of their precious HPs faster. Maybe add a s4 to all of their attacks, or a flat bonus equal to half their level, or something. Play with it until it works.

well, those were examples of big combats towards the end of a 2 1/2 year long campaign... every combat wasn't a huge climactic encounter. However, I should have said that the climactic encounters in 4E almost always left me unfulfilled as a DM, while I almost never had that problem in previous editions with climactic encounters.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I was thinking about this a little more in terms of the choices that the players are making.

In this post I talked about a skill challenge that I ran. The choices the player made in that case could probably be boiled down to "Which skill do you use?"

Now I use a different skill list in my game, but I don't think that matters much. So why did that skill challenge work?

My gut feeling is that it's because we paid attention to the details of the character's actions, and the consequences flowed naturally from those details. The choices the player made were of the most basic sort - "What does your character do?" - and the skill challenge structure informed the point at which she'd be successful.

[sblock=The same example with more detail]To recap, the PC wanted to gather townspeople to feed to vine horrors in exchange for information about a nearby hex.

The information she was looking for was tied to the reward system. She wanted to discover what happened to an ancient city of steel and glass, built by her ancestors (Bael Turothian). A very dangerous place. Pursuing this "Goal" is one of the main sources of XP in the game - I've divided encounter XP awards by 10. Is that important or not? I wonder.​

First: The player stated that she wanted her PC to head to the town's gardens, a series of small, fenced-off gardens on a mountain plateau where they are able to grow food. The player said that her PC was specifically looking for an older villager who could use some help.

This was the fictional set-up for the "find a mark" roll. We added up the modifiers for the roll: Charisma, as she was using "Social power, force, or presence" (a little weak but whatever); her full "Apprentice: Procurer" skill - as part of her background, she worked for a warlock, and at his command she would break into places and steal ritual components, kidnapping marks off the street, and rob graves; and a +2 situational modifier for going late in the day when most people had already started dinner.

She rolled against the DC of the town (bigger towns = more people = higher level), got a "Stunning Success" (she hit the Hard DC for that level), which meant that her action was successful (finding an older villager who could use some help) and another benefit.​

She found and old guy looking for help, and - fortunately - he was in a small, fenced-off garden covered in vines, well-hidden from prying eyes.

She offered help; the old guy was happy to see her and happy to accept her aid. No roll necessary.

Her default Reaction in town is "Looking to make friends" for all the things she's done during her adventures over the past month. This is why there was no roll needed; the guy already likes her. The Reaction also set the number of successes needed - 2. I prefer low-complexity skill challenges.​

Instead of helping the old guy, she bashed him over the head with her "flail". (It's actually a long chain with a ball at the end; as part of her devilish ancestry - chain devil blood - she can control chains with a skill check. It's a skill she has.) He was still on his feet after that, so she choked him out while he tried and failed to hit her with a hoe.

So it seems that this little combat wasn't part of the skill challenge.​

Then she threw the guy into a wheelbarrow (random roll to see if he had one; d6: 1-3 no, 4-6 yes; he did), covered him with her cloak, and went back to her place. I called for a check, again against the DC of the town, and she succeeded. At night she took the wheelbarrow out of town, making another check, and succeeded again.

These two rolls were the skill challenge, then. If she had done something like this in the previous month - when her Reaction defaulted to "Uncertain, cautious, and wary" - I'd probably have thrown some curious NPCs in her way. When she did some kidnapping in the previous month, that's exactly what happened.

So looking it over you could probably boil down the skill challenge to "What do you do?" "I roll my Stealth." Maybe it's the texture I've added to skill checks that made it work? Maybe the fact that it was player-initiated and player-driven? I'm not sure. Any thoughts?​

[/sblock]

Yeah, it is pretty abstract, you could handle it in any old town without even knowing much about it, but that would probably feel kinda flat. With enough detail it comes out pretty well. Now, toss a couple more things in there. Maybe the mark is somebody, the uncle of some other NPC that will be irritated if he goes missing say on a bad roll, etc. You can obviously add complications and pitfalls to avoid to whatever degree by increasing the amount of detail. A really bad oops might end up with the character tapping a ghoul on the shoulder and getting a surprise!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I had a big group, so my standard encounter was usually Level+2 or +3, and boss encounters were usually level+4 or +5. And, I'd usually do a pretty good amount of damage those first two rounds, but then there would be nothing left in the tank for the rest of the fight. And, I did a lot of variety, too, different terrains and hazards and whatnot.

And, the problem was that if I added more monsters to the fight, the fights would take too long. If I bumped up the levels of the bad guys, I'd run the risk of making the individual bad guys too powerful. Adding 2 more levels to an Elite Brute that's already level+4 is making something that will likely almost never miss.

One possibility is that you have that nightmarishly ultra-tactical group that just sucks up level+5 and spits it back out. Those do exist, the people who's characters are optimized to a T and work together like a well-oiled machine. I never had a whole party like that (so far) but I do usually have a player or two that can show up and step it up a good notch. 4e at least will hang together though.

I think the thing is at that point you have to ask if "tougher fight" is the way to go, at least in the classic sense. You might start to add in some real SOD/SOS type elements if you want, give them a bit of a "things can go bad if lady luck doesn't help out" kind of thing, or make the fights about existential type threats. Even having fights that dish out diseases and/or curses can be a good way to approach that. Maybe some other sorts of things like traps or 'tricks' that can mess with the player's plans (send them down some pit into the sewer and create a complication sort of thing).

In other words broadening the focus some so that the mechanical details of a specific encounter aren't quite as much the big deal and other things take some focus. You could do survival stuff too, situations where the PCs can pick their poison. Something like a fight that is a rear-guard action. The PCs can bypass it by eating a bunch of damage to cross hostile terrain, or take the delay of fighting the monsters and maybe avoiding the damage but losing time. Anything to build a more strategically focused situation.

 

[CroBob]

well, those were examples of big combats towards the end of a 2 1/2 year long campaign... every combat wasn't a huge climactic encounter. However, I should have said that the climactic encounters in 4E almost always left me unfulfilled as a DM, while I almost never had that problem in previous editions with climactic encounters.

Then I still suggest adding to the monster's damage, pure and simple. A bonus of something like +(Tier) damage on basic attacks and +(Tier)d8 damage on powers would increase damage output significantly, but not bloat it to the point it becomes too much to handle. Also, instead of rolling dice to determine when a monster gets it's powers back, simply wait a number of rounds equal to it's likelyhood (2 rounds for 4+, 3 for 5+, 6 for 6+), or make that the largest number of rounds which go by before they recharge, rolling anyway, but making it automatic after that many rounds.

Perhaps invent minor action abilities which give the PCs relevant penalties to defenses, thereby ensuring more damage through more likely hitting occures. Or simply make the minor action inflict minor damage directly.

I don't advocate giving monsters out-of-turn actions, but giving each enemy a bloodied reaction attack would also deal a bit more damage. I suggest experimenting, and figuring out exactly what works best.

One possibility is that you have that nightmarishly ultra-tactical group that just sucks up level+5 and spits it back out. Those do exist, the people who's characters are optimized to a T and work together like a well-oiled machine. I never had a whole party like that (so far) but I do usually have a player or two that can show up and step it up a good notch. 4e at least will hang together though.

Quoted fer troof.

But, yes, I've had several groups over the years. One of them, my home-town crew, had been playing together for over 15 years, and could work together and optimize to the point that it simply wasn't about how much damage I dealt them, but how I dealt the damage. Often, a group of enemies is primarily diversion from the big thing they should really worry about, the reason they had to hurry.

I've also had groups that barely understood what their own characters could even do, and they needed to be walked through several levels before they knew how to handle even an easy encounter on their own.

Anyway, this reminds me about the big threat threat. You could make things interesting by not making the fight itself the threat, but by making it take up a certain amount of time before the real threat shows up, or is activated, or whatever, and the challenge is working through the fight before that threat joins in, or blows up their home town, or whatever.