D&D 4E 4e Combat - Environment the Most Deadly?

[OgreBane99]

After seeing some of the hinted powers for PC's and looking over the RPG stat cards for the "Dungeons of Dread" mini expansion, I noticed that many of the powers involve pusing/pulling/shifting/teleporting.... This got me wondering. Will the environment be the most deadly aspect of a battle now? Is putting fields of lava, pits of acid, cliffs or pools of water going to be what the party or monsters focus on getting each other in? Sure, a hook horror can deal some significant damage, but who cares if they can throw you in that lava pool 4 squares away the next round.

Anyone that knows official word on this or has played some test games that dealt with this? Perhaps you can't use those movement powers in hazardous areas? It seems that the DM may have to be very responsible on what he puts in the encounter area, as it could, literally, kill the players easily.

 

[Satori5000]

In one of the 4e home games i was in, the dwarfs tide of iron moved an enemy into a pit trap. In another one, with Goblin Picadours, they were dragging the PCs into swarms of goblins.

So yeah, i think that environments are going to make a big difference on tactics and the way combat runs. Gone are the days of the whole party having overland flight up.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

I definitely think environment and terrain are going to be more important. I don't have anything official on this, but judging from Mike Mearls' past work, particularly Iron Heroes, I expect to see lots of "zones" that effect combatants in different ways.

 

[WyzardWhately]

So, D&D isn't WoW, it's Super Smash Brothers?

 

[Harshax]

The environment could be completely mundane, but the potential of all this movement suggests that neither PCs or monsters are allowed to act like a perfect phalanx. It also makes for better scenes, as everyone shifts, pulls, or pushes in response to the reactions of their opponents. Characters and monsters alike will be more susceptible to flanking. You'll have a chance to break the line, and wedging oneself in a doorway to play the conga-line of death won't be guaranteed.

 

[Chibbot]

I think thats part of it, but in large part is also just a larger focus on dynamic and tactical combats.

Yes, the hook horror could just lob you into a pool of lava. But if there isn't a pool of lava around (in the 7ish years that I've been playing DnD, only once has there been a convenient pool of lava nearby, and that was in a specially requested hill-giants-on-a-rickety-bridge-over-a-volcano encounter at a slow point in the Eberron game I'm currently playing in), the hook horror can still lob you to places you don't want to go. Perhaps he's teaming up with several melee beasts ('brutes' in the 4e lingo?) who happen to be slower than he, so he runs forward and tosses people backwards into these guys.

Or, to have an even more diverse battlefield, say you have the hook horror, 3 glass cannons (or, glass lightsabers perhaps, tons of melee damage but go down in a stiff breeze), and a handful of tower-shield-and-longspear-wielding soldiers. I can already picture the fight in my head (and its pretty sweet, and devastating), and the terrain is potentially irrelevant.

 P  P P   |
   P      V
    H P    

^  S  S  S  S
|   C  [COLOR=DarkRed]X[/COLOR]  C
|        C

Forgive the lame diagram. =) But imagine the hook horror (H) lobbing a PC (P) to X? That would be quite brutal.

(for reference, I don't actually know if you can throw people over other people, but situations like this have come up in the previously mentioned Eberron game, with the swordsage class.)

 

[frankthedm]

A 4e preview article specificly cautioned against using Bottomless pits and Lava pools at low to middle level because how easy it is to one shot with them.

 

[Harshax]

This could be a screenshot from Rogue.
You just need an @ to represent the PC to be pummeled.

 

[Chibbot]

This could be a screenshot from Rogue.
You just need an @ to represent the PC to be pummeled.

Haha. True.

Never played Rogue itself, but spent many a late late night playing NetHack in highschool.

 

[med stud]

So, D&D isn't WoW, it's Super Smash Brothers?

Please.

On topic: Environment can be very deadly. During my play tests, it was defenitly used; I had some bonfires in one combat, tree platforms in another and a cliff in the third. Especially the warlock and the fighter were deadly with this from the PCs side, I used the hobgoblin warcaster as a NPC in the one with the bonfires and picadors in the cliff- encounter. It was fun, with the maneuvering around the dangerous obstacles.