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

[Manbearcat]

@Manbearcat , thanks, that's interesting. And the way you talk about the role of each individual participant's conception of the situation in making it "real" for him/her reminds me of some things that @Balesir has posted here over the past few years.

Do you think you could comment on your thoughts regarding the mental framework of individual participants at the table and the table's agenda as a singular unit? Do you agree that this is a large barrier for an effective Skill Challenge approach and subsequent execution? Do you think that using concrete props such as maps is constructive or potentially caustic to execution?

My thoughts on mechanical frameworks for Skill Challenges (and non-combat resolution in general) are 180 degrees antithetical to my thoughts on combat resolution. I like mechanical crunch, tactical depth and concrete props/visual cues for my combat. I prefer my Skill Challenges/non-combat resolution as "art" and my combat as an "engineering project." Some (Ratskinner amongst them) don't like this as they percieve the juxtaposition (correctly) as incoherent. However, to my tastes, it is precisely what works for my table (assuming that you have players with tactical acumen, keen minds who can parse and execute quickly, and solid organizational skills) and without it, something would certainly be missing.

 

[Argyle King]

I'm curious about the tiers of these PCs.

Paragon tier PCs are certainly capable of killing kings and their entourage, as you say. They may be kings, or king equivalents, themselves. (A bit like AD&D name level PCs.) The game relies upon the assumption that kings are embedded in a deeper, cosmology-spanning social order (hence the link, in Worlds & Monster and subsequent setting material, between the overthrow of Nerath and the demon lord Yeenoghu.)

Epic tier PCs, in turn, are capable of killing gods, or at least godlings. They are gods themselves, reshaping the cosmology-spanning social order.

I'm not sure how any of the above relates to your own experiences with the game. But it's the way I see the game's fiction working.

I know that Chris Perkins runs a more world-bound game that he describes in his column, but for the sorts of reasons that I read in your posts (or, at least, that I take from your posts!) I'm not 100% sure how it works - how he reconciles a world in which the NPC kings, spy masters etc are as tough as gods. Maybe in Iomandra gods aren't such a big deal?

That is generally how the game panned out for the group I was in from about level 13 and onward. In the case of the group members who optimize more, it may have been earlier. In the case of one of the campaigns in which the party had two Warlords (one inspiring and one tactical,) the domination of the PCs started around level 8. There were generally some hiccups at level 10 when the PCs were not paragon yet, but were facing foes who were; likewise for the transition levels between paragon and epic. In many encounters, if the opposition was able to act before they died, it was a surprise. It was quite common for the majority (if not all) of the enemy to be dead or nearly so before they (the opposition) even had a chance to react to the PCs; this was especially true with the two warlord party I mentioned because the party had a rather massive bonus to initiative from the inspiring warlord (who was also a half-elf and took the racial feat which gave a bonus to initiative.)

Thinking back across the campaigns I've been a player in, there are two party compositions which I feel were even rougher on the opposition than the two warlord party mentioned. One was a combination of an inspiring warlord (my character at the time,) and a psion. The psion could give penalties to our enemies while I was simultaneously giving bonuses to the party. In many encounters, it was virtually impossible for the enemy to hit us. Meanwhile, it was virtually impossible for us to miss them. On top of that, even if they did manage to hit us, they were barely doing damage. Meanwhile, if we hit them, I was typically able to boost the damage output of the party.

The other was a campaign in which I --surprisingly-- did not play a warlord. (Aside from being my favorite 4E class, the rest of the group often requested I played one because I was apparently quite good at it.) I was playing a bard, and a different member of the Saturday group was playing a Warlord. Honestly, I cannot remember the names of the powers offhand, but I remember that he had several powers which allowed people to reroll attacks. At epic, he had one which somehow granted the rest of the party more attacks if he or someone he chose scored a critical hit. Meanwhile, many of my bard powers either granted extra attacks or allowed party members within a certain radius of myself to make attacks. Long story short: a lot of rolls + enhanced effects from critical hits meant we were nearly guaranteed a critical. I should note that this set up was in no way planned or intentional; our powers simply meshed very well. Add to the mix the barbarian pc who was already doing a ton of damage on his own with one attack, and it is in no way an exaggeration to say that most encounters were a slaughter. This particular campaign ended so one-sided, that I even tried to sandbag my actions during the BBEG fight (as well as most of the epic tier) so as to spare the feelings of the GM.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I feel that previous editions of DnD had a wider assortment of adventures which introduced different playstyles. 4e modules on the other hand followed, to a large degree, a much stricter pattern when it came to design.

I have mentioned it earlier that adventures are really important. Most of the replies have been that they home brew and aren't interested. I think that part of the thing I didn't say explicitly and both parties didn't get is that the premade adventures is a very natural way of introducing different ways of using the ruleset. From hex exploring, to old style dungeon crawls and games of intrigue and diplomacy.

I have to admit that I really didn't read the DMG for 4e much at all. Instead, I jumped right into reading the modules I was going to DM and checked anything that wasn't clear. As it turns out I probably missed some good advice, especially on skill challenges. I found that out by reading this thread.

The 4e DMG1 is sort of an odd beast. In one sense it tells a really experienced DM very little. There are a few mechanical/guideline parts that any DM would want to read, but OTOH it isn't going to knock your socks off otherwise.

I think since around a year and a half ago WotC STARTED to kinda get it. At least they seemed like they had started to find their way a bit. The Essentials adventures were not bad, and Gardmore sounds like it was pretty good. Still, they were not really AFAICT grokking the real strengths of 4e and playing to them. They'd figured out the worst things NOT to do, but it seemed like the learning curve was slow over there.

I mean I think transitioning to 4e, without it really telling you what it was good at, was not SUPER easy. It took ME a few months, and I started DMing in 1976. Maybe I'm not the quickest person out there, but 4e did stretch my DMing. Still, it seems excessive that after 4 years WotC has barely figured out "don't make gauntlets of fights". It SOUNDS like Chris Perkins understands, but the memo never got to HQ somehow.

I really expected DMG2 to be about high adventure romping with 4e. Stunned me that it wasn't.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That is generally how the game panned out for the group I was in from about level 13 and onward. In the case of the group members who optimize more, it may have been earlier. In the case of one of the campaigns in which the party had two Warlords (one inspiring and one tactical,) the domination of the PCs started around level 8. There were generally some hiccups at level 10 when the PCs were not paragon yet, but were facing foes who were; likewise for the transition levels between paragon and epic. In many encounters, if the opposition was able to act before they died, it was a surprise. It was quite common for the majority (if not all) of the enemy to be dead or nearly so before they (the opposition) even had a chance to react to the PCs; this was especially true with the two warlord party I mentioned because the party had a rather massive bonus to initiative from the inspiring warlord (who was also a half-elf and took the racial feat which gave a bonus to initiative.)

Thinking back across the campaigns I've been a player in, there are two party compositions which I feel were even rougher on the opposition than the two warlord party mentioned. One was a combination of an inspiring warlord (my character at the time,) and a psion. The psion could give penalties to our enemies while I was simultaneously giving bonuses to the party. In many encounters, it was virtually impossible for the enemy to hit us. Meanwhile, it was virtually impossible for us to miss them. On top of that, even if they did manage to hit us, they were barely doing damage. Meanwhile, if we hit them, I was typically able to boost the damage output of the party.

The other was a campaign in which I --surprisingly-- did not play a warlord. (Aside from being my favorite 4E class, the rest of the group often requested I played one because I was apparently quite good at it.) I was playing a bard, and a different member of the Saturday group was playing a Warlord. Honestly, I cannot remember the names of the powers offhand, but I remember that he had several powers which allowed people to reroll attacks. At epic, he had one which somehow granted the rest of the party more attacks if he or someone he chose scored a critical hit. Meanwhile, many of my bard powers either granted extra attacks or allowed party members within a certain radius of myself to make attacks. Long story short: a lot of rolls + enhanced effects from critical hits meant we were nearly guaranteed a critical. I should note that this set up was in no way planned or intentional; our powers simply meshed very well. Add to the mix the barbarian pc who was already doing a ton of damage on his own with one attack, and it is in no way an exaggeration to say that most encounters were a slaughter. This particular campaign ended so one-sided, that I even tried to sandbag my actions during the BBEG fight (as well as most of the epic tier) so as to spare the feelings of the GM.

Well, I would say that I didn't run into that problem. In fact it seemed kind of the opposite in a couple campaigns I ran. I just kept upping the intensity. Fights were simply little life and death cut-ups at low level that might have some interesting angles to them, but paragon was concerned with "how do I stop this army?" and "Oops the bad guys are a LOT stronger than us and have more resources" and such things. Yes, the PCs would do well in straight up fights, but that sort of thing became more and more rare.

Instead of the focus staying on powers and tactics it emerged onto a bigger stage where PCs were often stuck with the devil on one hand and a hard place on the other. You might beat the devil, but the price could be high. You could WIN but it was about really creative planning, RP, and beyond-just-using-powers action.

Again, I think NOTHING in the 4e literature points at how you do this or that you need to do this.

 

[Jhaelen]

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.

Well, I'd consider it rude if I ask a player what he's going to do and he just yawns and rolls a die.
I realize that skill challenges don't seem to work well for many players, but they do work for us. I'd also like to note that in our group skill challenges are not announced, so sometimes you don't even realize for a while that you are in a skill challenge.

And there's something else I wanted to add:
Maybe the reason why for many people skill challenges fall flat is because 4e's combat system is so good?

From time to time we invite players of older D&D editions to our 4e games. And if there's one thing they all agree about it's that combat is so much more interesting than it was in previous editions.
Perhaps one reason why so many groups prefer to solve every problem by combat is that it's simply too much fun?

I get feeling of purism here - "either like all of 4E, or drop dead". That is bad for discussion.

I agree that this would be bad, but I don't see it here (yet). 4e is not without its problems, e.g. the overabundance of effects that need to be tracked in combat starting at Paragon Tier.
It's also a bit problematic that if you want to play adventure modules written for previous editions you absolutely _must_ redesign the encounters.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think this relates to my comment about player agency:

Let's say that the PCs are in a dungeon. They want to get to where the loot is hidden without attracting attention. They are first level.

In one case, the DM has a map. He knows that to the east there is a pack of ghasts - a very dangerous encounter. However, they give off a rank odour that the PCs can smell from very far away. To the west lies a bunch of goblins who are not on the alert - a reasonably easy encounter if the PCs handle it right.

The players ask questions and make a decision about which way to go.

In the other case the DM doesn't have a map. He has a list of skills that the PCs might use, the DCs for each, and the results of a successful check - the DMG's skill challenge format, basically.

The players look over their sheets to see which skills have the highest modifier and might result in an easy DC without drawing an automatic failure.

The type of player agency in these two situations is quite different. There are other ways to run skill challenges but that's the style presented in the DMG.

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.

 

[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.

What choices are the players making here?

 

[Starfox]

Maybe the reason why for many people skill challenges fall flat is because 4e's combat system is so good?

Not for my group, no. 4E had lots of good ideas, but poor implementation in our eyes. The best parts were things like xp budgets, the cosmology, and different monster/pc design. That's why this thread has potential for me.

I think the main problem with both 4E combat and skill challenges are that there are too many rolls. Instead of rolls being exiting, they become statistics. That works in a computer game, where the computer does all the drudgery, and fast. It does not in a table RPG. This does have relevance to a discussion of encounter design - rolls should never feel uninteresting and trite like they did to us in 4E.

But I should stop here, lest I become an edition warrior myself.

 

[CroBob]

On the subject of Skill Challenges, I think the big problem is that they didn't give any sound advice on how to actually implement them. The way it reads in the book, it seems like you pretty much just roll a number skill checks and see what your success to fail rate is. That's really poor implementation. Skill challenges should be more organic, integrated into the story naturally. You don't tell the PCs that they need so many of this kind of check before failing a certain number of them, simply describe the situation, and ask the PCs what they want to do. Whenever they do something requiring a check, have them roll it, and that check counts towards the skill challenge, assuming it's a relevant thing they're trying to do. Never tell your players they're taking part in a skill challenge until you give them the XP for it.

 

[NewJeffCT]

4E encounters were much easier to build and it was pretty easy to judge what would be a decently challenging encounter.

However, I found solo monsters to be weak on their own, even as early as level 3 or 4. They always needed support to make it a decent encounter.

My big problem was that in two years of DMing 4E, I was almost never satisfied as a DM afterwards. In 1E, 2E, 3E and 3.5E, I was able to balance out encounters and really challenge the PCs right down to the last swing of the sword or last spell cast when everybody on both sides was down to the end of their hit points. However, in 4E, if I didn't knock the PCs out in Round 1 or 2, I had no chance since I've already burned my bad guys' daily and encounter powers and action points. If I'm lucky, I have a 33 or 50% chance to recharge one nice power, but that's about it. Sometimes, it's only a 1 in 6 chance to recharge the power. So, even when the encounter was done, it seemed like the players were down healing surges and dailies (and, of course, encounters), but were otherwise relatively unscathed. I never really had that feeling of having 2-3 PCs below 0 hit points and 3-4 down in single digits and maybe only one PC left that was around half points like in prior editions.

I guess maybe in previous editions, I felt like I could throw everything including the kitchen sink at the PCs. In 4E, I threw action points, a daily and an encounter at them, then was repeating the same at will for 6-8-10 rounds until it was over. If I was lucky, I had a mix of 3 dailies/encounters or a useful recharge power, but that would give me 3 rounds of interesting attacks instead of 2.