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

[Blackbrrd]

I strongly agree with this.

I'm less sure about this. I generally do let my players know they're in a skill challenge, especially if its of high complexity, because otherwise they don't have all the information they need to make sensible choices about how to use their resources (like powers, items etc).

I don't say "it's a skill challenge", just like I don't say "it's a combat". For skill challenges the players usually get what the problem to be solved is and try to solve it telling me what they are doing and so forth. I will give them feedback and ask for skill rolls.

I usually don't roll for initiative in skill challenges, but ask the players what they are doing, running it a bit more freeform than a combat. If a player doesn't do anything, I usually ask them what they want to do and allow the players to jump in when they get a good idea.

The point of the above is to make the game flow from pure role playing to a skill challenge and back to role playing without the players really noticing, making the game experience more immersive.

 

[Storminator]

I usually don't roll for initiative in skill challenges, but ask the players what they are doing, running it a bit more freeform than a combat. If a player doesn't do anything, I usually ask them what they want to do and allow the players to jump in when they get a good idea.

The point of the above is to make the game flow from pure role playing to a skill challenge and back to role playing without the players really noticing, making the game experience more immersive.

I just go around the table for my skill challenges. I used to have charts of which skills might apply and how, but I would only use those when a player got stuck. Now I just ask each player in turn "what are you doing?" and they give me the narration, sometimes with commentary from the other players. Then roll, I narrate results, and move to the next player.

I do allow players to jump the order if they have something they want to do right away, and I also allow different action threads to get out of sync, with people's actions not necessarily occurring in the order they're described.

But I also have a very forgiving table - everyone agrees that 4e is the best version ever, everyone loves skill challenges, and everyone rolls with whatever I come up with. It's pretty hard to screw that situation up!

PS

 

[Storminator]

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.

IME, after the short rest, fights rarely looked like they even happened. Like you said, everyone's hp is up to full and they have a lot of powers to fight with.

I always judge my fight by where people are during the last round of the combat. A really challenging fight continues a round or two after all the monsters are dead. One that stands out was 3 PCs down, 1 stable, 2 still making death saves, and the cleric is dazed (save ends) with no healing powers left. Who does he save?

PS

 

[Manbearcat]

If that's true, it was pretty naive!

It would be pretty naive, wouldn't it? And pretty bold, to boot.

So its either bold and naive or its too much snippage on the cutting room floor by the editorial staff because they were (i) possessed of inadequate infrastructure requisite to the task + (ii) they likely had a strict directive from on high regarding page count and (iii) + the editorial staff and their subordinates did not possess the understanding the implications of the product's design vision and saw the explicit advice as proportionally unimportant relative to the crunch.

Given my extreme exposure to large corporation's infrastructural incoherency from top to bottom (as the beaurocracy of product development and management becomes larger and more compartmentalized), the second option wouldn't surprise me in the least bit.

 

[Blackbrrd]

IME, after the short rest, fights rarely looked like they even happened. Like you said, everyone's hp is up to full and they have a lot of powers to fight with.

I always judge my fight by where people are during the last round of the combat. A really challenging fight continues a round or two after all the monsters are dead. One that stands out was 3 PCs down, 1 stable, 2 still making death saves, and the cleric is dazed (save ends) with no healing powers left. Who does he save?

PS

I have to agree here. The problem is if you have a party with lots of healing powers, they will be out of healing surges. A good way to avoid this and have shorter and more intense fights is to have less defenders and leaders and more strikers.

The current group I am playing in has two defenders (paladin and sword mage), no leader a wizard, a rogue and a warlock. It's the most unoptimized party you can find. Slow combat and no healing, but damage control.

If I am going to DM again I am gonna try to get as many strikers as I can get.

 

[Balesir]

I found them (skill challenges - context add) tough to put them in on the fly - why do I suddenly need to have the players make 6, 8 or 10 rolls when a single roll would do before, or maybe 2 rolls? I think if I could plan something out ahead of time, it worked fairly well.

I find that a major trick is spotting the SC early enough. Take the classic "persuade the king" scenario, for example; the challenge doesn't start with the PCs in the throne room, chatting amiably to the king - the real meat of the challenge lies in getting to that point. At that point, pretty much all that's left is a single Diplomacy roll, but getting there ought to have required a great deal more than that. Kings don't generally invite in all sociopathic ne'er-do-wells that knock on their castle-palace gate for a quick chat - they are busy people with kingdoms to run and (typically, like most busy people) a vastly overinflated sense of their own importance. They have flunkies, functionaries, guards and even armies to ensure that they are not bothered by random itinerant golddiggers. Spot the challenge early enough, and it's usually pretty clear why several "successes" are required. And, if it's not, then maybe the situation really isn't a "skill challenge encounter" but is more of a "skill minion" - a.k.a. a single skill roll...

 

[Neonchameleon]

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.

4e has a track record of being misunderstood, misrepresented, and flat out lied about. This tends to mean that 4e fans split into three groups - those who stay on 4e dominant message boards (such as rpg.net and Something Awful), those who stay on 4e specific subfora and sub threads and avoid all confrontation, and the cranky and irritable who know a game we enjoy and have invested a lot of time in will get routinely misrepresented, with people saying things happen a certain way when the rules say the literal opposite.

When such misrepresentation is normal, one of two things is necessary - either separating the subfora and people who are going to misrepresent the other side don't have to be seen, or a strong pushback so that we can at least stick to truthful criticisms. Right now a lot of the criticisms of 4e on this very thread are flat out false, but ENWorld is improving, at least in part because some of us are pushing back every time we see such a false criticism. It's not about being pro-4e or anti-4e. It's about the criticism being informed - 4e certainly isn't for everyone or everyone all the time.

And as for things being bad for discussion, I know of nothing that is worse than spreading falsehoods and misrepresenting the other side, as has happened in this very thread. That is not just bad for discussion, it means that no productive discussion can take place until the falsehoods have been cleaned up.

 

[Rechan]

I'm assuming you are speaking specifically about solos, and not combat in general?

Yes, I whole-heatedly agree that solos (especially in the first two MMs) were poorly designed. Even after MM3, it is the rare solo which can actually challenge the entire party and stay interesting throughout the long fight. That's why many of the solos I run now are L+3 or higher and I use AngryDM's "3 phase boss monster" model (with tweaks). Actually, while I think DMG2 was a really good book, one thing I was hoping they'd cover but didn't was solo design.

Another example of how the fans flex the system more than the designers.

Yeah, the issue of Solos is 'OK everyone throw your dailies, ok it's Dazed/Immobilized/Blinded, beat it over the head".

Of course, this isn't far from earlier editions. I'm sure everyone here has heard stories of "We geared up for the big fight, and in the first round the BBEG failed his Save or Die". It's just that in 4e, most characters get their own Save or Suck powers (and the higher the level, the more are handed out like candy).

 

[NewJeffCT]

Well, what aspects of encounters satisfy you as a DM?

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.

 

[NewJeffCT]

I always gauge (eyeball) encounters I design around the specific party in question, I find the challenge guidelines lacking in every edition to date.

That was my problem with 4E - I was always able to balance encounters & make them really challenging in 1E, 2E, 3E and 3.5E. With 4E, I was never able to nail that balance of coming up with a great encounter, or series of encounters.