ah - so, you were also supposed to add dailies to the bad guys after level 5?
D&D 4E 4e Encounter Design... Why does it or doesn't it work for you?
ah - so, you were also supposed to add dailies to the bad guys after level 5?
Quickleaf
Legend
Was this based on old math or more on "feel"? Just going by feel of the increased options and synchronized PC abilities, I'd say an L+2 encounter at 11th level is a good baseline fight whereas an L encounter might feel easy.
Yeah, because I threw them against an L+4 red dragon (which are usually soldiers) I changed it to a brute to keep its defenses a bit lower. While the dragon was hitting quite a bit, so were the PCs. It worked quite nicely.
Next fight we will have a lot of trolls on the board it seems. I'm OK with that but tracking HP of over a dozen monsters can get a bit burdensome, especially when they regenerate. We'll see how it goes.
I think the only way to get a "quick and deadly" fight in 4e - which seems to be what you are alluding to wanting - would be to use a small number of lurkers with some situational advantage. Basically an assassin hit squad type of encounter.
Neonchameleon
Legend
No. The bad guys work straight out of the monster manual. It's simply that the extra dailies mean that the PCs are much more able to blow apart the single big fight per day model of combats because their alpha strike is massively bigger. If they have several challenging fights in the adventuring day this is diluted.
Pour
First Post
Though I know this will really bother a lot of 4thers, throughout late Paragon and especially into Epic, I've found myself running combats with less and less emphasis on strict adherence to hp, damage, and conditions (they are tallied more as a guideline now than a hard rule) and more on the desired pace, tension, and difficulty.
Just as we reflavor and tailor monsters and terrain to meet our given needs, taking a narrativist (am I using this word right?) approach, I think combats themselves can be run similarly. Consider it sort of a real-time design where we push and pull the flow of combat through the components of combat we have direct control of (monsters and terrain mostly).
In my most recent Epic combat, I took some substantial liberties with Juiblex, representing him not as a token but as a massive hazard. Then I split him into five moving hazards. His condition combination was brutal. There was nothing specifically to target when attacking him, save one of these oceanic blobs. As combat went on, players bested and were thrwarted by this demon lord, and it became less about applying an attack bonus, then rolling damage and conditions, and much more about thinking outside the box, applying powers and skill creatively, and trying to figure out ways to address the very presence of the Faceless Lord. It was a superior encounter compared to the slog it could have been, and in the end it was the ingenuity of the player and the pacing of the combat, difficult, maybe close to impossible, until the right combination of creativity, ability, and player cooperation provided an opportunity for me to call the combat with Juiblex a success, challenging, dynamic, and ultimately quite memorable (though a few did despair for its unorthodox nature).
I'm not advocating cheating player action or predetermining events, but I do tweak monster survivability, adjust terrain and effects, add powers (the best opportunity is when monsters are bloodied), and consider less and less the idea of remaining within the typified rules construct presented at level one. So long as I'm being fair, and so long as I adequately keep the pulse of the players and the combat weighed against how difficult or easy I believe it should be (Juiblex I judged as a hard encounter for level 23s), I'm willing to tailor quite a lot and depart quite severely in the service of making my Epic combats work the way I think they should.
Just as we reflavor and tailor monsters and terrain to meet our given needs, taking a narrativist (am I using this word right?) approach, I think combats themselves can be run similarly. Consider it sort of a real-time design where we push and pull the flow of combat through the components of combat we have direct control of (monsters and terrain mostly).
In my most recent Epic combat, I took some substantial liberties with Juiblex, representing him not as a token but as a massive hazard. Then I split him into five moving hazards. His condition combination was brutal. There was nothing specifically to target when attacking him, save one of these oceanic blobs. As combat went on, players bested and were thrwarted by this demon lord, and it became less about applying an attack bonus, then rolling damage and conditions, and much more about thinking outside the box, applying powers and skill creatively, and trying to figure out ways to address the very presence of the Faceless Lord. It was a superior encounter compared to the slog it could have been, and in the end it was the ingenuity of the player and the pacing of the combat, difficult, maybe close to impossible, until the right combination of creativity, ability, and player cooperation provided an opportunity for me to call the combat with Juiblex a success, challenging, dynamic, and ultimately quite memorable (though a few did despair for its unorthodox nature).
I'm not advocating cheating player action or predetermining events, but I do tweak monster survivability, adjust terrain and effects, add powers (the best opportunity is when monsters are bloodied), and consider less and less the idea of remaining within the typified rules construct presented at level one. So long as I'm being fair, and so long as I adequately keep the pulse of the players and the combat weighed against how difficult or easy I believe it should be (Juiblex I judged as a hard encounter for level 23s), I'm willing to tailor quite a lot and depart quite severely in the service of making my Epic combats work the way I think they should.
I wasn't necessarily looking for quick and deadly. I was looking for more options than tossing my at-will power at the PCs round after round after round 2 or 3 of the combat and hoping to get my recharge power recharged every third round or so. Maybe I should have added an extra daily and/or encounter per tier to Solos and made the recharges easier, and then maybe added an extra encounter and made the recharges easier for elites?
However, I also didn't need 100+ options like my lich archmage that I had mentioned above in 3.5E (50-60 spells, plus feats, lich abilities, prestige class abilities, magic item bonuses, skill bonuses, synergies, etc)
Some sort of happy medium, I guess.
The lich-archmage battle took a long time at the table in 3.5E, but that lich had Gated in a Balor to soften the party up, cast Time Stop & then two Force Cages to trap & delay some of the party, then used some Quickened Dispel Magics to dispel PC buffs (level 6 instead of 7 due to some reason, if I recall, maybe being an archmage?) or counter PC spells, threw a Horrid Wilting in there, and I'm sure a Finger of Death as well. Not to mention having buffed itself up to the max while the PCs were being softened up by the Balor (some from scrolls, though). The lich's contingency then went off when the PCs damaged it badly - it retreated and healed up for 2 rounds, and then it went back into battle and threw a Wave of Exhaustion at the PCs, and probably a few more level 5/6 damage spells, before I was finally out of Quickened or Maximized spells and was basically down to deciding between casting Confusion and hoping a couple of them miss their saves, or seeing if I could line up at least 2-3 of them for a Lightning Bolt. Oh, I also tossed a Maze spell at the party's Goliath barbarian, and she failed her save, of course. But, then with her 10 INT, she managed to roll a natural 20 to get out of the maze in the first round.
But, I knew at the end of the day, I had tossed everything I could at them. Every slot from level 5-9 was used. Of course, I spent many hours putting that lich together, looking up just the right spells and buffs in the Compendium (there is one Buff that made one immune to all metals, including magical ones... basically making all swords useless against it until the spell was dispelled. Though, the party's elf paladin did have a special glass sword that worked just fine...and the lich Mazed the goliath because she carried a huge stone club)
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One way to do that is to have all trolls regenerate at the end of the round, instead of on their turn. So at Init 0, all trolls get x HP unless they took fire/acid. Make PCs responsible for remembering which trolls took fire.
I highly recommend this suggestion (lurkers being my favorite monster). Another option would be to create a new kind of monster - a Two-Hit minion. The Two-Hit minions however hit hard.
Quickleaf
Legend
Yeah I was thinking the same thing, to handle regen at end of each round but still it is extra bookkeeping, especially with the party facing a pack of ~20 trolls.
As for the players tracking fire-damaged trolls, I'm guessing we'll use little red stone tokens (I think originally used for Magic) as markers. Wish there was a less intensive way to track it, but that should do the trick.
D'karr
Adventurer
What you are asking for is a sort of tweaking that is almost necessary at Paragon and absolutely needed at Epic. WotC didn't do a very good job of supporting those two tiers as the power level of the characters "goes to 11" at those two tiers.
Solos need to be adjusted according to MM3 statistics and given more actions, and action denial prevention to keep them relevant, specially at those tiers. It is absolutely needed if you are deviating from the 4-5 character norm for encounters. A solo is supposed to be appropriate for 4-5 characters. If you turn that number on it's head and make it 7-9 you have to "pump up" the solo encounter to keep pace.
The best part about it in 4e is that "normalizing" a solo for that type of play is almost trivially easy to do in comparison to what you described. You can also do it either as prep work or on the fly. In addition, you can do this with multiple types of tools (hazards, traps, terrain, other monsters, or direct modification of the solo). There is no need to give him 5-6 feats, and add an inordinate amount of spells. A few additional recharge powers, adjusting recharge to "as appropriate", and a few additional encounter powers or interesting interrupts can handle most of the work. Add a few terrain powers and hazards and the combat becomes more interesting.
I've found modification of monsters to be one of the most pleasing highlights of DMing 4e. It's truly liberating to have a solid framework to build on, and complete independence to make it work without worrying about knock-on effects.
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Storminator
First Post
We use colored pipe cleaner rings for tokens. You can drop them on the minis, and they don't get lost or shuffled off to the wrong mini.
PS
Pour
First Post
One of the ways I've solved this throughout the years is by having multiple stat blocks for solos dependent on certain scenarios. I might have bloodied stat blocks with one or two familiar powers (beefed up in damage) and a swath of new, but thematically sensible, powers for the monster kicking into overdrive, losing control, or becoming desperate. I had one lycanthrope boss that had three forms, which were tied to reaching different damage thresholds (if he dealt this much damage, he changed).
Akin to super-solos, I've expressed some 'bosses' like a 500ft dragon in multiple stat blocks: head, claws, wings, tail, body (crushing attacks) and had each roll separate initiative with their own unique attacks. In essence, this one massive creature was an entire encounter group, and his attacks were themed, varied, and quite exciting for the party, and it was as easy to run as a regular encounter, giving one enemy a huge amount of manageable options.
When my players fought Strahd, it was a game of attrition, defeating a solo form (each themed to one vampiric archetype) and then chasing him deeper into Castle Ravenloft, weathering traps and minions and hazards along the way, only to fight a different Strahd, then go even deeper, etc. That was a pretty huge success, too.
I'm easily overwhelmed with too many options all sitting in front of me and despised my time running lvl 15-18 in 3.5, but with the proper considerations, I think 4e can serve to be as varied and complex as you like while still maintaining the ease of running.
