4e increased my DM prep time...

[LostSoul]

I think random encounter tables with accompanying terrain features would help out. Then you could just roll a bunch of dice and have an encounter with all those features ready to go.

 

[Turtlejay]

4e also increased my prep-time. Even using DDI, I felt the need to pre-draw maps, place color-coded terrain, get out condition markers, find appropriate minis (for the really big combats).

I still don't feel comfortable running it. If I try to wing an encounter, it will NEVER go right. Usually I slay every PC on the table without ever giving them a fighting chance. I at least think that I'm following the encounter design by the book.

It doesn't help that I haven't found any prepublished adventures that I liked (including all official WotC and Dungeon adventures). This means that every encounter had to meticulously crafted by hand ... and like I said earlier, I don't think they ever went well.

Case in point. I was introducing a group of 4 new players to gaming and decided that 4e would be a good starter for them. I ran a couple of the Chaos Scar adventures, and then BAM! Two back-to-back TPKs in supposedly balanced encounters.

There's 4 new players who will never touch RPGs again. Darn it.

Retreater

You may wanna check out the recent thread about die fudging. . .

Jay

 

[I'm A Banana]

Mudstrum, Zardoz, thanks a lot!. Those, I think, are going to cut my monster time down significantly. I'll just generate "generic stat block" and slap those roles on them and run with it.

FireLance, I love the idea for more solos. I think, since I posted this thread, and I've seen some of the conversation going on in Rodney's thread on improving WotC adventures, I'm getting closer to something that helps, by making every combat very epic. If I only have to have 1-3 monsters (elites and solos of high levels), then it goes a lot smoother. Templates (and class templates especially) are gods for this, and I've looked into adding a few. I still need to be prepared, but at least it's easier to get prepared. Can't wait for monster builder to have this support. An Encounter Manual would fullfill my dreams. Something like Dungeon Delve, but not tied so intimately to Dungeon Tiles, with poster maps or something instead...

Retreater, your story is sad. But it really resonates with how I feel. No TPK's or anything, but still, it's rough whenever I try and improv a combat. I'll probaby do better planning out maybe 3-6 big combats per level, and filling the rest of the encounters with non-combat stuff. I've gotta find a good noncombat mechanic system to make myself really happy, but I'm confident about it.

Keep the advice coming! This is really helpful. Any ideas on how to whip up a good, quick map? Common terrain effects I can maybe re-skin into other things? Size? Shapes? Pits? Traps? Coming from minis-less playing onto 4e, I'm finding that is a pretty steep learning curve.

 

[Dragonblade]

My experience was that 3e still required groups of monsters, even though the encounter building rules often said otherwise. Most monsters didn't really have anything to tip the economy of actions in their favor, so leaving sending them in ones or twos just meant they got mowed down since the PCs had so many more attacks. Most monsters didn't really seem able to stand alone without getting smeared.

And the ones that were able to fight effectively when heavily outnumbered tended to be really annoying for some people. Stuff like Dragons who were super tough spellcasting fliers. Monsters with off buttons for a few PCs. Flight so melee people have to waste actions getting to fly or use weak attacks. Grapple related stuff. Etc. You don't want to fight that stuff all the time.

This was my experience with 3e as well. When I DMed 3e my prep time was all about building a party of monsters from scratch since the monster books only provided a baseline. And adventure stat blocks were notoriously incorrect requiring a re-engineering to verify the math. Also a large chunk of prep time went to reviewing all the spell like abilities of the monsters.

In 4e my prep time went down because WotC has done all this work for me. The game has a variety of roles for each monster type, so I no longer have to build my own monsters. I also no longer spend time reverse engineering stat blocks to verify math, nor do I need to review spell like abilities. I thank the 4e design team every day for moving to self-contained monster stat blocks.

All that being said, here are some of the keys to winging a spur of the moment 4e fight that you hadn't prepared in advance.

1. Terrain - Don't break your back over trying to come up with unique terrain features every time. Just think about where the fight is taking place and throw something in there. If a battle breaks out in a throne room, you can scatter a few pillars around which make convenient obstacles affecting movement and cover. If the battle is in a forest, then throw in some trees to act as obstacles, and several squares of difficult terrain to represent roots and shrubs, maybe even a pool of water. That's all you need really. Shouldn't need to spend more than a couple of minutes coming up with something and sketching it out on the battlemat.

2. Encounter Mix - This really depends on the circumstances of your spur of the moment encounter but some basic ideas are as follows:

Stand up fight - 3 soldiers, 2 brutes or 2 skirmishers
Enemy commander present - 1 controller, 2 soldiers, and 2 brutes or 2 skirmishers
Ambush! - 2 skirmishers or lurkers, 3 artillery, 1 controller

3. Monsters - Again if you have something in mind, then great, flip open the monster manual run it out of the book, or reskin another monster. Otherwise you can take about 10 minutes to create your own monsters on the fly. Use the 4e DMG page 184 and 185 and a piece of scratch paper. Send your players to grab sodas or hit the restroom while you decide what you want to do.

The charts for making monsters on page 184-185 of the DMG are perfect for giving you baseline attack bonus, AC, and Defenses based on role and level. For damage, I game with a bunch of power gamers so I provide my on-the-fly monster with a basic attack that uses the Medium Normal Damage Expression and then I add +5 damage per tier. But if that's too much for you just pick Low, Medium, or High from the table without the added bonus damage.

I also may provide the monster with a more powerful ability that uses the Limited Damage Expression table and has a refresh 4,5, and/or 6 depending on whether I picked damage from the Low, Medium, or High column, respectively. As far as what the special attack looks like, well I just wing it! I try to come up with a cool narrative description based on the particular monsters and the fight.

Then depending on the role, I provide an additional special ability which I have just simplified to be easier to remember and apply on the fly:

Skirmishers - Can shift when they move, do +5 more damage when attacking after moving (describe the movement in some cool narrative way based on the monster)

Brute - Always does +5 damage, maybe pushes as well.

Soldier - Can mark foes, adjacent allies have Combat Advantage against marked foes, maybe inflicts forced movement as well.

Lurker - Does +5 damage when has Combat Advantage, and gains Concealment until the beginning of its next turn during or after a move (described narratively by me based on the monster and the circumstances of the fight). Maybe phasing or invisibility depending on the monster.

Controller - Attacks are Range 20, or Burst 1 within 10 - Can also Daze, Slide 2 squares per tier, or inflict some other condition on a hit as appropriate. OR can heal allies 10 HP per tier in burst 5, or provide 10 Temp HP per tier in Burst 10 with a standard action or as a minor with refresh 5,6.

Artillery - Attacks are Range 20, or Burst 1 within 10.

Leader - If one monster is a leader in addition to its basic role, add +1 to all its attacks and defenses, and it does +5 more damage, OR grants combat advantage to adjacent allies, OR it can grant a basic attack to any one ally it can see as a standard or minor action depending on how tough you want it to be.

Also feel free to add the Elite, or Solo templates as needed. Or add an aura or resistance or vulnerability based on the monster. For example, undead should be vulnerable to radiant, and resistant to necrotic, and immune to poison. Fire creatures might exude a fiery aura 1 per tier that does 5 Fire per tier, and so on.

Thats it. I don't usually worry so much about minor actions, or adding a lot of different special abilities, but depending on the monster I might add something unique. For example, fighting some nameless tentacled horror in the depths of the large fantasy metropolis' dark sewer, I would allow it to grab on a successful hit, and then allow it to deal bonus damage to grabbed opponents on subsequent rounds, or something along those lines.

Anyway, one encounter and foes ready to go. Should only take you 10 to 15 minutes to whip that whole thing up. My players are 4e veterans and power gamers so I tend to err on the side of having my monsters nastier than normal, so of course adjust your on the fly monsters to match the toughness of your PCs.

 

[S'mon]

Re wilderness terrain - I find that having a bunch of Paizo flip-mats with preprinted generic terrain is a real godsend. It tends to be the 'generic' reverse sides that see the most play. The most consistently useful ones are

(1) Woodlands - http://paizo.com/gameMastery/maps/steelSqwireFlipMats/v5748btpy7z7h - forest/cave/stream on one side, generic broad forest trail on the other, I use both a lot.

(2) Keep - http://paizo.com/gameMastery/maps/steelSqwireFlipMats/v5748btpy80i5 - not for the 'keep' (the 10' wide towers are unimpressive), but for the reverse side with its narrow trail snaking through dense woods/rough terrain, extremely useful!

(3) Darklands - http://paizo.com/gameMastery/maps/steelSqwireFlipMats/v5748btpy81u5 - again the reverse with generic cavern terrain is most useful; sketch a boundary around the size of cave you want and you immediately have a richly detailed cavern with pools, stalagmites et al. I've used it for an orc lair and a dragon lair and it worked great.

Also River crossing - http://paizo.com/gameMastery/maps/steelSqwireFlipMats/v5748btpy80i3 - the front has a bridge, back side has a river with fallen log, very nice but only used it once so far.

 

[LostSoul]

4E is a really simple system. If you need terrain features, you can pretty easily ad-lib them.

Attacks: level +3 vs. F/R/W or +5 vs. AC.
Damage: pick one from page 42 of the DMG based on the level of the feature.
Effects: pick one or more that makes sense.
Defences: level +12 for F/R/W or +14 for AC.
Skill DCs: use the table on page 42 of the DMG based on the level of the feature.

When trying to figure out what level something is, this is what I use as a guide:
1-3: normal stuff, things that might be a challenge to your average guy
4-6: dangerous stuff, things like lions and bears, storms, blizzards; stuff that's outside of the average guy's league but within reach of skilled professionals
7-9: the limits of the mundane world, things like getting bitten by a hippo or sailing through a hurricane; almost no one has ever been this good
10+: supernatural

 

[S'mon]

double post

 

[bagger245]

One of the most useful 4e threads. Keep it up guys!

 

[Novem5er]

I wanted to jump back into this thread and add a few more points.

YES, 4e has dramatically increased my prep time (see my earlier step-by-step post... which nobody really commented on, even though it was uber helpful lol )

HOWEVER... my 4e games have also been among the BEST that I've ever run! Yes, I've found 4e combat to be time consuming and often anti-climatic, but the overall sessions have been very memorable! I ran a 4e Forgotten Realms campaign for about 7 months and then a 4e Eberron campaign for about 4 months. In those two campaigns, our players created some wonderful characters, filled with personality. While our players put a lot of work into bringing these characters to life, I cannot deny that the 4e character system had an equal amount of influence via the "fluff" and the mechanics.

"Flames of Phlegathos!!!" is still routinely yelled across my game table

I put a lot of time into my Eberron game and it was pretty dang awesome! The reason it took me so long to create each encounter is that EVERY encounter served as a story element. I gave up on random encounters loooong ago. So, every encounter had to have A) enemies that made sense to the story, B) terrain that also acted as a backdrop to the world, C) mechanical elements that kept my "needy" players (hah!) interested.

For instance, when my players stayed the night at The Chapterhouse in Stormreach, they were assaulted by a group of Yaun-ti in the middle of the night. Yaun-ti were chosen because A) they are cool, and B) because of their fluff connection to the jungles of Xen-drik. This wasn't a "random" encounter, however. The party was in hot pursuit of a cabal of evil druids (the Children of Winter) that had stolen a powerful artifact. The druids caught wind of my players snooping around and so then hired the Yaun-ti to act as assassins to take 'em out.

Of course, Yaun-ti weren't at the appropriate level as my party, so I had to adjust their level in the Monster Builder. Then, I had to make the encounter area more interesting than just a "room at the inn", so I put the characters up in multiple rooms separated by a long hall, but connected by exterior balconies.

Unfortunately, I only had a couple Yaun-ti miniatures so I had to go online, find and edit photos, and print out tokens. Then I had to assign treasure, etc, including the incriminating note that linked the assassins to the evil druids.

It was an awesome fight! The characters were separated into different rooms (hey, 11th level heroes don't all huddle up in a single bed!), and the assassins came at them from all different sides; windows, doors, etc. Some were in snake form, others in human form, and my players really had fun individually taking out bad guys until they could regroup and fight en mass.

And, of course, it got them further pissed at the druids!

So, yes 4e has increased my prep time, but I realized that it's made me a better DM. I actually had a transplant player from another group join us as we followed the druids into the ruins of an overgrown, Giant city. The city of course, activated once we were inside and then stood up and proceeded to march towards the city of Sharn! (ala Shadow of the Colossus). After a few sessions, our transplant players was like "don't tell anyone... but I like your games better "

Unfortunately, the quality games just took a lot of my time and energy and I got burned out. I've been running Mouse Guard for about a month now and my group is probably going to try out the new Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. I just want something quicker and easier so I'm not spending so much on the mechanical set ups of my encounters.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Good suggestion, S'mon, I think those will come in handy.

However, there's also a bit of a problem when I have something a little more specific in mind, ensuring that it is still a good battle mat. For instance, one of my campaigns had a fight on the head of a giant dragon made of rotting vegetable matter, high above the surrounding countryside, with the kobolds who were controlling it. The head was kind of slick and swampy, held together with fairly weak magical force, falling apart as they disrupted the animating ritual.

In my mind, it would've been supreme and epic. In 3e, I would've encouraged bull rushes, I would've had them make Reflex saves when moving, maybe had passing birds join the fray...I've had plenty of combats on high, precarious objects, and I didn't draw maps, so I just thought of what the terrain could enable.

...In 4e, I found it took up enough time to draw up the map before the battle, that I didn't add in any real interesting terrain, and so when the battle came, it was just like it was in an oddly shaped room, rather than on the back of a towering magical construct of rotting swamp vegetation. It wasn't any more dynamic than a normal combat, really. Which was disappointing, considering the EPIC I was going for.

I don't know what caused that disconnect, other than maybe the prep time for the map itself just beating it out of me. And while the battle mats are great time-savers, they don't contain, in and of themselves, the big set pieces that I love to use in my games. I'd hate to drop them -- they've been some of the most memorable fights in the past. I just perhaps need a faster, smoother way of building them.

Something like LostSoul's submission might work great for that. I could easily see me rolling or picking from a menu like that to assemble 2-4 different elements to interact with in combats. Thanks! That is probably going to be excellent.

Novem5er, it sounds like you got an awesome game there! I can't say that 4e has specifically made me a better DM, but I tend to think "good DMing" transcends editions and games (though anyone can come to it from any side!). I think if, say, Piratecat ran a 1e game, it would be awesome, and I have no doubts that dialgo's games, OD&D or otherwise, are stellar.

I wouldn't "blame" 4e for me not being engaged either, it just seems like there's a mild mismatch that I want to try to overcome. And this thread has been VERY useful so far in helping that! Hope it keeps up, the more ideas I have, the better!