Are encounters too easy?

[Jarrod]

I've actually started going in the opposite direction - swarms of encounters that are substantially easier than normal. Last session we finished 8 fights in 4 hours; that time also included a lot of roleplaying, dungeon exploration, and skill challenges. That's with a party of 5 6th level PCs. The secret? 4th and 5th level monsters. It was still challenging, as the party is time-limited and so they were trying to kill the enemies while taking the minimum damage possible. It was fun for me, since combat never started grinding.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

One thing I have noticed is that it's more likely that the whole party will wipe (TPW) than a single PC to die outright. And a single PC death is more likely to come as a result of negative bloodied than failing death saving throws. Well... that's all in my experience.

As has been pointed out before, killing a single PC is hard. It's easy for them to be bounced back and they have a "deep" buffer before actual death. However, once most of the party is down, it becomes really hard to heal someone still unconscious. (PCs can remain unconscious once all the healing is tapped out. A standard leader of 15th level or less has only 2 minor action encounter healing powers, but of course healing-optimized leaders can have a lot more.)

I've done a "string of encounters" twice. The first time was an accident, and the PCs ended up combining the two encounters. It went ... poorly. The second time was deliberate (a set of villains attacked right after the PCs had been through a battle) and since the PCs had effectively spent all their healing in their first fight (except for a shaman's daily heal) they weren't able to compete. They should have died if I hadn't made a "convenient rules error" involving the shaman's mass regeneration power.

 

[ourchair]

Players do a good enough job of making encounters harder for themselves.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I certainly have no trouble challenging my players, IMO - eg 2 out of 4 6th level PCs were brought to 0 hp in the battle with orcs last night.

Just putting that into perspective, we took an entire third level delve as a single encounter and none of us had AoE at wills (two fighters, a warlord, and a warlock). Fortunately the Rod of Corruption+Promises of the Daughter combination can, once set up, cause chain reactions in the minions (of which there were about 50). If I hadn't had that combination (or something controller-y) I am pretty sure we'd have been swamped.

To sum up, this was a pretty non-standard setup. And I think people are complaining about standard setups not being challenging. (My current problem is finding an excuse not to allow a 15 minute work day most days for paragon PCs).

 

[keterys]

In running epic (21st-23rd so far), I can typically bloody and drop a small number of people (but certainly not the whole group) with N and N+1 encounters, kill someone with N+2 encounters, and threaten TPK with N+3 encounters (I've stopped myself at the brink twice).

I'm actually a fairly tame DM in terms of trying for kills (ie, I never do), but quite capable tactically so I think that part balances out. We've been using the damage updates religiously, of course, and there's often fair amounts of terrain, use of themes, etc.

 

[S'mon]

Just putting that into perspective, we took an entire third level delve as a single encounter and none of us had AoE at wills (two fighters, a warlord, and a warlock). Fortunately the Rod of Corruption+Promises of the Daughter combination can, once set up, cause chain reactions in the minions (of which there were about 50). If I hadn't had that combination (or something controller-y) I am pretty sure we'd have been swamped.

I added in an extra 26 or so minions there BTW, plus an extra orc archer on the wall.

 

[Evilhalfling]

in my last 2 paragon games I killed two pcs
the healer was barlely wounded in the first round, then got hit by most of the enemies, including a crit and running minion for the final blow to push him past negative bloodied.

In the second session an NPC dealt tainted wounds (cant heal till end of next turn). He only did minion damage, but he was responsible for killing a dwarf with 3 remaining minor action self-heals, and nearly killing the parties healer (again)
he got 2 chances to take out the healer, missed both times. Coincidentally the NPC minion killed the same dwarf PC 10 levels earlier.

 

[Quickleaf]

How do you perceive encounter difficulty?

For the rest of my group encounters lean toward the easier side, but for my knight they're downright lethal. It's a rare encounter where I don't end up making a death save at some point.

I think your question is golden; it's all about perception. Two players in the same group with the same DM could have very different experiences of how hard encounters are.

At the same time I continue to be surprised how resilient PCs are in 4e, so much so that I think the best encounters need to threaten the PCs goal more than their hit points. Our last game we began with no healing surges after a dungeon crawl and boss fight. We thought it was wise to return to town with the captive BBEG asap, and ended up with a nasty battle on the road, during which our leader and lucky die rolls kept us alive. Then we got back to town, many of us bloodied with no healing surges, only to find it on fire and the priest being tortured by wraiths. We ran to his rescue and our frontline got pummeled but lucky die rolls saved the day again. For most of that encounter I had 7 HP, no healing surges, no other methods of healing, and our leader had no healing powers left.

While alone the encounters weren't hard, facing two in our exhausted state felt very dangerous.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Good and poor Tactics. Yeah.
Experience. Yeah.
DM badassery. Of course.
By-the-book adventure. Seems so.

I think that a great factor is non-obvious intra-party synergy making things easy or hard.

 

[Rhenny]

When the healer (or PC able to grant healing surges) goes down, the entire encounter seems much more dangerous (even it it isn't more dangerous).

In my most recent campaign, last session, the party of 4 were attacked by zombies searching for a magic item the cleric was holding in a bag of holding. With only 2 zombies (a soldier and a slightly heftier skulk) left, the zombies flanked the cleric and knocked him down to -2 hp. He failed 1 death save, and then the wizard spent his turn moving over to the cleric to administer a healing potion, his only healing potion.

I'm pretty sure the party could have killed the remaining two zombies before the cleric actually died (at least waiting one more round), but they felt it was imperative to get the cleric back up fast. I like that. Who knows...maybe more zombies were waiting around the corner to pop up when the PCs thought they were safe.