D&D 4E Dave Noonan on his 4e Playtest

[Ipissimus]

Hmmm... I'm not sure it's even fair to compare the 3E and 4E exp and cr systems.

Mainly because 3E's was all over the place. A TPK machine could be a significantly lower CR than a cakewalk. With 4E's relating power levels directly to exp rather than using CR as an intermediary there could still be problems but at the very least it's easier to eyeball whether the PCs are in over their heads. It seems obvious to me that throwing two encounters (each designed to be a fair fight) at once in 4E will result in a TPK, since that's twice the exp they should be handling at one time, maybe more. The same can't be said of 3E due to the wildly innaccurate CRs of the monsters.

 

[WotC_Dave]

Heck, more info? I can help with that. Boom!
--Dave.

 

[Kraydak]

3e is (loosely) based on 4 encounters/day, and gives the players plenty of ability to nova. This means that if you throw a very difficult or a very easy encounter at the PCs, they can adjust their effective power level to deal with the danger. 4e is fairly strictly based on 1 encounter/1 encounter (yes, that sounds silly). You always have all of your powers available, so you cannot nova. Without the ability to adjust one's resource expenditure rate, you lose the ability to handle more difficult encounters. This is not a surprise.

In 3e, you might sweat an easy encounter *because* you want to conserve resources, and handle a very difficult encounter later on because you did so. In 4e, an easy encounter rapidly becomes an utter cake-walk as the (free) per-encounter abilities come to dominate, while very hard encounter rapidly become impossible as per-day abilities become negligible. While the underlying math behind xp/monster vs. CR is the same (modulo an exponential transform), the accuracy of the xp/monster *has* to be better than CR's accuracy (which means less monster crunch design flexibility in the end, sorry 4e lovers) because PC adaptability took a nose-dive.

I'm not saying 4e's design decision here was bad, but the Playtest report is not unexpected.

 

[catsclaw227]

Heck, more info? I can help with that. Boom!
--Dave.

Thanks for the update, Dave.

So, is it safe to say that instead of CR being the measuring factor for encounter design, it is XP budget? And how much wiggle room is in the budget, especially considering that a 12th level encounter is budgeted for ~3500xp, yet you had a 4200 combine with a 3700 in Rnd3?

Also, had they done much damage to the 4200xp encounter in the first three rounds to take the edge off the combined encounter?

 

[WotC_Dave]

In 4e, an easy encounter rapidly becomes an utter cake-walk as the (free) per-encounter abilities come to dominate, while very hard encounter rapidly become impossible as per-day abilities become negligible.

If you take out "rapidly" and replace it with "incrementally and gradually" in both cases, I agree. But I'm curious: Why do you regard the falloff (on both the easy and hard side) as rapid? Why isn't it working out that way at my table?

While the underlying math behind xp/monster vs. CR is the same (modulo an exponential transform), the accuracy of the xp/monster *has* to be better than CR's accuracy (which means less monster crunch design flexibility in the end, sorry 4e lovers) because PC adaptability took a nose-dive.

Why does the accuracy of the xp/monster mean "less monster crunch design flexibility?" You're taking some logical steps between "you need to have the right level for that monster" (and I'm with you there) and "you don't have as much flexibility for monster crunch design" that I'm unable to follow.

And I don't think it's accurate to say PC adaptability took a nose-dive, necessarily. I'd say rather that "PCs' ability to use attrition-based resources to adapt" took a nose-dive.

Attrition management was a key strategic axis in 3rd edition. But it's very much in the back seat in 4th edition. I think that "intraparty teamwork" and "tactical positioning" are arguing about who should drive.

--Dave.

 

[WayneLigon]

At least now we won't have any more 'No-one ever dies in these playtests!' posts.

 

[WotC_Dave]

Thanks for the update, Dave.

So, is it safe to say that instead of CR being the measuring factor for encounter design, it is XP budget? And how much wiggle room is in the budget, especially considering that a 12th level encounter is budgeted for ~3500xp, yet you had a 4200 combine with a 3700 in Rnd3?

XP budget is certainly how I'm doing adventure design right now. It's not completely rigorous, because an individual monster indeed gets "so easy that it ain't worth it" and "so hard that it ain't worth it." That window of "levels you can use this individual monster as a part of your encounter" is certainly wider than it is in 3rd edition, though. I'll go about 5 levels down from the average party level and 5 or 6 levels up without worrying about it too much.

As for how much wiggle room...hmm. It's a fuzzy line, of course--you can't say that "an extra 30% is OK but an extra 35% is lethal." I'd say you can add or subtract 50% or so without worrying about the, um, narrative implications. Eventually, it'll feel "easy" or "hard," of course, but you want to evoke that feel. And differences of 10%, plus or minus, are likely to be unnoticed by anyone sitting at your table.

I learned Thursday night that "more than double the XP budget" is beyond the limit, though.

Also, had they done much damage to the 4200xp encounter in the first three rounds to take the edge off the combined encounter?

Not really. They were still dealing with the bone naga's "dance of death" when the githyanki appeared, and then they did the D&D equivalent of a Napoleonic "refuse the flank" move to deal with them.

--Dave.

 

[Spatula]

Hmmm... I'm not sure it's even fair to compare the 3E and 4E exp and cr systems.

They both control "balanced" encounter design and xp rewards, so I don't see why not.

Mainly because 3E's was all over the place. A TPK machine could be a significantly lower CR than a cakewalk. With 4E's relating power levels directly to exp rather than using CR as an intermediary there could still be problems

CR is XP; the only "intermediary" is the table in the DMG. Not that XP rewards have anything to do designing challenging encounters - that's more a concern of levelling speed. The difference between 4e and 3e here is that in 3e, the challenge level of a monster is a guesstimate done after the monster is created; in 4e, you decide on the monster's challenge level first and the game tells you how to create it.

3e is then less precise, but even so I haven't run across any out-and-out errors in WOTC published CR values. Inaccuracies IME stem from templates, advancing monsters more than a few HD (due to monster HD going up faster than CR), poor party composition (4e won't fix this), or DM/player mistakes - either tactical or in creating suboptimal characters (ditto).

4e has plenty of room for inaccurate challenge levels itself, depending on how tightly controlled a monsters' ability scores, attacks, special abilities, and movement capabilities are.

 

[Kraydak]

...

Why does the accuracy of the xp/monster mean "less monster crunch design flexibility?" You're taking some logical steps between "you need to have the right level for that monster" (and I'm with you there) and "you don't have as much flexibility for monster crunch design" that I'm unable to follow.

The hard part of monster design is the special abilities. Any half-competent designer (should) be able to come up with basic underlying stats that work and determine the power level of those stats. That is the easy part. The huge variability comes from the specials. That is obvious. 4e needs tighter tolerances (again, as you note below, simple enough). The tighter tolerances then get passed onto the only thing that is hard: the specials.

And I don't think it's accurate to say PC adaptability took a nose-dive, necessarily. I'd say rather that "PCs' ability to use attrition-based resources to adapt" took a nose-dive.

I'm confused, we are saying the same thing here. In 3e, if you throw a massive encounter at a party they can adapt by throwing the kitchensink back. In 4e, they just die. You trade off the ability of parties to have a 15 minute adventuring day with the need to measure encounter difficulty very strictly. I rather like per-encounter abilities, but going that route means you need narrower tolerances elsewhere. Like monster design.

Attrition management was a key strategic axis in 3rd edition. But it's very much in the back seat in 4th edition. I think that "intraparty teamwork" and "tactical positioning" are arguing about who should drive.

--Dave.

Again, I'm not saying 4e's decision was wrong, but it does have major implications. If you give players a very narrow list of abilities available in an encounter, then the difficulty range of the encounter has to be tailored to that narrow power range.

 

[Cactot]

The hard part of monster design is the special abilities. Any half-competent designer (should) be able to come up with basic underlying stats that work and determine the power level of those stats. That is the easy part. The huge variability comes from the specials. That is obvious. 4e needs tighter tolerances (again, as you note below, simple enough). The tighter tolerances then get passed onto the only thing that is hard: the specials.



I'm confused, we are saying the same thing here. In 3e, if you throw a massive encounter at a party they can adapt by throwing the kitchensink back. In 4e, they just die. You trade off the ability of parties to have a 15 minute adventuring day with the need to measure encounter difficulty very strictly. I rather like per-encounter abilities, but going that route means you need narrower tolerances elsewhere. Like monster design.



Again, I'm not saying 4e's decision was wrong, but it does have major implications. If you give players a very narrow list of abilities available in an encounter, then the difficulty range of the encounter has to be tailored to that narrow power range.

"tailored" in this case means somewhere between 50%-200% of the recommended xp value per encounter, i think i am pretty comfortable with that range. If you group with a bunch of tactical geniuses and/or optimizers then the range very well may increase to up to 250-300% of the recommended value. I personally am in LOVE with the fact that individual actions, party teamwork and tactical choices play such a huge role versus the 3/3,5e standard where party composition and optimization matter far more than individual tactics (in my experience).

Take in to consideration that CoDzilla and wizards/sorcerers (if built correctly) could often SOLO encounters that would severely trouble a rounded group otherwise. I would say that it is not that the party can no longer throw the kitchen sink and the baddies, its more that the "overpowered" classes had a heck of a lot bigger kitchen sink to throw than they do now (though that may change a bit with more info being released and further splat books). As much as i absolutely ADORED clerics, druids and wizards (especially druids) i think this is a change for the positive. Hopefully tactics > builds now. Though ideally there will be flexibility so that good tactics and bad builds are roughly equal to slightly worse tactics and better character design, while excellent tactics and character design surpass them both. This would be ideal because some people are great at finding synergy in character abilities, and some are great at tactical decisions, and this would let them both thoroughly enjoy 4e without being over/underwhelmed in combat. Also, if you end up with a group of players who are extremely good at both, all it takes to make the combats enjoyable and challenging is to add another 20-50% xp worth of critters to each encounter. VIOLA! best of both worlds!

P.S. YAY to no more "save or screwed" spells, as those were a BIG part of the problem. One roll of the die could change the encounter from a cakewalk to a TPK or vice versa.