Designing encounter map

[Silverwave]

The map design of a combat encounter is really important in 4e combats. It really changes everything.

I've run easy encounters (low xp budget) that turned really though because of the map design (tight rooms with monsters having damaging auras for example) or hard encounter that turned really easy.

The DMG give some advice how to design encounter map, but it's very basic.

So i'm asking the community : how do you design your encounter maps to make combat :

- interesting
- harder / easier

How do you manage the difference between classes having more difficulties/ease with some terrain features (controllers usually like large open grounds, some other (defenders) like tight quarters, some like difficult terrain, other don't, etc).

Any other tips and tricks you use.

 

[Greatwyrm]

Interesting

1. Keep it varied. Try to use something different most of the time.

2. Keep it simple. Lava is cool. Pits are cool. Caltrops are cool. A map crisscrossed with rivers of lava, deadly pits, and scattered with caltrops is kind of annoying.

3. Make the terrain matter. A ledge is just decoration, until someone gets up there and starts shooting down. Put features in parts of the map the PCs will want to go to, increasing the chance they'll interact with it.

Challenge

Unless the PCs catch the monsters by surprise or in some kind of random encounter, the terrain should favor, or at least not hinder, the enemies. If you can fly while you fight, why would you pick a cavern with a low ceiling to mount your defense? If you're an agile skirmisher type, difficult terrain is bad for you, but things to hide behind and things to push enemies into are fun.

For an easier encounter, just tailor the terrain a little more to your group's tactics. Just remember, a monster with any kind of intelligence isn't going to spend its days chilling out in a lair that will kill them as fast as any invaders.

 

[Westgate Polks]

@Silverwave I feel that terrain design is as important as monster selection / mix. While I don't have a ton of experience using dungeon tiles to map encounters, I try to pick terrain as follows:

1. I want it to be interesting. If it isn't, then it's a waste in my mind.
2. I want it to enhance the monsters when possible. Have defenders bottleneck choke points so their artillery can rain damage on the party. Have controllers trap/immobilize party members in isolated places, etc.

A key is to make sure your monsters use their surrounding terrain as well as possible.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I have a player that really likes "mobile" terrain - so, conveyor belts, etc. that move persons on them. I had them fight in a rock crushing plant last battle, but unfortunately I didn't spend much time designing it, so the crushers and rollers didn't have much roll except to one player who was pushed back into them and got stuck.

Next battle I will have them fighting on a giant set of gears, jumping from one to the next to get to the bottom. I was first going to have them fighting up the gears, but realized that such would doubly screw anyone who fell. Hopefully my players won't just say "oh, its only 3D10, let me jump down" - but if they do, I'll have to consider something more penalizing that the bottom.

That said, a very tense and fun (for the DM, anyway) battle was them defending a quickly put together baracade against what would otherwise be quite a difficult foe.

But I agree with the others - fun terrain is such that encourages players to intereact with it but doesn't necessarily force them to do so. Additionaly, you want the terrain to be interesting but not such that it takes over the encounter - its no fun for players to be pushed continually into a pit, nor is it for the DM to have same happen to all of the monsters.

I disagree that it should automatically enhance the monsters - sure that is great many of the times, but players will also appreciate terrain that allows them to do neat and crazy things. Rather, don't focus too much on giving the advantage to one side or the other... its no fun for a melee dominant party to have the enemy artillery on the other side of an impassable chasm, nor is it to have a melee enemy in the same situation with a ranged party.

One thing you definitely don't want is terrain that removes models from the fight for good - falls are good, but you want it so that either the person can return to the fight in short order (IMHO, he should lose at most a full round in moving back) or feature something for the player to do at the bottom - a new monster to fight, some battle altering doo-dad to play with, some plot item to retrieve, whatever.

 

[BobTheNob]

Im a fan of fights that integrate terrain (especially with solos).
Like
1) Portals with destrucable components that Solo can teleport to on his action
2) Lava, can never have enough Lava, especially when throwing magma creatures at the party and allowing the magma creatures to cross the magma terrain, but not the players
3) Cover. Always give enemy shooters cover, it really forces the party to break position and attempt to flank the position.
4) Floating Landscape with rope bridges (ooo the possbilities)
5) Moving Landscape! (If you can support it) A chunk of rosk floating is a lava river (again with the lava)
6) A forest in the Feywild where the combat is set in ancient trees miles on limbs miles the ground
Just love coming up with cool places to pit combat

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

While the terrain BobtheNob suggests is undoubtledly cool, one needs to take care that:

a) getting pushed into a terrain feature doesn't do too much damage; and

b) getting pushed into the terrain doesn't remove the player from the fight.


So, 100 ft. drops and lava are really cool - falling off a 100ft drop and taking 10D10 damage while at low levels and having no way to get back up - not so much. Likewise the 20D10 damage I've seen for lava in the epic draconomicon dragon encounters... not so good for heroic parties...

So, best to consider how such will affect your game. Fighting mooks with no way to push the players? Fighting miles above the earth may work. Fighting an enemy controller with lots of slide effects - you better have something in place that prevents the monster from simply sliding the entire party to their dooms.

 

[theshard]

In my previous Eberron campaign (3.5), the party had to fight a Warforged Titan in a Cannith Foundry below Sharn. The titan was much more powerful than them but I had dropped clues that they might be able to break the supports for the platform they were on and drop the titan into the lava flows below.

Once the titan was defeated, then they had the extra challenge of figuring out to get off the platform that they were hanging onto for dear life or fall into the lava themselves.