E3: Prince of Undeath?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Actually, those are some pretty major spoilers.

Yes, but on the other hand - anyone wanting to know about the adventure is probably going to run it, right?

Fairly pathetic when such legendary foes can go down in 1 or 2 rounds without even doing anything...

Have you seen it go down in 1 or 2 rounds in actual play?

 

[Stoat]

I was disappointed in the encounter design in E3, and I've been disappointed in WotC's encounter design in general for the last several months. 4E was supposed to issue in an era of dynamic, exciting encounter spaces and to signal an end to the "you open the door, orcs attack!" style of encounter design. IMO, the heroic tier adventures did a pretty good job with this. Not anymore.

1) Most, if not all encounters in E3 take place in a single room. Often a room with no features other than a few squares of difficult terrain. What happened to the concept of encounters that encompassed multiple rooms and groups of monsters?

2) More than a few encounters in E3 involve big monsters in small spaces. Large and Huge monsters need room to move or combat becomes static.

Although E3 really demonstrated these problems to me, I've seen the same issue in the other Epic adventures and in Dungeon. And I don't like it.

 

[StarFyre]

There was a playtest some folks did at the wizards site with a tarrasque and a party of 5 or 6 (forgot) andthey took it out in 2 rounds i think it was and the tarrasque couldn't attack back...I believe they did max the characters, but the fact that it's even possible in a standard system shoudl have been taken into account...since from what I see, most campaigns are focused on combat; and thus, everyone maxes their characters anyways...

Orcus.prob not..but the same concept stands...epic stuff really isn't very epic.

Stoat - i detailed some stuff that we do to make combat a lot more dynamic..using orcs, a dragon, and a marilith as an example...
I can send you that for example. it's not by the book, cause personally, by the book 4E doesn't work for my group (in terms of, they hate it and want to go back to 3 or even 2E in comparison)...

Sanjay

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Okay, here an overview of stat changes:
- The E3 Orcus is changed. He is a level 34 Solo Brute. he still has the same hit points as his MM version, and is defenses are also the same.
- He does not have Variable Resistance but fixed resistance instead.
- He has an extra at-will power (Close Blast 4, all the benfits of the Master of Undeath power apply)
- His attack bonuses are slightly higher (fitting to the extra level).
- He is accompanied by 10 Level 30 Minions.
- He now raises Abyssal Madness Ghouls (Aura) and Dread Wraiths.

[sblock]
Should the PC manage to fail saving the Queen, he gets +10 to damage, +2 to defenses and extra hit points. If they succeed, he loses 100 hit points.
[/sblock]

For some reason, the encounter level is listed as 32, which must be an error error. It should probably be level 35?

Before this final encounter, the party most likely has had a Level 33 encounter, two Level 31 encounters, a Level 32 skill challenge/trap encounter (the trap inflicts damage). The final encounter might happen together with a level 30 skill challenge that requires standard action to gain successes. (Strictly speaking, nothing seems to require doing this under time constraint or during the battle, so this might be a nice dial to increase or decrease difficulty.)

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

There was a playtest some folks did at the wizards site with a tarrasque and a party of 5 or 6 (forgot) andthey took it out in 2 rounds i think it was and the tarrasque couldn't attack back...I believe they did max the characters, but the fact that it's even possible in a standard system shoudl have been taken into account...since from what I see, most campaigns are focused on combat; and thus, everyone maxes their characters anyways...

Orcus.prob not..but the same concept stands...epic stuff really isn't very epic.

Stoat - i detailed some stuff that we do to make combat a lot more dynamic..using orcs, a dragon, and a marilith as an example...
I can send you that for example. it's not by the book, cause personally, by the book 4E doesn't work for my group (in terms of, they hate it and want to go back to 3 or even 2E in comparison)...

Sanjay

Does "playtest" mean they were only fighting this particular encounter, or does it mean it was a regular encounter during a regular session? That can make a large benefit.

Fights at epic levels are not supposed to get "harder" if you still have the same relative level. If you want it to be harder, increase the level of the NPCs or reduce the level of the PCs. A Tarrasque is only a Level 30 Solo. It should feel as difficult to 5 30th level characters as 5 Kobold Skirmishers should feel to 5 Level 1 characters.

 

[Gargazon]

There was a playtest some folks did at the wizards site with a tarrasque and a party of 5 or 6 (forgot) andthey took it out in 2 rounds i think it was and the tarrasque couldn't attack back...I believe they did max the characters, but the fact that it's even possible in a standard system shoudl have been taken into account...since from what I see, most campaigns are focused on combat; and thus, everyone maxes their characters anyways...

I remember that playtest and remember that all the characters involved were fully rested, used all their daily powers and their action points to do that.

 

[wayne62682]

Given that my DM will think the level range of the adventure is the range that you're good to play it, I'm more than a little scared that our party is going to end up at like level 26 or 27 when we have to fight Orcus, with no changes at all to his statistics.

 

[Runestar]

The party is already going to have their resources taxed by the time they get to the final battle. The idea that they'll just pop out their combos and end the campaign in one round is pretty silly. They'll be low on dailies and healing surges by the time they get to the Orcus fight.

Thats always been the thing, everyone pits fully rested characters against Orcus instead of characters at the end of a series of tough fights.

If we are talking about the wizard's orb power, there are encounter powers which disable foes. Of course, there is still demigod (I assume it hasn't been revised yet?), which allows for free healing outside of combat.

Has anyone actually playtested these fights using only encounter/at-will powers?