"Fear of Monsters" back into 4th Edition

[Garthanos]

Obviously your group has its own priorities, but to me most of those old-school effects aren't actually scary. What they are is super super annoying. I remember re-calculating stats and spells on the fly for level and stat drain effects. Entire builds reduced to "I guess I just try to punch it" by some stupid gear-destroying beastie. But was it scary? No, at least not for us. It just made somebody's day suck, and slowed the game down for everyone.

If anything, I find death more of a threat in 4e because you're less likely to die. Does that make sense? When there's the constant chance of save-or-die TPK slapping a boring, narratively unsatisfying ending on a story, my instinct is to presume that there is a fairly mundane way to bring a PC back to life.

Yes and resurrection being du Jour at 8th level always seems a legacy'ism... a patch for random haphazard story destroying unsatisfying deaths by failed save and similar thngs

It's pretty hard to die in 4e, so if you needed to bring somebody back it wouldn't feel unfair for it to be a major quest or a unique ritual or something. So death in the setting can go back to being something meaningful, which is much more satisfying to me than the possibility of dying in what, let's face it, is often a really stupid way.

TLR, You could not pay me to put that sort of thing back into my 4e. But I don't need my players to fear death, so much as I need the world around them to fear it.

This all the way....

I do however like McGuffin story lines where to bring the monster within the scope of the heros abilities they need to go acquire this item X and to do that they have to do sub quest Y and so on... perhaps a story structure not unlike that in Russian folk tales where you pick up unexpected allies along that path and they are the real method for destroying the baddy but the process of looking for the McGuffin is how you found them etc etc...

I do not think creating such structure is something you are going to get in any automatic way and it has to be planned by a DM.

 

[Fox Lee]

I do however like McGuffin story lines where to bring the monster within the scope of the heros abilities they need to go acquire this item X and to do that they have to do sub quest Y and so on... perhaps a story structure not unlike that in Russian folk tales where you pick up unexpected allies along that path and they are the real method for destroying the baddy but the process of looking for the McGuffin is how you found them etc etc...

I do not think creating such structure is something you are going to get in any automatic way and it has to be planned by a DM.

Oh, absolutely! I am in no way suggesting that the GM shouldn't present an adventure where the BBEG is too powerful to defeat without the heroes inflicting story upon it. Those are great! One GM in our group built a campaign around the concept of researching boss monsters and planning for their unique mechanics. To me, that's a completely different question to whether or not standard monsters are scary/deadly enough.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Oh, absolutely! I am in no way suggesting that the GM shouldn't present an adventure where the BBEG is too powerful to defeat without the heroes inflicting story upon it. Those are great! One GM in our group built a campaign around the concept of researching boss monsters and planning for their unique mechanics. To me, that's a completely different question to whether or not standard monsters are scary/deadly enough.

Yup, and 4e makes it darn easy! That is one of its great strengths. You need to get the 'ghost oil' so you can 'go out of phase' and fight the ghosts who are scaring everyone to death... sounds like a fetch quest to me! Or maybe an SC, etc. Likewise I always wanted Raise Dead to be a more interesting thing. I kinda liked the DW "death's door" thing, though it seemed a bit TOO forgiving sometimes.