The fragility of heroic-tier characters

[Caliber]

Caliber's DM:
"Well the Wednesday night group completed the 3 H modules in 59 gaming sessions..."

Is that normal for these modules? 15-18+ sessions per module? How long are your sessions?

I've been running a lot of typical modules recently, and they've all gone exactly 4 sessions, f 4-5 hours each. I didn't think H1-3 were that different? Also, aren't you meant to level up 3 times each H module? At 3 sessions to level x 3 levels, that'd be 9 sessions per adventure.

We usually play for 3 to 4 hours, tending to the 3 hour side more so than the 4 hour side. I would guess two combat type encounter and some role play is a usual session, which would make 15~18 roughly appropriate for a three level stretch I guess.

I'd guess we average 4 to 6 session a level, rather than 3. Still though, I'm shocked (shocked I say!) at the stark difference in lethality. Is no one else having to step carefully around the stacks of dead PCs?

 

[Jack99]

Still though, I'm shocked (shocked I say!) at the stark difference in lethality. Is no one else having to step carefully around the stacks of dead PCs?

If by dead you mean in need of a raise dead (just making sure) then no. As mentioned earlier, I killed off 7 characters and there has been 11 deaths all in all. Over 19 levels though...

 

[Pseudonym]

I see Storminator already weighed in on our game's fatalities. For the record I'd like to point out that my eladrin taclord, with his high Int and pointy ears, is still alive, though that may prove to be an outlier.

I think it interesting how various groups and players hold different perspectives based on their play experience. Our group frequently finds themselves making death saves, having to resort to Heal checks to stabilize etc. Heck, we refer to Second Wind as Second Round. I wouldn't say we have a 'killer DM' either. He's not pulling any punches, but not throwing softballs either. Some of it is due to player overconfidence. Our last session ended with a fight against a Shadow Dragon in a near TPK that could have gone a lot different had our avenger not been a walking wounded plague victim and if we'd had our Dailies available.

We play 4-5 hours a session, with one session a month. Maybe if we plaied more frequently we would see a different pattern.

 

[Campbell]

The main difference I see between the two tiers is that at heroic tier (especially on the low end) you don't really have very much in the way of means to use healing surges during the course of an encounter which really amps up the danger of individual encounters. Of course this is conjecture for me since I've not yet had the chance to see 4e at paragon levels.

 

[Nebulous]

I've found that while heroic level pcs are pretty damn tough, they're hardly invincible, although they might SEEM like that when at full strength and a healer in your midst and a grab-bag of healing potions. Take away a chunk of surges, isolate the healer, remove the healing potions, and PCs will definitely drop. It's more a matter of wearing them down over several encounters (or gaming sessions, without extended rests in-between) before things get really dangerous.

I have not seen any full strength PC in a full-health balanced party die.

 

[Storminator]

I see Storminator already weighed in on our game's fatalities. For the record I'd like to point out that my eladrin taclord, with his high Int and pointy ears, is still alive, though that may prove to be an outlier.

But he also has a high STR, so Kord approves!

PS

 

[Shroomy]

In our campaign, which is basically on a one month hiatus, we're up to 14th level and have had only fatality. The revenant rogue played by our DM's wife was petrified by a medusa and no one knew the remove affliction ritual; our DM was going to put a scroll containing the ritual in the treasure, but his wife had to drop out of the campaign, so we left her as a statue, for now. However, we've had plenty of close calls. The reason for our durability is that our party contains two leaders (a drow cleric and an eladrin artificer) and our dragonborn fighter is a beastly damage soak. Its amazing how much punishment he can take, which takes a lot of pressure off of us.

 

[hailstop]

I've never killed anybody by accident in 4E. I've killed a few people on purpose, and I've seen people die because they really screwed up. Mostly these are the same thing, as players do something that will result in them getting killed and I unhesitatingly pull the trigger.

That being said the first three levels or so PCs are a bit more fragile. HP are low, and PCs don't have as many resources to swing the momentum of a fight. A couple of bad rolls can have a bigger effect, and turning the tide back in favor of the PCs is much more difficult. By about levels 4-6, this stops being true.

One of the great things about 4e is that as a DM I've never had to pull any punches. I've actually had a bit of problem challenging my PCs (although that has been less of a problem lately).

One thing that was addressed by one of Sly Flourish's twitter hints is that adding just one monster to an encounter when there are 6 PCs isn't enough...you need to add two.

While 5 monsters for 5 PCs might be an even encounter, 6 monsters for 6 PCs is a bit easy.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I'm definitely noticing that it is much harder to really challenge a party in paragon if it's any good. I agree 100% with minions. As soon as PCs get paragon paths, minions can be very easily killed. The cleric's burst 8 for example, can clear a room of minions in a single attack. At paragon, I've just started throwing piles of them out there and counting them as 4 for the exp budget. They're mainly window dressing now, not actually tactically challenging.

I've DMed a couple of heroic tier games now and I haven't been too worried about hurting PCs but I haven't killed anyone either. I'm looking forward to running some heroic tier adventures again. Unfortunately, my favorite monsters are all paragon / epic tier.

 

[CapnZapp]

I don't think heroic PCs are fragile at all.

That doesn't mean I can't see your point - it's only that I think you should realize coming from higher levels warps your assumptions a fair bit. Yes, heroic characters have far fewer tricks up their sleeves than paragon characters, and yes, compared to paragon heroes, heroic PCs will seem frail.

But that doesn't mean I think it's fair to classify them as frail - far from it.

When you compare heroic PCs against newly started out characters of other fantasy games (including previous editions of D&D!) they come across as very stout and competent indeed, and this is a much more appropriate characterization, I believe.



Take my first adventure, for example. I took the 3E module Vault of Larin Karr (from Necromancer Games) and converted and embellished it a bit.

That meant that the four (4) player characters were tasked with evicting a complete fort manned by twenty thugs or so, and with a squad of professional Hobgoblin soldiers in the basement.

My players, all experienced AD&D and/or 3E hands, freaked out! They spent the very first session just skulking around, scared almost shitless by the notion of having to fight three dozen enemies. "What were the DM (me) thinking! We're level 1. We're supposed to getting our asses handed to us by wild dogs and wererats!"

But they persevered. And that was a great intro to 4E, and they really felt strong and successful after that, despite being 2nd level "only".