The Lethality of 4E

[Scribble]

How did the spider take out the warlock in one hit? Even with the crit?

How come he's not cursing people, and why isn't the fighter marking people?

Also since the rogue was absent, your encounter is set for 5 people, but you only have 4. (so it's already harder.)

And no one used a healing surge?

 

[Scribe Ineti]

I put four 2nd level characters up against a 5th level solo green dragon. It resulted in a TPK after 16 rounds (an hour and change of game time).

Had the PCs not had a cleric among them, it would have been over in maybe 10 rounds. The second winds, healing powers, and assorted means of spending healing surges kept the heroes around longer than expected.

As it was, after 16 rounds, they all finally died, but the dragon was down to 16HP (from 260). Had the PCs had a little better dice luck or a fifth PC in their group, they would have likely won the day.

As it was, it was an excellent, epic battle.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

YEs, 4th ed is brutal IF the players are foolish, and the DM overplays the creatures, or, there is less than 4 PCs.

#1 Foolish players fight like 3rd ed. Or charge in etc. 4th ed is best played tactically. move and retreat, seek cover...help the tank by Area of Effect spells that burn down or weaken enemies around him once they are on him (AOEs that only hurt enemies are great), use abilities ot move the hell away, or knock enemies down...etc.

#2 Don't play monsters too smart unless it's appropriate. goblisn/orcs are simply tood umb to come up with great tactics, most of the time (orcs especially, goblisn can be sneaky)
see, many DMs are used to playing a computer game, or playing liek chess..but the NPCs are *individuals* they cannot see "the game board", or have telepathy with their allie s(well, not most creatures, lol).

This means they shouldn't be played with tactical perfection, except for really dealdy/smart foes, liek drow, devils, professional soldiers etc.

#3 when you have too few PCS, ie less than 4, to block strategic points, you can get "flanked and ganked". so it's good idea to run extra characters, when you have only 3 players or less.

 

[malacapricornis]

This may seem lame, but I tend to play this game solo with a party of 5 trying to play as strictly as written. Just running Kobold Hall for myself I had one wipe and one combat that could have been a wipe if I didn't use some dailies.

I try to play it from limited intelligence perspective of each side and I find it's not too hard to be fair since I like the tactical aspect. I do take the DM advice about rarely targeting a fallen character. I have killed one via a blast attack but it was incidental.

What I have found is that it's not the best strategy to split up away from a defender. With the hit points and incapicating effects the enemies have, as well as the traps and terrain, careful tactical maneuvering, patience, and positioning is important.

Getting flanked, immobilized, knocked in a slime pit are bad. Getting hit with multiple OAs climbing a wall and still failing the check is bad. The flyby attack of a drake is bad. However, at level 1 it's been a lot of fun.

My party is a Warforged Fighter, Half-elf Paladin, Dragonborn Warlord, Tiefling Fey lock, and Eladrin Wizard. The lock is hard to kill with the misty step. If I were playing in a group, I would have to consistently remind players to keep a good front line for control. Throwing weapons/hand x -bow if using a shield are also important so you don't have to drop your shield or waste a standard action dealing with that.

Early use of encounter or daily powers(if you deem the encounter to be relative high level) I find help more then waiting.

 

[Ktulu]

It was a somewhat shortened round-by-round. the warlock thing I can't quite figure out. He may have been hit by something else, but I don't recall. He should have had about 32 hp, though, so I can't quite figure that.

Only the wizard and fighter used second wind, but the fighter was hit a lot. He had marked the enemies, and they were focusing on him. The two times the cleric was hit while the fighter was up he missed his attacks.

The warlock only ever cursed the original spider he ran from, and did not continue attacking it.


As far as the encounter, yeah, I wasn't expecting the rogue to be absent, but I figured they could handle it. My bad on being incorrect.


I didn't say my party was full of genius .

 

[Henry]

One thing I've noticed about 4e is that, as I put it in another thread, it makes you watch your character die. None of this, "zap, you're petrified/dead/disintegrated/held." Instead, you're taking bucketloads of damage every round you're standing next to the kruthik horde/needlefang drake swarm/Orcus. Beholder Stone Rays make you immobile, THEN stone you. Disintegrate rips off huge gaping chunks of your body round after round until you vanish in a little puff of smoke.

This Sunday, I watched one player in rampant frustration as he consistently for several rounds failed his save to put out the fire on his body. Had I thought about it, and were I cruel enough, I would have been making jokes about "stop, drop, and roll."

But 4e has replaced instant death with death over two or three rounds, and you have a chance to stop it, but just as good a chance as to DIE.

I'll also mention that 4e has the most lethal falling rules of ANY Dungeons and Dragons Edition, EVER.

 

[MerricB]

I'll also mention that 4e has the most lethal falling rules of ANY Dungeons and Dragons Edition, EVER.

To be fair, Gary did think he'd put in D&D that the first 10' was 1d6, the next 10' added on 2d6 (so 3d6), and so forth so a fall of 50' was 15d6 damage.

Cheers!

 

[Mindseye]

One thing I've noticed about 4e is that, as I put it in another thread, it makes you watch your character die. None of this, "zap, you're petrified/dead/disintegrated/held. Instead, you're taking bucketloads of damage every round you're standing next to the kruthik horde/needlefang drake swarm/Orcus. Beholder Stone Rays make you immobile, THEN stone you. Disintegrate rips off huge gaping chunks of your body round after round until you vanish in a little puff of smoke.

But 4e has replaced instant death with death over two or three rounds, and you have a chance to stop it, but just as good a chance as to DIE.

Seems very true. My player that had his character engulfed by the gelatinous cube took that acid 10 every round and never came close to getting himself out. Took the rest of the party finally beating it down to free him, but he definitely had that helpless round by round feeling...........

 

[Kraydak]

The problem of 4e lethality suffers from the extremely limited novaing ability of PCs. For example, a standard low level party might only have 2 healing words for the party and one second wind apiece available for healing. If you don't cut down your opponent's numbers fast, you will tap out healing wise early... and then die.

Basically, PC power stays roughly constant for the first few rounds (per encounters, maybe a daily or two per PC) and then plummets. If the fight isn't over by the time the PCs run out of abilities, life gets very ugly. So in 4e a fight is only interesting if you get towards the end of the PC's resources (otherwise nothing of importance is spent), but if you accidentally add even one monster too many, the PCs will be tapped out too early (monsters having rechargeable abilities at least puts PCs out of the misery relatively fast if it comes to that).

This means that DMs who tend to use easier encounters will run 4e with less lethality than 3e (slower combat=less swingy combat), but DMs who tend to use harder encounters will run 4e as more dangerous than 3e (no ability to nova if things go wrong). Finally, note that 4e is designed (not perfectly) for everyone to roughly need 10s on the d20 to do something. 3e was designed for the target to drop well into the single digits. This means that putting PCs up against higher level opponents (with better ACs/to-hits) is more brutal than in 3e (a +1 when you only need a 5 is worth less than a +1 if you need a 10). Add in the messed up PC/NPC scaling (NPCs scale faster than PCs on a level basis) and you have a recipe for DM failure.

 

[Celtavian]

re

One thing I've noticed about 4e is that, as I put it in another thread, it makes you watch your character die. None of this, "zap, you're petrified/dead/disintegrated/held. Instead, you're taking bucketloads of damage every round you're standing next to the kruthik horde/needlefang drake swarm/Orcus. Beholder Stone Rays make you immobile, THEN stone you. Disintegrate rips off huge gaping chunks of your body round after round until you vanish in a little puff of smoke.

This Sunday, I watched one player in rampant frustration as he consistently for several rounds failed his save to put out the fire on his body. Had I thought about it, and were I cruel enough, I would have been making jokes about "stop, drop, and roll." :evil:

But 4e has replaced instant death with death over two or three rounds, and you have a chance to stop it, but just as good a chance as to DIE.

Interesting.

I'll also mention that 4e has the most lethal falling rules of ANY Dungeons and Dragons Edition, EVER.

This is great. I house ruled falling damage in my 3.5 campaign to make it lethal. It topped out at a 100d6 damage and was cumulative and multiplicative damage. I had grown tired of the 20d6 fall that felt like a fighter fell off a ladder.

I haven't read falling damage in 4th edition. I hope it is equally as lethal. If a characters falls off a cliff, he should feel doomed.