Megadungeon Sandbox and 4E

[Badwe]

Badwe, maybe I'm not understanding where you're going and will need to wait for the example...

In an old-school throwback model, dungeon level *does* equal encounter level... yes yes, it may seem illogical, but it's part of the players being able to make good choices about their level risk/reward (part of challenging the players).

This may be an issue of nomenclature. You might say that the first floor is assuming a level 1 party, and thus averaged around it. This is not the same as saying "clearing the first floor nets you 1 level". If it did, you would HAVE to create 8-10 encounters averaging level 1. So Floor is not necessarily equal to level, but floor may have an average level.

The parcel example. If your PCs face 10 level 1 encounters, they go up to level 2. At this point, they have many options in this megadungeon but we will classify them generally as either "move on to a placewhere the average level is 2 and do 8-10 more encounters" or "go do 10-12 more level 1 encounters". Now, how much treasure would you give them? In previous editions you would simply roll out from a random table and assume the average works out.

You can't do this in 4th ed because there are no table to roll from. You, as the DM, must choose what each group holds. To come out correct, the players must collect 10 parcels in the course of gaining a level. How do you account for when the players choose to move on to "floor 2" where there are monsters averaging level 2? And what do you do if they stay on floor one to stomp more level 1 groups? What if they do _both_ ?

To give you an example of my solution. Let's say your dungeon is limited in scope, and is only meant to handle levels 1 and 2. You can extrapolate this example to as many levels as you want. So, of the 10 first level parcels, and of the 10 second level parcels, 2 of them call for a level 3 magic item. Where do you put these 2? What happens if the PCs skip one of the encounters? Now they're underpowered. What if you put 3 level 3 items in the dungeon assuming they'll miss 1 and they end up clearing the whole place. Now they're overpowered. Instead, let's assume you create some amount of encounters in this dungeon worthy of a level 3 magic item. The first one they defeat, they get the first item on your list. When they defeat another, they get the other. If they do anymore, they get nothing, or a small amount of gold to keep the idea of a reward present.


Long story short: this is meant to be a way to adhere to the 4th edition treasure parcels, keeping player power relatively on par, without having to resort to random treasure tables.

 

[crash_beedo]

Long story short: this is meant to be a way to adhere to the 4th edition treasure parcels, keeping player power relatively on par, without having to resort to random treasure tables.

Ah, okay - I see what you're saying now. (It's maybe freaking me out a little bit, I'll have to wrap my head around it).

Yes, dungeon level could/should equal average encounter level. So if you're on the level 1 of the dungeon, and you enter a typical delve or lair, the encounters would range from level 1 to level 4 (easy, standard, hard) just like in the encounter guidelines, and the potential for some level 1 treasure parcels would be there.

I see how stocking everything is problematic - you could over-wealth the group if they clean a level; it's the corollary to the XP problem I've indicated with clearing a level as well. On the other hand, I don't know if treasure should be completely dynamic, either. Maybe employ a similar strategy - stock it up, but once the group has hit their 8-10 parcels, it stops appearing, or treasure gets fractioned as well? The other approach (once they get their first 8-10 parcels, no more monsters have treasure) seems heavy handed - but I guess it works if we assume the stragglers are 'wandering monsters'. And maybe no more heavy-handed than fractioning XP.

Maybe it won't be a problem and my group will be eager to stay on the curve... I guess I'll find out shortly (scheduled to start the sandbox game in Jan).

 

[S'mon]

I've never seen a problem with PCs having say half or twice of standard wealth-by-level, and for a megadungeon especially I don't think you should worry about it.

 

[malraux]

I've never seen a problem with PCs having say half or twice of standard wealth-by-level, and for a megadungeon especially I don't think you should worry about it.

3e made it kinda a problem as wealth could give access to really high powered stuff. For 4e, additional wealth is more likely to lead to flexibility in items, not excessive power, but because of the caps on per day usage and the exponential growth in the wealth curve, its hard to gain access to more powerful items that way.

That said, what might work best for a mega dungeon would be to have essential items keyed to the areas the party is likely to go, with extra wealth available if they hunt through the level.

 

[Badwe]

The other approach (once they get their first 8-10 parcels, no more monsters have treasure) seems heavy handed - but I guess it works if we assume the stragglers are 'wandering monsters'. And maybe no more heavy-handed than fractioning XP.

This is sort of like one of those mind-bending excercises where I try to convince you to "Think outside the dungeon"

In all seriousness, the idea of the parcel handouts is that even after those 8-10 encounters you continue to hand out treasure. The difference is you are now (or perhaps already were) pulling from items set aside for the 10 level 2 parcels. This is sort of an existential idea, in that as soon as the PCs go up to level 2, they are "on" level 2. The fact that they are choosing to either take on more easy encounters or fewer difficult encounters is irrelevant, what has happened is merely you as the DM have put that choice in the player's hands rather than making a concious decision of "I will give my PCs lots of easy encounters" vs. "I will give my PCs a few difficult encounters".

Eventually though, you'll run out of treasure to give the PCs. A Level 5 item doesn't fit into any level 10 treasure parcel, and therefore probably shouldn't be dropped by an encounter balanced for level 1 (level 2 would be ok, of course). At about the point that you've given out all the treasure from all the parcels, levels 1 2 and 3 for example, that could be given from level 1 monsters, is about the point that treasure SHOULD start drying up completely.

Summary: Whatever level your PCs are, that is what "floor" they are experiencing. The megadungeon merely gives them the choice between taking it easy or making it hard. Whatever they choose, they should still get treasure to keep from being underpowered. However, no encounter should drop an item 5 levels higher than their EL.

I hope this all makes sense, I know it is something of an abstraction of the dungeon.

 

[crash_beedo]

3e made it kinda a problem as wealth could give access to really high powered stuff. For 4e, additional wealth is more likely to lead to flexibility in items, not excessive power, but because of the caps on per day usage and the exponential growth in the wealth curve, its hard to gain access to more powerful items that way.

That said, what might work best for a mega dungeon would be to have essential items keyed to the areas the party is likely to go, with extra wealth available if they hunt through the level.

Yeah - you're completely right. The players are going to care, first and foremost, that they're getting their most important gear / magic item wishes in the important parcels.

It won't be imbalancing if they eventually get a +1 version of a secondary or tertiary weapon or item, and the 4E economics (items are worth 1/5th their value if sold) reigns in abuses. I think you guys have talked me down.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Game balance expects PC's to have a certain amount of magic items (and money to spend on more, or potions and rituals) - and in 4E, this aspect of the game is managed by the Parcel system. From that perspective, the DM can create treasure and magic items for a series of encounters, literally in minutes.

My advice?

Ignore game balance.

Seriously.

Balance the encounters on any given level as though it were for a given level (or level range) of characters, and then give treasure as you feel appropriate. Let the players worry about "game balance". If you really want that Old School feeling, the primary difference between OS & NS is that in OS, it is incumbant upon the players to decide what they can handle.

If the PCs don't have enough OOMPH to survive on level 3, they don't go to level 3. Or they don't survive. Easy.

(But let your players know what you are doing.....WotC-D&D players are unlikely to be expecting this! Unlike the 1e PHB, the 3e and 4e PHBs have scanty or no advice for the players in terms of how to judge a challenge and survive it. I would suggest having them read the player advice section from the 1e PHB. Lots of good stuff there.)

If you built a level 1 dungeon with 50 encounters, you literally could give every monster an appropriate treasure. And one reason players might not spend time on level 1 any longer is the XP and Treasure rewards they're getting no longer keep them moving forward at an acceptable rate.

In the 4E paradigm, I don't believe XP is exponential any longer... it's a more gradual curve... raising the issue that a level 2 party could still be advancing at a decent pace while whomping on level 1 monsters.

That's what happens when you change things without understanding why they were designed in a particular way in the first place. The easiest thing to do here is to simply 'port in another XP paradigm. Use the Fighter XP progression from the 1e PHB, and determine XP with the 1e DMG....without giving XP for hit points, because hit points are crazy in 4e.

(You might need to do a bit more tweaking than this to make 4e work in megadungeon mode, but that's the way I would handle this particular problem.)


RC

 

[S'mon]

3e made it kinda a problem as wealth could give access to really high powered stuff.

Only if the GM doesn't set a suitable gp limit. I'm using 3,000 gp - small town - which works great.

 

[Lacyon]

Things to keep in mind:

The 4E XP system is exponential (at least until you reach the part of the XP table where they smoothed out the numbers), it just doubles every four levels instead of every level. Squashing two Level 1 encounters together gives you a level 5 encounter. This means that any given level of a dungeon can have a wide variety of encounter levels on it without changing much in the way of individual monster strength, and if players get too overconfident about staying on one level to clean it out, the beseiged monsters can cooperate against them and still provide them with a reasonable challenge for the characters' level. Even if you don't, once characters hit ~5th level, they'll be gaining levels half as fast by seeking out level 1 encounters as they would be if they pursued level 5 encounters.

The GP system in 4E is also exponential. An item of level x+5 costs five times as much as an item of level x. Also, selling a magic item yields only 1/5 of it's nominal value (or the value of an item of level x-5). However, each 5x increase in cost doesn't bring with it 5x more power - that's how much it costs just to go up a single +1. Assuming you managed to get all your items to 5 levels above what you should have, you've essentially got an extra two levels worth of attack and defense bonus, and maybe enough extra powers/static bonuses/healing from those levels to match 2 more levels worth of hp, powers, and feats that you'd otherwise be bringing to the table. In order to get there, you'll have to sell twenty-five items of the level you're supposed to have. I don't think you'll have too many problems with wealth by level - once players start to see that they're being left behind, they'll move to fix that by taking on harder challenges.

 

[gizmo33]

It's a tougher argument in 4E, where it takes 1,000xp to get to level 2, and only 3750 to get to level 4, but the difference between a level 1 standard fight is 500xp and level 4 is only 875xp. Players *might* still be leveling at an acceptable (albeit unchallenging) pace if given access to enough encounters below their character level.

The difference in XP, hopefully, is proportional to the difference in difficulty (at least in theory). And turning a 1st level encounter into a second level encounter means adding 125 xp worth of monster. I don't think that players who kick down a door and see 6 orcs instead of 5 are going to cry foul. Plus you can use alliances between monsters, tricks and traps, etc. to boost the encounter difficulty on short notice.

IME people that ran old-school megadungeons would have to have plenty of tricks up their sleeves to balance encounters, which I think is far more difficult in earlier editions. I don't think the basic principles have changed (and as much as it might seem otherwise, the rules don't prevent the PCs from running away). People interested in megadungeons IMO should consult the 1E DMG and Dragon Mags from that time period, although the advice is of mixed usefulness IME. Unfortunately, IMO, the 4E DMG lectures pretty much run contrary to what a DM wants to do in a sandbox game.

The world/environment (which, in this case, is the dungeon), should adapt to the presence of the PCs, and the DM can see to it that it does so on a way that suits his interests in terms of balance. For example, I think the monsters living on level 2 would get curious about all the crashing and banging they hear going on upstairs. IMC they would investigate sooner or later. Meaning if the PCs don't go to the dungeon, the dungeon will go to the PCs. Probably while they are camping. Things that are good for game balance are often good for versimiltude as well.

I don't take the treasure parcels thing seriously either. I don't think it's necessary for 4E. I don't think it takes a DMing genius to get a sufficient sense of the PCs power. IME you can't balance challenges on a razor's edge no matter what, unless you fudge. That's due to random chance as well as tactical decisions by the PCs (which often appear as random chance due to the fact that two smart people often see the same thing two different ways). Bottom line is, place the treasure however you want, require the PCs find it, and expect the encounters to adjust to the PCs power level (which will just simply not be the same as character level). The adjustments don't have to be heavy-handed, the in-game rationale for them is basically that the more successful the party is, the more powerful creatures become aware of them and the weaker creatures band together for their survival.

If it takes a DM more than one or two encounters to figure out how powerful a 1st level party is with a bunch of +5 weapons, then that DM should stick to treasure parcels.

Also, when it comes to too much stuff, don't forget rust monsters, disenchanters, thieves, former owners, etc. Certainly, "taking away the PCs stuff" is something that is increasingly unfamiliar to DnD players but it's not prevented by the rules. Done badly, many of the tactics suggested by 1E for dealing with these issues can be obnoxious and heavy-handed, which is probably why 4E steers away from this gaming style. But IMO a DM has so many options for dealing with this issue that with some thoughtfulness, subtlety, and experience a DM make this into a good game.