4e Creatures, Not Scary?

[Fallen Seraph]

I do have to say I've seen some scared PLAYERS face off against level-draining undead. Admittedly, the "scared" turned to "disappointed" when the drain actually happened. The trick is in the fear and anticipation, not in the actual doing. I never saw a group of PCs move more stealthily and carefully than around a castle with randomly patrolling spectre guards, back in 2nd edition D&D.

Actually this reminds me of something I have done to cause tension and "scares" for my players without actually putting them under too much danger (I like having the characters survive the whole way through). What I do is a have some threat or what not.

Lets say... Catapults raining down Alchemical Fire. This could easily devastate a low-level party and yes some damage is done. But... I fake lots of rolls, to make it feel like there is even more chance of something extremely bad happening. So while there is the feeling of risk, there isn't a actual risk of immediate death.

 

[SpydersWebbing]

Orcus without a Paladin in the party? Scary.

With a Pally? Not really..

 

[Mephistopheles]

High lethality situations with things like level drain and save or die effects are a legacy of older editions of D&D. Determining when to avoid certain fights and how to do so was part of the knack of adventuring because combat was often brutal. A lot of downtime between adventures was commonly assumed and to some extent made necessary by the rules. Survivability increased at higher levels but there were plenty of characters who wouldn't survive to see it. These factors were mitigated somewhat by players having more than one character each as well as the involvement of henchmen and other retainers and brisk combats.

The current model with 4E D&D tends towards more survivability right off the mark. It's still possible for characters to be killed but it's not as likely or as immediate as before. Combat is as much a set piece of the system as it is something to be survived and as such seems to be something the designers intend the characters to shine through rather than avoid. Required downtime is minimal. Characters are probably going to survive to higher levels. This makes some sense as the focus is now squarely on one character per player without a retinue of henchmen and other servants; the characters are Heroes.

I think there is fun to be had with both styles of game but you're not likely to have fun with one if you're expecting it to be the other.

(As a bit of an aside, 3E strikes me as being the middle child of the progression in some ways. It still had the lethality of older editions and even became increasingly lethal as level increased. It also had the focus of one character per player without the auxiliaries. I also enjoy it but I find the combination of these factors makes it less fun to sustain above level ten or so.)

 

[Victim]

Pure, evil, genius. I Love it.

Thanks.

 

[Holy Bovine]

4E isn't about POWAH!!! Its about control. The scariest monsters are the ones that exert the most control. Same with PC abilities for that matter.

This is 100% correct. The best, and scariest (as in we-are-all-gonna-die!!!11!), fight I've run in 4E was just last week with the PCs (5th level) facing off against a Brain in a Jar and its skeletal allies (2 Blazing, 3 Archers, 4 standard Skeletons and 3 Skinwalker Skeletons). The archers were pretty awesome with their encounter powers (dishing out over 60 damage in a single round!) but it was the Brain that had the PCs absolutely terrified with a 'Kill it! Kill it NOWNOWNOW!!" attitude. Its ability to dominate was great and the fact it could still move and knock people prone made it seem way deadlier than it really was. It was the best moment I've had running 4E (and it has been a lot of fun up to now too!).

 

[Jhaelen]

Level drain was a good design element and it did indeed inspire fear.

I'm not sure what edition you're talking about. It definitely was BADLY designed before 3E (where it was actually quite fine since there were both level-appropriate ways to protect against level-loss and ways to recover lost levels).

One of the best 1E campaigns I participated in fizzled out because of a single encounter against level-draining undead that went bad.

In a system where the xp required to level up double every level you basically have no other choice but to retire characters that have been drained of more than one (or maybe) two levels. It's a serious setback for everyone involved, especially if the campaign was mostly driven by character motivations.[/quote]

Apples and oranges, really.

Yep, only in this respect it's rotten, worm-riddled apples and fresh, juicy oranges.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm not sure what edition you're talking about. It definitely was BADLY designed before 3E (where it was actually quite fine since there were both level-appropriate ways to protect against level-loss and ways to recover lost levels).

One of the best 1E campaigns I participated in fizzled out because of a single encounter against level-draining undead that went bad.

As a DM, fear of this kept me from ever using Spectres, and my vampires tended to inflict blood drain rather than energy drain.

You could get away with the occassional wraith or wight, mainly because they went down hard and didn't hit very often, but it was a very fine line between PC's being afraid of undead and undead draining the player's enjoyment of the game.

Still, that being said, I think that we've swung too far the other way. It feels like so many monsters are wearing nerf mittens less they actually injure the characters in some way.

 

[jgbrowning]

In 3E, someone would have rolled a bad save, been petrified, and the adventure would have come to a crashing halt.

I find this quote intriguing. The seeming separation between "the adventure" and character action is interesting.

joe b.

 

[drothgery]

I find this quote intriguing. The seeming separation between "the adventure" and character action is interesting.

As soon as one character is down, the reaction of the rest of the group in my experience is almost always to grab the body and flee unless that's impossible, impractical (i.e. we're up against a time limit), or it's pretty clear we can win the current combat anyway (and if the bad guys are throwing around petrification, then teleport or other rapid transit magic is usually within the PC's ability). Though I remember a petrified PC being used as a bludgeoning weapon once...

The thing about a PC death or severely debiliting condition that can't be immediately reversed by resources the PCs have at hand is that it usually changes the PC's focus from 'accomplish the goals of the adventure' to 'raise/heal the other PC'.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm not sure what edition you're talking about. It definitely was BADLY designed before 3E (where it was actually quite fine since there were both level-appropriate ways to protect against level-loss and ways to recover lost levels).

The Restoration spell has existed since at least 1e. There have always been ways to recover drained levels, or protect adequately against the likelyhood of being drained in the first place. Once in a while those things might not be available, but even so it wasn't a disaster for several reasons, the main one being that experience gain was also geometric in 0e/1e/2e. A character that was 2 levels behind everyone else needed 1/4 the experience to advance, but got an equal share of the experience in the next adventure, which was scaled for PCs 2 levels higher and thus was 4x more experience. That meant a character would essentially advance 16x faster if he was two levels lower than the rest of the party. Granted he wouldn't ever QUITE catch up, but at worst case he'd be around 1/2 level behind.

In some ways this was a nice feature of 1e, you could introduce new characters to an existing group without needing to make them high level right from the start. No matter how far behind they were to begin with, they would catch up in a few sessions.

I would never use level draining in 4e simply because the experience point and level progression system would permanently disadvantage someone that got drained. But petrification or some such? Not really a big problem overall. It scares the players and puts them on their toes, but like any other effect the DM can always fix the unfun potential. Just make the party pay an arm and a leg for a scroll that fixes the problem.