4E at higher levels question?

[NewJeffCT]

Hi there - I just finished up DMing a long-term 3.5 campaign that took about 2 1/2 years to complete. We had a large group of players, but it seemed that once the game got past level 10/11 or so, it was a full-time job for me to prepare encounters in terms of developing challenging & unique bad guys and learning all their feats, powers, skills, abilities (class, racial, template, spells, spell-like abilities, etc) as well as magic items. I don't think I can commit to that much time going forward in a new campaign

One of the players in my group runs a 4E game is now running a couple of low level 4E adventures so we can get a feel for the system (he & his wife play in a separate 4E game) and I can take a little break to recharge my mental batteries. I like what I saw at level 1 and combat seemed to go much quicker than it did in 3.5 (where a round with an 8 player and 1 DM group took a good hour or a bit more) - but, it's also level 1 and our last campaign ended at level 18.

However, even he cautioned me that combat does get more complex at higher levels and he's heard stories of people with stacks of "conditions" on their characters in combat and that while the rounds may go by quicker, the combats can take just as long.

That said, if the prep time is significantly lower, it would certainly be helpful for my sanity in the long run...

So, for those of you whose games are past level 10-15 or so, how does 4E run in comparison to previous editions? For DMs, is it still easy to prepare? Granted, I expect things to get more complex for players and DMs as people go up in level and monsters get more powerful, but is it exponentially harder like 3.0 and 3.5?

 

[Scribble]

So, for those of you whose games are past level 10-15 or so, how does 4E run in comparison to previous editions? For DMs, is it still easy to prepare? Granted, I expect things to get more complex for players and DMs as people go up in level and monsters get more powerful, but is it exponentially harder like 3.0 and 3.5?

Well, in my own experience (my players were just nearing 20th when I moved) the game prep is a LOT easier. That said it's not a "simple" task at all, but I found the way the monsters work tended to free me up for other parts of the adventures, rather then just number crunching.

The fundamental build of monsters stays relatively the same throughout the game. The number of powers, increases, but not a ton, they get a couple more as they enter each stage, but more then likely they just do more damage.

You don't have to worry about feats and stuff. Everything they can do will be in the stat block, unless you wan to modify it, and even that is quick.

I found myself, rather then looking for good combos/powers/abilities that would challenge the PCs, instead spending that time trying to come up with "COOL" descriptions, scenarios, locations, as well as looking for cool ways to design the battlefields when I knew there would be a fight, to best syngergize with the monsters and their abilities.

Combats can be just as long as they were in 3e, however, I've found the progression around the table is a whole lot quicker. (This combined with the added idea that sometimes people have powers that are designed to take effect while it's not their turn specifically has the added effect of keeping people a little more focused on the combat, instead of their iphone, or a book, or side conversation while they wait for their turn...)

There are a lot more effects happening at higher levels, but they're pretty easy to track, and normally don't involve a whole lot of calculating. You're mainlyjust tracking on/off status.

One thing you DO have to remember is that "killin' PCs at the real high levels is damn hard! I mean when certain characters have effects that read: "Once per day when you die..." you know you're in for a crazy ride.

 

[Ktulu]

I'm starting my second foray into paragon in 4e tonight. On Saturday I spent four hours prepping and I put together:

11 combat encounters. Some of these won't be seen for a session or so, or won't happen depending on the players motivations.

15 skill challenges. Some are complexity 1 (requiring only 4 successes), and many are generic bribe this, or diplomacize that, though there are a few that will take some time, and one is a massive over-all challenge involving the travel throughout the wilderness.

I bulit 5 unique characters, two NPC's and Three enemies.

I customized 7 monsters, including reskinning three, upgrading one to elite, and adding a monster theme from DMG2 to three others.

This also included the time I used laying out the maps and coming up with interesting terrain/tiles to use.

So, in four hours, I probably put together 3-5 sessions worth of gaming.


I will add, as a caveat, that I use the ddi, Microsoft Onenote, and the DnD4e Combat manager when planning/running my games:

OneNote is used to track the progression (through pages) of the story, each page is it's own skill challenge/combat/story, linking to other pages based on assumed choices.

The DnD4e combat manager (free) http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/DnD4eCM is a nifty tool that imports characters from the Character builder, and monsters from the Monster tool, and can be used to track initiative, powers used, hp, etc... It can also save multiple encounters that can be imported throughout a session.


I have never had an easier time planning games in any other RPG.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Well, overall Epic Play is much the same as Heroic play except for conditions and the importance of resistances.

At higher levels, allowing people to save against debilitating conditions is increasingly important, especially ones that will kill the character like Petrification. Add in dominated, stunned, or even immobilized and characters can be totally removed from effectively fighting. But that is on the character side of the game, if they do not spend resources there, and instead go for more bang, then that is their problem

Overall, I think it is a bit easier for the characters to hit the monsters as they level up, mostly from bonuses from teammates and items, plus a few feats. Monsters have a harder time versus AC, but do well against other defenses, so be sure to make sure some monsters in most encounters can hit reflex, and will especially.

Yes, it is hard to kill characters, increasingly hard, so make characters use surges, and not the good surges like the various WORD powers. At higher level spending a surge is not so cool unless you add the 4d6+10 to it you can do with a healing word, for example.

But 4E is great for higher levels.

 

[Iron Sky]

In our experience, at Heroic the lack of familiarity with your characters (and the rules if you're just starting 4e) is offset by the limited number of options players have. The familiarity and general comfort with the rules at higher levels is offset by the vastly increased number of options and conditions to keep track of.

For our group, combats actually got much faster as we proceeded through Heroic and got more comfortable with how to play our characters and how to work together. Also, we got more specialized and our damage output and the quantity/quality of status effects we could drop went up so we killed things alot faster.

When we hit Paragon, things slowed down a bit as we adjusted to our new powers, improved/retrained feats, and increased monster status-effect dealing, but then began to speed up as we became more comfortable with our characters. Also, our damage output spiked dramatically at Paragon (Stormwarden, Daggermaster, Studen of Caiphon, Radiant Servant) so we were killing things even faster than before.

From the DM side, higher level monsters take a little more time to design, but, IMO, it's balanced by the fact that you can give them more interesting/flavorful powers so they're more fun to design.

If you have the monster builder, most of the time is spent in the power-making part (the fun part) since it pre-calculates most of the other stuff(HP, defenses, etc) for you.

With the monster builder, you also have probably somewhere around 800-1000 pre-made monsters that you can just take and use, modify, and/or reflavor right there in the program. Before my game went on a hiatus, I got to the point where I could throw together an improvised random encounter from scratch in a few minutes.

The monsters have more abilities triggered in more different ways (I usually forget about auras until about half-way through the fight) and more powers/recharge powers to keep track of. After a couple rounds DMing a fight, I usually have the monsters' shtick down and my side of things speeds up.

The biggest slowdown we've noticed in higher-level play is all the conditional effects from class abilities, feats, and powers. I don't think a round goes by without someone saying "Oh, I should have done 5 more damage to that guy since he was cold vulnerable" or "Damn! I have an immediate interrupt against Will attacks that raises my Will by 4!"

We also just picked up our game again after a year hiatus on our game... trying to pick up a level 16 character after not looking at them for a year is a bit of an adjustment.

 

[Jack99]

IME

The prep time doesn't really change much. I spent about the same time on prep at level 22 as I did at level 1. Maybe a tad more thinking up weird stuff, but overall, the difference was definitely negligible.

As for the speed of the game. The difference (if any) between heroic tier and paragon tier was very small. However, around level 19, it does slow down (noticeably). For us, it was still nowhere as slow as the previous edition, but it was slower that the previous levels for sure. With a simple houserule (+33% damage, -25% hit points) you could easily get combat time down to acceptable 20m-45m for n+0 to n+2 combats. But the big fights could definitely take a while. Of course, these numbers will vary a lot from group to group, depending on focus, the DM and what other measures you take to speed up combats.

For us, the switch has meant that the DM (thats me) uses about 1/5 of the time to prep and we get 1/2 combats and more RP into each session, compared to what we did before.

So, in short, no, its absolutely not exponentially harder to prep nor slower combats at higher levels.

 

[Shazman]

Hi there - I just finished up DMing a long-term 3.5 campaign that took about 2 1/2 years to complete. We had a large group of players, but it seemed that once the game got past level 10/11 or so, it was a full-time job for me to prepare encounters in terms of developing challenging & unique bad guys and learning all their feats, powers, skills, abilities (class, racial, template, spells, spell-like abilities, etc) as well as magic items. I don't think I can commit to that much time going forward in a new campaign

One of the players in my group runs a 4E game is now running a couple of low level 4E adventures so we can get a feel for the system (he & his wife play in a separate 4E game) and I can take a little break to recharge my mental batteries. I like what I saw at level 1 and combat seemed to go much quicker than it did in 3.5 (where a round with an 8 player and 1 DM group took a good hour or a bit more) - but, it's also level 1 and our last campaign ended at level 18.

However, even he cautioned me that combat does get more complex at higher levels and he's heard stories of people with stacks of "conditions" on their characters in combat and that while the rounds may go by quicker, the combats can take just as long.

That said, if the prep time is significantly lower, it would certainly be helpful for my sanity in the long run...

So, for those of you whose games are past level 10-15 or so, how does 4E run in comparison to previous editions? For DMs, is it still easy to prepare? Granted, I expect things to get more complex for players and DMs as people go up in level and monsters get more powerful, but is it exponentially harder like 3.0 and 3.5?

If you actually saw a 4E combat for 1st level PC's run faster than a 3.5/Pathfinder combat for 1st level PC's, it must have been an anomoly. 4E combat at low levels generally takes about twice as long as 3.x/Pathfinder and only gets worse as the levels go up. This isn't necessarily a bash on 4E but a personal observation. 4E combat is extremely time consuming and can be even more complicated with various conditions that can last for various times on various combatants.

 

[NewJeffCT]

If you actually saw a 4E combat for 1st level PC's run faster than a 3.5/Pathfinder combat for 1st level PC's, it must have been an anomoly. 4E combat at low levels generally takes about twice as long as 3.x/Pathfinder and only gets worse as the levels go up. This isn't necessarily a bash on 4E but a personal observation. 4E combat is extremely time consuming and can be even more complicated with various conditions that can last for various times on various combatants.

Interesting - I know the conditions can be a chore to track, but I don't think it would be significantly harder than all the buffing & debuffing that goes on with 3.5. It wasn't unusual for both sides to have up 6-8-10 buffing spells up going into a combat situation, and then when the dispels started getting fired around, you had to recalculate them all the time, and also remember what type of bonus it was and if the original buff spell was superseding a magic item or another buff.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I've played and run up to 11th/12th level 4e.

Main observations - fighters liked having a lot more options, casters hated having far fewer options.

Combat was a real pain with multiple conditions, ongoing damage, marks and other stuff flying all over the place. Much more annoying than 3e was. Combats tended to last longer (harder to kill stuff and more people have more choices) compared to 3e.

Prep time was pretty much the same.

Cheers

 

[Ravellion]

If you actually saw a 4E combat for 1st level PC's run faster than a 3.5/Pathfinder combat for 1st level PC's, it must have been an anomoly. 4E combat at low levels generally takes about twice as long as 3.x/Pathfinder and only gets worse as the levels go up. This isn't necessarily a bash on 4E but a personal observation. 4E combat is extremely time consuming and can be even more complicated with various conditions that can last for various times on various combatants.

That doesn't match my experience. I am currently DMing 21st level 4e, and combats now take about the same time as when the PCs were 5th level, which is to say, roughly an hour. I do occasionaly have shorter fights, but also a few longer ones. I'll give you that low level 4e takes longer than low level 3e, but in my experience 3e combat length was a rising curve every level (extra iterative attacks, quickened spells, summons etc. all increasing the duration of combat at higher levels), and 4e stays flat at around an hour. Conditions do not lead to major slow down, as through use, we have learned them by heart. Besides, stunned creatures' turns go by quickly .

To the OP, I'll echo the sentiment that prep is as fast at high as it is at low levels. However, I am not happy with 4e epic combat. It is very hard to even threaten, let alone kill, a 21st+ PC. If I do another 4e campaign, I'll try and finish it between 16th and 20th levels.