D&D 4E Hints on Sandboxing with 4e?

[S'mon]

I reckon I'd like my next tabletop RPG campaign to be a fully open 'sandbox' using the Wilderlands of High Fantasy, with PCs able to go anywhere, do anything, follow whatever rumours they fancy, and lots of development in play.

I'm undecided about the ruleset - current options include 1e/OSRIC, 3.5e/Pathfinder, and 4e.

They all have their pros and cons. 4e is popular with my games club and I have lots of 4e books. It's easy to set up and run 4e encounters - easier than 3e I think.

I have one problem with 4e though, experienced in my current limited-sandbox 4e game: un-balanced encounters suck. Worse, too-high-level opponents don't do lots of damage and force PCs to flee like in 3e, they stick around in endless grindy combat that lasts hours and bores everyone.

My concern is that running a sandbox, I won't be able to, and won't want to, rescale all the monsters to the PCs' level. So I thought I'd ask for hints/tips on making 4e work in a sandbox approach, or if you think I should use a different system?

 

[Dice4Hire]

One of my main problems with 4E is it is built along the expectation of 3-4 encounters a day.

The number of dailies, various powers, milestone and even numbers of surges mean it is a lot harder to challenge adventurers with one fight a day, unless you put them up against an encounter that can easily kill them.

A couple things I would do.

Characters gotta reach a milestone to get an extended rest benefits. So if you fight one group as a random encounter one day, you are not at full strength the next.

Reduce the number of surges by 25% or even half, to make even one fight or two more worrisome.

I'm sure other people have better ideas, but I would probably do these to make less combats more dangerous without using Level + 2,3 or 4 encounters.

 

[BlackTiger]

You could always create artificial danger when they encounter something that's above their level... or seek out ways to make the monsters seem dangerous - Fluff can play a heavy part here, as can rumor and background information. Or if it comes down to it, letting people make the knowledge checks to realize they are out of their league.

 

[S'mon]

A couple things I would do.

Characters gotta reach a milestone to get an extended rest benefits. So if you fight one group as a random encounter one day, you are not at full strength the next.

Reduce the number of surges by 25% or even half, to make even one fight or two more worrisome.

I'm sure other people have better ideas, but I would probably do these to make less combats more dangerous without using Level + 2,3 or 4 encounters.

I'm reluctant to rest with player-side rules elements, I think anything that's even more metagamey than core 4e, like milestone-to-rest, is out. But reducing the benefits of an extended rest might be a possibility, eg 1 extended rest only restores 1 healing surge, or a limited number of healing surges, a fraction of the PC's maximum number. This would be more simulationist/'realistic', and restores the possibility of attrition over time.

 

[S'mon]

Looking at the practicalities of reduced healing surge recovery after an extended rest, it looks like from the distribution of healing surges by class that 1 per 3 maximum (1/3, rounded down as usual) might work, that way even the 6-surge Wizard gets 2 back. He could then either spend those to get half his hp back, or bank them.

I'm not sure how well this would interact with the all-healing-starts-from-0 hp rule though, or if trying to alter 4e in this direction is a bad idea.

 

[ExploderWizard]

One of my main problems with 4E is it is built along the expectation of 3-4 encounters a day.

The number of dailies, various powers, milestone and even numbers of surges mean it is a lot harder to challenge adventurers with one fight a day, unless you put them up against an encounter that can easily kill them.

This is what I am running into in my own sandbox game. The PC's are 5th-6th level now and a challenging combat if there is only one for the day is hard to do.

 

[thedungeondelver]

I find that AD&D tolerates a great deal of "fiddling with" and this, among other reasons, I list elsewhere is why I recommend it.

(I should also point out that you can do with Original D&D what you can do with AD&D with the same degree of ease, more or less.)

 

[Doug McCrae]

I've recently come to the conclusion that, compared to most other rpgs, D&D isn't very well suited to sandbox play, due to Vancian magic and the very wide gulf in power between low and high level. It might seem heretical, but I'd consider a another system altogether.

Other suggestions:
1) Replace 'per day' with 'per session'.
2) Restrict the level track to, say, 3-7.
3) Consider modifying encounters based on PC strength. After all who is to say there are always 10 ogres in the cave? Some days there might be 5, others 18. In fact you could even change your notes to a range, rather than a fixed number.

 

[JoeGKushner]

My concern is that running a sandbox, I won't be able to, and won't want to, rescale all the monsters to the PCs' level.

My question is why is this a sandbox issue?

If you find that combat is taking too long, is it only in a sandbox campaign that it takes too long or do you wish to restrict combat to one combat per game?

If combat in 4e is the problem then you need to work on speeding up combat. Slyflourish has some great examples on his website, including big solo encounters.

Sly Flourish

 

[Blackbrrd]

In the later Monster Manuals, the monsters generally do more damage. Just look at the new damage expression chart, it's quite a bit higher than it was earlier. Tweak the monsters from MM1/2 to your needs and I think you will be in good shape.