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

[S'mon]

Am I getting that right? I understand that the DM isn't coddling them and isn't pushing them toward specific encounters.

The PCs are certainly encouraged to do threat assessment and seek out challenges they think they can handle. Eg in my current OSRIC City State of the Invincible Overlord game the 1st level PCs learnt of hobbit kids kidnapped by goblins, and a fortune in gold stolen by the Thieves' Guild from an allied NPC who seeks revenge on the Guild. The PCs decided the goblins sounded like a more practical challenge. In my 4e Vault of Larin Karr game the low level PCs, after several bad experiences in the local Underdark (such as a tribe of 9th level Orc minions, then a 14th level Roper), have decided not to go back down there until the entire party is at least 5th level.

Your definition of 'linearity' seems to be "mostly low level encounters before mid level, mostly mid level before high level" - yes by this definition the sandbox is linear, if the PCs are to survive.

 

[S'mon]

If you think D&D4's combat is long and boring, then it doesn't matter if you're playing Open World/Sandbox or not. It's long and boring.

It's possible to have 4e battles that are interesting and of reasonable length (45 minutes to an hour for a 6-7 PC group), but IME only within a tight level range compared to Party Level, and preferably avoiding Elites and Solos. Something like 3 Standard monsters + a bunch of minions usually works well. I also sometimes halve monster hp, giving 2/3 XP, this usually works well for somewhat higher level monsters and is pretty much vital for pre-errata Elites.

 

[S'mon]

If true sandboxing means that there are monsters of levels 1, 5, 10 and 20 (just to pull some numbers out of thin air) scattered around the countryside

(couple of module spoilers to follow for Lost City of Barakus and Vault of Larin Karr)



Any very high level encounters within easy range of the starting PCs are likely to be signposted, eg in Lost City of Barakus (3e sandbox module for levels 1-5+) there is a CR 12 red dragon in the Dragonspire, but local people know about it and leave it alone. If the low level PCs ignore the warnings and manage to breach the dragon's lair, yes they'll get eaten.

This isn't always the case - in Vault of Larin Karr (sandbox module written for 3e levels 4-9) there is a CR 10 Roper beneath the Ruined Village, which the PCs are unlikely to know about before encountering. IMC for 4e it was even more lethal, level 14 Elite encountered by 2nd-3rd level PCs! I was reasonably generous with my GMing, and the party just managed to flee without losing a PC.

 

[S'mon]

Pre-D&D4, D&D was built on the Conan model, which was self-motivation, perfect for sandbox play. Heroes are active, which is necessary for sandbox play.

D&D4 focuses more on heroic characters, and heroic characters are reactive. Terrible for sandbox play.

You can run a sanbox game in D&D 4, I did it. Very ambitious game, at best a middling success because the players were constantly waiting for something to react to, rather than deciding what they wanted to do.

Hmm, interesting thanks.

My current 4e Vault of Larin Karr mini-sandbox seems to work ok in that regard, the PCs are motivated enough to go looking for treasure, with which they can buy or craft magic items, and adventure, which gains them XP. I agree that the push-to-adventure can be weaker in 4e, but this is also true of 3e which allowed easy item purchase by default. 3e & 4e both allow restrictions on item purchase.

Hmm, this seems a strong argument against using the Inherent Bonuses system in a 4e sandbox game, since using it greatly lessens the motivation to adventure to gain loot/items for more '+s's. This is something I hadn't considered, and is just the sort of hint I was hoping to glean from this thread.

 

[S'mon]

But are you saying that the 15 miniute adventuring day is better suited for this type of play? If the party runs into something it can't handle and it runs after them, ain't no getting back them spells.

IME, in pre-3e games party behaviour varies by level.

At low level the party engages in short delves, typically has only a few encounters, then retreats to safety.

At mid level and above the party has the resources to plow through lots of typical encounters quickly (the Fighters are very tough, the M-Us use wands etc and often don't need to use their high level spells), and will only need to rest after a major battle.

In 3e the tendency is for all encounters to be challenging, causing 15-minute-day effect at all levels. It's particularly exacerbated at high level because the spellcasters outstrip the non-casters and everything revolves around the need to rest so the casters can regain spells.

In 4e game play is designed for several encounters/day at all levels.

 

[S'mon]

First of all, I think the thing that needs to be gotten rid of to making sand box gaming work in 4E is that the notion of level appropriate encounters is somehow bad or not appropriate.

Monsters can be scaled up and down in level so easily that it really should be a non issue...

...There's just no reason to grind away for three hours.

Eh, my experience doesn't really tally with this.

In my 4e VolK sandbox I do often adjust monster level, but I'm not a de-levelling genius, and it's hard to get right.

eg with 2nd-3rd level PCs I de-levelled a pair of Ettins from level 10 to level 5 and had them encounter the PCs separately. It still made for a long grindy fight.

Also I don't want an 'Elder Scrolls' approach where everything levels precisely to the PCs.

You have to remember that the GM cannot predict exactly which encounters the PCs will have, session by session. That makes assigning PC-appropriate threat levels much harder than in a linear adventure.

 

[Obergnom]

I am currently running a 4e sandbox and it worked perfectly for 6 levels now There was a TPK but we started over with new characters at higher level.

We have a few houserules, but those do not really affect the sandbox campaign:
Some races are not allowed and we only use player material from the first two PHBs and the first four Power Books plus Forgotten Realms stuff).
Minions get a save when hit. If they make that save they are bloodied. Bloodied minions do not get the save.
I use Stalker0's Obsidian Skill Challenge system, because it is much easier for me to improvise with it.

So why does it work?
In my opinion points of light do not work as good as advertised in 4e, because that would mean having a lot of traveling encounters (you need at least 2 or 3 a day) while traveling between the points of light. For me thats just to many.
My campaign uses an inverse concept (Points of Darkness, so to speak). There is the Bloodstone Valley (Based on WotCs Chaos Scar), a place where evil creatures flok to, and where everyone wants to find treasue (the meteorite fall upon the former capital of Bloodstone) and pieces of the meteorite. But it is surounded by the peaceful, if evil, nations of Damara and Vaasa.
Within the Scar, my players are absulutly expecting frequent attacks and threats. They never act as if they will not have to fight some more this day. Traveling through Damara they expect no attacks, maybe some assassination attemp, but these are special and planned encounters and can easily match a fully rested group.
Nearly all of Bloodstone Valley is difficult terrain of some kind and the party usualy spends a certain amount of time watching out for danger and just not getting hurt while traveling. To cross all of it would only take them 3 days, but we played this for 6 levels now, and they never got further away from Restwell Keep (Their homebase) than a single day of travel.
Many areas are so dangerous that I use smaller skill challenges where the group might loose surges or get a disease or something like that.
As for higher level threats, I so far used a couple. An Othyug was hiding in a swamp. It was so though, the party fleed. The huge fog giant is roaming a part of the Scar.
Every encounter with it was a skill challenge, the party nerver even thought about attacking it, they just wanted to flee and hide (and once had to outsmart him).

The MM3 monster stats make this even easier, creatures of a higher level actually have enough power to kill your group fast. Usualy I make these high level creatures into elite or solos, giving my players an appropriatly epic fight, if they try to fight them. (Reducing the level by 4 each time I go up a category... an Oger can be modelled as a first level solo, when they encounter another one at level 9, it will feel appropriate to be a normal creature)

My most important tool are several sheets of paper where I printed thematicaly matched groups of monster including statblocks on. Running 4e encounters from books does not work for me, because of all the page flipping involved.

 

[vagabundo]

I'm worried that while in 1e and 3e it causes swift PC death and/or flight, in 4e it causes boredom.

Edit: I am actually running a (smallish) 4e sandbox campaign currently, Vault of Larin Karr converted, and this is what I've seen - the environment is largely unscaled and when the PCs encounter a tough monster, the game goes slow and grindy.

A hitpoint at level 2 is not the same as a hitpoint in level 7 in 4e. So if you are going to be using monsters outside of the 4-5+ PC level range they need their hp upped and their damage increased IMO. I'd also lower their defences by some scaled amount. This will at least allow some attacks to hit. The same goes for monsters well below the PC's level range - increase defences, lower HP (even to minion status), lower damage, increase attack values.

But clever play, with possible use of the environment, could win the day even if they are well outmatched. I suppose this is the ideal outcome that we are looking for; it is the stuff that legends are made of. "Remember when we took out that level 10 dragon with those first levellers! That cave-in trap worked a treat."

Look up threads and posts from LostSoul - he is the king of the 4e sandbox!

 

[S'mon]

From what I'm finding, two things help a lot.

1: Use the MM3 damage expressions. That hill giant ambusher you sprang on us was scary. And switching my campaign to MM3 has done things.
2: There's a huge leap in nova performance between fourth and fifth level. That extra daily makes a massive difference. One house rule I'd consider implementing in a heroic tier sandbox is "Only one daily", with fifth level allowing you to upgrade it to a fifth level power.

Thanks Francis (one of my 4e Vault of Larin Karr players). Re #1, the MM3 monsters do seem much better designed (and MM2 are much better than MM1). I agree that MM3 level 11 hill giant worked very well, I thought, on your 4th-5th level PCs.

One problem is that so many classic monstes are only in MM1. Another is that getting 4e encounter design right takes effort, and if you just let things fall as they may it's easy to get it wrong. Eg the penultimate session's assault on the Forge of Fury's Mountain door went very well IMO, the Orc Raider stats worked well, but last session's battle with the Orc Raiders took longer than I'd have wished, because there were so many of them at once. But if things had gone differently you might have encountered more of them in smaller, level-appropriate groups.

Short of Orc Raider skirmisher-3s spontaneously morphing into Orc Warrior minion-9s whenever too many get together, like the Inverse Ninja rule applied to Orcs, I don't see a solution. And for me Inverse Ninja-ing them would hurt my Suspension of Disbelief.

 

[S'mon]

In my opinion points of light do not work as good as advertised in 4e, because that would mean having a lot of traveling encounters (you need at least 2 or 3 a day) while traveling between the points of light. For me thats just to many.
My campaign uses an inverse concept (Points of Darkness, so to speak). There is the Bloodstone Valley (Based on WotCs Chaos Scar), a place where evil creatures flok to, and where everyone wants to find treasue (the meteorite fall upon the former capital of Bloodstone) and pieces of the meteorite. But it is surounded by the peaceful, if evil, nations of Damara and Vaasa.
Within the Scar, my players are absulutly expecting frequent attacks and threats. They never act as if they will not have to fight some more this day. Traveling through Damara they expect no attacks, maybe some assassination attemp, but these are special and planned encounters and can easily match a fully rested group.

Aha! Very interesting! This brings up an important point.

My current 4e sandbox is set in my primary homebrew setting, which within the scope of the campaign is a "Points of Darkness" or "Frontier" type world. There are vast areas of civilisation where combat is very unlikely - the Realm of Man. Then there is the Borderlands - the Frontier, and within/beyond that the Points of Darkness, where adventurers delve and frequent combat is very likely.

I fully agree - this approach seems to work great with 4e.

But my intention for my next campaign is to run The Wilderlands, which is very much the classic Points of Light world, almost certainly providing some inspiration to the 4e designers. For that matter even the Points are mostly not very bright. In the Wilderlands beyond the PoLs combat is certainly likely, but I certainly agree that 4 fights a day would really threaten Suspension of Disbelief. Eg in 1e AD&D DMG, using the wilderness encounter tables, even the most dangerous areas generated on average less than 1 encounter per day of overland travel (6 checks/day, 1 in 10 per check).

That said, I do think the single very tough encounter that really threatens the PCs can work fine in 4e. These have been I think my most enjoyable experiences running & playing 4e.

The problem is more the narrow level range of such encounters compared to PC level (roughly Level +3 to +5, I think). Very trivial encounters are often not fun in 4e, and too-tough encounters not fun either, and both for the same reason - they take too long to play out.