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

[S'mon]

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.

Very good point, doing the latter works well, and it's a pity that 4e does not include a mechanism to do the former. If you turn a Level+8 Standard into a Level+4 Elite, the doubling of hp means it's still a grindy combat.

Hmm. It sounds like the trick may be to turn the L+8 Standard into a L+4 Elite, including increase in damage output, but then half the hp (and award 2/3 of Elite XP). This ought to work pretty well, although it's still a fair bit of work, eg the Monster Builder doesn't increase damage output when you Eliteify critters AFAICR.

Thanks though, this is useful advice.

 

[S'mon]

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.

I do think PoL has design advantages over PoD when it comes to long-term play.

With Points of Darkness in a mostly civilised world, at very high level it becomes difficult to explain why the threats appropriate to Epic-level PCs have not already trashed the campaign setting. If the answer is "Very High Level Good NPCs stop them" - a la Forgotten Realms' Elminster & co - this makes the PCs feel surplus to requirements.

By contrast, with Points of Light, most of the campaign setting starts off already trashed! Powerful NPCs and monsters establish their own little realms/spheres of influence, which may count as PoLs or PoDs, but usually with lots of wilderness in-between. It's thus easy for PCs to start in a low level area, perhaps one at the fringes of a high-powered PoL/PoD like the City State, then seek out bigger challenges as they level up. And the Wilderlands includes areas (in 4e terms) from Level 1 up through high-Epic Levels, separated only by geography - no need for other planes, though they can certainly be used if desired.

 

[Jack99]

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?

Let's assume a group of 5th level PCs stumble into a level 11 group of ogres* - which is just a bit outside the range of stuff they should fight.

* Ogre Dreadnought (L14), Ogre Storm Shaman (L11), 3 Ogre Ironclads (L9) - 2800xp, 200xp shy of the 3000 for a L11 encounter

PC avg hp 48:
Monster Avg Damage: 18 per hit, hitting pretty darn often, sometimes twice a round (and hopefully the DM lets the Dreadnought be lumbering up more slowly to the battlefield, since then they'll start dying)

So... end of round 1, one PC is down, 1 PC is blinded and bloodied, 1 PC is bloodied, 1 PC is close, and the other PC is already starting to run. The wizard maybe tosses a daily to slow the monsters down, cleric throws a heal, and you start running! How is that slow and grindy?

The biggest problems I've seen are with high level elites, their toughness greatly exceeds their damage output. Elite soldiers are the worst, eg ettins.

Do you use the new MM3 guidelines? they really take care of most of the issues and ensure that higher level monsters are quite lethal.

 

[S'mon]

Do you use the new MM3 guidelines? they really take care of most of the issues and ensure that higher level monsters are quite lethal.

I have MM3. Is there a handy worksheet or something to help me MM3-ise the MM1-2 monsters?

What would be ideal would be for the DDI Monster Builder to have a button to MM3-ise the older monsters. I don't have a current DDI subscription - is there anything like that in the current version of the Monster Builder?

 

[nnms]

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.

The cause of the grind wasn't an error in delevelling, but in role and type of the monster combined with it's level.

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.

An ettin is an elite soldier. That means high defenses and good HP. You brought him down from level 10 so he wouldn't murderize the party, but he's still an elite soldier. Elite Soldiers are made of grind. Especially when they're a higher level than the party.

This is the cause of the grind, not them encountering a too powerful enemy and insisting on fighting it out for three hours. There are lots of ways to handle that without causing grind. Elite soldiers of higher level than the party are a pretty sure fire way to produce a slog.

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.

I've improv-DMed entire tiers. Assigning PC appropriate threats has never been easier than in 4E. You could pull it off to a degree with OD&D and AD&D, but it was more a matter of intuition than any sort of level based encounter design system. If you went with "number appearing" you had huge swings from way too weak to horribly difficult just by weight of numbers.

My recommendation for any edition is to print yourself off a list of monsters by Level (or Hit Dice). Get their stats nice and prepared so you can pull out what you need at a moment's notice.

There are enough monsters of every level (or hit die) in any version of the game that you can grab something that does what you need it to do for the story purposes of a given encounter and simply reskin it. Describe it as what you need it to be. I don't know how many times I've use the Human Rabble minions to be all sorts of low quality mooks, regardless of race.

 

[Obergnom]

I do think PoL has design advantages over PoD when it comes to long-term play.

With Points of Darkness in a mostly civilised world, at very high level it becomes difficult to explain why the threats appropriate to Epic-level PCs have not already trashed the campaign setting. If the answer is "Very High Level Good NPCs stop them" - a la Forgotten Realms' Elminster & co - this makes the PCs feel surplus to requirements.

It is no problem in my game. We play a customized version of the 4e Realms (no Abeir Collusion, but the Spellplague happend). Epic Level threats can not be handled by single NPCs (Elminster and Drizzt are both just below Epic Level in this incarnation of the setting).
The setting is full of remote threats though, like the Warlock Knights who are currently building up their power or a mighty Titan assembling forces even north of Vaasa.
High level threats are building up, but not there yet, or they are hold back by entire nations (In our Realms, Sazz Tam rules an empire of Undead in Mulhorand and is under constant attack from the Red Wizards of Thay).

 

[S'mon]

It is no problem in my game. We play a customized version of the 4e Realms (no Abeir Collusion, but the Spellplague happend). Epic Level threats can not be handled by single NPCs (Elminster and Drizzt are both just below Epic Level in this incarnation of the setting).
The setting is full of remote threats though, like the Warlock Knights who are currently building up their power or a mighty Titan assembling forces even north of Vaasa.
High level threats are building up, but not there yet, or they are hold back by entire nations (In our Realms, Sazz Tam rules an empire of Undead in Mulhorand and is under constant attack from the Red Wizards of Thay).

It was maybe a bigger problem in 1e-3e, due to Scry Buff Teleport. In 4e it's much easier to impose travel restrictions, even on epic-level BBEGs.

Also, Forgotten Realms is something of a points-of-light setting, even back in 1e. I think it's a bigger problem with a world of nation-states like Greyhawk or Kalamar. If at Paragon level you are running adventures where Only The PCs can Save Nyrond from the Paragon-Level Threat, it can be trickly to then have Epic-level threats in the same setting.

Eg if the Horned Society is a Paragon Level threat to Nyrond, and then later the Great Kingdom is an Epic-level threat, why didn't the Great Kingdom squelch Nyrond when the PCs were Paragon-level? There are answers, but it's still a problem.

This is one reason why Epic-level play traditionally moves on to other planes.

 

[S'mon]

It is no problem in my game. We play a customized version of the 4e Realms (no Abeir Collusion, but the Spellplague happend). Epic Level threats can not be handled by single NPCs (Elminster and Drizzt are both just below Epic Level in this incarnation of the setting).
The setting is full of remote threats though, like the Warlock Knights who are currently building up their power or a mighty Titan assembling forces even north of Vaasa.
High level threats are building up, but not there yet, or they are hold back by entire nations (In our Realms, Sazz Tam rules an empire of Undead in Mulhorand and is under constant attack from the Red Wizards of Thay).

BTW I like your 4e FR ideas a lot; if I ever run 4e FR I think I'll go with all of these. In particular I hated the trashing of Thay in 4e, what makes it worse is that in my homebrew campaign world Ea I already have a group of Necromancers called the Red Wizards (inspired by Vonotar the Traitor from Lone Wolf, long before FR was published); whereas the original FR Red Wizards had a very different feel.

 

[Kerranin]

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.

You're absolutely right, that hill giant encounter really pushed the envelope, I had to blow everything I had.

 

[S'mon]

This is the cause of the grind, not them encountering a too powerful enemy and insisting on fighting it out for three hours. There are lots of ways to handle that without causing grind. Elite soldiers of higher level than the party are a pretty sure fire way to produce a slog.

Yes, by far the most grindy fights IMC have been with higher-level Soldiers - those Ettins, or the young Red Dragon. I'm thinking a fairly easy solution might be to use Monster Builder to turn most Soldiers into Skirmishers or Brutes.