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

[pdiddy]

To me there biggest obstacle for using 4E for an exploration based sandbox campaign is the easy of leveling monsters. Bear with me...

Note: I am using the assumption that in this hypothetical sandbox, the difficulty level of an encounter area is determined prior to being encountered by the party and remains unchanged. For example, if the DM has pre-determined that the swamp is inhabited by trolls of a certain level, this does not change when the party explores the swamp, whether this happens at level 2 or level 8.

A large part of sandbox exploration is players making decisions about what are appropriate challenges. In older versions of D&D, this decision process was much easier as you needed fewer pieces of information. If you knew that the creatures you were facing were goblins and you knew there were six of them you could make a pretty good guess as to if your party could defeat them. If you knew that the cave you were entering was the lair of a large red dragon you likely knew that you were in trouble.

The ease of leveling monsters now means that there are goblins that can challenge a party of level 1 up to level 10 (for sake of argument) or level 1 appropriate dragons. The base line for making decisions about what your party can effective handle has been blurred to the point where only a knowledge-based skill check can give you the information.

The worst part is if you fail this skill check not only are you withheld the information about if your character stands a chance in the fight but you are now also doomed to a long, grindy combat that will likely not be much fun.

 

[S'mon]

The ease of leveling monsters now means that there are goblins that can challenge a party of level 1 up to level 10 (for sake of argument) or level 1 appropriate dragons. The base line for making decisions about what your party can effective handle has been blurred to the point where only a knowledge-based skill check can give you the information.

While this is true, the GM can still use (eg) the MM published versions as defaults, so that the players know that most Goblins are only 1st-2nd level threats, Orcs are 3rd-4th, and so on. Higher level Goblins can be visually distinguished by the GM making it clear through description of their armour, weapons, demeanour et al.

 

[Jack99]

Thanks - L+8, not L+4?

Confirm, +8.

 

[Solvarn]

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.

Damage expressions have recently been errata'd, and fights tend to be more deadly to the PC's it seems. Check that out for sure.

The mistake that many people make when building "difficult" encounters is that they increase level. More so than previous editions, increasing the levels of the monsters just increases the length of the encounter. This can be great with like one monster maybe, but the way to increase the difficulty of the encounter is to increase the number of combatants involved and keep them within one level of the PC's, if not the same level. If it is difficult to manage the size of the encounter use waves or stagger their introduction. A lurker added to an encounter late is a great idea to use against the party's ranged people.

Try introducing something in the plot that is time sensitive, so they won't want to rest all the time.

Sandboxing in general is a really hard thing to do sometimes. I advise people to look at a game like Dragon Age Origins or Fallout 3. In a game, even one as expansive as D&D, you are really only presenting the illusion of choice, like these games do.

My suggestion is to prepare several different areas or encounters and let the PC's choose to do what they wish. Also, prepare encounters at areas that PC's are likely to occupy. A tavern encounter, a market encounter, etc. These can be scaled easily later to the level of the party. Monsters are easy, terrain is hard as far as preparation goes. Good terrain makes or breaks encounters in 4E and in my experience is that terrain is the most underrated and oft ignored part of adventure prep.

Take good notes. Listen to your party before and after play starts. See what they talk about. Some of my best ideas have come from a seed I plucked from a player discussing events with another player.

 

[S'mon]

Confirm, +8.

Thanks, that seems like quite a big change. I remember my players were horrified when my Orc Warrior minion-9s did 9 damage, instead of the 6 in MM1. If they were Brutes doing half Standard monster damage that would go to 9+8 = 17, +25% = 21.25, /2 = 10 damage. But I guess we stick to a generously-interpreted version of the DMG2 minion damage numbers.

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

I think that a Sandbox Style can be run in 4E. The key is how to handle the Extended Rest.

An option to prevent the Nova-Rest cycle of typical exploration / random encounters.

You can only take an extended rest in the wild after your second milestone.

This makes random encounters part of the "average" adventure day. Once they've reached their second milestone, the PCs have an option for an extended rest.

A variant on this rule could be

You can only take extended rest while in a city or some other civilized area

This would make exploring the wilderness a dangerous activity and anchor the PCs to local towns/cities. Travelling between cities becomes a dangerous game as well (who knows how many random encounters they might have, they might even be forced to turn back).

For random encounters, I'd divide them by region. Each region would be given a level and the random encounters would be plus or minus some amount of that level. If the Frog Marches are level 3, then I'd have encounters that ranged from 5-1 inside them. When the first level PCs encounter a level 4 encounter in the Frog Marches, they might think better then to continue exploring them.

 

[S'mon]

This would make exploring the wilderness a dangerous activity and anchor the PCs to local towns/cities. Travelling between cities becomes a dangerous game as well (who knows how many random encounters they might have, they might even be forced to turn back).

I think I could work with limiting the availability of extended rests, not totally banning resting but maybe say that a typical wilderness rest only restores 1/3 your healing surges, less in bad weather etc, while you get the full rest benefits from a good bed in a warm inn.

I'm also thinking that a PC below 0 hp with 0 healing surges is critical-but-stable and can't take an extended rest for some period, maybe several days even to represent slow recovery from terrible wounds. Normally another PC like a Cleric will be able to heal them, of course.

 

[LostSoul]

I am running a sandbox game in 4E now. It's going well, but the PCs are still low-level - no one has hit 3rd level yet. Problems may rise in the future.

I've made a number of changes, some mechanical, some DM-advice type.

• Metagaming is allowed; PCs know what players know.
• PCs begin with two Quests: a Goal, "retirement level" one that can trigger often (I need to do some work on this), and a specific Quest that the player selects based on the setting. The Quest's level is based on the level of the hex where the Quest takes place.
• New PCs begin at 1st level.
• Treasure is distributed semi-randomly (randomly for individual monsters, fixed by level for lairs).
• PCs may hire a number of henchmen based on their Charisma modifier.
• PCs only refresh 1 Healing Surge per extended rest.
• PCs don't refresh Daily Powers through resting; what they have to do depends on their power source and is more of a social activity.
• PCs don't get XP until they rest.
• The DM creates the setting before the game begins, giving a level to each hex (breaking the setting down into geographic areas or regions).
• The DM does not alter the level of the challenges (monster encounters and DCs) based on the party; it's based on the hex's or monster's level.
• The DM rolls for wandering monsters every 4 (or 6, I forget) hours in the wilderness. In dungeons it's different; I forget what the frequency is. Wandering monsters have no treasure.
• At the start of each encounter, the DM makes a reaction roll for NPCs and monsters unless he already knows what the monster's disposition is.
• There's a system used to set DCs, whether a Defence or a DC from the table on page 42 of the DMG. Moderate DC = marginal success, Easy DC = marginal failure, Hard DC = good success, < Easy DC = bad failure.
• When the PCs rest/head back to town, the DM reveals/plays up the consequences of their actions.
• At the beginning of combat, the players decide if they want to use the standard/default 4E combat system or a variant made for quicker resolution that I wrote.
• I gave the players a list of rumours about the setting; this also contains the Level for each region, so the players can judge the risk they're willing to undertake.

 

[tyrlaan]

I guess I just don't grasp how sandbox is supposed to work. To me the biggest issue with sandbox in 4e would be the fact that 4e is designed with an "end game" in mind - epic destinies and all that.

For example, I don't follow why trivializing of magic items or the use of inherent bonuses would hurt sandboxing. Isn't it just as "sandboxy" if you introduce a heap ton of events and storylines and just let the players decide what to do with them? I can't get my head around the necessity to incorporate the impetus of getting loot into a sandbox game.

Also I really don't understand how extended rest, milestones, and 15-minute adventuring day concerns are sandbox specific problems that hinder 4e from working as a sandbox system.

What am I not getting here?

 

[Kerranin]

I guess I just don't grasp how sandbox is supposed to work. To me the biggest issue with sandbox in 4e would be the fact that 4e is designed with an "end game" in mind - epic destinies and all that.

For example, I don't follow why trivializing of magic items or the use of inherent bonuses would hurt sandboxing. Isn't it just as "sandboxy" if you introduce a heap ton of events and storylines and just let the players decide what to do with them? I can't get my head around the necessity to incorporate the impetus of getting loot into a sandbox game.

Also I really don't understand how extended rest, milestones, and 15-minute adventuring day concerns are sandbox specific problems that hinder 4e from working as a sandbox system.

What am I not getting here?

I think the problem with extended rests relates to sandbox style games often having single encounters with considerable gaps between. This limits the ability to grind the player's healing surges down since the tendancy is to fight-rest-fight-rest.