Late heroic and into paragon though is much different. The fights were just long and dragging before the update (or more specifically before I started to apply the update). Not only were they long (sure the PCs are doing more damage, but not that much more damage) but they were not interesting either. It was almost always clear early on that the fight would be won by the PCs regardless of what they did. In many respects it lead to sloppy play (no real need to think about tactics for instance). The thought that the ranger might take 114 points of damage on the first monster's first turn never crossed the PCs minds. That, has certainly now changed though.
Yeah this matches my experience. I think the average paragon/epic combat went pretty much with the PCs not being scratched by just about anything and it was quite frustrating. I needed obscure combination's of terrain, traps and basically deliberately metagaming monsters specifically to thwart the PCs. For me as a DM who doesn't play 4E, I get satisfaction and fun from roleplaying monsters - but doing this was suicide. If I didn't treat every group of monsters
100% optimally it was simply a walk over.
Most importantly it was a completely trivial walk over. Combat would take 5-6 rounds but it would be boring. The monsters didn't do much and the players didn't do much either - because I would deliberately try to chain stun/daze/dominate them. In fact dominate because the go to power and every single combat - every single one - revolved around if the monsters that could dominate actually did so or not. You can imagine this isn't very fun for the players involved and really it's purely artificial challenge.
The response to this was to start ratcheting up ELs. I started with an EL+2 as my "base" encounter - I no longer regarded an EL = 0 as worth anything frankly. Then I started to really optimize encounters and think immensely tactically. I made monsters that created zones, solos that could thwart conditions or had intrinsic action like mechanisms. In many ways I am thankful for this period because it really did make me a really good DM and forced me to get the most out of 4E as a system - but without blatantly breaking the rules.
Of course each encounter was taking me
three hours to make.
Three hours. That was because I had to really think about all elements of an encounter and how they interacted to make them challenging, fun and not have to rely on things like repeatedly stunning the PCs. Even then, a single mistake and it could be trivialized. All the while my PCs were gaining more power every level and I had to adjust to constantly expanding sets of powers. For example the original pre-errata Legion's Hold*, which was a close burst 20 and stunned everything (or dazed everything on a miss). This meant that any open encounter was automatically trivialized.
Monsters just flat out couldn't deal with this by themselves for numerous reasons.
1) They couldn't do enough on their own turns anyway. I think I once kept track of the amount of damage a group of level 26 monsters did in one combat. I believe it was something like a whole 50 points of damage - across five PCs. Big whoop.
2) PCs could largely negate a lot of attacks - something that doesn't get mentioned much in these discussions. Reactions and interrupt attacks/actions that could simply restore a PCs HP in response to damage (and this was also pre-surgeless healing nerfs) or just plain negate attacks (EG Shield) meant what monsters did do was easily ignored. They wouldn't get another chance to do anything most of the time either.
3) The dwarven defender had come and get it, combined with a muticlass to warpriest granting him pretty ridiculous AC. The point of this was that he could easily draw in every creature and then pretty much ignore all the damage done. Whatever damage that wasn't just healed due to the clerics surgeless healing powers anyway. This also conveniently sat all monsters in a group to be killed by the Wizard/Sorcerers AoE attacks.
My responses to these were to think again very cleverly about how the monsters in the encounter worked. A good example was exploiting the parties distinct weakness against flying creatures I observed in one encounter. A beholder could hover 4 squares up and pound the party into submission almost without fear. Due to their general lack of range and importantly - the lack of many abilities that could knock it prone or pull the creature to the ground - the beholder could last for ages. It took little damage and could spam eye rays to its heart content. But again this was simply chipping away slowly at HP -
extending combat - not making it inherently more fun or tactical.
Speaking of tactics, the PCs tactics were always pretty straightforward and never required a lot of particular forethought. The fighter grabbed all the creatures together with one of the two come and get it like powers (there is an epic one as well!). Then just bomb the resulting mess with AoE powers on action points - using feats like martial recovery and power regaining features of the archmage to get back dailies used. The result was pretty much killing everything trivially and minimal damage. This tactic was only thwarted when I used
huge areas, particularly with line of effect blocking but not line of sight blocking terrain (EG huge glass floors and similar). Pretty much if they could do this it was always the optimal thing to do - there was never any thought and the situation barely mattered.
Then came MM3 right towards the end of the game. It came out about level 27 in this game and its effects were immediate. Although I had no understand at the time of the new base math, I usually got away with copying stats from roughly similar monsters - or outright using them.
The difference was shocking. The PCs tactic of come and get it and bombared backfired instantly. The fighter ate dirt on -20 HP after a single round -
absolutely unprecedented in the game to that point. The cleric had to use his demigod HP feature for the second time in the entire epic tier. The sorcerer actually took damage. The wizard couldn't trivially lock down everything (reflavored Serpents of Nihal drove him
bananas incidentally). The Barbarians huge horde of HP was actually worth something.
And
all this chaos? In a single EL 27 encounter - that is just 5 standard MM3 monsters. The new damage - and powers - allowed the monsters to be more mobile and hit harder. They could actually do something to the PCs and generally get somewhere. Poor tactics - contrary to Tony's assertions about pre-MM3 being more tactics (I honestly can't fathom how) - were punished severely. No longer could they do the same thing every single combat and get away with it. Brutes that targeted a NAD would tear the fighter to pieces in only a few hits - so if he bit off more than he could chew it was frankly completely lethal.
Suddenly combats became shorter - I wasn't bothering with so much stun/daze/dominate anymore - but more violent. At the same time, they were infinitely more tactical for their preparation time than combats I spent three hours carefully metagaming. Mistakes would cause PCs to go down or even risk death. All creatures needed to be treated like threats - not just figuring out whatever had the most obnoxious status effects and killing it to clean up the remaining creatures. Power use had to be more considered, because an EL+2 encounter could devastate the party if ran into in an unprepared state.
So not only did MM3 speed up my combats - I needed to use less monsters to actually challenge the party - but it also reduced my prep time. It had corresponding effects in making PCs need better tactics to get through encounters - because a few wrong moves and you could end up in huge trouble. The new monsters also felt like epic creatures - their powers kept up with what PCs could do and had interesting interactions. Their tactical possibilities were just fantastic and meant that one dood, hiding in the back you ignored all combat - that was a
bad mistake.
Overall I just couldn't go back to the pre-MM3 damage levels. Even if I do mulch through my PCs healing surges, the alternative was long, boring combats that pretty much played the same way 99% of the time anyway. You couldn't pay me to go back to that.
*Incidentally for those wondering about my dismissal of the power creep argument from Tony I will state again, it's another
Players Handbook power. Combined with being used multiple times by an ED,
from the Players Handbook. Legions hold was ridiculous once per day, when it could be used multiple times a day it was just plain bonkers and incredibly hard to deal with.
