But how have you been doing that in 3e?
Or have you been playing a different rpg before 4e?
4e Buyers remorse
- Thread starter Aramax
- Start date
Or have you been playing a different rpg before 4e?
Lord Zardoz
Explorer
Terrain is most important with multiple monsters
I am going to disagree with some of your points here, while conceding that it is entirely possible that 3rd Edition has increased your preptime.
Regarding preset encounters vs 'pull it together from what makes most sense for the moment', I can see your point. If you basically pull an arbitrary amount of monsters from whatever the scenario of the moment can offer, then you may have more work when your selecting which monsters to use. But there are two factors which need to be considered here.
First, you like to "have monsters and people on hand that I can toss in on the fly". The only difference I can see between 3rd and 4th is that when you prepare your list of monsters to have on hand, you need to provide for the roles, and keep a few rough encounter templates in hand (ie: Soldiers and Artillery, Mass brutes, Elite with weak lurker) and just fill in some numbers. You can probably eyeball the raw number of creatures to use if you keep the rough proportions right.
Second, 3rd Edition truly sucked if you were going to use more then two different types of monsters in a fight. There were two ways to deal with this problem. You could either run a small number of strong monsters, or a large number of weak monsters. Weak monsters did not have many options, so there is not much decision making beyond 'move here, attack this target'. Strong monsters might have a bunch of options, but then you only need to learn and use one option set. (Before I get complaints, I concede now that most DM's who went for few stronger monsters would use 2 or 3 strong ones). I could run a 3rd Edition fight with 5 or 10 Ogres or 4 Manticores very easily. But if I wanted to run an evil adventuring party with a Sword and Board Fighter, an Archer built ranger, a Sorcerer, and a Bard, the fight would slow to a crawl.
I mention this because I am the kind of DM that liked to use lots of weaker monsters in 3rd Edition. For me figuring out compelling terrain features has always been a problem. Interesting terrain is not generally the kind of thing you can just wing easily. But because 4th Edition made a point of having larger encounters, that style is harder to work with. With just 2 or 3 enemies, movement does not matter so much once the players dogpile someone.
I would say that 4th Edition will generally reduce your preptime, but it will demand a certain minimum level of prep that you might not be used to if you are not in the habit of using large encounters.
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I am going to disagree with some of your points here, while conceding that it is entirely possible that 3rd Edition has increased your preptime.
Regarding preset encounters vs 'pull it together from what makes most sense for the moment', I can see your point. If you basically pull an arbitrary amount of monsters from whatever the scenario of the moment can offer, then you may have more work when your selecting which monsters to use. But there are two factors which need to be considered here.
First, you like to "have monsters and people on hand that I can toss in on the fly". The only difference I can see between 3rd and 4th is that when you prepare your list of monsters to have on hand, you need to provide for the roles, and keep a few rough encounter templates in hand (ie: Soldiers and Artillery, Mass brutes, Elite with weak lurker) and just fill in some numbers. You can probably eyeball the raw number of creatures to use if you keep the rough proportions right.
Second, 3rd Edition truly sucked if you were going to use more then two different types of monsters in a fight. There were two ways to deal with this problem. You could either run a small number of strong monsters, or a large number of weak monsters. Weak monsters did not have many options, so there is not much decision making beyond 'move here, attack this target'. Strong monsters might have a bunch of options, but then you only need to learn and use one option set. (Before I get complaints, I concede now that most DM's who went for few stronger monsters would use 2 or 3 strong ones). I could run a 3rd Edition fight with 5 or 10 Ogres or 4 Manticores very easily. But if I wanted to run an evil adventuring party with a Sword and Board Fighter, an Archer built ranger, a Sorcerer, and a Bard, the fight would slow to a crawl.
I mention this because I am the kind of DM that liked to use lots of weaker monsters in 3rd Edition. For me figuring out compelling terrain features has always been a problem. Interesting terrain is not generally the kind of thing you can just wing easily. But because 4th Edition made a point of having larger encounters, that style is harder to work with. With just 2 or 3 enemies, movement does not matter so much once the players dogpile someone.
I would say that 4th Edition will generally reduce your preptime, but it will demand a certain minimum level of prep that you might not be used to if you are not in the habit of using large encounters.
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Mark
CreativeMountainGames.com
I've never experienced this problem in any edition (I haven't tried it in 4E). It always seems to run just as fast as any other encounter but also provide for interesting variety, particularly since the players are not aware necessarily what class NPCs might be, what level, or what sort of items they might have. Although I guess 4E NPCs are meant to be stripped down, I'm not aware of anything that would stop an DM from using the CB to generate a party of evil NPCs and play them in the same way. I don't use the DDI but this seems as if it would be quite easy to do? I fail to see why 4E would be any slower on the prep for an evil party rather than monsters nor why it would be any more difficult to run an evil NPC party than monsters in 4E. What am I missing?
Haffrung Helleyes
First Post
Encounter Complexity
What I've seen over the last decade DMing 3.X (and now Pathfinder) is that the ability to run a large encounter rapidly varies greatly from DM to DM.
I'm confident that I would have no issues running the aforementioned NPC adventurer party quickly -- I regularly run battles 2 or 3 times that size and my players have no complaints -- but I have a very solid grasp of the rules, I'm very good at doing math quickly in my head, and I've been DMing for 30 years.
The thing that's difficult in 3.X and Pathfinder is prep time -- creating all those monsters/NPCs takes far longer than it did in earlier editions, due to the need to pick feats and skills, which in turn affect combat modifiers.
I would think that 4E would be much, much easier in this regard -- you've got electronic tools for monster creation/encounter building , and 4E monster statblocks seem to be simpler to create.
Ken
What I've seen over the last decade DMing 3.X (and now Pathfinder) is that the ability to run a large encounter rapidly varies greatly from DM to DM.
I'm confident that I would have no issues running the aforementioned NPC adventurer party quickly -- I regularly run battles 2 or 3 times that size and my players have no complaints -- but I have a very solid grasp of the rules, I'm very good at doing math quickly in my head, and I've been DMing for 30 years.
The thing that's difficult in 3.X and Pathfinder is prep time -- creating all those monsters/NPCs takes far longer than it did in earlier editions, due to the need to pick feats and skills, which in turn affect combat modifiers.
I would think that 4E would be much, much easier in this regard -- you've got electronic tools for monster creation/encounter building , and 4E monster statblocks seem to be simpler to create.
Ken
catsclaw227
First Post
I am running 4e right now, though my experience levels and expertise with 3.x are pretty much identical to yours.
I dig 3.x, but I started finding that creating NPC enemy parties to help challenge the higher level PCs (13+ level) was time consuming and my prep time was soon more than actual game time.
When I run 4e, my prep time has fallen dramatically, and I can spend more time on story and other parts of encounter design like maps and terrain elements.
The 4e statblocks are much simpler. DMing has become much easier and more fun, though these facts don't necessarily mean the playing of the game is more or less fun because of it.
To the OP, I agree with taking a break. Talk to your min/max player and find out why he/she needs to feel responsible for min/maxing the rest of the party. Is he trying to suggest powers and actions in game as well as out of game?
Also, if 4e is not as fun for you, go back to the edition that you had most fun with. An edition change cannot ruin the fun of a 29 year campaign. Only people can do that.
Lord Zardoz
Explorer
What I may have failed to make clear is that the 'Evil NPC Adventurer Party' problem is something I encountered in 3rd Edition.
And that right there is pretty much the problem. For prep time, When your building an NPC based on a PC race / class, you have a HUGE number of problems. If you have ever ran a 3rd edition game where you had players roll up even a 7th or 8th level PC at the table at the start of the game, you know your going to lose between 1 and 2 hours as the players fiddle with skills, spells, feats, and what classes to chose, and that is with 1 pc per player.
Now when you go to run them in combat, odds are you are going to need to refer to what feats and weapons a warrior has when that NPC's turn comes along, and then work out the current attack and damage bonuses (ie: Ok, Full attack, using the 1st and 3rd attacks against PC Bob the Fighter, and the 2nd Attack against PC Jack the Theif. Initial attack on Bob is going to be a Disarm attempt. My Evil Fighter has a Bulls Strength, Bless and Prayer active. Don't forget the flanking bonus...). Then you have to decide what to cast for the Sorcerer this round, but chances are you do not recall every single spell, and perhaps you try for Black Tentacles, then run the summoned monster you called up last round, and then finally track the durations on whatever ongoing effects you cast previously.
The problem does not only apply to NPC adventurer types. It also applies to monsters that also have spell caster levels or a variety of spell like abilities. A reasonably powerful dragon in 3rd edition could just Bite. Or Claw. Or do Claw / Claw / Bite / Wing / Wing. Or maybe hit something with its tail. Or snatch / Grapple. Or use a breath weapon. Or cast something from its caster levels. Or use a spell like ability. Lots of options are nice, but I seriously doubt there are may people who have run an encounter with say, 3 Adult or older dragons of entirely different colors. The fewer unique effects and attacks you have to remember, the quicker you can decide what to do. The fewer modifiers and ongoing effects you have to track, the faster you can determine the relevant numbers to determine if an attack was a hit or a miss.
4th Edition monsters are simple. Some may still have many options, but every thing you need to know about every option available to a monster is in the stat block (with the exception of the exact definition of effects like Restrained vs Immobilized, which are on the DM screen).
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