4e Creatures, Not Scary?

[LostSoul]

But when I take the monster manual off the shelf and look at the 24th level Eladrin Lich, I see 3d8+7 damage.

What you should be looking at is "and the target is stunned until the end of the lich's next turn."

That's the scary part.

 

[pawsplay]

All my favorite 3e fights, player or GM, have been ones in which there was a real danger of someone going splat. That's like an action movie. 4e is more like a Final Fantasy game.

 

[Dragonblade]

All my favorite 3e fights, player or GM, have been ones in which there was a real danger of someone going splat. That's like an action movie. 4e is more like a Final Fantasy game.

The last action movie I saw was Transporter 3. At no point in the film, even when he jumped his car onto the top of a moving train, did I ever feel like Frank Martin (Jason Statham) was in any danger of going splat.

On the contrary, I have played many video games where the outcome was in doubt and the action suspenseful since my survival was not guaranteed.

 

[Jack99]

I guess there's just a part of me that misses the devastatingly painful creatures. I know that design-wise the new way makes sense, I just miss it a little.

Well you get action points to emulate the burst damage/scary things.

In my version of KotS, the hobgoblins were lead by a elite. The players had already interrogated a few goblins and a hobgoblins, so they had heard of this Chief WhatshisName. They knew he was a bad-ass. So when they were approching what they thought to be his lair, they sent the superstealthy rogue to scout and see if there was an ambush. For once, the rogue failed his stealth, and coming around a corner, the Chief charged right into the surprised rogue and hit him hard with his bastard sword (that was the surprise round). Initiative. Chief WhatshisName won it, and started. Double attack (he is an elite after all). Action point. Double attack. Permadead player. Not even a death save he got. Went straight to more than minus bloodied. And this was not some crazy sick monster that was higher level. Players were 3rd or 4th level, and the Chief was one level higher (and elite).

MY point is, its' still possible to put a scare into players with burst damage. But to do that, you need help from elites and solos. Which imo fits great, because those are the monsters that are supposed to be scary (imo)

All my favorite 3e fights, player or GM, have been ones in which there was a real danger of someone going splat. That's like an action movie. 4e is more like a Final Fantasy game.

You should play 4e (if you have) with a better DM.

 

[Blizzardb]

You should play 4e (if you have) with a better DM.

Oh yes, I agree.

In my last 4E game as a player my character was the last man standing in a fight with a bunch of hobgoblins. At 3 HP, after finishing 3 of the enemies by himself! 2 of other characters were dead, the last I managed to save at the last death save. Good times!

In my last game as a DM, the party survived the last fight seemingly by a miracle. The fight turned bad for them and they had to retreat through a magic portal with 2 men down. One of the 2 characters still standing was at 1 HP left! I'll say it again - good times!

So yes, in my experience, 4th edition fights are both exciting and dramatic, even more so than in previous editions. And the monsters are scary - my players are already developing dinosaur fobias after the last fight, not to mention they hate spiders after their mate was eaten by a bloodweb swarm...

And if this is different for anyone, maybe, just maybe, he is doing it wrong.

 

[delericho]

In our one (and, thus far, only) 4e session to date, we had a TPK brought about by kobolds. Kobolds.

Given the reaction of my group to this event, I think 4e monsters are plenty scary.

That said, I do find miniatures (or other representative tokens) reduce the menace of a creature. Sure, the DM can describe a benighted monster, jaws dripping with acidic drool, eyes aflame with malice... but when the miniature goes down, it's reduced to a small lump of moulded plastic. And it really doesn't help that so many of the D&D Minis are cartoonish.

But that's not a 4e issue, except in that that game has a greater reliance on minis than even 3.5e (which went too far in that direction for my taste).

 

[Runestar]

Have you trying running epic level fights? A "mere" 3d8+7 is an average of 20.5 damage, which is about a tenth of an epic-level defender's HP.

Everything is relative.

In a 3.5 one-shot, I once pitted a high lv party against 3 elder elementals, each with 5 lvs of warblade, swordsage and crusader respectively (EL19). My players thought they had the battle in the bag when the 2 casters in the party promptly forcecaged one of the foes and mazed the other. But I fought back by having the mazed elemental iron-heart surge his way out of the maze, shadow blink to the fighter, activate his belt of battle for an extra full-round action, then proceed to initiate time stands still, followed by 2 full-attacks (I think the fighter survived just by a few hp). The other caged elemental too 'ported out of the forcecage, then upped the ante with diamond nightmare blade of his own, for 200+ damage to the cleric (killing him instantly). The 3rd elemental was no slacker, using strike of vitality to heal the majority of its wounds.

So yeah, in that 1 round, my players went from confident to crapping in their pants.

I probably won't expect to see this sort of scenario in 4e, even with solos using action points to make the equivalent of 2 full attacks against a single PC.

As pointed out my Mearls, 4e does away with this sort of "rocket tag" in favour of a slow, gradual decline towards sheer, utter helplessness. Probably for the better, but I still can't stop chuckling whenever I think about it. Definitely one of my more memorable battles.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

It's like I've said since 4e came out. It plays a lot different than it reads. I've seen more hp loss and more dropping-to-zero-hp in 4e than I ever saw in 3.5. Less death, overall, granted, but more "holy crap, this is a difficult fight."

For a couple of levels, my players were scared of elven archers.

 

[avin]

...there was a real danger of someone going splat. That's like an action movie.

The protagonist never dies on action movies... there's no danger around those movies

 

[SlyFlourish]

I saw that same danger in the heroic tier as well. Kalarel was a real bad-ass as were most of the elites in that module. As my group has leveled up, though, the battles seem to go more and more in their favor.

At epic level, especially if they have Epic Destines, they party has so many ways to overcome damage. Between damage resistance, healing items, and healing powers, I can't find any way to kill off an equally leveled epic-tier dwarf fighter whose trying not to die.

Granted a group of guys can do it, but taking the example of the hobgoblin that downed a party member off the surprise round, I can't see a Lich doing that in the epic tier. I did the math and a lich getting the same advantages as the hobgoblin would do about 80 damage to a rogue with about 140 hitpoints. It would seem the only way a lich can really down a character is if he has a big friend with him.

I saw that same danger in the heroic tier as well. Kalarel was a real bad-ass as were most of the elites in that module. As my group has leveled up, though, the battles seem to go more and more in their favor.

At epic level, especially if they have Epic Destines, they party has so many ways to overcome damage. Between damage resistance, healing items, and healing powers, I can't find any way to kill off an equally leveled epic-tier dwarf fighter whose trying not to die.

Granted a group of guys can do it, but taking the example of the hobgoblin that downed a party member off the surprise round, I can't see a Lich doing that in the epic tier. I did the math and a lich getting the same advantages as the hobgoblin would do about 80 damage to a rogue with about 140 hitpoints. It would seem the only way a lich can really down a character is if he has a big friend with him.

I was thinking about what sort of brute would work well and I found the level 23 Glabrezou. That guy's a machine of killing. He's got minor action damage dealing effects, big melee attacks, and a fair bit of powerful spells. He seems a lot tougher than the lich one level higher. I think the lich as written is just underpowered.

On the movie angle, while the main characters rarely die, there is always an instant-kill threat around. They're either getting shot at or there's some big laser threatening to cut off their nards. One-hit-kill threats are all around, they just don't usually work.