4e DMs: Allow players a 5 minute rest after EVERY encounter?

[Majoru Oakheart]

That seems like an exaggeration; 2 PL +0 encounters together > PL +4, which the DMG lists as the top end of 'hard but doable'. IME you have to get up around PL +6 before you're likely to actually defeat the PCs.

Not really. I've actually ran 2 encounters together. It resulted in a near TPK. It's possible, but it's certainly more difficult than a PL+4, which I've run before as well.

The problem is the number of actions they get. 5 enemies who are level 10 are a PL+4 encounter for 5 level 6 characters. That'll be very hard. If you have 2 PL+2 encounters for a total of 10 level 8 creatures....it's very likely that the PCs are all dead. It doubles their damage output each round. It double the hitpoints of the encounter. It's likely that the hitpoint total nor the damage total of the level 10 monsters is actually double that of the level 6 monsters.

The number of monsters is actually MORE important than the level of the monsters you use.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Not really. I've actually ran 2 encounters together. It resulted in a near TPK. It's possible, but it's certainly more difficult than a PL+4, which I've run before as well.

The problem is the number of actions they get. 5 enemies who are level 10 are a PL+4 encounter for 5 level 6 characters. That'll be very hard. If you have 2 PL+2 encounters for a total of 10 level 8 creatures....it's very likely that the PCs are all dead. It doubles their damage output each round. It double the hitpoints of the encounter. It's likely that the hitpoint total nor the damage total of the level 10 monsters is actually double that of the level 6 monsters.

The number of monsters is actually MORE important than the level of the monsters you use.

By letting monsters arrive in wave, you can turn the action economy in favor of the PCs again, and still have PL+4 and higher encounters. Essentially, the enemies have less time to deal damage to the PCs than the PCs have time to deal damage to them.

Still, it will exhaust the PCs resources - They will probably use most of their daily resouces in such encounters.

I did this a few times running Thunderspire Labrynth. The encounters didn't seem very difficult in some areas, and some of the NPCs (in the Duergar base, IIRC) managed to run away, alerting his allies in the next room. That triggered the second encounter. It took the PCs all their resources to survive that one, but they did...

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

By letting monsters arrive in wave, you can turn the action economy in favor of the PCs again, and still have PL+4 and higher encounters. Essentially, the enemies have less time to deal damage to the PCs than the PCs have time to deal damage to them.

Yep, there are ways to mitigate this. But the point that Andy Collins and Mike Mearls were making when they talked to us was in their tests THEY were surprised to see just how much difference 2 encounters at once made to the difficulty of an encounter. This was still during beta, so they said they had just tried it for the first time about a month beforehand and that it resulted in the unexpected TPK of the entire group.

They pointed out that the best way to scale an encounter was with higher level enemies than with greater number of enemies because all the enemies being given one level generally had less impact on a combat than even a single additional enemy. It was easier and more predictable to add levels.

 

[S'mon]

When I said "Party Level +4" I was thinking of more monsters, not just higher level monsters. I don't recall the DMG or DMG2 saying anywhere "Don't use more monsters!" - quite the reverse in fact. So I don't think this made it into the DMG.

I *do* think that when the fight goes pear-shaped a TPK is more likely when there are lots of monsters* rather than a few tough ones, but that is a separate issue from encounter difficulty per se.

*My recent near-TPK was an EL+7 fight with 40 Orc Drudge minions (39 of whom died very fast), 4 Orc Raiders (2 started wounded), 1 Orc Berserker, and a half-orc plague priest controller, who did most of the PC-killing. Several posters on rpgnet expressed surprise the PCs lost, decided my players must be crappy etc.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

When I said "Party Level +4" I was thinking of more monsters, not just higher level monsters. I don't recall the DMG or DMG2 saying anywhere "Don't use more monsters!" - quite the reverse in fact. So I don't think this made it into the DMG.

No, it wouldn't have. The DMG was almost completely written before they even discovered the issue. From my discussions at DDXP that year with R&D, I got the impression that they were fairly certain the math worked and that it could be stretched...but they weren't sure how far they could stretch it.

The math was designed for a number of enemies equal to the number of PCs (with 4 Minions replacing one of the monsters, 2 of the monsters "combining" to make an Elite, and 4 of the monsters "combining" to make a Solo). With the levels of the monsters being +/- about 4 from the PCs. Adding or removing one monster is an acceptable way to increase or decrease an encounter. But going more than one enemy in either direction starts skewing the math(due to the number of attacks and total hitpoints the enemies have).

While I was talking with them it was mentioned that a couple of people around the office were attempting to see how far the system would bend, whether it was possible to run an encounter with just one monster of level 10 against a party of level 1 characters and so on. They were surprised exactly how far the system could bend. But still, they recommended we don't try to push it too far when writing adventures.

Essentially, it's better to know that the enemies have 5 attacks each round, each with about a 50% chance to hit for X damage that is appropriate for their level. Increasing the level of all the enemies by 1 increases their damage and hitpoints by about 5-10%. Increasing the number of enemies by one generally increases their damage and hitpoints by 20% as well as giving them 20% more actions to do non-combat related activities. This can make a pretty big difference.

 

[jbear]

Running two encounters together should be done only occaisionally and for concrete reasons beyond 'wandering monsters interrupt your rest.... again'.

I like to push my players to the limits but when healing runs out, people are going to die. The night I ran two encounters together, eveyone died. As it was only the secondary campaign we run when some players cant make it to the main game, and a precreated module (kotsf), I was more predisposed to have a heavy hand. And to tell you the truth I didn't really have fun anhialating them. It felt dirty. They didn't have fun either and a very enjoyable campaign died (and yes, my players really enjoyed KotSF). That was my experience, yours may vary.

 

[jbear]

double post

 

[Hussar]

Funnily enough, in the game I play in on Tuesdays, we had consecutive encounters. First one was tough, but, not too tough. Second one was very, very hard. Two PC's down (although no one died) and two PC's a round from dropping before the baddies all fell down.

So, yeah, it's doable, but, wow, is it nasty.

I have a question for those much more experienced than me, what about three in a row?

 

[Obryn]

Frankly, I'm with the folks who don't see any real difference in 4e between one long encounter, and two shorter ones without a rest.

Without a rest, you don't heal, you don't recover encounter powers, you don't lose your end-of-encounter stuff, and so on. There's zero difference between two encounters without a short rest, and one encounter with two waves of foes.

-O

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Frankly, I'm with the folks who don't see any real difference in 4e between one long encounter, and two shorter ones without a rest.

Without a rest, you don't heal, you don't recover encounter powers, you don't lose your end-of-encounter stuff, and so on. There's zero difference between two encounters without a short rest, and one encounter with two waves of foes.

-O

There is a big difference depending on how you design encounters. The long encounter could be 1 monster of party level plus 3 or so and with stacks of minions instead of regular monsters so that it is just a hard encounter but they come in waves.
The two encounters with no rest would be at least party members x2 number of monsters depending on the difficulty.