D&D 4E 4e Dungeon Design - New Article

[Andor]

A new article up on wizards. Here it is.

Interesting stuff. More dynamic encounters. Monsters actually responding to what's going on around them. Massively out numbered PCs. Sounds sweet!

But what's up with the homework?

 

[Mouseferatu]

Here it is.

I'm Ari Marmell, and I approve this message.

Seriously, I like the sound of that... with one caveat.

I don't want to see the "one or two monsters in an isolated room" encounter vanish completely. I have no problem with it being almost gone, but sometimes it's still appropriate. It's going to be tough designing a reason for every area in a dungeon to provide tactical avenues to other areas, or to be wide enough to allow a blitz attack.

But honestly, I don't think it'll be an issue. So far, nothing I've seen has suggested absolutes. Heck, even though 4E is focused on groups, the sample combat we've seen was against a single dragon.

So I think I'm good. And I love the idea of most combats being closer to what Mike described.

 

[Baron Opal]

I like that concept of expanded tactics. The last time I ran a large battle was against an army of lizardmen against some 6th level characters. It was about 50:1 odds, and the PCs prevailed a little too easily in my opinion. The lizardfolk were unable to harm the fighters and the rogues and magicans constantly manoeuvered out of reach. I didn't realize at first that the lizardfolk would need and extra +3 to attack to be a viable threat

 

[KarinsDad]

Monsters actually responding to what's going on around them. Massively out numbered PCs. Sounds sweet!

This is nothing new. DMs have been doing this for decades. It came into dungeons in the early 80s along with latrines.

 

[Andor]

This is nothing new. DMs have been doing this for decades. It came into dungeons in the early 80s along with latrines.

Oh please. I remember the dungeons of the early '80s. They no more had latrines than the Enterprise or Versailles does.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I like that concept of expanded tactics. The last time I ran a large battle was against an army of lizardmen against some 6th level characters. It was about 50:1 odds, and the PCs prevailed a little too easily in my opinion. The lizardfolk were unable to harm the fighters and the rogues and magicans constantly manoeuvered out of reach. I didn't realize at first that the lizardfolk would need and extra +3 to attack to be a viable threat

Sounds like Blackwall Keep. I had the same thing happen. Fly plus fireball. Bleh.

 

[Beckett]

I don't want to see the "one or two monsters in an isolated room" encounter vanish completely. I have no problem with it being almost gone, but sometimes it's still appropriate. It's going to be tough designing a reason for every area in a dungeon to provide tactical avenues to other areas, or to be wide enough to allow a blitz attack.

As you say, I don't think these will go away. I don't think Mike's schedule is free enough that he can stand behind each of us with a baseball bat while we're designing encounters.

I am looking forward to this being the new standard. I've faced the same problem brought up at the start of the article, and for years I've judged encounter difficulty by guesstimation, intuition, and luck, rather than the printed EL rules.

I'm not going to speculate on what he means by "minion" rules, but I am intrigued.

 

[Mouseferatu]

As you say, I don't think these will go away. I don't think Mike's schedule is free enough that he can stand behind each of us with a baseball bat while we're designing encounters.

Well, no. But I wasn't clear; I was speaking as a designer as much as a gamer. Sometimes I'll want to do the "lone room" in a published scenario, if that's what makes sense.

But again, I don't think that'll be a problem. I don't really believe that such things will be gone, just that they'll be a lot less common. And that's just fine.

 

[Kunimatyu]

Most excellent - this has been the way I've been designing encounters in my 3.5 games for a while now, and it's refreshing to see that it'll be easy to do that out of the box. Dungeon crawls may be classic, but my group absolutely loathes the "fight one monster in a room" scenario unless it's versus a solo boss-monster type, so I imagine there'll be more than a little bit of cheering at this.

 

[Samnell]

Interesting stuff. More dynamic encounters. Monsters actually responding to what's going on around them. Massively out numbered PCs. Sounds sweet!

I thought that was the reason they gave monsters listen and spot scores in 3e...so a fight somewhere in the dungeon could be heard or seen by monsters elsewhere who may come to help or prepare ambushes.

...at least that's how I've been shamelessly playing the game since 2000, and ELs be damned. If the party is dumb enough to do something like stand around after the alarm bell rings (this actually happened) for several rounds without even asking for a skill check to figure out what that might mean about their attempt to bluff their way in the gates, they've set themselves up for overwhelming odds and they should take the complex's rapid response team to the face. I threw virtually the whole Main Gate complex in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil at them for that one. Earlier the same party got almost everything in the Moathouse dungeon level coming at them from two directions. The only consideration I have for the PCs at times like this is to try not to trap them into a TPK.

Maybe I'm weird that way. My players tell me that they're always waiting for the other shoe to drop, but I don't think that's fair. My shoes don't come in anything so small as sets of two. Bipedalism is for players.