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

[Henry]

And really, does a lizardman need a loin cloth?

Because he's anatomically correct, and I'm thanking my lucky stars that the lizard-man's got that much foresight.

 

[grimslade]

It's not that the dungeon reacts to intrusion; it's that 3 rooms are linked as one encounter. None of the individual rooms; ie Bugbear, Hobs and Gobs is a good threat alone. Linked they make a tough fight.
If the party hit the torturers room first, the tactics would change because the environment changed, but the result would be similar. If the ranger and rogue hadn't muffed their stealth checks, the minions might have been taken out before raising the alarm, changing the dynamic again. The dungeon itself is becoming more of a component of an encounter. It is not just for breaking up the 3 combats a day.

 

[Jer]

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!

As some others have been saying - some of us have been doing this stuff for a while. In fact, Wizards has been doing this type of encounter design for a while - this is part of the whole "new encounter format" that they've been using. Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, for example, includes a lot of encounters kinda like this - connected rooms making up the encounter instead of a single room, notes on which creatures will hear cries from other rooms in the encounter, etc. That part really isn't all that new, even for Wizards. It's good to hear that they're going to be taking this into account from the beginning, and probably making this the standard for encounter design in the DMG, but it's not really new.

OTOH - the bits that Mearls drops about encounter balance - I like those bits. I know they've been floating around as rumors for the last week or so, but it's nice to see confirmation. I really, really like the idea that the "standard" encounter is one where you have as many creatures as characters - it makes for easy balance and it fits more with my playstyle - that was how I'd always "balance" encounters in Basic/Expert/etc. D&D - 6 3rd level characters? Throw them against 6 3-HD monsters. It didn't always work perfectly (HD is a gross tool to use for comparing power levels, even in Basic D&D), but anything that brings that dynamic back is good by me.

Now, if we could get some idea on how they plan to balance those encounters where you WANT everyone beating on a single monster I'd be happy. Sometimes you want that ogre, or giant, or dragon, or pit fiend, or avatar of a dark god to be a single creature that the PCs beat on - I'd like to see what guidelines they're going to give for setting up those types of threats.

 

[F4NBOY]

As for the minion rules, I could be wrong but these MAY refer to something similar to the nonheroic character class from Star Wars Saga. The comments about "much less difference between level X and level X + 1" makes me think this is the case - the nonheroic levels are built to basically give a being more skill ranks and BAB, and that's about it (d4's for hit points, no feats or talents other than by level, etc.)

I hope not Henry.
Separating characters into "heroic" and "non-heroic" is a pretty dumb rule IMO, and is one of those rules designed to simulate cheesy action movies. If the characters can kill dozens of mooks, they should be able to do simply because they are powerful enough. The rules must make sense and be cohesive, otherwise, different combat rules for each type of opponent just looks like cheating to me.

 

[Imaro]

Not sure how I feel about 4 or 5 1st level adventurers being able to take on twenty enemies. I could see having minion(mook rules), but isn't this the same as sending a horde of weaker monsters against a party of higher level adventurers? I guess we'll have to wait and see, how exactly they pull this off, but all that's registering from this article is that there will be a definite increase in the power levels of the PC's and an increase in sales oif minis...in fact it almost sounds like D&D is becoming more like Exalted. I guess that could be cool but at 1st level(besides when I want something that high powered I play Exalted)?

I guess one of my concerns with this type of design is the opposite of the why can a house cat put up a fight against an adventurer...in other words, if goblins or other monsters are so easy to slaughter by the dozens, why do people even need adventurers to combat them? I'll wait and see but I am definitely ambivalent towards this design direction, again it seems to coincide with the feeling that 4e's design motto is more power, more enemies, more abilities...just MORE of everything. This could be good, but I have seen next to nothing about making all this more, easier to run, teach and play.

 

[Andor]

Because he's anatomically correct, and I'm thanking my lucky stars that the lizard-man's got that much foresight.

But... An anatomically correct lizard has no external genitalia. I guess he is a lizardMAN!

 

[hexgrid]

I may be misreading the article, but I'm not seeing anything different here from what I've seen DMs do for literally decades. What am I missing? (no cheap shots at Mearls, please)

The difference is that this is hard to do if you follow 3.e encounter balance guidelines- so the change is most significant for those working on published modules.

 

[Intrope]

Ditto!

This preview was really interesting, but I have to say, that lizardman has a serious case of overbite!

Is that a lizardman or a kobold? (My first reaction was 'what a cute little kobold! It almost looks like it could actually hurt someone! It's really stumpy-looking for a Lizardman, but it's rather thick-bodied for a kobold. And that's a wicked underbite, there!

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

With the fight mearls described, facing multiple rooms' monsters at once, approaching from all sides, came about *entirely* from a player decision. They went past a door without checking it.

If they'd stopped at the door to #7 (which I would do-- never leave a door at my back) then then all the goblins from #8 and #9 would have responded. Not quite as bad a situation, but still not great.

The bugbear deserves what he gets for not having a secret back door out of his room. Ideally, I'd have a secret door on the south wall into the passage near #8. The bugbear can slip back towards his escape route, drawing the PCs into #7, and the rest of his minions can come in from behind.

The bugbear should also have the bar thrown across his door. A little noise trying to break that down alerts the goblins in #9, who respond with missile fire. As the PCs charge towards #9, the bugbear and the goblins from #8 can surround them.

Anyhow, plenty of realistic examples that don't assume the PCs to act in an atypical fashion.

 

[JVisgaitis]

Pretty cool. What really piques my curiosity is the minion rules and a 1st-level partt taking on 20 goblins. That sounds awesome. I do hope the new combat rules are quick, as dealing with combats like that in current 3.5 would really cause the game to crawl.

I hope minions are mooks with like no hit points and it finally makes Cleave a much more useful option. When I think of Cleave, I think of a Fighter hacking down 3 or 4 foes in a single round. With minion rules it seems like this could be a more common occurence. That sounds awesome!