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

[an_idol_mind]

If there's a focus on encounters reacting to the PCs, I'm curious as to how that effects the "per encounter" focus on abilities. What makes an encounter? If the PCs wipe out all the monsters in room 1 but make enough noise to draw the attention of the monsters in room 2, who then show up 2 rounds later, is that the beginning of a new encounter or a continuation of an old one?

 

[Grog]

If there's a focus on encounters reacting to the PCs, I'm curious as to how that effects the "per encounter" focus on abilities. What makes an encounter? If the PCs wipe out all the monsters in room 1 but make enough noise to draw the attention of the monsters in room 2, who then show up 2 rounds later, is that the beginning of a new encounter or a continuation of an old one?

Yes, that's another potential problem. The definition of "encounter" can get awfully fuzzy at times. Hopefully this will be addressed.

 

[Artoomis]

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.

Oh, I don't know - PC's (and their opponents) are supposed to be the really incredible folks who are a small percentage of the population - by some combination of natural ability, luck, skill and training. I like the idea of "minions" - remember way back when (original D&D) when a character could strike ordinary NPCs or low level monsters (1HD or less, I think) once per round per level? You could wade through the minions, as it should be!

I think we've kind of lost that flavor over the years.

 

[Artoomis]

If there's a focus on encounters reacting to the PCs, I'm curious as to how that effects the "per encounter" focus on abilities. What makes an encounter? If the PCs wipe out all the monsters in room 1 but make enough noise to draw the attention of the monsters in room 2, who then show up 2 rounds later, is that the beginning of a new encounter or a continuation of an old one?

We'll see what develops, but I suspect an "encounter" ends when you stop counting in rounds and start tracking time in minutes and hours again.

 

[WizarDru]

There is not a rule in 3E that characters must face 4 CR equivalent challenges in a day (or if there is, noone, and certainly not WotC has followed it). Rather, new DMs are advised to use this as a starting point. It's a good starting point, and its reasonably good advice so far as it goes, but its just a starting point.

I'm not sure what your answer there was, other than the fact that you were correct in that I should have said guidelines or suggestions instead of 'rules'. It sounded like you were saying that 4e's potential emphasis on giving guiding information about encounters has no place in the DMG because we more experienced DMs don't need it. The DMG II does a much better job, IMHO, of taking a DM by the hand and giving him an idea of what to expect and how to actually be a better DM (due in large part to Robin Laws' contributions).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Oh and SEE!!! 4E is not becoming World of Warcraft. In WoW you rarely fight with too many monsters at the same time, the few the better. Ha!

You're thinking of EQ1, where the entire game is set up to enable players to fight terribly unfair fights of six (or more) versus one and to punish you when you "fail" at this task.

In WoW, large melees with a 1:1 ratio are quite common.

 

[Remathilis]

If there's a focus on encounters reacting to the PCs, I'm curious as to how that effects the "per encounter" focus on abilities. What makes an encounter? If the PCs wipe out all the monsters in room 1 but make enough noise to draw the attention of the monsters in room 2, who then show up 2 rounds later, is that the beginning of a new encounter or a continuation of an old one?

If its Like SWSE, then an encounter ability "recharges" after 1 minute of rest. Using SAGA, a Jedi fighting Three waves of Storm Troopers, each showing up 2 round after the other, is still one "encounter" because the Jedi did not have the requisite 1 minute of rest between combat rounds to recover his force powers.

Of course, in SWSE, there are work-arounds to the one minute of rest rule (natural twenties on UtF, force point recharges, talents, etc) but the general rule is you could have ten one-round encounters or one ten-round encounter, but they still count as "one" for the purposes of encounter abilities unless you have a minute of rest between them.

 

[TwinBahamut]

If there's a focus on encounters reacting to the PCs, I'm curious as to how that effects the "per encounter" focus on abilities. What makes an encounter? If the PCs wipe out all the monsters in room 1 but make enough noise to draw the attention of the monsters in room 2, who then show up 2 rounds later, is that the beginning of a new encounter or a continuation of an old one?

Based on how WotC has handled per-encounter balancing so far, it is most liely that all encounter based abilities refresh after the characters take a minute or so to pause and catch their breaths. The time frame of a minute seems to come up pretty specifically.

As such, the "2 rounds later" attack would probably count as the same encounter, as far as encounter based abilities are concerned.

The confusion over this issue is the big reason I hate the term "per-encounter ability," even though I like the concept.

 

[Korgoth]

We should all still be playing OD&D.

Alright, dude. You've talked me into it! Let it never be said that I went to EN World and didn't follow some of the advice given thereupon.

 

[Celebrim]

By this reasoning, there's no point in ever making any changes to the system.

It depends on what you are trying to change. I hate analogies, but I'll try one for the sake of illustration.

I think that gaming technology is just technology. It's a new technology, and its evolving as we better understand the technology, but eventually it will become a refined technology. At that point, its going to be running up against real world limitations.

For example, architectural technology is reasonably robust at this point. I can argue that there is no such thing as a perfect building, because there isn't. There are always tradeoffs in construction. If someone tells me that they can produce a building that sturdier, more attractive, and faster and cheaper to build than existing construction techniques, I'm going to be really skeptical. That doesn't mean that I think existing techniques can't be improved, just that I doubt that you've got something that revolutionary to do so given how long we've been building buildings.

I think we could all agree that improvements could be made in the CR/EL system. I've previously been a part of discussions like that. What I've never claimed and what I'm skeptical of is that fixes to the mechanics of the CR/EL system - the mechanics Mearls chooses to focus on in the article - would make it easier to run large groups of mooks against high level characters and still challenge them, while simultaneously running large groups of mooks against low level characters and not risking a TPK. First level characters aren't threated by 20 goblins because of the CR/EL system. They are threated by 20 goblins because they are 1st level characters. All the CR/EL system attempts to do is systematically document that.

First, I'm extremely skeptical that any algorithm can accurately document how big of a threat X monsters are to Y PC's in Z situation.

Secondly, when Mearls hints at the real mechanical change that might allow you to send 20 goblins against 1st level PC's as a normal encounter, he brings up an extremely gamist idea - 'minions' - an idea that you are equally skeptical of. I fully agree with you that if I want a weaker monster, I'd just like to use a weaker monster. Why I need a vague gamist concept like 'minion' to balance a monster against PC's I'm not sure. It might superficially sound ok for orcs to be mooks, but then its a concept of utility only at very low levels of play. If the concept scales, then its going to create really weird situations like 'minion' ogres, 'minion' fire giants, 'minion' priests of Set, 'minion' 10th level fighters, 'minion' dragons, etc. depending on what BBEG has as minions and what the level of the PC's is. One guys minion is another guys boss. It's another concept like 'encounter' that is uncomfortably vague and gamist. I actually fear all these gamist concepts will be so vague outside of the narrow context of the design, that they'll be more constraining on encounter design than a more universal simulationist approach would be.

We seem to be moving back to '0 level fighters' and 'turns' and other vague gamist concepts (remember when you had different scales depending whether you were inside or outside) all of which I was glad to move away from because they had such a narrow application and created so many problems when applied outside of that narrow application. These gamist approaches don't create flexibility - they pigeonhole - and so far Mearls is not showing that they will in turn 'streamline' the rules. I think there is a good reason for that. No game system in the industries history has ever been successful by moving from high detail to low detail. 'Rules Lite' systems are rarely successful, both because players become uncomfortable with them and the economics of publishing work against them. So claiming we are going all simple and streamlined in this edition requires me to fail a save to disbelieve check right off the bat.

And yes, I know that as a DM, I could wing it and build a big encounter for 3E. But that doesn't change the fact that working around a broken system is an unnecessary pain in the ass for a lot of people, and trying to change the system so it works better is a worthy design goal (though it remains to be seen how well it will actually work, of course).

So anyway, yes, fixing the system for assigning XP should be high on thier design goals, but doing so won't solve any of the problems of encounter design he focuses on in his article. If he wants to convince me that 20 goblins vs. 1st level PC's is no longer a problem, he's going to have to do something that convinces me that he hasn't just created another problem someplace else.