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

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

And as they are classed as Ordinaries-- sorry, Minions-- it is very easy to apply all sorts of other rules to them as the DM sees fit. Minions are dead, not unconscious, at -1. Minions always take 10 on saving throws. Minions can't score critical hits. Etc.

Weren't you one of those arguing against the "Everybody or nobody 'saves' when you switch to defenses vs. an attack roll" a la Saga?

 

[Celebrim]

Weren't you one of those arguing against the "Everybody or nobody 'saves' when you switch to defenses vs. an attack roll" a la Saga?

My guess is that versus a minion, you won't even roll an attack roll. Attack rolls against minions either automatically succeed or else are assumed to be 20's. That would be the only way to introduce all these minions without slowing the combat down.

 

[ThirdWizard]

See, statements like this are really confusing me. Don't most of us ALREADY play 3.5 this way? I find it hard to believe that there are lots of 3.5 groups out there playing adventures featuring monsters that wait patiently while the PCs butcher their colleagues in an adjoining room.

I think the biggest shift is going to be that in 3e, having several rooms converge on the PCs can get out of hand (as far as EL is concerned) very very quickly and turn into a TPK, and 4e will be more keyed to handle and even expect these kinds of things from a mechanics/balance perspective. So in 4e, if three rooms converge on the PCs, the encounter will become harder, but it won't overwhelm the PCs as quickly as it can in 3e. That way you can build a more fluid dungeon design much faster.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

The only thing I'll miss about Mook rules is the lucky guy. Though maybe he'll still be around.

In our AoW campaign we came upon a random encounter with stock orcs when we were 5th or 6th level. They weren't a threat. However, it came down to the cleric going toe-to-toe with one of the orcs. The player said the rest of us should contend with our usual compliment, that even the non-combat-focus caster cleric could handle one orc.

The one orc proceeds, through poor rolls and the PC's part and good on the GM's part, to mop the floor with our cleric. So much so that we stepped in and saved the orc and released him back into the wild to later become a recurring NPC.

Fun times.

On the whole, though, I think Mook type rules or something similar (a sliding scale like SC2.0 with the option for lower settings for trivial threats) would be very nice for the D&D game. Sure it is gamist, but if the GM wants non-gamist I imagine he can choose not to introduce 3,487 orcs ... just that the rules will now present us with the OPTION to.

--fje

 

[occam]

And really, does a lizardman need a loin cloth?

Sure, he needs it to hold his junk.

...Er, by which I mean, those doodads hanging from his belt.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Weren't you one of those arguing against the "Everybody or nobody 'saves' when you switch to defenses vs. an attack roll" a la Saga?

Yes I was.

Do I need to explain the difference to you?

 

[Mercule]

Some do, but keep in mind that not every DM is experienced at this sort of thing. Even if it's written this way just to serve as an example to new DMs, that'd be a good thing. I'm all for more exciting encounters in any case.

It's also nice to have written down just once for the occasional rules lawyer. I've got one player who seems to watch for every little rules shortcut I try. I have no problem saying "suck it up" a few times, but it gets tiring. When he stops worrying about whether I'm following the rules, he's a darn good gamer, though.

Still, that's just one reason I'm getting burn out on 3E -- enough semblance of rote to give an ornery player some leverage, but not enough actual organization to make life easy on the GM.

 

[Celebrim]

I think the biggest shift is going to be that in 3e, having several rooms converge on the PCs can get out of hand (as far as EL is concerned) very very quickly and turn into a TPK, and 4e will be more keyed to handle and even expect these kinds of things from a mechanics/balance perspective. So in 4e, if three rooms converge on the PCs, the encounter will become harder, but it won't overwhelm the PCs as quickly as it can in 3e. That way you can build a more fluid dungeon design much faster.

Do you have any evidence for this claim?

There are only two ways you can insure that multiple groups coming together is not a threat of a TPK. The first is if the individual encounters are individually not a threat, and only together are they balanced against the party. One is that the difficulty of the encounter doesn't change no matter how many mooks join in, so that for example you have a rule that says each time more minions arrive all minions collectively get a penalty to hit.

In the second case, its true that several rooms converging on the players won't get out of hand. In fact, the problem here is that it might lead to metagame behavior where the players deliberately get themselves outnumbered so as to make the fight easier!

In the first case, you can't in fact plan for which encounters are going to occur together. Ultimately, its the players that decide which encounters occur together unless the encounters occur in a wholely disjoined universe (say like the random encounters while moving through the outdoors map in Fallout). Unless you make each individual encounter trivial, collectively they are going to at some point overmatch the PCs. If the encounters occur in the same game space as each other, regardless of your planning they may or may not occur together. This has happened to me several times in 3rd edition. In one case a player opened a sarcophagus while another combat was still going on. In another case, a party fleeing one encounter took the wrong fork in the dungeon and ran into another one. What's 4E going to do to change that from happening? Conversely, I can plan so that several CR 4 encounters are likely to turn into one big CR 8 encounter in 3rd edition already (I just can't gaurantee it will happen).

 

[Geron Raveneye]

One big question keeps striking me when I read these articles, and some comments...and that is "So what's new?" and I'm not looking around for Trixie in a chain mail bikini.

And then I remember when I used to constantly read these advice articles in Dragon, about how to create organic, living dungeons...and that it is over 10 years ago. And that it definitely took me a good few years to first grab and UNDERSTAND the concepts that were hit on in those articles.

And then I realize that the next generation of young DMs is coming out of 3.X, just far enough to question some of their usual game conceptions and perceptions, and that they definitely will profit by somebody telling them all that "new" stuff that old hands already know from 20+ years of experience.

So yeah, I guess all that "4e will have totally NEW concepts about how to play this game" is not aimed at most of those who do that kind of game for the last decade or two already...and a lot of it sounds like it went through the Hype-O-matic 2008 a few times too often...but I'm sure there's a lot of young DMs out there who will have plenty of material to think about in context of their current playstyle with it.

Just wish it would sound less like "Hey LOOKIE, we've got those BRAND NEW concepts to sell to you"...which they only have in part...and more like "Hey, we have plenty of good stuff and ideas for you if you're a relatively new player". Because that's who they're aiming at. It would make the old editions sound less crappy (which they don't deserve), and alienate less old players who might feel like they're portrayed as a tad slow by hype of "new" ideas that actually are as old as the game itself in some places.

 

[fanboy2000]

I read the new article with interest. Like other's have said, they're trying to solve problems I don't have. For example, I learned a long time ago that multiple monsters makes combat more fun for me and my players. This was 3.0. After reading this article, I can't help but wonder if Mike Mearls and I are playing the same game. That said, I'm not worried.

For one thing, if 4e is designed to easily accommodate large groups of monsters, great. Less work for me on that part of prep.

One thing that I haven't seen mentioned in the designer blogs and on D&D Insider is that adding class levels to monsters is probably used more by DMs more than players. I don't add fighter/barbarian/sorcerer /etc... levels to monsters because I want to play them, but because I want tougher or more interesting monsters.

It doesn't matter to me what game mechanism I use, HD advancement, PC class levels, NPC class levels, or whatever, so long as I can scale and customize the monsters. Now, I'll admit, I run a lot of monsters out of the book, but I also customize a lot of existing monsters. Orcs with class levels are not uncommon foes at my table. I doubt I'm in the minority.

Everything I've read about 4e suggests to me that that's going to be possible, but they're going to do it differently. 3.0's problem, monster-wise is that the DM had to reverse engineer the many monster's to customize them. 3.5 acknowledge that and gave a lot more information on building monster's from scratch. If 4e does uses a different game mechanic to achieve the same result, I'll have to see it before I can judge.