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

[Grog]

There is a huge problem with CR/EL as 3e presents it: it does not accurately model the power jumps from CR to CR. Moving from CR1 to CR2 is a huge relative increase in power; moving from CR10 to CR11 is a much smaller relative increase. Yet the CR/EL/XP system treats them as if they are equivalent jumps in power.

I remember one of the Dungeon/Dragon editors (can't recall who at the moment) talking about something similar to this a while ago. He said that a group of 19th level characters fighting a CR 27 enemy doesn't play out nearly the same way as a group of 5th level characters fighting a beholder. That really is a weakness of the system, IMO.

16 orcs are actually much closer to 3rd level (using Chi/Rho for my guesstimate).

Actually, I think 16 orcs would be way too dangerous for a 3rd level party. Sure, the fighter might have the AC to handle himself okay by that point, but the orcs would be almost guaranteed to kill the wizard (he wouldn't have a good AC, the orcs could probably drop him in two hits, and with so many of them, it's not like the fighter could stop them all from reaching him), and quite possibly the rogue as well. The only way to avoid that would be for the party to fight them at a choke point, but then the encounter just turns into the 3rd level fighter vs. a long string of CR 1/2 enemies - which isn't nearly the same thing.

 

[Grog]

In truth, it probably takes about 64 orcs to be a EL 7 encounter for a 7th level party, while at the same time 64 orcs is probably closer to EL 11 for a 3rd level party. This is because the challenge is actually relative to who is being challenged.

That's true. Another good example is unintelligent land-bound brute monsters like the Colossal Monstrous Scorpion. They're deadly in a straight-up beatdown fight, but if the party can fly, they can kill them with missile weapons and spells without taking a scratch. Or just bypass them completely.

But no XP system is ever going to be able to take all the various possibilities of any given encounter into account. It's always going to be a DM judgment call.

Maybe so, but it would be nice if we read each others comments generously. I don't think he meant to imply that it would be a pushover, merely that 20 goblins appears to be the new 4 (or 8) goblins.

I didn't get that from the article at all. Here's the relevant quote - "Add in the rules for minions (which will be described in a future Design & Development article), and you could (in theory) match twenty goblins against a 1st-level party and have a fun, exciting, balanced fight."

Now, admittedly, "fun," "exciting," and "balanced" are all subjective terms, but I didn't take that to mean that fighting 20 goblins in 4E is going to be the same level of challenge as fighting four goblins in 3E.

And, I'll again caution against trying to use 3E as a baseline for what to expect in 4E. Comparing characters/monsters/combats between 1/2E and 3E doesn't really work, and I don't think comparisons between 3E and 4E will necessarily work any better.

Yes, and it sucks and is widely ridiculed. But its not the fault of 3E, it is actually a legacy of 1st edition which had the same sort of problems we are here describing (0 level 'minions'). The flavor just stuck.

My point was that you can't level "There'll be lots of powerful NPCs around" against 4E as a criticism, because that's been the case in every edition of D&D ever made, including 3rd edition. If a particular DM doesn't like that idea, he should feel free to just remove the NPCs. And if he needs the high-level NPCs to keep his players "in line," well, then I'd say that the real problem he has is with his players, not with the game system.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Do you have any evidence for this claim?

Right now no one has any evidence for any claims, theories, or speculations that are going on. We're all talking about a system that we've practically seen nothing for yet. So we take what we've read in other places (in this case - the default assumption of combat is lots of opponents vs. the 5 person PC party) and apply it to this instance (in this case - encounters will be made up of groups of enemies spread over larger areas). And, I come up with the idea that 4e will handle scalable groups better than 3e. Not that far a leap, I dare say.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

1st level could be the new 3rd level, if you take into the account of Star Wars: Saga Edition being a 4e preview. I remember all of the classes in there starting out with 3 HD at maximum worth of hitpoints. Even though BAB and others things still started at D&D 3.5e standards.

 

[Fobok]

Now, admittedly, "fun," "exciting," and "balanced" are all subjective terms, but I didn't take that to mean that fighting 20 goblins in 4E is going to be the same level of challenge as fighting four goblins in 3E.

Well, another thing to keep in mind is the whole resource management aspect. In 3e, a challenging balanced encounter was (supposedly) balanced to use up 25% of the party's daily resources. Now, with per-encounter abilities thrown into the mix, it can be balanced to use up 100% of the per-encounter resources. Which, if it's designed right, can lead to more exciting fights that are more challenging and fun without worrying about what might come around the next corner.

 

[Reynard]

:okes head in::

Nope. Still know one talking about exploration, traps, ancient ruins or long lost treasures of a forgotten age.

::sighs whistfully::

 

[Celebrim]

Well, another thing to keep in mind is the whole resource management aspect. In 3e, a challenging balanced encounter was (supposedly) balanced to use up 25% of the party's daily resources. Now, with per-encounter abilities thrown into the mix, it can be balanced to use up 100% of the per-encounter resources. Which, if it's designed right, can lead to more exciting fights that are more challenging and fun without worrying about what might come around the next corner.

And you see this as a good thing?

This 4E = Toon analogy is getting more appropriate all the time.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Let me expand on what I was saying before. This is all supposition, take it as you like.

Check out the map here:
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/4e/20070827a_drdd_1full.jpg
That is being referred to in Mearls' article.

7, 8, and 9 comprise a themed area. So instead of 7, 8, and 9 being distinct encounters in and of themselves, each makes up, say, Encounter A.

Lets say, also, that we decide to combine 10, 11, 12, and 13 into another thematic encounter area, B. Now lets say that 13, 14, 15, and 16 make Encounter C. And, yes, I did notice that B and C share area 13. This works, because depending on which way the PCs come from, 13 might get involved in either. Because of the way encounters are designed, with multiple monsters making up each one, the dungeon can become much more organic naturally in this way.

Remember, 20 goblins can be an interesting match up for a group of 5 1st level PCs. So, now I can put 5-6 goblins in one area, an few orcs or gnolls in another, a bugbear perhaps in another, and the EL doesn't ramp up as fast as it would in 3e. This makes encounter design more granular. I think that's an important part of how I see scalability as inherent in this design.

In other words, adding 5 goblins to a fight probably won't turn the tide too far in 4e, whereas in 3e, it would be more of an upset. So, no, in 4e, each one of those numbers wouldn't be a big deal by itself. But, you won't be fighting those encounters by themselves.

This is a case of the rules catching up to actual play.

Much like other 4e decisions (eg magic items in the PHB) this is really just 4e cementing what should be the case and taking what 3e made more difficult even if people did it, and write the system to handle it much better. Now you can design your encounters as clusters of mini-encounters. And the rules now encourage this behavior.

So good stuff, I say.

 

[Grog]

And you see this as a good thing?

Speaking only for myself.... I don't know.

But I do know that I've gotten really tired of the 3rd edition "day," which runs from 8:00 in the morning to 10:00 in the morning. The 3E mechanic of requiring the party to rest after every four (CR appropriate) encounters really limits what you can do as a DM.

 

[Fobok]

And you see this as a good thing?

Yes, I do. For a dungeon example, you clear 4 rooms of orcs and have to retreat until the next day... why the heck don't the orcs come back, realize they've been attacked, and set an ambush? Repeat the process a few times and you never make any progress in the dungeon.

I also, back when I had a group, tried to run my adventures like an episode of Hercules or Xena. Action and adventure is what the game is about, after all. And it really messes up pacing to only get an hour or two of adventure in a day. (For more gritty, realistic games I used Game of Thrones D20.)