D&D 4E 4E Encounter Design - Changing up the Format

[Retreater]

I'm working on converting The Red Hand of Doom from 3.5 to 4E at my group's request. We played through about half of that adventure back in the 3.5 era and we're interested in completing the story now. (We're going to start back at the beginning for the 3 new players in our group.)

So looking at the adventure, there are a lot of "this is an extremely high EL fight because it's the party's only fight of the day." How does this work in 4E? How high can I push an encounter's level above the party level?

I was planning on having the opponents come in waves, splitting up the encounters into two fights that are Level +1 or +2. Depending on how tough the first wave was, I can let the party have a short-short rest: maybe recharge a limited number of encounter powers, healing surges, etc.

Anyone else have a theory?

 

[LostSoul]

In my experience, the DMG's advice is pretty good: EL + 4, with monsters no higher than PC level + 7.

Using high level elites or solos can throw this out of balance. I TPKed an 8th-level party with a MM1 Human Lich. I don't have my books with me so I don't know what that encounter level was.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

I've had good experiences with what you call a "short short rest", and what I often call alternate refreshers. A few options I've used are a simple system where everybody recharges something at X round, a token system where you can earn tokens for various actions (including slaying, and healing), and a magic residue system where enemies leave behind a vestige of magic and the first character who touches it gains a recharge.

I have to disagree with LostSoul however, I find that it's better to ramp up the Total EL while keeping the individual monsters close to the PC's level.

(For a shameless plug, my company's adventure Beacon in the Dark features just such a massive battle, where with alternate refreshers and an EL equal to the PCs + 7)

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

For a higher level opponent, you could reduce their level by 5 and make them an elite. For instance, if you have a 7th-level adventure and your PCs of that level face a 16th-level opponent, you could use an 11th-level elite instead.

 

[Spatula]

So looking at the adventure, there are a lot of "this is an extremely high EL fight because it's the party's only fight of the day." How does this work in 4E?

Not very well, to be honest. Assuming the players know that they get to rest afterwards, they can pop off dailies nearly every round and blow their opponents out of the water. Waves are a good idea, as that will mitigate encounter-long status effects. I would also keep the monsters within 3-4 levels of the PCs to keep them hit-able.

In order to keep the players from being able to go nova on these types of fights, you might want to discuss a house-rule with them about only being able to recharge daily powers if they've hit 1 or 2 milestones, instead of recharging them with any extended rest. In that case, I wouldn't reset the milestone count with an extended rest, either.