4e increased my DM prep time...

[ExploderWizard]

My prep time went down a bit from 3E once I got the monster builder. I never wasted much time on calculating balanced challenges before so I don't bother now. I can just use the builder to quickly assemble whatever the creature is supposed to be and go. If you get too worried about what you are "supposed" to have and making sure the balance is just so I guess the time could get a bit long on prep.

The same goes for maps/terrain. Combats break out wherever they happen to in whatever terrain the PC's find themselves in. Sometimes there are interesting bits to fiddle with on the battlefield and sometimes not. The combats are interesting and have meaning in the context of the campaign so I don't need to create staged areas to maintain interest. This also helps keep prep time down.

I gotta say that statblocks in 4E without the monster builder would be a dealbreaker (same for 3E).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Your problem:

CR system of 3rd edition nearly works perfectly until level 10 or so when your players are no powergamers and you know what you are doing as DM. (And if you know that monster*2 = CR of 1 monster +2)

As soon as you don´t worry too much, your prep time is near to zero in 3rd edition.

However if you start using NPCs instead of Monsters, 3rd edition works terribly, because you have to build them using PC rules. And they need magic items.

When is stopped worrying about rules too much, my prep time for NPCs dropped from 6 hours to a half...
I bet, when you get a grasp how to setup a challenge in 4e you prep time will go down again.

 

[fuzzlewump]

@Kamikaze

Try just prepping for 4E just like you did for 3E. I think you'll be surprised how easy it is to find appropriate level monsters; especially if you know what roles you want and it's even easier if you just fight multiple copies of the same thing.

 

[The_Gneech]

It sounds like you're suffering from a bit of "performance anxiety" with the encounter design, which makes sense given the way 4E has largely been presented. If you look at the modules, all the encounters are these enormous and complex set pieces with pits here, and controllers there, and "wonky magic circle that's only there to add a tactical element" in the far corner.

Quick tip: to heck with all that.

Not that you should put your encounters in a 20x20 room and call it done, but I'm guessing that in 3E you wouldn't have done that either. My point is just don't get hung up on trying to "turn up the cool" for every fight. Grab a handful of critters, put 'em on a map, and go.

The DDI monster builder is a tremendous tool for this. I had an encounter on a beach where I wanted 1st level characters to be fighting harpies and sea devils -- both of which are way too tough for 1st level characters out of the book -- but I just opened up the stat blocks in the Monster Builder and cranked the foes down to the right level. Easy peasy.

Don't worry about optimizing; the guys at WotC do that, sure, it's their job to squeeze everything out of the system they can. Your job is to put something fun in front of your players and let them make a mess out of it.

Finally, your best tool for winging it in 4E is Page 42. Skill check difficulties, on-the-fly terrain hazard damage, it's all in there. (This is something 3.x/Pathfinder sorely needs, and I'm working on that.) If the players come up with something and there isn't a rule handy, tell 'em to make a skill check.

-The Gneech

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

One of the things that made 3e easy to wing at least for me was I'd played and ran it for 8 years. 4e is still pretty new and I'm not as comfortable winging it as I was 3e, but I imagine once I've ran 4e for as long as I did 3e that it will be similiar. 3e was not easy to wing back in 2001 either.

QFT. System mastery is always a factor in running off the cuff. At least with 4e you really don't need to master the PC rules

I recommend page 42 and Stalker0's Obsideon skill challenge system. Those two rule guidelines have cut my prep time immensly.

Also, I stick with the DMG encounter templates when designing a combat, usually the wolfpack or commander and troops. This means 2 to 3 monster types, maybe 4 at the most. Add in a trap/unique terrain/special and you have a good combat scenario.

And I agree with S'mon on using the Centaur 'out of the box' as an ally, altho I would slash its hit points down to PC level as well as shifting any nasty encounter ability up to a daily. Of course, I would have the centaur unlikely to join into life or death combat without good cause.. he might just hang back and watch instead of joining in.

 

[Mentat55]

I can say that 4E has changed how I distribute my prep time, without increasing or decreasing it substantially.

I used to spend a lot of time advancing monsters and making my BBEG viable (though it never really mattered) in 3E. With 4E, advancing monsters is a lot faster. I still spend a decent chunk of time on the BBEG in my adventures, but it seems more fun to me, especially with the Monster Builder. I do less number crunching and more thinking about abilities, how the opponent will play, etc. I think that is the biggest thing with monster / encounter prep -- I am doing a lot less math than I did before.

In terms of DM style, I tend to have a few key combat encounters explicitly prepared, everything else is more loosely described, and I try to key off the players, make up details in areas that they are interested in, but ignore everything else. That actually means I have to do a lot of work afterwards, because I make notes on what I introduced, so I can maintain consistency moving forward.

 

[LostSoul]

I also need to present a battlegrid that is "interesting," in that it needs to contain terrain features, traps, hazards, or other rules bits to interact with (when I did that in 3e it was icing on the cake, but 4e kind of requires it).

I made a random table to generate terrain features over here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan...64-random-terrain-features-natural-world.html

Something like that might help because you don't need to prep anything - you just roll some dice and draw some stuff on the map.

 

[xechnao]

The way I run games ("do whatever you want, I'll tell you the consequences") means that narrowly effective individual rules are actually more of a hassle than broadly implemented general principles. I can't just go from what makes sense and see where that takes me. I have to take into account the consequences of my rulings. Which makes me less adventurous, less willing to branch out.

It seems, 4e by itself is ill suited for your style. You definitely need some solid setting which will add all that it is missing to help you sort out your options - yours and those of your players alike.

Otherwise, a subsystem that could provide you with a campaign planer -aside from the encounter planner which 4e seems to be- would do wonders to help you develop the right mindset on how to accustom your game around your style and needs. If you like this suggestion, the game "Reign" is a must read.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Some really solid stuff here.

I should say that I enjoy 4e and I fully intend to keep playing and running it. I'm just looking to make it a bit easier on me, to get a bit closer to how I was DMing 3e. I've no desire to go back to the days of multiple buffs and high-level bookkeeping. That stuff got in my way even more than some 4e stuff does.

And I'm not so sure it's system mastery. I've been playing or DMing 4e since it came out, so I've got an OK handle on how stuff works.

One of the encounters I ran like this - it was a group of Ice Devils sent to assassinate the party. 6 Ice Devils seemed rather boring, so I divided them into groups of three, had each pair seem slightly different (one group had oversized longspears, another were big and bulky, the last was quick and agile), and then slightly modified each group accordingly - choosing one key aspect of the Ice Devil and adjusting it for each group. The longspear guys got an extra square of reach and a small slide on their longspear attack. The bulky guys got a slightly larger breath weapon and cold aura. The agile guys got to swing twice with their claw attack.

I'm a fan of that. Minor tweaks to existing monsters makes a lot of sense. I'm a little concerned I wouldn't be able to keep it straight at the table, but I don't think it'll be any more complex than keeping track of conditions.

tweaking critters in the Monster Builder, putting Dungeon Delves into my sandbox setting, building nice encounter groups. It takes less time and is far more fun for me than building a 3e NPC or monster by the RAW, anyway.

This is probably true for a lot of DMs who are used to doing prep, but I'm coming from "nearly zero," myself. I'd never build a 3e NPC or monster. I'd never (well, rarely) draw a map. I'd just pick a beast out of a book (usually, a monster, since it was only late in 3e that I had pre-generated NPC stats, but the DMG came in handy there), and I'd grab the DMG for the environmental effects that I wanted to add to the battle.

I'm a huge fan of your "let it ride" advice for NPC recruits. I'll probably do that in the future.

especially if you know what roles you want and it's even easier if you just fight multiple copies of the same thing.

Well, that's part of the problem I'm having, I think. I don't know what roles I want, or what roles I should want, or what monsters might fill those roles, off the top of my head. Though the MM indexes help a bit on this, I end up eating game time flipping between indexes looking for monsters of a given role that make sense in the context of the adventure so I can insert them.

I wonder if there's a quick "role template" or something I can use to swap out a basic "goblin" for a "goblin soldier/goblin skirmisher/goblin artillery" kind of thing. That'd be crazy useful to me, I think.

It sounds like you're suffering from a bit of "performance anxiety" with the encounter design, which makes sense given the way 4E has largely been presented.

You're probably right. This might be linked to my dislike for maps and minis, too. I can give general evocative descriptions and have awesome imaginary setpieces, but the moment I have to physically stick something on a grid, I kind of balk. "Should this go here? Should it go there? What tactical options does this allow? What should be difficult terrain, what should be a skill check, how is that favoring certain characters over others?"

Perhaps I need a little crash course on map-making. Or a really good guideline for using 4e without a grid (I've seen a few OK ones, but they haven't impressed me much, 'cuz they largely rely on a lot of "DM doing the work" stuff. I'd rather make my players do the work. ).

Also, I stick with the DMG encounter templates when designing a combat, usually the wolfpack or commander and troops. This means 2 to 3 monster types, maybe 4 at the most. Add in a trap/unique terrain/special and you have a good combat scenario.

Nice! Since I'm mostly using the DDI when I generate encounters, I forget that the DMG has that section a lot of the time (and also some really useful templates for individual monster tweaking!). Perhaps I need to crack the spine on that book a little more often.

I made a random table to generate terrain features over here: EN World D&D / RPG News - Powered by vBulletin

Yoink'd. Slick!

Otherwise, a subsystem that could provide you with a campaign planer -aside from the encounter planner which 4e seems to be- would do wonders to help you develop the right mindset on how to accustom your game around your style and needs. If you like this suggestion, the game "Reign" is a must read.

I'm going to have to look into that, because I definitely see my games more as campaigns then as sets of encounters. This might help some of the flow problems I'm having.

Though I still think my main problem is in the encounters themselves. I guess I'll always be doing a little more prep in 4e than I was in 3e (quantity of monsters, maps, etc.), but I'd like to be able to pull as much of that out of my behindus as possible at the last minute.

Some good suggestions so far, keep 'em coming...any pointers on making maps or customizing critters would, I think, be double-plus good.

 

[Ariosto]

if the party, say, decides to recruit the centaur instead of kill it, I can't just run the monster sheet, I need to use the DMG2 and re-format the thing.

What's involved there?

Aside: I thought I would look up the centaur stats, so opened the 4e MM, and ... no centaur. How many (and which) books would it take to get the equivalent of the 3e core trilogy? The 1e?

Anyway, I see that the monsters have the standard six ability scores. All I would think to add is maybe some skill bonuses.