Lord Zardoz
Explorer
Elements from the original post have been reorganized a bit.
I think that this is a potentially valid concern. In 3rd Edition there was a tendency for me to never mix and match monsters, just pick one and go. In 4th Edition, aside from varients (it is not just Goblin, there is the Goblin Cutter, Goblin Blackblade, Goblin Hexer, Goblin SharpShooter, etc). I can easily see someone spending more time then expected trying to balance out the roles of the monsters present.
I am going to have to disagree, or at least ask for a more specific example. I do not see how 4th Edition requires this any more than 3rd edition did.
I can partially agree here. All monster abilities that go beyond inflicting damage take their elements from the conditions list. This has a big effect on the 'flavor' of the description. However, I think that there is enough variance here to say that the monster abilities are still significant.
I will agree to some elements of this. There is not much to tell you when you should insist on a Diplomacy check instead of Bluff. There has not really been a good or compelling solution on how a given DM should go about creating and running a skill challenge. However, this is something that can vary greatly from game to game. I can see some DM's just cobbling a semi random set of skills together and saying 'make some checks and give me X successes'. However, the system as a whole has a huge amount of untapped potential.
This is something I entirely agree with. One of 4th Editions benefits is that it streamlined the statblocks for monsters by insisting it was OK for a monster to not need to have every bit of info that a PC or NPC would have. However, there is a big problem when you try to quickly adapt a monster into a helpful NPC, especially if you expect it to need to be around for a while. I do think much of this can be handwaved though.
The bigger problem to me is that it is very difficult for a DM to keep an NPC alive if he ever uses it in combat. In 3rd Edition I could use potions, spells, magic items to give an NPC a few viable escape options (ie: break line of sight, use a rope trick. Fly away with a Fly potion). 4th Edition does not give me many options for having something cleanly escape.
As for suggestions, that is a bit trickier:
For monster prep time:
The encounter builder works well enough for me. I suggest deciding first on what kind of mix you want; Do you want to have a single heavy monster with support? Do you want to have front liners run interference for artillery? How durable do you want your monsters, and how much risk do you want to provide?
Higher level monsters simply hit more and wont be hit as often. Using them will increase risk to your players. Most 4th Edition encounters and adventures I have seen tend to use monsters of a slightly higher level then your players. If you go from 2 levels higher to 2 levels lower, your players will have a much easier time dealing with the encounter.
From there it is just pulling in what ever makes the most sense for the encounter.
For Skill Challenges:
For any skill challenge you need these things:
- A Reward for Success / A Punishment for Failure: Both your reward and your punishment must be something that should stick around for a while and have a real effect on the game. Something that should at least be worth using limitied resources. Forcing players to lose healing surges or access to encounter / daily powers is a good punishment. A free action point, treasure, or a semi-persistant bonus is a good reward. What ever it is should just matter though.
- A Resolution Mechanism: This is flexible. You can go with X success before Y failure, 3 Strikes to fail. You can have each player make X checks and give out one 'Penalty' per failure per player.
- A set of relevant Skills / Options. This is probably the trickiest, since you need to engage every player but avoid having one player dominate. You should also try to do more then providing a list of skills a player may use. You could allow a player to make a check vs a harder DC to cancel a previous failure. You can allow a check against a hard DC to gain a bonus to other rolls rather then gain a single success. Or you could allow a player to gain a success without a skill check if they just pay cash, or do something particularly intelligent.
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I hear that 4e dropped the prep time for a lot of DMs, and I don't doubt it, but I do wonder if there's something in my style that provokes this. Now, in 4e, I'm finding my prep time is dramatically increased from "virtually nothing" to "a good evening or two."
Part of it is quantity. In 3e, one or two monsters would challenge a whole party. In 4e, I need to mix and match at least 4-5 different monsters, each of which has their own abilities and powers to use.
I think that this is a potentially valid concern. In 3rd Edition there was a tendency for me to never mix and match monsters, just pick one and go. In 4th Edition, aside from varients (it is not just Goblin, there is the Goblin Cutter, Goblin Blackblade, Goblin Hexer, Goblin SharpShooter, etc). I can easily see someone spending more time then expected trying to balance out the roles of the monsters present.
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 am going to have to disagree, or at least ask for a more specific example. I do not see how 4th Edition requires this any more than 3rd edition did.
Part of it seems to be the "leveling off" of abilities. There's nothing inherently dramatic or exceptional about any monster or PC ability -- they're balanced very well, which means they kind of homogenize. It's the "it doesn't matter how you describe it, the effects are what is key" problem.
I can partially agree here. All monster abilities that go beyond inflicting damage take their elements from the conditions list. This has a big effect on the 'flavor' of the description. However, I think that there is enough variance here to say that the monster abilities are still significant.
That same issue plagues skill challenges. There's no fiddly abilities that make you sit up and pay attention, nothing I can hang a hook on and go "why?", nothing that stands out to catch interest. 4e is a sleeker beast.
I will agree to some elements of this. There is not much to tell you when you should insist on a Diplomacy check instead of Bluff. There has not really been a good or compelling solution on how a given DM should go about creating and running a skill challenge. However, this is something that can vary greatly from game to game. I can see some DM's just cobbling a semi random set of skills together and saying 'make some checks and give me X successes'. However, the system as a whole has a huge amount of untapped potential.
Part of it is the fact that I can't trust the books to have rules for what I need. Because everything is designed for one narrow purpose, 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.
This is something I entirely agree with. One of 4th Editions benefits is that it streamlined the statblocks for monsters by insisting it was OK for a monster to not need to have every bit of info that a PC or NPC would have. However, there is a big problem when you try to quickly adapt a monster into a helpful NPC, especially if you expect it to need to be around for a while. I do think much of this can be handwaved though.
The bigger problem to me is that it is very difficult for a DM to keep an NPC alive if he ever uses it in combat. In 3rd Edition I could use potions, spells, magic items to give an NPC a few viable escape options (ie: break line of sight, use a rope trick. Fly away with a Fly potion). 4th Edition does not give me many options for having something cleanly escape.
As for suggestions, that is a bit trickier:
For monster prep time:
The encounter builder works well enough for me. I suggest deciding first on what kind of mix you want; Do you want to have a single heavy monster with support? Do you want to have front liners run interference for artillery? How durable do you want your monsters, and how much risk do you want to provide?
Higher level monsters simply hit more and wont be hit as often. Using them will increase risk to your players. Most 4th Edition encounters and adventures I have seen tend to use monsters of a slightly higher level then your players. If you go from 2 levels higher to 2 levels lower, your players will have a much easier time dealing with the encounter.
From there it is just pulling in what ever makes the most sense for the encounter.
For Skill Challenges:
For any skill challenge you need these things:
- A Reward for Success / A Punishment for Failure: Both your reward and your punishment must be something that should stick around for a while and have a real effect on the game. Something that should at least be worth using limitied resources. Forcing players to lose healing surges or access to encounter / daily powers is a good punishment. A free action point, treasure, or a semi-persistant bonus is a good reward. What ever it is should just matter though.
- A Resolution Mechanism: This is flexible. You can go with X success before Y failure, 3 Strikes to fail. You can have each player make X checks and give out one 'Penalty' per failure per player.
- A set of relevant Skills / Options. This is probably the trickiest, since you need to engage every player but avoid having one player dominate. You should also try to do more then providing a list of skills a player may use. You could allow a player to make a check vs a harder DC to cancel a previous failure. You can allow a check against a hard DC to gain a bonus to other rolls rather then gain a single success. Or you could allow a player to gain a success without a skill check if they just pay cash, or do something particularly intelligent.
END COMMUNICATION