D&D 4E 4e mid encounter fatigue

[vagabundo]

It sounds like a decent idea - once in a while. The problem I could see is that the players assess the situation when the encounter first begins, use their encounter powers, then when the "twist" comes, they are annoyed because they have already used up powers that would have been better for the twist. If it becomes a regular thing, you might find your players hoarding their encounter powers waiting for the twist. If it never comes, then they will have made the fight more difficult for themselves.

Do you not enjoy torturing players for metagaming?? I must be a sadist.

It could become formulaic, I think it would be best to have a few strategies for dealing with this and matching them to the situation. Also I think there will be a good number of encounters where this does not come up due to excellent tactics and luck. The monster just gets destroyed by the PCs before the twist.

 

[Kzach]

I've experienced the dragon encounter twice and had two different results.

The first one I was the DM and wasn't really thinking tactically and neither were the players. And yes, it became a bit of a slugfest. We were still stuck in a 3.x mindset, I think.

But in the second attempt, with a different group and someone else DM'ing, it was an awesome pitched battle where we almost killed the dragon, and forced it to escape and use it's action point to do so.

I think there is a paradigm shift required in DM and player thinking for encounters in 4e to be dynamic and exciting. I think this will occur naturally as people realise they have more options and so do the monsters.

Even with just your base class abilities and at-will abilities, you still have interesting tactical options, and with recharges, so do the monsters. I don't see why, after a little practice, people would ever end up sitting statically and slugging things out in any encounter.

 

[frankthedm]

This sounds like the reason why monsters are getting abilities that come into play once they've been "bloodied". I haven't played any preview games, but... does the dragon not have any of those? Are they just too minor to make an impact?

The dragons get a free breath attack when bloodied, but generaly that just means more HP damage.

Destroyable terrain can help make a dragon fight that changes midway through.

 

[Revinor]

As long as we are talking about long solo fights, I think there is a place to look for inspirations As much as I hate to say it, look at WoW boss fights. In many cases, there are few stages during fights there (mostly tied to discrete hp levels) and in each of the stages tactics have to change considerably. In 4th ed, we even have a very nice indicator for that - bloodied condition.

Mixture of some bloodied-only abilities, abilities which cannot be used by bloodied and some environment changes can do exactly what you are planning - major twist in the middle of combat.

For the people who are disgusted by idea of taking those ideas from WoW - please remember, WoW boss fights are really well designed (for it's medium). What makes it horrible is that everybody in the world is killing same boss over and over and over... With D&D, every such situation will be unique.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Odd, I never noticed the players starting off with their Encounter powers. They always saved them tactically. Passing Attack is best used when trying to mow through enemies toward a bigger bad. Witchfire when an enemy has turned on a striker instead of a defender. Fey Step when you've become surrounded. Some are better to start with, especially Ray of Frost (which is "really" an At Will) and Cause Fear, but I didn't run into the problems expressed here.

Now, having said that, for those that do have this problem, one of my hopes is that terrain (remember that fungus with the poison cloud?) effects will push the encounters to be more interesting throughout. When there are plants that injure bloodied enemies who become adjacent to them, Tide of Iron is made more interesting. When there are flammable/exploding materials around, Scorching Burst looks hot (pun intended). And so forth. So, I've got my fingers crossed there.

 

[Kzach]

What makes it horrible is that everybody in the world is killing same boss over and over and over... With D&D, every such situation will be unique.

No, what makes it horrible is that it's incredibly boring to kill the same boss over and over and never get the damn loot you want because Blizzard hates [insert class here].

 

[vagabundo]

BTW this is really only a minor concern and it only reared its head because the first half of most of the encounters have been very cinematic.

- My dwarf fighter using an action point as a move action, a move, his charge and criting a kobold that was about to destroy the ranger. He was a long way away at the start of his turn, it looked very cool.
- The ranger, fey steping to a ledge and then bull rushing the kobold to this death.

Saying that, I need to use more terrain myself and focus on running the monsters a bit better.

I'm also really enjoying creating encounters for 4e. I preped a game from nothing in 20 mins and it ran for 3 hours.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

We've seen the same thing in our playtest, and across all editions of Dungeons and Dragons.

We basically houseruled it during our 3.0 days to use multiple dice based on 1/2 level. Meaning, if a Fighter picked up a Longsword at 10th level, he does 5d8 damage plus his other bonuses. This brought them in line with Wizard Invoker output and helped "quicken" combat.

Now that powers seem to share a standardized damage, I fully intent to use the same rule again (with exception that it's based on the dice for damage used by power). This means Ray of Frost at 10th level will do 5d6, instead of the standarized 1d6.

 

[Celebrim]

No, what makes it horrible is that it's incredibly boring to kill the same boss over and over and never get the damn loot you want because Blizzard hates [insert class here].

Yeah, but what would you do with that lphat oot except ... kill that same boss over and over again?

 

[DonAdam]

I worry that they might have stripped solo monsters of too many powers. Just a handful of powers is fine for most, but if my BBEG fight goes 20 rounds I want lots of options to keep things interesting.