Adjusting Encounters for 3 PCs

[kaomera]

Hey whats the next element the party will face in your elemental dungeon? I'd be happy to throw together a barebones mini-boss encounter for you to adapt.

I'll want to return to this and make a more detailed reply later, but the next encounter is a level 15 Solo Efreet (reskinned and re-leveled Elder White Dragon from the Monster Vault... It's also Large instead of Huge, if that matters), and two level 14s... I was thinking of de-leveled Rockfire Dreadnoughts, but they didn't really seem that interesting and I was thinking that Soldiers (or Brutes) might make the fight take too long. I'm currently leaning towards a pair of Skirmishers that simply move about leaving a trail of fire behind them... (Large, so it would be a 2-square wide wall of flame.) Based on another thread I had started, I was thinking that around 25-30 fire damage for moving into a square of the fire on your turn or ending your turn there would be an appropriate amount (this is in lieu of them having any other attacks). That should both restrict the party's mobility and I'm thinking of allowing the creatures (they need a name...) to pass through an enemy's square, although that might be too much. (It wouldn't be auto-damage unless you where immobilized, but it could force a PC to move in a particular direction to avoid taking damage.

 

[Quickleaf]

Interesting reskin!

So I noticed your idea about Skirmishers bypassing the PCs and I came up with a good example - I choose the earth element as the theme because of the burrowing ability to go underneath the PCs.

Elemental Earth Mini-Boss
Level 15 (6,000 XP)

The PCs descend into a huge cavern with a large lower room with sloping passages leading up to 4 overlooking side rooms; it's a wide open space save for several stone pillars scattered around the cavern. There is an ominous fissure along the floor of the large room. Whitish/purplish stalactites and stalagmites emerge from the ceiling and floor, encasing preserved corpses within them like amber. Vaguely luminescent quartzite deposits line the corners of the cavern. Keen eyed dungeoneers will notice thunderstone deposits in a side room and signs of lodestone in another.

Derghodemon (12 elite soldier): occupies main room, it's demonic influence has corrupted the area. This nasty demon grabs, restrains and does 10 ongoing, the burrows with it's grabbed victim (presumably dragging them through earth, and knocks PCs prone above its burrowing path. Nasty. It is a scavenger feeding on the corpses encased in mineral stalactites/mites.

Stormstone Fury (14 artillery): it begins in one of the side rooms, servitor of the big earth elemental boss

4 "minionized" Stormstone Furies (14 minion artillery: they are part of a classic "guess which is the real enemy" puzzle. Meld to Ground power is changed so that when a minion Stormstone Fury dies, the rest teleport to different locations swapping places. There's a pattern to this and figuring it out allows the players to anticipate where the real Stonestorm Fury will go next.

12 "minionized" Xorn (9 minion skirmisher): they come in waves, burrowing through stone to attack party where they're weakest. Corrupted by derghdemon. Hitting a Xorn breaks the demon's spell and the Xorn escapes sinking into earth, hence their minion status. A previous encounter might unlock a complexity 1 skill challenge in this fight allowing the PCs to free some of the Xorn from corruption or even sway some to their aide.

Fracturing Fissure (11 obstacle/blaster hazard): Triggered early in the fight by demon's first use of Earth Furrow, a seal broken to enter cavern, a rumbling quake hinting of big elemental earth boss, etc. The fissure cracks erratically across floor (obstacle), releasing gouts of poison/acid vapor (blaster).

Cave-In (13 lurker hazard): triggered later in fight when derghodemon is bloodied or killed, when it thrashes around causing havoc. Players might be able to trigger specific areas to cave in, using this to their advantage to drop rocks/pillars/stalactites to bridge or fill in the fissure.

Just a quick outline, but is it helpful?

 

[kaomera]

Did you read the "Party Building" article by Robert Schwalb in Dragon #373? Your group would be the ultimate tanking living fortress. The sorcerer must feel very protected Even though several of your PCs probably have striker as a secondary role judging by their ability to swiftly take down a fire giant, you probably have some fights become wars of attrition...they outlast their foe, healing as much damage as they deal.

I didn't read that article. The sorceress is usually in the thick of things, but she has several abilities that let her avoid or mitigate a hit and/or teleport or go invisible. It's the Shaman who's usually hiding out in the backfield, although this last session he decided to off-tank which is how he got bloodied both fights.

The giants where de-leveled to 13, and they don't have any more hit points than any other monster and low Reflex and Will, which the PCs where very much able to exploit. I see most fights become wars of attrition, the group was much more aggressive this session with 3 PCs and last with 4 than they usually are. Still I think they avoided about a third of the overall damage that would otherwise been dealt to them, between resist, thps, and the aegis.

I've seen a swordmage and sorcerer in action in my party - the swordmage is impossible to pin down and plenty of evasive powers and the sorcerer does consistently good damage against clustered enemies. I challenged the swordmage with larger spread out battlefields where they had to make decisions about positioning and who to protect. As for the sorcerer she hates being targeted by focused fire.

Our sorcerer is the evasive one, the swordmage isn't bad, but is much more of a controller. With the whole group available the swordmage usually runs ahead to lock down ranged enemies, while the rest of the group stays clumped around the Spirit of Athas. The shaman either hangs way back or hides between the fighter, ardent, and spirit.

Their glaring weakness is the lack of a controller, and encounters which exploit that will be much harder. The more monsters and the more waves/directions the come in will tax your party more than any elite or solo.

I haven't noticed this. Fewer enemies might make the swordmage shine more, but more enemies the better resist 5 all is, not to mention that lower-level enemies have a hard time hitting anyone but the shaman (who has ridiculously low defenses but also has a double-surge heal as an immediate reaction). I think part of the problem with both the giants and the salamanders was double attacks, area attacks, and ongoing damage all end up enhancing the effectiveness of the spirit.

I'd also try more situations where tight formation isnt an option and the PCs need to move to different points on the battlefield to accomplish their goals. If you have DMG2 read up on the section about encouraging movement.

I'll have to re-read that. One thing I've noticed is that while no-one is really standing still, the main melee tends to end up with everyone just shifting about.

A really tough encounter for your party would combine a lower level high damage elite/solo brute, scattered archers with terrain advantage, waves of minion skirmishers, and environmental hazards requiring movement. One enemy, probably an artillery, would need a powerful area effect to counter tight formations (eg chain lightning or a wildfire spell igniting PCs adjacent to target). If I felt particularly nasty I would add an offscreen leader who skirmishers could retreat to for healing - finding the leader and stopping it would be up to one PC. The terrain would be a couple open areas connected by narrow choke points, adding pillars with difficult terrain around them for artillery to use as cover... remember the swordmage's teleport requires LoS. Lastly, I'd throw in attractive terrain which PCs can use to cause extra damage or bypass blocking/hazardous terrain if they use it right.

Build that encounter and I guarantee your players will be sweating.

I'm generally trying to keep things relatively simple. I've tried big fancy encounters and so far they have been a lot more work to design and run with little or no real improvement in the game as a result. I'll admit that my terrain has been a bit basic and I really haven't used much in the way of hazards... I need to figure out some better kind of organization for that sort of stuff so that we can use it effectively and consistently without slowing the game to a crawl or spending hours writing up a bunch of flash-cards that will only get used in a single encounter...

 

[erleni]

I don't know why, but in small parties the ability to soak up damage becomes very attractive. I believe that the reason is the fact that you can't really afford members of the party going down for any reason, as any action used to revive them bites into an already small "resource pot" and that you may not have the opportunity to revive them at all before the end of the combat.
I play in a 3 PCs party which is quite unbalanced and very swingy (assassin, barbarian and shaman/druid). After a few encounters we started to look into any possible way to mitigate damage.
The assassin uses temporary HP, insubstantiality and on top of that he's a revenant. The barbarian is a warforged. The shaman/druid has a lot of healing/THPgiving/resistance powers. This is the best way we found to avoid the inherent swinginess of the game with less PCs.
Our master usually reduces the number of enemies (and thus the XP budget) instead of delevelling monsters and that works pretty well.
I would only like to add one comment about solos. Do not only reduce their HPs by 2/5, be also careful about solos with too many actions (Behir, I'm looking at you). They can be devastating for a smaller party.

 

[kaomera]

Quickleaf: That's an interesting encounter, and I may have to try something like that at some point... The issues I have would be: Using MM2 monsters, as I'd rather stick to MM3 or MV stuf at this point. I think I understand how the Derghodemon is supposed to work, but I'd be worried about a level 12 (or even level 13) monster being able to consistently hit the PCs. Especially since it looks like it needs two hits in one turn to start a grab. This is an even bigger problem with the Xorn. And in general I wouldn't expect much from the minions, to the point that they seem a bit like useless complexity. I'm sorry, I kind of just panned everything in that encounter, I guess... I just feel like I've been trying to add more monsters, synergistic stuff, interesting terrain, etc. and it seems to just make the encounters longer, not more fun.

Where are those hazards from? I've been looking at including some hazards, but all of the ones I can find seem very odd & impractical...

erleni: I think maybe defensive options are pretty attractive regardless, and if they're effective then that's as it should be, really.

I had kind of gotten the impression / hoped that the concentration on "the math" in 4e was going to help make it more so that players could make effective choices for their characters without them being "cheesy" or "broken". I don't think players should have to make sub-optimal choices to keep the game fun. But at the same time I was expecting / hoping that the DM would have less work in balancing stuff. And in particular that I would not have to go out of my way to negate the cool things that the players had chosen for their PCs just to make the game challenging. If the PCs pick up stuff to give them resist and I respond by upping monster damage, well IMO that kinda sucks...

When I was playing (before I took over as DM for the group) I was running a Bard, and I really liked the character. But I was the only player who was trying hard to make an offensive instead of defensive character (even the Ranger was more or less optimized for running away...). And even though we had kind of a "defender and a half" the other PCs just didn't stop the monsters from getting to me, and I kept ending up getting pounded on... It was frustrating because I wanted to play the game as a real party, and designed my character around that idea, and everyone else was really just concerned with their own characters and tried to make them as self-sufficient as possible at the expense of being able to support me (or anyone else).

I'm kind of seeing something I think is related with the group now: as an example, they've been talking a lot of ways to make combat advantage useful, because they don't feel like +2 attack is actually worth moving into a flank instead of positioning themselves defensively... Or, really, I think they kind of don't think the +2 attack bonus is worth much of anything at all. And I think it's at least in part because they're doing a lot of their "play" away from the table in character builder. If it's not something they can write on their character sheet, then it's not really important...

The result has been, unfortunately, that I'm spending a lot of time on encounters, etc. (and I can chalk a lot of that recently up as "learning experiences", at least), and it's not really making much of a difference. It doesn't matter much what the monsters' powers are, if the players really don't care. It certainly doesn't help that those choices (that I've made) don't seem to have been very effective ones... I'd like to avoid really deliberately screwing over the PCs, and I don't really want to cause a TPK, so maybe part of the problem is I can't really define / decide what I'm trying to accomplish with these encounters. Should I just be "going for the throat", maybe? Is it at all reasonable to be fishing for monsters, etc. that will specifically screw over conjurations or the swordmage's aegis, or whatever? Or what?

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=38357]kaomera[/MENTION] So your problem is challenging your PCs right?

Quickleaf: That's an interesting encounter, and I may have to try something like that at some point... The issues I have would be: Using MM2 monsters, as I'd rather stick to MM3 or MV stuf at this point.

Sure that's your perogative. In play I've been fine doubling static damage of pre-MM3 monsters, and reducing three defenses of elites by 2 (solos are another matter). Why wouldn't that work for you?

I think I understand how the Derghodemon is supposed to work, but I'd be worried about a level 12 (or even level 13) monster being able to consistently hit the PCs. Especially since it looks like it needs two hits in one turn to start a grab.

Whoa, you have 13th level PCs right? The derghodemon should be hitting an average AC of 31 (+17 +2 CA with prone from earth furrow +2 flanking with xorn). Do most of your party have ACs over 30?

As for the death hook, I'd expect one PC to be grabbed every other round (not to mention if there is another grab the derghodemon is sustaining). And once every 3 rounds I'd expect a PC to get successfully death hooked. That seems reasonable.

This is an even bigger problem with the Xorn. And in general I wouldn't expect much from the minions, to the point that they seem a bit like useless complexity.

Low-level minions aren't about piling on damage or genuinely threatening PCs - they are useful in that they help the more powerful monsters simply by their presence.

I choose Xorn because they (a) fit the flavor of the encounter, (b) can burrow up in waves from unexpected directions, (c) their multiple attacks mean it's likely with PCs who are close together that at least one is taking a little damage. Since the %chance to hit is low but they make multiple attacks (making %chance of criticals higher) I would give the minion-ized Xorn extra damage or a rider effect on criticals. And I like minions which cause an effect simply by being adjacent to a PC in numbers, such as the Hanged Ones, so I would replace Submerge with some kind of "if a PC starts their turn with 3+ Xorn adjacent to them..." (eg. They are grabbed)

Also consider how the minions interact with the rest of the encounter. For example they have darkvision in a potentially unlit cavern and they can burrow anywhere around the cavern without the PCs knowing where they'll come from next, this may grant them greater manueverability during fracturing fissure.

You might decide there is something spawning extra Xorn each round until the PCs destroy it. Or you might decide to give the minion-ized xorn a feature which enhances the derghodemon's grab attacks/sustaining grabs.

I'm sorry, I kind of just panned everything in that encounter, I guess...

Yeah you did but I may not be articulating the synergies of this encounter as well as I'd like to - the individual elements are probably easy for your PCs, but it's how they work together that makes this a challenging encounter for your living fortress party.

It demands mobility from the PCs on multiple fronts (do i go after perched artillery? do I save my skin to avoid a hazard or do I stand by ally's side to fend off attackers no matter what? do I go after the Xorn generating device or focus on taking out the derghodemon? do I dive single-handedly into the derghodemon's burrow where it dragged my friend?). It also demands the ability to adapt to sudden changes (Xorn popping up, Stormstone fury delayed explosive thunderstones, triggered hazards).

Your party is a tanking living fortress. Divide them, require mobility, provide changing/evolving challenges, and in general don't fight fair (focus fire, send lurkers after squishies, etc).

I just feel like I've been trying to add more monsters, synergistic stuff, interesting terrain, etc. and it seems to just make the encounters longer, not more fun.

It sounds like you are trying a lot!

Is it a game prep/info tracking issue, or party's composition issue?

In the second case, its clear the players want to be tough as steel and nigh invincible so let them play to their strengths. You get to exploit their weaknesses

Here's a quick list from what I've gathered:

* Encounters can last too long, so any threat which grows in intensity each round is going to challenge a party focuses on staying power over hard-hitting

* The party shrugs off damage and effects...so look at putting more traps/hazards & controllers into your encounters since they change the game the most

* The players don't seem to care about fights, taking success for granted...so throw in alternate combat objectives besides "kill all monsters" (TheWeem has a great blog about this).

* The swordmage's aegis has been used to devastating effect in your games...so consider encounters where line of sight and being within range can't be taken for granted. Teleportation in general requires the DM think differently about encounters.

Where are those hazards from? I've been looking at including some hazards, but all of the ones I can find seem very odd & impractical...

The cave-in is from the DMG, the fissure I made up. Apologies, I tend to assume other DMs are as comfortable homebrewing as I am.

 

[kaomera]

[MENTION=38357]kaomera[/MENTION] So your problem is challenging your PCs right?

I guess? I'm frustrated, and I think part of it / a lot of it is that I'm spending a lot of time designing encounters; and that's fun, but a lot of that fun is based on the idea that they're going to be cool in play. And in play they just seem to be complicated more than they are fun or even interesting. I am hoping that maybe my players will pay more attention to the monsters, terrain, etc. if the encounters are more difficult.

Sure that's your perogative. In play I've been fine doubling static damage of pre-MM3 monsters, and reducing three defenses of elites by 2 (solos are another matter). Why wouldn't that work for you?

I don't know, maybe it would. I've tried running them as published, and I was trying adding +1/2 level to damage, and neither of those worked. I've really just been working from the July 2010 update, but apparently a lot of older monsters have wonky damage expressions to start with? And I haven't been able to figure out which attacks are supposed to be "high" or "low" or "limited". You're suggesting that, frex., I change 1d8+5 damage to 1d8+10?

I'm also liking that the MM3 and MV monsters seem more straightforward, with less stuff to track at once and fewer powers that rely on getting multiple things lined up just right.

Whoa, you have 13th level PCs right? The derghodemon should be hitting an average AC of 31 (+17 +2 CA with prone from earth furrow +2 flanking with xorn). Do most of your party have ACs over 30?

Yes, I think. At least the fighter and swordmage, the ardent may be 29 or 30 but his NADs are really high. And they all get various bonuses from marks, the shaman's conjurations and/or various powers. Also, I wasn't really considering the prone, or the flanking. I find that stuff like this, that requires several steps to set up, at some point the PCs always screw it up or I blow a roll. That's the real problem with the damage mitigation - I need to get several hits in a row (before it's a new turn and immediates refresh) to really do much, and I rarely do.

As for the death hook, I'd expect one PC to be grabbed every other round (not to mention if there is another grab the derghodemon is sustaining). And once every 3 rounds I'd expect a PC to get successfully death hooked. That seems reasonable.

OK, maybe I'm just unlucky and/or I'm being overly pessimistic. It seems like I need to use level 14+ monsters to generally ensure a 10+ will hit.

Low-level minions aren't about piling on damage or genuinely threatening PCs - they are useful in that they help the more powerful monsters simply by their presence.

I choose Xorn because they (a) fit the flavor of the encounter, (b) can burrow up in waves from unexpected directions, (c) their multiple attacks mean it's likely with PCs who are close together that at least one is taking a little damage. Since the %chance to hit is low but they make multiple attacks (making %chance of criticals higher) I would give the minion-ized Xorn extra damage or a rider effect on criticals. And I like minions which cause an effect simply by being adjacent to a PC in numbers, such as the Hanged Ones, so I would replace Submerge with some kind of "if a PC starts their turn with 3+ Xorn adjacent to them..." (eg. They are grabbed)

I should have seen the flanking trick. Even if the Xorn are only going to be around for a round or so they can burrow up into position (well, not around the sorceress... Spark Slippers...).

It demands mobility from the PCs on multiple fronts (do i go after perched artillery? do I save my skin to avoid a hazard or do I stand by ally's side to fend off attackers no matter what? do I go after the Xorn generating device or focus on taking out the derghodemon? do I dive single-handedly into the derghodemon's burrow where it dragged my friend?). It also demands the ability to adapt to sudden changes (Xorn popping up, Stormstone fury delayed explosive thunderstones, triggered hazards).

Your party is a tanking living fortress. Divide them, require mobility, provide changing/evolving challenges, and in general don't fight fair (focus fire, send lurkers after squishies, etc).

Yeah, I have been trying to fight fair. I also think that I end up being the one having to adapt more often than not.

It sounds like you are trying a lot!

Is it a game prep/info tracking issue, or party's composition issue?

In the second case, its clear the players want to be tough as steel and nigh invincible so let them play to their strengths. You get to exploit their weaknesses

I think it's a bit of both. I know I'm generally doing better with MM3 / MV monsters, but some stuff I've tried was just a huge block of powers and auras and stuff and I'd always end up missing stuff. I have one of the players running initiative now, and I'm getting better at organizing things - I rearrange stat blocks now so that they're in the order I want to be considering options on a turn, instead of just printing them out. And I probably should be making reminder cards for some effects, etc. but I kind of feel like I'm already spending too much time on prep. (And the PCs really don't seem to have too many weaknesses, but maybe I'm just not looking in the right places.)

Here's a quick list from what I've gathered:

* Encounters can last too long, so any threat which grows in intensity each round is going to challenge a party focuses on staying power over hard-hitting

* The party shrugs off damage and effects...so look at putting more traps/hazards & controllers into your encounters since they change the game the most

* The players don't seem to care about fights, taking success for granted...so throw in alternate combat objectives besides "kill all monsters" (TheWeem has a great blog about this).

* The swordmage's aegis has been used to devastating effect in your games...so consider encounters where line of sight and being within range can't be taken for granted. Teleportation in general requires the DM think differently about encounters.


The cave-in is from the DMG, the fissure I made up. Apologies, I tend to assume other DMs are as comfortable homebrewing as I am.

Well, I was comfortable with homebrewing, except the stuff I was coming up with wasn't working... I'm stepping back from that for a bit, hoping that looking at the stuff I am using I can get a better idea of what works and what doesn't.

Anyway, thanx for the advice. =]

 

[Dice4Hire]

To the OP

Keep trying!!

 

[kaomera]

Keep trying!!

I will... I really like playing with these guys. I'm just frustrated because I know that I could cause a TPK if that's what I wanted to do, but creating the possibility without just simply forcing the issue shouldn't ought to be this tricky...

So, I thought I had everything set for the boss fight and was on to making sure the next encounters (there are several possibilities) where set up, and now we're going to be down a player again...

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

From my own experience, a good way to get players more engaged in encounters is to foreshadow them (and the opponents) and otherwise tie them into the plot.

After all, a power that might otherwise be "ho hum" can be an "oh yeah!" moment when your PCs twig to what some clue you gave before was actually an indication of what tactics the enemy might use.

Likewise, monsters are much more interesting for a player if you've given them a reason to feel some emotion towards them before hand... fear/hate are the easiest to instill, but pretty much any emotional connection works. Though, it certainly helps if you have players who buy into it... if you don't, it can simply lead to further frustration.

Now, I must admit, this is something that I'm really bad at - coming from a wargaming background, its easy to just jump right into combat. I'm finding more and more that doing so is a mistake... I keep kicking myself when I think after the fact of either some introductory information I could have used... or simply forgot to.