Appropriate Challenge

[SigmaX0]

Just wondering if could gather some opinions from various DMs on these forums (I am solely a PC).

What kind of encounter would you consider a hard challenge for 3 level 11 PCs? That is, an encounter which would likely drain all of the players dailies and most of their healing surges.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think the DMG contains suggestions on that.

My guesstimate would put it at an encounter level of player level +3 (assuming 3 players, and the encounter level calculated as if it was against 5. ).

 

[SigmaX0]

As a lowly PC I have restricted access to such sacred tomes as the DMG

I'm after opinions on specific monsters particularly, this is our first 4E campaign (long time 3rd and 3.5 players), and there is still an element of "testing the water" from our DM in terms of what our group can and can't handle.

But last meeting we went up against 6 level 6 Mad wraiths, followed by a Nightwalker, level 20 elite, and whilst it was very challenging, it still felt a little surprising that it was doable for 3 characters of our level.

 

[hong]

I... think you guys might be playing it wrong.

Care to post the details of those encounters?

 

[SigmaX0]

I don't have the sheets from Saturday's meeting as my DM keeps them, but I can try and recall as many details as possible, what would you like to know exactly?

We have a party consisting of:

Level 11 Human Fighter - Kensai PP

Level 11 Dragonborn Wizard (lolz) Battle mage PP

Level 11 Human Ranger - Stormwarden PP (me)

We're probably slightly above what you would expect in terms of power for our level, given that our wizard has a +4 wand and our fighter a +4 greataxe, also one of my ranger's swords is a +5 (obtained for plot-related reasons-was able also to bypass the insubstantial property of the wraiths, but not an issue for the Nightwalker)

Basically, we fought the 6 wraiths first, each one tried it's touch of madness (I think that is the name) ability on the fighter, and also managed to recharge these abilities due to some lucky rolling from our DM, resulting in me getting bashed pretty heavily by our fighter's scary basic attacks. However with the use of my aforementioned sword, and my sweeping whirlwind and clear the ground encounter powers we finished them off quite quickly.

The nightwalker was obviously a lot more tricky, the wizard went first and stuck a flaming sphere pretty close to the NW, this contributed a LOT of damage to him over the course of the fight, as he failed to get away from it.

Fighter charged in and marked it, and I managed to take my ranger to a flanking position using a combo of expeditious stride, storm step action and attacks on the run (although I still took an AoO ironically to gain the flank)

Its damage was quite nasty but we blew everything we had, the fighter used unbreakable, unstoppable etc.

At one point, the fighter became bloodied, the NW used his finger of death, but he managed to avoid it using Last ditch evasion. (which probably saved the fight). During his stun time, our brave wizard got himself into melee to keep providing my ranger with a flank.

His minor action knockback was very irritating, but mainly used on the fighter who would charge back in and eat the AoO anyway (he has bracers of mighty striking and horned helm for some crazy charge attacks)

When he used it on my ranger I took the opportunity to use my second wind, but the NW died just after he had put the fighter to negative HP. All in all a challenging fight, but not as "impossible" as I thought it would be.

PS helped of course by some excellent rolling, also spectral ram helped a lot.

PSS TLDR

 

[baberg]

I'm pretty sure you were playing something wrong in the Nightwalker encounter. A group of level 11s should have to-hit bonuses of what, maybe +14 or +15? Nightwalker's weakest defense is Will at 30, his highest AC of 34. Your fighter should have only been hitting on a natural 20 and anybody else with 15s or 16s. And the Nightwalker has attacks +23 vs. AC and +21 vs. Will (at-will, close blast 5, minor 1/round) for 1d8+7 damage. And he's an Elite Brute with over 450 HP, while a PC is hovering at below 100.

Definitely something wrong there.

EDIT: Also, just read that the Fighter would charge in and eat an AoO. Nightwalker doesn't have Threatening Reach, so there should have been no AoOs on a charge. I think your DM needs to pay attention to my signature and not treat 4e as 3.75 Throw out what you think you knew about combat and read it from a fresh perspective.

 

[ForbidenMaster]

What kind of encounter would you consider a hard challenge for 3 level 11 PCs? That is, an encounter which would likely drain all of the players dailies and most of their healing surges.

Can you have such an encounter? I simply think there may not be enough healing. Each PC gets a second wind, maybe the fighter has a power or two to let him spend a HS depending on the fighters level, and then you have a leader who can do a minimum of two per encounter, and then a few more as they level up. You also have magic items, but somethig specific like spending a healing surge for healing is a bit rare, and even then it would be 1/day, and healing potions which while spend a HS to get HP, isnt very effective. Given the fact that at a minimum a PC will have6+CON HS per day, I am at a loss as to how to create a single encounter that would drain most of the parties HSs (which seems to be by design).

 

[SigmaX0]

Re healing surges, that was a misleading statement, I meant, after the encounter ended, we had to use most of our remaining surges in order to be battle-ready again. I think 2 of us used second wind, and as I mentioned the fighter used all 3 utility powers to stay alive (and he still entered dieing)

Regarding attack bonuses, i'll tell you how mine is made up, as I mentioned in my post my ranger has a +5 longsword in the MH, +3 scimitar in the OH, my strength is 1 above what it should be due to a magic book (gogo 3.75) making it 24, so:

STR + 7, Weapon Enhancement +5, Weapon Prof +3, 1/2 Level +5 = +21 MH
Str + 7, Weapon Enhancement +3, Weapon Prof +2, 1/2 Level + 5 = +17 OH

I appreciate these are higher than you might expect for characters our level for the reasons I mentioned. Factor in combat advantage for the whole encounter and +23 vs 34 AC is 11 to hit, not too shabby.

Our fighter has the same strength as me, +7, a +4 weapon, prof bonus of +2 for a greataxe, and half lvl +5 so that's +18, plus I think fighters get +1, so +21 with combat advantage. So far from a natural 20 for our group at least.

As for the nightwalker attacks, yeah, it hit us a lot, but we hit it a lot too, and our team kicks out a lot of damage when the dice land right.

As for the reach on the NW, i'll have to take your word for it since I don't have a MM, but surely reach would only make the fight even harder!

 

[hong]

You guys are definitely overpowered for level 11.

That said, a lone nightwalker is 5600 XP, and by the book, that's about a level 15 encounter for 5 PCs (there's only 3 of you, but your stats compensate for that -- especially when dealing with lone overlevelled monsters). Something to remember about 4E is that it flattens the power curve a lot compared to 3E. A level+4 encounter would be close to TPK for 3E, but that might still be a tough but survivable fight for 4E. And you guys look like you used smart tactics, always looking for flanking etc, which would have helped matters.

 

[baberg]

Well, I can't argue with your math... but yeah, you're pretty overpowered for a standard 4e level 11 PC. 20 in your primary stat at level 1 (if I'm doing the math right), an extra point on enhancement for the weapon, and 4e fights generally aren't built around a single monster except for the Solos (Dragons and such) which generally have specific rules that allow them to make multiple attacks per round.

If your group is still doing this sort of thing, I'd love to hear what happens if your DM puts an Adult Red Dragon against you. She has an XP budget of 6,000 (just slightly more than the Nightwalker) with similar defenses and attack bonuses, but she's got more HP (as a Solo always does) and can make multiple attacks per round. She also has a tail swipe that helps prevent flanking. Honestly, I think you'd get TPK'd pretty quick

So as for the original question of "What is a good challenge", it sounds like your DM will need to bump up encounters about 3 levels above your party level to challenge you. And also remember that 4e is also a bit broken when you only do one combat per day because of the great Daily abilities that some classes get. I've had to change the way I approach encounters ever since we got a Wizard in the group with Sleep and Stinking Cloud.