Bad experience with a 1st level 4e encounter

[Liminal Syzygy]

Hi all,

I've been a 3.0/3.5 player for years. When 4e came out I purchased the books, and a couple months back started a play-by-post game with some friends. My expectations for 4e were not high, but I've liked 4e more than I thought I would... until our most recent encounter in which I had a very bad experience as a player. I'm interested in people's thoughts on if is an example of bad encounter design or more of an endemic problem with trying to balance 4e encounters.

The story follows (if you are playing or plan to play The Scars of War) adventure path, there are spoilers below, so you probably want to stop reading.

Our first level party (warlord, wizard, warlock, rogue, fighter) is on a mission to rescue some people and find some items in a dungeon. We've been through three or so encounters, and find a room with some kind of magical portal. We approach the portal cautiously to investigate (we'd not yet heard any hint of such a portal so we know nothing about what this might be or why it's here), and without warning an ochre jelly spills through the portal and attacks.

We engage in combat, fighting a couple of rounds, the jellies split, we try to force one back though the portal unsuccessfully. We dispatch one half of the jelly and it appears things are going well for us, but then the fight suddenly takes a turn for the worse.

Out of no where and with no warning, two specters which had apparently been invisible simultaneously appear and unleash their AoE power on much of the party. One does 11 damage to four of us, and another does 8 damage to three of us. At the same time, the remaining jelly attacks hitting our warlord (who had also eaten both of the specter AoEs) for 9 damage.

All of a sudden our fighter and our warlord (who has our only healing) are down, and it's pretty clear there are going to be deaths. We started talking about having the survivors run and having the players of the fighter and warlock roll new characters.

We ended up having the character of another player who wanted to join conveniently join the party at that time with another fighter. Then blowing her daily and encounter powers. But this felt like a complete deus ex machina and left me feeling cheated as a player.

At the end of the day, with the new fighter's help, we were barely able to squeak out a victory with no deaths. But this fight left a very bad taste in my mouth as a player.

There was no way we could have anticipated the appearance of either the jelly (which 99% of parties would have engaged in combat with) which conveniently got us embroiled in the room, or the appearance of the specters.

Was it just the encounter design? My DM says he played it as written and I believe him. Is it reasonable to expect a first level party to be able to survive these kinds of odds?

 

[tomlib]

Hi Cordo,

I'm a player in the Scales of War campaign as well and that particular room is just poorly designed in my opinion. My GM lets me look at the adventures after we finish and your GM played it as written.

There are a lot of things wrong with it but basically your thoughts sum it up. The foes are completely out of the blue and have nothing to do with the room or the rest of the dungeon (there is more of that ahead). We were very close to TPK there as well.

It has nothing to do with 4.0, again in my opinion. Just bad design. It does go to a thread making the rounds that the designers of 4.0 adventures seem compelled to put a foe in every room or every section of rooms.

Tom

 

[Wisdom Penalty]

4E is hard, dude.

You could say it's poor encounter design that gave you cats a challenge you barely survived, or you could say it's great encounter design that gave you cats a challenge you barely survived.

Me, I prefer the latter. If I don't feel like my character can die, you may as well pack up the wife and kids and head home.

I realize, as I reach the end of this post, that I've said nothing remotely constructive. Sorry about that.

WP

 

[malraux]

In my group we also just hit that fight and had nearly the same result. I think the problem with that encounter is that it's a bit harder than normal plus is timed to likely occur at the end of the day. 1st level characters just don't have the depth of resources to handle an extra surprise.

It's much more a function of you being 1st level than it is playing 4e.

 

[Pseudopsyche]

I think the problem here is a combination of bad luck and the particularly "gotcha" nature of this encounter. A typical party probably wouldn't expect the ochre jelly to come through the portal, so a "nice" DM would have to go out of his way to give the PCs some warning. The specters had to roll a stealth check to beat your passive perception checks. When they attacked, they hit on 7 out of 10 attack rolls with their AoE (for average and above-average damage), and then the remaining ochre jelly also managed to hit for respectable damage.

To answer your question more directly, it sounds you owe your bad experience to largely edition-independent factors. In any edition of D&D you could design an encounter where a monster jumps out of a picture and then invisible specters flank you from behind, and if the battle goes poorly for whatever reason, the players will always feel like they were set up.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

He played it as written, I have dm'ed that encounter. My read was that by the time the party reached that encounter they should have picked up clues that that room was no place to hang about in. Also the spectre should attack as soon as the party cleared the corridor going in.
Your DM waited until the optimal moment to screw your party.
Is it dooable for a first level group? In my opinion, just about expecially if you have a cleric. I think you had some extremely bad luck.

I ran it with a Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Fighter, Swordmage and Cleric and ran it as written. The party is one bigger than the desgined for group but I decided it would give them a good fight.

THe Ochre jelly is pretty tough initially but as it splits it get away more fragile. The spectres are lethal but very fragile. The cleric bloodied them from full with a turn undead. The swordmage was very effective in knocking out the jelly but got dropped to below 0 by the spectres.

In the end the party won but blew all powers, a good few action points and had as far as I remember a couple of characters dropped below 0.

 

[FireLance]

I think there's another factor at work here. Monsters are much more effective when they attack more or less simultaneously, and the PCs do not have the opportunity to react in between monster actions. If the spectres had appeared one at a time, and the PCs got to react to them before the ochre jelly attacked again, the warlord could have healed himself, and other wounded characters could have pulled out healing potions or whatever.

This is not unique to 4e. I've encounted combats in 3e that were made much more difficult because the DM rolled a single initiative for the monsters, which enabled them to leave one or two characters dying after their barrage of attacks.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Good point on initiative, i generally group by type for 4e.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

I don't. I've seen it done though(my RPGA DM does it that way), and battles are much more interesting when things have their own initiative. The only time I combine initiative is with minions, combining them into one group or keying them off of the initiative of other non-minion enemies. As an example of the latter, think of a Kobold battle with a Wyrmpriest, a Dragonshield, two Skirmishers, and six minions, and have two minions each accompany the Dragonshield and each Skirmisher.

 

[Rechan]

or keying them off of the initiative of other non-minion enemies. As an example of the latter, think of a Kobold battle with a Wyrmpriest, a Dragonshield, two Skirmishers, and six minions, and have two minions each accompany the Dragonshield and each Skirmisher.

Oooh, I like that.