D&D 4E Changing the Combat Parameters of 4th Edition

[Myrhdraak]

4th Edition Monster XP and Encounter Building

I did a small exercise to help those of you that do not want to use my 4.5 Edition but would like to have a new XP curve that better reflect the monsters actual challenge difference towards the party in 4th Edition. The standard deviation is here 4.22% so it is a decent match between the XP and the actual monster challenge as to their HP and Damage output in 4th Edition. Quite interestingly it is quite far from the XP ladder given in 4th Edition.

The way I calculate this is to look at monsters down to 5 levels lower and up to 5 levels higher than the party and rounds needed for the party to kill the monster and multiplying this with the average monster damage to see how much damage the monster manage to infect on the party before they kill the monster. Then I optimize the XP to reflect the challenge difference over these 10 levels. So it gives an XP ladder that is optimized for encounter building.



The curve is much steeper than my 4.5 Edition that ended at 150,000 XP for a monter of 30th level (here it is 880,000 XP). The reason is that bounded accuracy makes the monster easier to hit and therefore more useful in a wider level range. In 4th Edition monsters sooner get irrelevant due to them loosing the ability to hit and do damage with wider level difference.

 

[Myrhdraak]

ENCOUNTER BUILDING
I have added some encounter building guidelines into the 4.5 Edition Guideline document. I have also started using this in my own Campaign now, updating the character sheets and mosters to the new rules. What I really like so far is that I have the flexibility to, for example, build a 3 encounters (1+1+1) setup for a day travelling to the Dungeon of Doom, which runs faster than the normal 5 encounter per day guideline in 4th Edition (while using monster of the player level as well (or M+1 if I want to reduce HS), and then when they arrive in the Dungeon of Doom I can run a 3+3+1 format with 6 shorter encounters with more focus on exploration, and then a final boss fight in the end. It brings together the best of two worlds.

What I am pondering on now is the ability to have DM steered recovery during an Extended Rest. What if an extended rest had higher requirements for full HS recovery? Maybe sleeping out in the wild with the threat of wandering mosters reduce the HS recovery, vs. sleeping in a safe place? This could give more DM controll, allowing me to build a three day travelling with one encounter per day, without HS recovery during Extended rest (which would give the same setup as a 1+1+1 adventuring day). Needs some further thinking, but it would be great in order to be able to bring back wandering monsters into 4th Edition in a nice way.

4.5 Edition Conversion Guide

/Myrhdraak

 

[Garthanos]

So what is the impact of your shenanigans on the value of powers that trigger off of bloodied.
And are mid battle turn arounds undermined by changes to the healing system?

 

[Garthanos]

btw: I admire your due diligence on getting the numbers to line up with your goals.

 

[Myrhdraak]

So what is the impact of your shenanigans on the value of powers that trigger off of bloodied.
And are mid battle turn arounds undermined by changes to the healing system?

Well it will have an impact when you run the 3+3+3 encounter building as the individual threats are quite small, however we will have to take into account that the damage is most likely not evenly distributed during a battle, some players will take more damage and might still get to the bloodied condition. Another aspect is that during the small short enconters (usually around 2 rounds), tactical battle is not really the point, and the party or monsters will not have the time to use all Powers (like in 3.5 and 5th Edition). These bloodied or non bloodied conditionas will mainly only play a difference in the longer tactical fights, such as when you build a 3+3+1 encounter, when the final battle will be just lika any 4th Edition battle you play.

/Myrhdraak

 

[Garthanos]

There are also bloodied conditions of the adversaries that may blit off the board so fast that it is insignificant in this model.

 

[Jhaelen]

*bump*

 

[Myrhdraak]

There are also bloodied conditions of the adversaries that may blit off the board so fast that it is insignificant in this model.

Yes that might be the case, but as DM you have control over when and where to use your monsters. For the short skirmish encounters I will most likely monstly use simple brutes and soldiers, maybe some artillery support, nothing really tactical. For the tactical fights I can of course as a DM go all in and do nice combination and monsters with several interesting combinations, etc. like you do with every fight under the 4th Edition normal rules.

 

[Garthanos]

Yes that might be the case, but as DM you have control over when and where to use your monsters.

i added minions to the type of creature which can be intimidated directly by the Deva Astral Majesty.... and since your ummm adjustments opened up the range of adversarial levels you might also enable things that affect bloodied enemies as affecting things ummm 5 levels lower? and mayhaps minions.

It seems like a lot of flavor might be lost and things start feeling like slaughter fests, I guess it isn't technically true as players can chose to have merciful final blows. However In a standard game I have enemies looking for the exit relatively normally when they hit bloodied obviously not undead or low self preservation enemies but this can also accelerate fights AND my players do not feel the need to be murdering machines and chase them down.

I am uncertain of the benefits of enabling those 2 round non-fights... making it easier to integrate a few combatant tricks in what is mostly a skill challenge would seem more useful.

 

[Myrhdraak]

I am uncertain of the benefits of enabling those 2 round non-fights... making it easier to integrate a few combatant tricks in what is mostly a skill challenge would seem more useful.

I am not sure that I would agree, but I think it is all a preference here.
I could see a skill challenge for a minor skirmish be resolved with and Athletics group check for all melee fighters and a group Arcana/Religion check for the magic/divine users. Question is what fun is that? If you have a working combat mechanic with powers and HP, why try to replace it with an inferior mechanism? How fun is running 4 of these before the real tactical battle happens? Will it be so well balanced so that 50% of the party resources are now consumed when the final battle happens? I do not think so, and then you will have to compensate with a lot of high level monsters instead which then introduce much more XP and more risk for a battle that will be very long (4 rounds of At-Will powers) as well as more "risky" in the sense that it might be overpowering the PCs.

Another argument is why 5th Edition at all have combat encounters as every encounter is built for the 2 rounds encounter length? Why haven't they just taken out combat mechanism completly and are only running skill challenges instead? I think they realized that the 4th Edition strategy of making EVERY battle tactical, consumed to much table time, and there was a need to shorten many of these encounters to give more time for exploration and roleplaying - but not by turning short encounters into skill challenges, but by creating a combat framework that allowed for 2 rounds of average combat length. Sadly at the expense of longer tactical fights. The game could not do both. What I am trying to achieve here is a game that can do both.

But if you prefer a few tactical combats and resolve everything else as skill challenges, run with it.

4.5 Edition Conversion Guide

/Myrhdraak