Did an experiment last night with an 'easy' encounter.

[hailstop]

Well, was planning on two experiments last night...one using Sly Flourish's 4e Hard Mode suggestions from his blog (Sly Flourish» Blog Archive » Dungeons and Dragons 4e: Hard Mode). The other was to see how a combat of a lower level would go against the PCs...who are 15th level. They went up against a 13th level encounter (but with 12th level monsters).

The combats still took quite awhile, even though the players were able to hit pretty much at will, and the players weren't challenged at all either (although admittedly I rolled to hit poorly, and the PCs work well together...especially coordinating the controller abilities).

Anyone else have any experience with 'easy' encounters? I was hoping to use them for flavour but to be over quickly. Didn't happen.

 

[frankthedm]

monster HP scales up and down slowly and player damage scales slower still. Even a couple of levels down will drop foes hit rates, but those foes will still have plenty of HP to grind through.

 

[Rechan]

Personally I think "easy" encounters should be done narrativly, or wrapped up fast. The outcome is rather obvious, because they're easy. So why go through the entire procedure?

I will say that an "easier" encounter consisting of more lower level enemies could be fun. Just pour on the lower level monsters until it reaches the PC's level +1, and see how that works. Although I imagine it would take time to whittle their HP down.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I think level equal encounters are easy but it you want to play out real easy then use hordes of minions and may be the odd 'officer' monster.

 

[Otterscrubber]

Well I've run some lvl 24 fights for experiments and they actually went pretty fast even when using at level combats. Perhaps it goes faster if everyone knows their characters well? As you get higher up and more options open up it can take awhile if people aren't used ot their characters' abilities. I have to assume if you were running an experiment then the characters used in the experiemtn probably weren' ones that were very famaliar and thus took awhile longer to figure out how best to work.

 

[Otterscrubber]

In the past my PCs have destroyed any minions pretty fast to the point where I almost don't even want to award any xp for them. I'm wondering what if I put my group up against enough minions that by the end of the fight they would all gain of level's worth of xp. I mean a HORDE of minions just to see how that would turn out. At what point would they run, or could they win? Obviously a group geared towards lots of AE would destroy them but my group is not, so i think this would be really interesting.

 

[hailstop]

monster HP scales up and down slowly and player damage scales slower still. Even a couple of levels down will drop foes hit rates, but those foes will still have plenty of HP to grind through.

That's a good point. It seems that defenses and to-hit rolls scale quickly over a small range of levels...but hp and damage do not.

Probably what makes higher level than the party monsters annoying is that they are hard to hit...not so much that when you hit you have to plug through a ton of hp.

Hmmmm...perhaps 'grind' solutions should focus more on defenses rather than hp...but still focus on damage instead of hit rolls for offense. (ie the 75% hp, + 1/2 per level damage solution which I use).

 

[hailstop]

Personally I think "easy" encounters should be done narrativly, or wrapped up fast. The outcome is rather obvious, because they're easy. So why go through the entire procedure?

I will say that an "easier" encounter consisting of more lower level enemies could be fun. Just pour on the lower level monsters until it reaches the PC's level +1, and see how that works. Although I imagine it would take time to whittle their HP down.

I think that's the problem...the hp. There were eight monsters (vs 6 PCs) in that encounter, and even though they were 3 levels lower than the PCs, and were hit pretty much at will (hits on 3s in a couple of cases), the PCs still had to slog through those hp.

I rolled so crappily that the fact that the monsters were effectively -3 to hit didn't really matter.

 

[hailstop]

Well I've run some lvl 24 fights for experiments and they actually went pretty fast even when using at level combats. Perhaps it goes faster if everyone knows their characters well? As you get higher up and more options open up it can take awhile if people aren't used ot their characters' abilities. I have to assume if you were running an experiment then the characters used in the experiemtn probably weren' ones that were very famaliar and thus took awhile longer to figure out how best to work.

This is true and it certainly came into it. 3 of the players are using new characters (for the last 3 sessions).

One thing that has become apparent to me (and I started pushing the 'roll your damage at the same time as the attack), is that 4e has one problem in that there is a lot of situational damage modifiers.

For instance, the Warlock had cast Fireswarm, and had sustained it. On the next turn he did 4d10 damage + 2d6 fire damage for his paragon path +2d6 damage for something else...and if he'd critted it would be +3d6 for that...plus...plus...

In earlier editions while there may be modifiers on the hit roll, there usually weren't many situational ones...and there rarely were modifiers on the damage roll.

 

[hailstop]

In the past my PCs have destroyed any minions pretty fast to the point where I almost don't even want to award any xp for them. I'm wondering what if I put my group up against enough minions that by the end of the fight they would all gain of level's worth of xp. I mean a HORDE of minions just to see how that would turn out. At what point would they run, or could they win? Obviously a group geared towards lots of AE would destroy them but my group is not, so i think this would be really interesting.

I would think they'd really kick ass until they started running out of encounters and dailys. Then the hordes would really start to come into play. Especially with flanking and such.

Could be fun as a change of pace though (and I did do a 24 zombie encounter once).