Easilly assembled encounters, more character driven adventures?

[Think0028]

I'm glad for the easier DMing, but instead of letting someone else DM, I can finally DM again! I snapped about a year ago and decided to elect the other guy who knew the rules thoroughly as DM. Although he's good, he and I both agree that I should take over as DM once more.

 

[The Little Raven]

Might be, but that's not how it's being spun....

If you can't figure out how to have a fight in 4e that isn't an "ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny," I'd say the problem lies with you, because my playtest bar brawl against bandits had no touches of destiny, fate, fortune, or any other life-controlling mechanisms. It was just a fight in which bandits got their asses kicked.

 

[Dragonblade]

Last night's game (3x): About ten minutes of prep==3 hours of game.
Picked monsters from the book (MM and TOH2); ran them as is. Came up with the next arc of the adventure when specifiying treasure. (First I wanted a ring with a sigil...then I decided to add in some more items with the same sign...then I created the royal family to which they belonged, tossed a few plot hooks into them, and presto! Next game is planned.)

Granted, it's still low level -- 6-7 -- but I just don't have this whole "I need six hours to prep!" meme going. In 8 years of running 3x, it's very rare I ever have anything done more than 2 hours before go time. (If a fight seems too easy or too hard, wing it. Have another monster come in and make it look like you planned it all along. Or decide that someone had 20 fewer hit points than you originally noted. This is DM 101.)

Fights in 4e seem like MORE work to me, because everything has to be the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny with exploding terrain, hordes of minions, and giant whirlygigs of doom. You can't just run into an ettin thug who's the mind controlled pawn of a bloodsucking tree anymore.

Here is where I have a problem with 3e. I just reached up to my bookshelf and grabbed the nearest monster book. MM3. I randomly flip through the book to find a monster, and here we go: Lurking Strangler.

Its a tiny CR 2 aberration. Seems like a simple enough monster, everything looks pretty straightforward. But wait. It has eye rays. It can cast Cause Fear and Sleep. What does it say in the book? It says they act like the spell. Well, shoot. I don't remember the specifics on either of those spells.

So, now I have to pull out my PHB, flip to those pages and read those spell descriptions. Aaarrghhh! What a pain. I just want to be able to run the monster out of the book. I don't want to EVER have to look at something in another book.

Hmm, lets flip the page. Here is another CR 1 monster. The Mindshredder. CR 1, it should be simple enough to run. Umm wait, there is almost a whole page of combat information I now have to read through. Hmm, it has some Supernatural ability called "Thought Sense" and several paragraphs about how it works and how it interacts with Concealment. And it also has this ability to deal Wisdom damage, but wait the Wisdom damage heals it. But wait, if it grapples it does something different. Oh and sometimes the healing does temp hit points. GAAAHH!!

Screw this, isn't there anything easier to run?

Hmm, flip some more pages. Here is something called a Rage Walker. Its a CR 14. Holy cow, the thing has a two page entry! It has all sorts of special abilities with a paragraph of text describing each one. Plus it has 4 different spell like abilities which I now have to look up. Well, Bull's Strength is one. I'm pretty sure I have that down, so I just need to look up 3. But still!

And these are premade monsters!! Heaven forbid I need to come up with a 10th level NPC wizard on my own. Hmm, what gear does he have? Well I need to know its AC and combat bonuses so I have to give him stats and gear. And then I have to pick spells and read all their descriptions and decides what's cast, and what's not. Calculate all his buffs, etc. Oh and then if a PC casts Dispel Magic, I have to go and recalculate everything in the middle of combat.

This sucks. I'm not even having fun anymore. And all my players, who were on the edge of their seat a minute ago, are now bored and chatting OOC while I look all this crap up. My alternative is to spend a couple hours of prep before the game. But I don't want to do that either. Playing D&D shouldn't require me to do "homework". Its supposed to be a fun hobby for crying out loud! Sure, I could make something up. But what numbers should I use? What if I guess wrong and make the encounter too tough? 3e has no guidelines for anything like that.

Pretty much the only monsters I can run out of a 3e monster book without having to look anything up are physical brute monsters that have no casting, special rules, or anything. That's not real exciting.

Now let's see what solution 4e offers me. Let's see. Hmm, Hobgoblin Warcaster. Its a level 3 monster. Just looking at it, I instantly know its AC, and Defenses without having to deal with any buffs whatsoever. It has 4 different attacks. A staff hit, a staff hit with lightning damage, or it can blast foes at range for damage, or blast foes and knock them back.

EVERYTHING I need to run this monster is right there in the statblock. It's clearly written, easy to understand, and no paragraphs of text discussing an endless variety of obscure corner cases. It has interesting magical attacks and doesn't require me to look up anything in another book.

This is what I LOVE about 4e. This is why I think 4e will be hugely popular not only with players, but with DMs especially. I feel like I can once again return to my 2e DMing style when I ran entire games with zero prep time. Now, if you can do that with 3e and it works for you, then awesome. Good for you!

But, for me, running 3e just sucks the creativity and desire to DM right out of me. 4e so far has had the entirely opposite effect.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I'm hoping that 4e will be (as promised) significantly easier to DM than 3e was. While I could DM just about anything I could imagine in 3e, the process was simply too time consuming to maintain for long while working a full time job and raising a familly. Largely, I resorted to using Dungeon magazine. This saved a lot of time, but my campaigns as a result became less character driven -- the module writers over at Dungeon are good, but they couldn't know about the backstories of each of my individual characters and intertwine them into the plot.

I'm hoping that 4e will help me return to the DMing style I used in AD&D.... if your character is the son of a duke who's position was usurped by his brother, the new duke will at some point take note of the character's rise to power and seek to have him eliminated before he becomes a threat. Reclaiming the Dutchy may eventually become the central thread of the campaign. If you've noted specific enemies on your character sheet, you better be on the look out for them because they're going to be on the look out for you.

A lot of this is lost when relying on published modules. I plan to swear off using published modules for my first 4e campaign, and I'm really looking forward to the idea. I just hope encounter design is as painless as advertised.

I'm glad 4e is looking easier to DM. If all they changed were the magic items it would be less time-consuming.

I don't want to see character-driven adventures though. Most parties have more than one player, and it's next to impossible to craft an adventure that spotlights everyone that way.

 

[Lizard]

If you can't figure out how to have a fight in 4e that isn't an "ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny," I'd say the problem lies with you, because my playtest bar brawl against bandits had no touches of destiny, fate, fortune, or any other life-controlling mechanisms. It was just a fight in which bandits got their asses kicked.

The reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwBK31tC5QM

This is what 4e combat feels like to me.

Which is absolutely amazingly cool for the big boss fight, but not for every fight scene. I tend to use combat not so much as an end in itself but as a means of advancing the story -- I try (though with varying success) to make every fight mean something. It reveals information, or provides an ally, or teaches something about the world, or gives a particular character a chance to strut their stuff, or whatever.

4e overloads PCs with Cool Moves, and I'd feel I was failing as a DM if I didn't give everyone a chance to show off their powers -- which means laboriously designing a battlefield to accomodate all that shifting/pushing/pulling/etc. Keeping track of mob tactics in 3x is bad enough; it will be much harder in 4e.

 

[Benimoto]

Granted, it's still low level -- 6-7 -- but I just don't have this whole "I need six hours to prep!" meme going. In 8 years of running 3x, it's very rare I ever have anything done more than 2 hours before go time.

I don't need 6 hours to prep, but I'm also rarely completely satisfied with the adventures I create when I whip them up in the last 2 hours before the game.

I run a fairly combat-heavy game, with about 2-4 fights per session, each usually against multiple varied monsters. Once the party hit level 12 or so, I discovered there were fewer and fewer monsters usable directly out of the Monster Manuals. So, I end up making around 3-6 stat blocks for opponents every session. I would say I spend an average of 20 minutes on each stat block. Some, usually melee brutes, are easy and get done in 10 minutes, while others like spellcasters or monsters I spend a lot of time looking up feats for take more like 30. So that's 1-2 hours spent on monster stat blocks.

Then I like to make maps for some of the encounters. I like terrain to be an important factor in at least one fight each session, so that takes another 10-30 minutes of planning. Then, there's all the out-of-combat stuff, and while I'm happy to improvise, I like to jot down at least an outline of the major plot and dialog points beforehand. I hate it when I forget to mention important stuff, so writing it down helps.

So what we're looking at is 2-4 hours of prep for each 4-6 hour session. I usually work on stuff throughout the week, so it's not like it's a burden.

The thing is, I don't particularly expect 4e to change the time I spend that much. I already skip allocating most of the skill points and any unnecessary feats or low-level spells in my stat block, so the simplifications there won't help much. Still, if 4e cuts down my average monster stat block time from 20 to 10 minutes, that will halve the time I spend there. Not having to give NPCs pointless stat-boosting items, just so that they can properly threaten the PCs will help. As will not having to figure out a "buff suite" for some spellcasters, I suppose.

I do hope encounter design is faster and easier, as promised, but from what I've seen so far, I doubt 4e will cut more than an hour off my process. Still, that's one less hour per session spent on prep, so that's something to look forward to.

 

[Lizard]

This is what I LOVE about 4e. This is why I think 4e will be hugely popular not only with players, but with DMs especially. I feel like I can once again return to my 2e DMing style when I ran entire games with zero prep time. Now, if you can do that with 3e and it works for you, then awesome. Good for you!

But, for me, running 3e just sucks the creativity and desire to DM right out of me. 4e so far has had the entirely opposite effect.

I've never had the problems you have just picking out monsters and running them. If I run them a bit suboptimal, so what? Just drop the CR by 1 when handing out XP. (I also recommend using a hypertext or other digial SRD, so you can look up spells real quick...)

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I've never had the problems you have just picking out monsters and running them. If I run them a bit suboptimal, so what? Just drop the CR by 1 when handing out XP. (I also recommend using a hypertext or other digial SRD, so you can look up spells real quick...)

Optimal or non-optimal is only part of the problem.

What if you want to want to modify monsters? It's a lot easier to look at the "hobgoblin warcaster" as a "template" you can add to a monster than slapping cleric levels onto it.

 

[Benimoto]

I've never had the problems you have just picking out monsters and running them. If I run them a bit suboptimal, so what? Just drop the CR by 1 when handing out XP. (I also recommend using a hypertext or other digial SRD, so you can look up spells real quick...)

Those are the answers for you, but they're not good answers for everyone. Some people don't want to give their players less experience just because the DM wasn't prepared properly. And some people, including myself, don't want to have to spend time at their game session looking things up on a computer.

Plus, once you hit around level 12, just running monsters out of the monster manual becomes a lot more difficult. Just look in the back of the MMI at the table of monsters sorted by challenge rating. Less than 1/8th of the monsters are devoted to CRs 12-20. Those levels are almost half the game if you want to play till level 20. If you want to run at those levels, you really have to go and advance or otherwise modify monsters.

 

[joela]

all the info

EVERYTHING I need to run this monster is right there in the statblock. It's clearly written, easy to understand, and no paragraphs of text discussing an endless variety of obscure corner cases. It has interesting magical attacks and doesn't require me to look up anything in another book.

This is what I LOVE about 4e. This is why I think 4e will be hugely popular not only with players, but with DMs especially.

Then blame WotC for that. Such information could easily have been incorporated into 3e stat blocks at the very beginning of 3.x. And some companies, feeling DMs' pain, tried: Paizo, when it ran the Dungeon and Dragon magazines, did to a limited extent. So did some 3rd party materials. WotC did update its MMs to hopefully make things easier. IMO, right now 4e is looking easier partially because 1) we've only seen the low level stuff and 2) they made sure the 4e statblock is friendly. Let's see what the full ruleset will contain.

So tell me. What do 4e wizards use the athame, orb, staff, and wand for? Which is best for Iron Sigil disciple? Emerald Frost? Who's the most effective controller: a goblin Stormwalker theurge or a servant of the Blue Star? And which order does cinder storm belong to?