Excerpt: Swarms

[FadedC]

So, take a monster Foo with a Foo aura that inflicts 1d6 damage and 5 Foo damage (save ends). Take a Bar monster, with a Bar aura. Assuming that Foo and Bar are equivalent in rarity and resistability, the monsters Foo and Bar should be equivalently XP'd. However, an encounter that has a Foo and a Bar will be much harder than just a Foo or just a Bar. This bodes ill for the vaunted XP system's predictive capacity.

Just like 2 defender monsters, a leader an artilery and a controller are going to be tougher then 5 defenders types. It's assumed that DMs will mix and match for optimal power.

With that being said, I doubt the xp system will work pefectly by any stretch. But it doesn't take much to be better then CR.

 

[Yaezakura]

I think the big problem is the fact the testers are putting a balanced party up against 5 of the same role, a situation that SHOULD be very rare in the game, for the reasons the playtests have shown. Sure, a single-role group has weaknesses and lacks effectiveness in some areas. But they do their primary job and play to their strengths frighteningly well.

I think the situation would be a lot different if the party the 5 swarms were going up against included level 2 characters consisting of 2 wizards, 2 dragonborn who time their breaths to hit the max number reasonable, and a Cleric or Warlord. They'd then be one heavily specialized group fighting another heavily specialized group, not a specialized group taking on a balanced force (which almost always ends in the specialized group winning, because the balanced force doesn't have enough of the proper kind of firepower to deal with the threat).

Alternatively to that, I want to see a normal balanced level 2 party fight an encounter that includes only one or two Needlefang Drake Swarms supported by level 2 creatures of other roles. I have a feeling the results will be far less terrifying than the ones we've seen so far.

 

[robertliguori]

Just like 2 defender monsters, a leader an artilery and a controller are going to be tougher then 5 defenders types. It's assumed that DMs will mix and match for optimal power.

With that being said, I doubt the xp system will work pefectly by any stretch. But it doesn't take much to be better then CR.

I greatly question this assertion. Depending on the specific monsters and specific situation, different tactics will dominate. Leaders boost the damage output of other monsters in an encounter, either directly with buffs, or indirectly by making the monsters last longer (and take more swings, therefore doing more damage). If the amount of damage boost a leader grants is less than the difference between the leader's damage and a brute's damage, then adding a brute instead of a leader will be better.

Besides, we've already seen problematic design imbalances. Swarms, for instance, can only be effectively fought with area attacks; a group of five swarms with complementary abilities (needlefang swarms, for instance) that are directed to endure the Defender's attacks and focus their fire on leaders until the leaders are beyond healing, then focus on anyone who demonstrates area attack potential, and then have the surviving swarms mop up the rest of the party, seem to be a pretty optimal strategy.

Of course, such an encounter would fall very quickly and embarrasingly to a party that had five controllers specializing in area attacks. That party would itself suffer at the hands of a high-defense solo with Resist. That same solo would squish rapidly if dogpiled by five Defenders, and those defenders stand a good chance of being attritioned to death by the swarms, on account of their resistance to the general Defender bag of tricks.

Again, I question the XP pool method of generating encounters. A monster or encounter that is vulnerable to a particularly squishy class, resistant to other classes, and can inflict significant damage is superior; it can focus fire on its weakness until squish has been acheieved, then sit back and let its numbers carry the day from there on out.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I greatly question this assertion. Depending on the specific monsters and specific situation, different tactics will dominate. Leaders boost the damage output of other monsters in an encounter, either directly with buffs, or indirectly by making the monsters last longer (and take more swings, therefore doing more damage). If the amount of damage boost a leader grants is less than the difference between the leader's damage and a brute's damage, then adding a brute instead of a leader will be better.

Besides, we've already seen problematic design imbalances. Swarms, for instance, can only be effectively fought with area attacks; a group of five swarms with complementary abilities (needlefang swarms, for instance) that are directed to endure the Defender's attacks and focus their fire on leaders until the leaders are beyond healing, then focus on anyone who demonstrates area attack potential, and then have the surviving swarms mop up the rest of the party, seem to be a pretty optimal strategy.

Of course, such an encounter would fall very quickly and embarrasingly to a party that had five controllers specializing in area attacks. That party would itself suffer at the hands of a high-defense solo with Resist. That same solo would squish rapidly if dogpiled by five Defenders, and those defenders stand a good chance of being attritioned to death by the swarms, on account of their resistance to the general Defender bag of tricks.

Again, I question the XP pool method of generating encounters. A monster or encounter that is vulnerable to a particularly squishy class, resistant to other classes, and can inflict significant damage is superior; it can focus fire on its weakness until squish has been acheieved, then sit back and let its numbers carry the day from there on out.

What's your suggestion on how to build encounters?
CRs were imprecise and insufficient. XP pools and monster rules are not enough, either. So what do you do? (I don't expect you to have in answer soon. Identifying flaws and fixing them are two different tasks, unfortunately.)

But I think the 4E system as a whole is a lot more helpful.
- You have player character roles.
- You have monster roles.
- You have monster "weights" (Minion to Solo)
- You have expected XP values
- You have monster levels comparable to PC levels.

If you have an unbalanced party, you can first try to create mixes of monsters with roles that fit the party (whether you want it to be a hard fight or a "fair" fight is up to you, but at least you know which dials you have to move). Then you can mix and match monsters to get the expected XP values, taking into account monster levels so that the monsters are in the ballpark of the PCs.

The think 4E still doesn't fix is that, if you want to create a published adventure that is to be used for many parties of unknown composition, you can only assume a "standard" party (consisting of balanced roles). Still, the monster descriptions itself give the DM using the adventure hints on how the encounters might work against his PCs and what he might have to look out for.

The system is not perfect. It's not really true that encounters of the same XP value are actually equally different, because that depends on the roles of PCs and monsters involved. But it gives you a lot more ways to adjudicate the actual difficulty for a given party and a a given set of monsters.

 

[Stalker0]

This bodes ill for the vaunted XP system's predictive capacity.

Considering how simple the model is, you can't expect genius results all the time. You are taking a tremendous amount of information and putting it all down as one number. That can only be so good.

DMs have to be a bit smarter than that. If they build a party of aura guys that give all of them massive buffs, they'll have to factor in a lot XP. If they have 2 guys whose auras hurt each other, that lowers the xp a bit.

But hopefully the XP range a party can typically handle is large enough for such adjustments aren't often necessary. If a dm throws a normal xp encounter at his party, and due to synergies in abilities the encounter is actually tougher, that should be okay. The party spends a few additional resources but is otherwise fine. Its only when you push the XP number near the danger zone where the synergistic bump in difficulty should be a true problem.

 

[robertliguori]

What's your suggestion on how to build encounters?
CRs were imprecise and insufficient. XP pools and monster rules are not enough, either. So what do you do? (I don't expect you to have in answer soon. Identifying flaws and fixing them are two different tasks, unfortunately.)

But I think the 4E system as a whole is a lot more helpful.
- You have player character roles.
- You have monster roles.
- You have monster "weights" (Minion to Solo)
- You have expected XP values
- You have monster levels comparable to PC levels.

If you have an unbalanced party, you can first try to create mixes of monsters with roles that fit the party (whether you want it to be a hard fight or a "fair" fight is up to you, but at least you know which dials you have to move). Then you can mix and match monsters to get the expected XP values, taking into account monster levels so that the monsters are in the ballpark of the PCs.

The think 4E still doesn't fix is that, if you want to create a published adventure that is to be used for many parties of unknown composition, you can only assume a "standard" party (consisting of balanced roles). Still, the monster descriptions itself give the DM using the adventure hints on how the encounters might work against his PCs and what he might have to look out for.

The system is not perfect. It's not really true that encounters of the same XP value are actually equally different, because that depends on the roles of PCs and monsters involved. But it gives you a lot more ways to adjudicate the actual difficulty for a given party and a a given set of monsters.

The best solution I've seen is a series of tables, that indicate that a monster of level N has as an expected damage output, defenses, and the like, at as high a level as possible (possibly expressed average damage output per round and number of rounds of expected survival), akin to M&MM's power levels. Monsters could flip into and out of levels as circumstances changed; a swarm would be a low-level challenge against a party that was strong in area-effects, and a high-level challenge against a party that was weak. The existing system will probably work fine if you don't question its assumptions, and have a five-man party with all roles covered and a small amount of tactical synergy between the PCs, but when people start noticing "Hey, this party set up lets us Ginsu through 85% of encounters and gives us a 50% shot of surviving running away from the remaining 15%,", you'll get a lot less voluntary role-covering. The current XP system with rules for adjudicating an over- or underabaundance of any given role in terms of effective level adjustment would be a good thing.

I'd also like the roles to be a bit more abstract, but to include firm ideas on how to port creatures between them. I'd much like some generic advice on turning generic monsters into minions, elites, and solos than a list of monsters hard-coded into a particular value.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The best solution I've seen is a series of tables, that indicate that a monster of level N has as an expected damage output, defenses, and the like, at as high a level as possible (possibly expressed average damage output per round and number of rounds of expected survival), akin to M&MM's power levels.

Why are you forcing me to seriously consider buying yet another rulebook I'll never use just to see what you're talking about!

I'd also like the roles to be a bit more abstract, but to include firm ideas on how to port creatures between them. I'd much like some generic advice on turning generic monsters into minions, elites, and solos than a list of monsters hard-coded into a particular value.

Hmm. I think this advice actually exists. Pick the numbers from the table for [weight] [role] for monster, and slap on special monster attack A - D as found in the stat block of the base monster. (Shifty for Kobolds, Hobgoblin Resilience for Hobgoblins, and so on). Might not be what we would expect after 3E monster creation, but it seems to get the results you want.

 

[Korgoth]

The think 4E still doesn't fix is that, if you want to create a published adventure that is to be used for many parties of unknown composition, you can only assume a "standard" party (consisting of balanced roles). Still, the monster descriptions itself give the DM using the adventure hints on how the encounters might work against his PCs and what he might have to look out for.

The system is not perfect. It's not really true that encounters of the same XP value are actually equally different, because that depends on the roles of PCs and monsters involved. But it gives you a lot more ways to adjudicate the actual difficulty for a given party and a a given set of monsters.

I don't even think it's a fixable 'problem'. There will always be some form of rock-paper-scissors interplay. In wargaming, for instance, a lot of games are point-based (both sides get X amount of points, which are supposedly balanced). But even if they are balanced relative to possible choices from the lists, not every force will be balanced against every other. The guy who shows up with a 1500 Tigerkompanie is going to mulch a guy who shows up with 1500 points of Cromwells. Why? Because they're both more or less one-trick ponies, except one guy's pony is a Shire horse. Likewise, a list that does 2 things well and everything else mediocre is more balanced but can still run into a list that stands up to those two things well enough to exploit the third, and so on. That doesn't mean that they're not balanced. It just means that every point-balanced force does not have a 50/50 shot against every other point-balanced force. The balance was in the options available, not in what you ultimately decided to field.

It's inevitably going to be the same in D&D. The Needlefang Drake Swarm, no matter how one interprets the exact function of the aura, is extremely tough, especially against a party heavy on martial strikers (since their damage is halved versus the swarm). A party of 5 rangers or rogues would be eaten alive! But a party with a couple of Dwarven paladins and 3 blast-happy wizards will fare much better, I would expect. But in other situations, they won't work as well.

 

[Stalker0]

It's inevitably going to be the same in D&D. The Needlefang Drake Swarm, no matter how one interprets the exact function of the aura, is extremely tough, especially against a party heavy on martial strikers (since their damage is halved versus the swarm). A party of 5 rangers or rogues would be eaten alive! But a party with a couple of Dwarven paladins and 3 blast-happy wizards will fare much better, I would expect. But in other situations, they won't work as well.

A dm also has to take his party into account when determining encounters. That said, the basic design premise of 4e is that party has a leader, defender, striker, and controller...and the game system is designed with that in mind.

A level 2 party against a number of drake swarms will get TPKed often, as we have seen earlier in this thread with playtest results. That's not a level 2 encounter. Now, if the aura does not stack I think that will help a lot. Most people aren't worried about a single swarm as much as what happens when you have lots of them.

However, I am curious how 2 paladins and 3 wizards would do against 5 drake swarms. On the one hand, wizards obviously can do more damage. But on the other, they have lower fort saves, so easier to prone, and with the damage the drakes are pumping out, they can flat out kill a wizard in one round. And the paladin's marks only are effective is the swarm attacks somone else, but for a melee paladin to mark the creature he needs to be in melee with it, meaning he's taking the aura. And as long as the aura hits the paladin, the swarm doesn't take mark damage.

 

[Dausuul]

And as long as the aura hits the paladin, the swarm doesn't take mark damage.

Not true. Read it again. The aura isn't one simultaneous attack hitting everyone in range, it's a series of distinct attacks, each one occurring at the start of the turn of whoever's being attacked. And it's not clear that the swarm even has the option to not execute that attack; which means the best way to take on swarms might be with a party of 5 paladins.