D&D 4E How to build encounters in 4e (aka Only you can prevent Grindspace!)

[Nail]

I knew some fanboy would come along... Thanks for unthinkingly passing on the One True Word!

Let's not get this thread closed, CapnZapp. This thread is too helpful to let shrivel on the vine. Please retract snarkiness.

 

[Vayden]

Well, there seem to be a few of you out there enjoying this, so I'm gonna keep going. Today, an expansion on Tip 1 (Know your party) - which monster types are best (and worst) for which classes? Let's go through the list!

1a) Clerics

Clerics tend to do radiant damage most of the time, which means they love fighting Undead. They also have a decent selection of area attacks in their encounters and dailies, so they like minions almost as much as Wizards do. Their party buffs tend more towards defense and healing, and they don't give attack bonuses quite as well as warlords, so you want to slant slightly towards low-defense/high offense monsters to play to the clerics strengths.
Happy Cleric: Lots of undead brutes, artillery, and skirmishers
Sad Cleric: Soldiers, anything resistant to Radiant damage.

1b) Fighters

Fighters tie with Rogues for the highest possible straight up attack bonus, and their ferocious opportunity attacks and marks make them the best in the game at pinning people down. Skirmishers and Lurkers are great for fighters, because they can feel great satisfaction by catching and pinning the mobile, dangerous opponents. They don't have enough area attacks to really handle minions, though cleave helps. Big solos and/or soldiers they're okay against, but they don't really shine. The one thing fighters really hurt at is attacking at range, or having their reflex/will attacked.
Happy Fighter: Skirmishers, Lurkers, Elites
Sad Fighter: Artillery that attacks reflex/will

1c) Paladins

While fighters shine locking down multiple opponents, Paladins shine locking down one single opponent. Like clerics, they love fighting undead, but even more than that they love fighting solo monsters. They have very few area attacks, so too many minions will make your paladin feel like they're wasting their time, and while they have more ranged powers than the fighter, those tend to be restricted to their dailies.
Happy Paladin: Undead, Solos
Sad Paladin: Minions, artillery, or pretty much any situation where the party is heavily out-numbered and the paladin can't lock down all the targets.

1d) Rangers

I haven't had a chance to see the TWF or Beastmaster Ranger in action yet unfortunately, so I'm going to just comment on the archer ranger for now. The archer ranger is your perfect prototypical ranged striker. They love settling back and putting holes in an enemy - they hate enemies with high AC and enemies who get into their face too easily. This is a tough balance to strike, because some ranger players will get bored sitting back and claim they're just doing the same thing over and over, while other ranger players love the simplicity of standing 10 squares away and quietly accumulating kills. You have to read your player here to figure how often you should be pushing through the front line and hurting them. A ranger also tends to enjoy bigger monsters, as they can put some nasty effects on a monster and those get wasted if the monster dies right away.
Happy Ranger: Anything with a relatively low AC, elites and solos.
Sad Ranger: Skirmishers or artillery that get to the ranger too easily, Soldiers or anything else with a high AC.

1e) Rogues

Single target damage machines. While they don't have the range of the ranger or warlock, and don't have the multi-target option of twin-strike, against one big target, the rogue has the highest alpha strike capability of anyone. A rogue loves nothing more than to be flanking a solo or elite monster with a defender. Conversely, they hate nothing more than wasting 57 points of damage on a minion. With their ability to attack reflex instead of AC, they're also more willing to take on soldiers than a ranger is.
Happy Rogue: Any melee monster with a lot of hitpoints.
Sad Rogue: Minions, artillery or other monsters that it's tough to get combat advantage against.

1f) Swordmages

The Wizard of melee types, a Swordmage is much more capable of taking on minions or ranged opponents than other defenders. I haven't seen them in play as much as I'd like, but I rate their "stickiness" as a little bit less than the Paladin or Fighter. They are also very mobile with their multiple teleport power options. They tend to do less damage per hit than the fighter and paladin as well, since they spread their damage around more.
Happy Swordmage: Lots of minions, being the 2nd defender in the party so that they can roam around and freelance more without worrying about defending as much.
Sad Swordmage: Solos and/or Elites - the fewer opponents, the sadder the swordmage.

1g) Warlocks

Warlocks deal less pure damage than any other striker, but they have access to typed damage and can attack multiple defenses. A warlock's favorite target tends to be something where they can find the perfect chink in the defenses to exploit - something with one low defense, or a vulnerability that they can exploit. They're also good at immbolizing or otherwise rendering an opponent ineffectual.
Happy Warlock: A big brute they can neutralize, anything vulnerable to the damage type of their at-wills.
Sad Warlock: Minions.

1h) Warlords

Warlords shine at granting to-hit and damage bonuses, as well as setting up combat advantage for their allies. They love a good collection of melee enemies or a big solo they can hit with Lead the Attack or similar powers. Like Fighters and Rogues, they become much less effective at range or against very high ac opponents (though they love one single high ac opponent, since they can give to-hit bonuses to their allies).
Happy Warlord: Melee opponents, a nice big solo.
Sad Warlord: Ranged opponents, minions.

1i) Wizards

This one's relatively simple - the more opponents, the happier the wizard. Wizards are the anti-thesis of strikers - they spread their damage around and create damaging zones. Against a solo, they can still be effective, but they lose much of what makes them special. Also, since almost all their damage is typed, resistances and vulnerabilities are big for them.
Happy Wizard: Minions, anything vulnerable to their attacks (esp fire)
Sad Wizard: Solos, things with resistances (esp fire).

If you're lucky enough to have a party that tends towards the same likes/dislikes, this gets easier to work with - a Warlord/Fighter/Rogue combination means that you should generally steer away from using ranged attackers, while a Cleric and a Paladin in the same group begs for some undead to slaughter. However, even with a disparate group, you can still make this work for you.

Your first rule should be to always be giving at least one player a chance to shine - never make an encounter that hits everyone's weak spots, unless you're just being sadistic.

The second rule is to make sure that everyone gets a chance to shine at least once every 4 fights - if you have a wizard, make sure you mix minions in at least that often so that he gets a chance to shine.

The third note is the reminder that you have multiple monsters in each fight - if you have a paladin/rogue/wizard/warlord, maybe have a big melee solo for the rest of the party to fight, but ring the encounter with ranged-attacking minions that the wizard has to take care of in order to enable the rest of the party to survive.

 

[Doctor Proctor]

Well, there seem to be a few of you out there enjoying this, so I'm gonna keep going. Today, an expansion on Tip 1 (Know your party) - which monster types are best (and worst) for which classes? Let's go through the list!

<snipped>

If you're lucky enough to have a party that tends towards the same likes/dislikes, this gets easier to work with - a Warlord/Fighter/Rogue combination means that you should generally steer away from using ranged attackers, while a Cleric and a Paladin in the same group begs for some undead to slaughter. However, even with a disparate group, you can still make this work for you.

Your first rule should be to always be giving at least one player a chance to shine - never make an encounter that hits everyone's weak spots, unless you're just being sadistic.

The second rule is to make sure that everyone gets a chance to shine at least once every 4 fights - if you have a wizard, make sure you mix minions in at least that often so that he gets a chance to shine.

The third note is the reminder that you have multiple monsters in each fight - if you have a paladin/rogue/wizard/warlord, maybe have a big melee solo for the rest of the party to fight, but ring the encounter with ranged-attacking minions that the wizard has to take care of in order to enable the rest of the party to survive.

First off, great job on that post. I think, for most of the "typical" builds, you've perfectly captured what different classes excel at. There are slight modifications you might have to make depending on build (Tempest Fighters are a bit different than Greatspear wielding Elardrin with Fey Charge, for example), but these are minor tweaks.

I also think you notes on how to deal with parties that are composed of classes with differing play styles were good too. I know that in KotS, for example, some of my favorite fights with my Dragonborn Fighter so far had either a BBEG like Irontooth, or high AC soldiers like some of the Hobgoblin fights. I felt that I and the Rogue really "shined" in those fights. The one with the Undead though? That was all about the Cleric and the Pally...

As a player, I obviously want to be engaged in every fight and not sitting out because the enemies are 30 squares away and I have a Javelin, but I don't mind taking a back seat every couple encounters so that other people can get the high fives. Plus, playing to different strengths in different fights does two other things for you. 1) It ensures that resource usage gets spread around so that you don't have half a party with no surges and no dailies and half the party with barely a scratch and every daily intact, and 2) it means you're always playing to someone's strengths, which will make the combat quicker and a lot more fun.

 

[Vayden]

As a player, I obviously want to be engaged in every fight and not sitting out because the enemies are 30 squares away and I have a Javelin, but I don't mind taking a back seat every couple encounters so that other people can get the high fives. Plus, playing to different strengths in different fights does two other things for you. 1) It ensures that resource usage gets spread around so that you don't have half a party with no surges and no dailies and half the party with barely a scratch and every daily intact, and 2) it means you're always playing to someone's strengths, which will make the combat quicker and a lot more fun.

Exactly. And if you can play the combat to multiple people's strengths, then you can ramp up the challenge and give them a chance to handle an encounter that would be far above their capabilities if you hadn't tilted it to their strengths.

 

[Nail]

BTW: The designers have said an encounter of the PC's level (EL = PC's lvl) is "standard" and "should challenge a typical group of characters but not overwhelm them."

Is this true in-play?

I'm a player right now in two games. From a player's perspective (without my DMs' plans), this doesn't seem to be true. Thoughts?

 

[Venport]

I've found that el=pc level is an easy fight. However my players are experianced, and I can see that if you were the dm for some new players el=pc level would be about right

 

[Vayden]

BTW: The designers have said an encounter of the PC's level (EL = PC's lvl) is "standard" and "should challenge a typical group of characters but not overwhelm them."

Is this true in-play?

I'm a player right now in two games. From a player's perspective (without my DMs' plans), this doesn't seem to be true. Thoughts?

I haven't seen this as typical at all. At 1st-3rd level, possibly. If the players are uncoordinated, use poor tactics, or have a 14-15 in their primary attack stat, possibly. If your groups are at all coordinated and well-built, a standard level equivalent encounter will eat up one or two healing surges from each character, and will most likely fall into the boring predictability of grindspace.

As I think I said somewhere else, I think this was the designers still being in a 3e mindset to a certain extent - I would be shocked if Mearls, Wyatt, Collins et al are still throwing level equivalent encounters at their home groups. The level-appropriate encounter is based off the old 3e model of using encounters to tempt players into wasting resources so that they can't nova as effectively against your big last encounter. In 4e, it's too easy for the players to make it through without using their dailies, so it's better to just plan your big final encounter as if they're all going to nova (since nova-ing isn't as broken as it was in 3e).

Now, a level appropriate encounter can still be great fun if the terrain is interesting enough - if the terrain presents a puzzle of sorts, the players can have fun solving that (see the Hall of the Crimson Whip and Hall of Enforced Introspection encounters in Thunderspire Labyrinth for great examples of this). By and large though, you should be using level +1 as your easiest encounters, and ramping up to level +2 for bigger fights and level +3 for big boss fights.

That's why I've said several times in this thread to err on the side of hard fights - I firmly believe that a combat without risk is boring and a waste of everyone's gaming time. Use less fights, but make them tougher and more epic. Quality over quantity.

 

[Vayden]

As I think I said somewhere else, I think this was the designers still being in a 3e mindset to a certain extent - I would be shocked if Mearls, Wyatt, Collins et al are still throwing level equivalent encounters at their home groups. The level-appropriate encounter is based off the old 3e model of using encounters to tempt players into wasting resources so that they can't nova as effectively against your big last encounter. In 4e, it's too easy for the players to make it through without using their dailies, so it's better to just plan your big final encounter as if they're all going to nova (since nova-ing isn't as broken as it was in 3e).

Hmm - I've been thinking about it, and now I'm getting curious - Mearls, Rouse, anyone else at WotC if you're reading this - what's the internal play-style like these days? Do you guys use level-equivalent encounters still, or have you tossed them out?

 

[Nail]

If the players are uncoordinated, use poor tactics, or have a 14-15 in their primary attack stat, possibly. If your groups are at all coordinated and well-built, a standard level equivalent encounter will eat up one or two healing surges from each character, and will most likely fall into the boring predictability of grindspace.

Let's run with the yellow part of this statement for a bit.

Is it the case that by going with method 2 of ability score generation (point buy), we effectively raise the level of the PC, and thus find we need EL +1 (or higher) to be challenging?

The first method - perhaps the designer-assumed default method? - gives PCs with fairly unoptimized stats. Perhaps optimized stats adds +1 to the EL? Perhaps 4e was play-tested with only Method 1 (16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10)?

 

[Vayden]

Let's run with the yellow part of this statement for a bit.

Is it the case that by going with method 2 of ability score generation (point buy), we effectively raise the level of the PC, and thus find we need EL +1 (or higher) to be challenging?

The first method - perhaps the designer-assumed default method? - gives PCs with fairly unoptimized stats. Perhaps optimized stats adds +1 to the EL? Perhaps 4e was play-tested with only Method 1 (16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10)?

Hmm - I don't know if we can go that far. I think it is safe to assume that the designers view that as a fairly optimal buy - I remember seeing Mearls in a thread somewhere saying that if the players had bought an 18 and then used racial to get to 20 in their primary attack stat, then they must have a weak defense in fort/ref/will, and you as a DM should target that.

So we can probably assume that Mearls at least believes buying anything higher than a 16 is un-optimal. I think he's probably wrong from a strict optimization standpoint - attack wins over defense in D&D, so it's better to have a weak defense or two in exchange for a strong attack. Still, from a fun perspective, I almost never buy above a 16 myself - I like being decent at a broad range of skills and not having a glaringly weak defense.

Still, even if you're going with the 16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10 default arrangement, if you pick a race that boosts your primary attack stat, you're going to start with an 18 which is honestly quite good enough to get by. I think you may have hit on something here with the designed power balance assuming a 16-18 instead of 18-20 in your primary attack at level 1, but I don't think that in itself is enough to throw off the math so completely that level-appropriate could be considered "a decent challenge". (Though I'm not up to crunching the numbers in detail - is Stalker0 around?)

I think this may be a small piece of the puzzle, but I still think a bigger piece is the assumption that a level appropriate encounter should only drain about 1/8 - 1/10 or so of a party's resources, as can be seen from the rough distance between good "resting spots" in the published adventures. While I understand the desire to increase the length of the adventuring day, I think they made a design mistake here - the adventuring day is more exciting if each fight pushes the players enough that they use up about 1/4 to 1/5 of their resources (defined as healing surges, daily powers, and magic item dailies). While that may shorten the day, I think it makes the day more cinematic and exciting.

Because of this, I usually build my dungeons/adventures planning on about 3-5 combat encounters (along with some social or puzzle encounters) before providing a break. I've found this to be much more rewarding than the DMG suggestions.