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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5646146" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, one thing that I've found is good as a start is to trust the DMG. James Wyatt is a pretty smart guy. Some things they didn't get perfect, but for instance the basic encounter building templates/guidelines are not bad places to start. The main difference with 4e really is you definitely don't want a combat that is stuck at a choke point or where several PCs will just end up pinning down and surrounding one big monster that then can't do anything but trade blows with them. Every battle worth running should be like a scene from an action movie somehow. Put something good in there, a bridge, a pit, a balcony, some furniture, traps, hazards, terrain. Use some basic terrain, but at the very least have a few trees or boulders or something. One single big melee bad guy with no way to break off and move around will need some tricks added to the map to allow that. 4e combats are more intensive than in previous editions. You CAN make trivial encounters, and with minions it is truly easy to do that, but most encounters should have a reason for existing. Ask a few questions about why you want to have the encounter. How does it add to and fit into the plot. Is it needed? Can it be made into something more interesting than straight combat? The third room full of orcs in the orc lair that are basically there because you need an orc tribe to have 52 orcs in it? Eh. You just don't need that. Make it 5 minions that the party can blast with at-wills as they run past, its window dressing. Or just make it an SC to 'surprise the orcs' and levy a couple surges for failures. There is a lot of possibility to make types of plots that were hard before. The NPCs are just stat blocks now, and the PCs lack a lot of 'plot buster' type powers that spells provided in the past, so you can make a murder investigation and not need to worry about the PCs just running all over it with divinations. The BBEG can actually be something that doesn't have to live in an adamantium, lead lined, anti-magical, vault at the bottom of the ocean to survive at higher levels either. So take advantage of that. As for skill challenges. Just remember that they're a way of gaging success during normal problem solving. The players need to explain what they want to do, and it is up to the DM to decide if that can work and what skill and DC it is. If you just plop the PCs in front of a STATIC situation that is meant to be a challenge the players will just get the best guy to roll all the checks. So there has to be something going on. If the PCs are going to climb a cliff then there should be a number of elements of the challenge that come up as they go and require different characters to react to, and whatever actions they take will propel the thing forward. It should be a little mini-story of its own with a plot and an antagonist.</blockquote>

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