Increasing disparity between monster and player initiative

[Starfox]

Interesting find.

I find giving the monsters high initiative creates dramatic fights, where the monsters use dramatically-appropriate heavy hitters to create an impression of being dangerous early on. To that end my game also limits PCs to using their big-shot power until later in the round. Works well.

In other words, I don't think this is a problem really.

My player's don't agree and tend to invest heavily in initiative. Maybe they'd have more respect for your findings.

 

[Ferghis]

I find giving the monsters high initiative creates dramatic fights, where the monsters use dramatically-appropriate heavy hitters to create an impression of being dangerous early on. To that end my game also limits PCs to using their big-shot power until later in the round. Works well.

I agree that giving team monster a strong initiative helps create panic and drama among players. I think this can easily be achieved by also giving monsters good powers ("Whaddayamean he has a power that lets him remove my mark" is particularly good against swordmages) and adding more monsters.

In other words, I don't think this is a problem really.

It really depends a lot on your game experience. I noticed it actual gameplay, so looked up the numbers. I would have never noticed the "expertise" problem (i.e. the one expertise feats fixed) because the numbers are so close.

My player's don't agree and tend to invest heavily in initiative. Maybe they'd have more respect for your findings.

I think it's an issue because I don't think character building choices should patch big holes in game design (I say big because of the widening of the "gap" by 8 points, which is a relatively big number in this game). Obviously, reasonable people can differ on the issue.

 

[keterys]

Yep. You should never have more than a +-5 change to a d20 roll, and Initiative regularly adds _far_ more than that. Note the _21_ spread I mentioned between top and bottom? That's completely negating the d20 roll, and I've seen worse than that...

Plus there are dailies that add another stat to init, or +10 to a group, etc. I did one fight last weekend in which I crit team monster's init, got a 51 for one guy, 50 for another... and still went after the PCs because they were rolling +49 that fight (Warlord gave +9, Runepriest daily gave +10)

 

[S'mon]

If this is a real design goal, it would be the only instance in 4e where this occurred (at least that I can think of). And, if it were the case, it should probably apply to monsters as well. Monsters generally just gain advantages as they go up in level. While it's true that some vulnerabilities scale up with level, (a) it's a relatively rare issue for monsters, whereas the initiative issue applies to the vast majority of PCs; (b)the vulnerability may or may be relevant in any given combat, while initiative will be an issue in ever fight; and (c) vulnerabilities do not scale consistently (as the notion you suggest would require them): reviewing a handful of epic tier monsters with a vulnerability, only the undead are consistently vulnerable 15, others are often only vulnerable 10, similar to many paragon tier monsters with vulnerabilities.

I'm not opposed to this notion. One of my favorite warforged characters intentionally neglected Reflex (although I didn't actively gimp it) because I liked to think of it as a clumsy automaton. It's just not a consistent design goal in 4e.

PCs get worse by default relative to monsters of the same level in pretty much* every respect; even peak damage I think. To maintain parity the player/group has to allocate a certain amount of resources to that area. If they allocate less than expected they fall behind. If they allocate more than expected they move ahead. This is true for almost everything, not just Initiative. There are several posters in this thead with games where the PCs always or almost always win Init, because the group has allocated more than expected resources to Init.

*Armour Class seems to be largely an exception, it seems very hard to raise it much over parity, or to fall behind much unless you're deliberately hindering yourself.

Edit: I am of course talking about getting relatively worse compared to opposition of equivalent level. Obviously getting worse in an absolute sense - vulnerabilities increasing as you level - is very rare in 4e and not relevant to my point.

 

[keterys]

You can do it with AC as well, but it's trickier than other means.

But, let's look at a defense-focused swordmage for a moment:
L1: Int (5) + 3 (ward) + 2 (leather) + 10 = AC 20 (L+19)
L28: Int (10) + 3 (ward) + 2 feat (better ward) + 11 (+6 hide) + 3 (elven chain shirt) + 2 (helm of able defense) + 2 (concealment) + 14 (lvl) + 10 = AC 57 (L+29)

 

[Libramarian]

Really? You think that, as characters gain levels, they should get worse at doing stuff when compared to a monster of equal level?

I don't think it's necessarily a problem when the game has a level cap.