It's bliss... almost.

[Zephrin the Lost]

I was fortunate to find a few uninterrupted hours to work on my 4e campaign, and it almost felt like I was in the 21st century.

I am converting the free rpg day module Khyber's Harvest from a 2nd level adventure to 6th level. I took each encounter, examined at the monsters by role and assembled the same encounter but at higher level using the flash-based encounter builder. Then I either reskinned more appropriate monsters to replace the originals or I adjusted the originals upwards using the downloadable monster builder. I scanned the module into my pc and used OneNote to screen grab relevant text from there & grabbed the monster stat blocks from the on-line compendium or the builder.

I upgraded all 10 encounters in a little over 2 hours, and I only had to kludge the skill challenges and hazards because there's no builder for those (yet, I hope it's not foolishly optimistic to add 'yet' here).

This was stupid easy and almost streamlined, even with the flash on the encounter builder hanging up several times.

I'm as frustrated with the pace of electronic tools as anyone, but this experience showed me it's almost there- well, with a big help from Microsoft Office. If WoTC can get all of this integrated, get the builders for all encounter elements running and also get a PDF equivalent for their print products, something like this will take even less time. Adjusting 10 encounters by 4 levels in less than 2 hours would be bliss.

--Z

 

[mudbunny]

I will be adding this to my weekly report.

 

[Stumblewyk]

The monthly game that I DM just hit 5th level a session or two ago, and I recently got the Monster Vault for Christmas. I like the included module "Cairn of the Winter King", and I had a really good idea for including it in my campaign. But it's for a 4th level party of 5 PCs. I have 6 PCs, and they're all 5th level. And they seem to be capable of handing a lot more than WotC expects them to be able to take on.

So...I fired up the Monster Builder, and rebuilt every encounter a level or 2 higher, and for more PCs. Took me about an hour and half all-told. As I leveled up the monsters, I imported them into DnD4eCM, and I'm set for tomorrow night.

The tools are there. They're not perfect, and they're not all unified and easy to find, but they do exist.

 

[TerraDave]

For my last session I had to come up with giant beetles (where are the giant beetles for 4E!), delevel but make elite a frost giant--that could throw big chunks of ice, and level a few other things.

Using the compendium I found a dinasour to reskin as the beetles (its trample became a sort of flyby attack)...and the rest was also pretty trivial. Just copies and pasted stat blocks. Did not even bother with any other online tools. Not that I wouldn't like an upgrade there.

In any case spent, and am spending, much more time thinking about story elements.

 

[phoffman]

What tools were you using?

I have found the flashed based encounter builder on the dnd insider website to be lacking. I don't see an easy way with that tool to level up or de-level monsters either with that tool.

The Adventure Tools, Monster builder works pretty good. But i wish there were easier ways to build encounters and monsters in the same too. Then save the whole group of monsters as one file and easily print out stat blocks for the entire encounter.

 

[Cyronax]

I was fortunate to find a few uninterrupted hours to work on my 4e campaign, and it almost felt like I was in the 21st century.

This was stupid easy and almost streamlined, even with the flash on the encounter builder hanging up several times.

I'm as frustrated with the pace of electronic tools as anyone, but this experience showed me it's almost there- well, with a big help from Microsoft Office. If WoTC can get all of this integrated, get the builders for all encounter elements running and also get a PDF equivalent for their print products, something like this will take even less time. Adjusting 10 encounters by 4 levels in less than 2 hours would be bliss.

--Z

Don't forget to send this to WotC's customer service. They need some props after receiving all of those indignant 'fired as customer' letters from people over in the Industry forum.

I have Onenote, but have never used it actually. I personally like to use Powerpoint to collect screen grabs from pdfs. This way I could conceivably project the ppts on to my big screen TV during sessions. (Haven't done it yet, but it sounds nice in theory).

C.I.D.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I have done the same thing, but using primitive methods, like paper and pencil.

It is still very very easy.

 

[Zephrin the Lost]

What tools were you using?

I have found the flashed based encounter builder on the dnd insider website to be lacking. I don't see an easy way with that tool to level up or de-level monsters either with that tool.

I used the encounter builder more or less to keep track of the XP budget for each encounter and to give me some ideas on replacement creatures. That's really all it's good for and I could have done the same thing with my DMG open to the correct page.

The downloadable monster builder lets you scale monsters with the click of a button. You have to review the results to look for exceptions but it works very well. I've run a balor as a level 6 solo using that thing!

-Z

 

[mudlock]

I've run a balor as a level 6 solo using that thing!

That sounds awesome!

I ran an Angel (the 9th level one) as a level 1 solo. The only hiccup was that one of the templates I applied added a reactive "target cannot attack this creature" attack... which, in a solo fight, means "target can't attack at all", and totally taking out one character both disappointed whoever the target was each round, and slowed the fight down a bit too much.

 

[Zephrin the Lost]

A little off topic but also worth a mention- the 6th level PC's are undoubtedly bad ass and capable of tremendous effectiveness, but there's one standard encounter I built during this upgrade I'm a little worried about wiping them out. Not super-worried, or I'd tweak it, but victory in this encounter is not a sure bet.

I think that speaks well of the system, that the players feel confident but I have the tools to keep them from getting cocky - or to keep them from surviving too much cockiness, at any rate.

--Z