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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GMforPowergamers" data-source="post: 8624846" data-attributes="member: 67338">now I don't know you... but I had a player make a similar complaint at my 2nd 4e campaign (it was a rogue build not a barbarian but also all about moving around) and I did run some numbers...at the time I was running at home at a table, but I had just started about 1/2 way through 1st campaign using my laptop to run, so I had my encounter notes saved... just under 1/2 (but way over 1/3) of my encounters had what I would call dynamic terrain... meaning terrain that could be used for an advantage, or for damage, and that most (about 2/3) of the other encounters either had regular difficult terrain, or multi non minion enemies.  So I ran a kind of experiment and for 3 weeks put dynamic AND difficult AND multi enemies in every encounter (at the time we were still trying to fine tune the hp problem we had identified with 4e by upping monster damage and lower monster hp so we were starting to get 3-5 encounters per night in combat zones) and I noted each time a PC in general (but player in particular) used the terrain or grouped enemies for AOEs... I found less then 1/3 of the combats did it happen. So then I brought all of this up with the players and went over my notes (we had an entire game night spent figuring out how to improve) and what we came up with was we all needed to communicate intent better. we made a joke about video games and parts of walls being different colors, and another about a superhero RPG that let you just add to scenes... but in general it was pretty much both.we found that often I would put a book case in a room, or stairs, or a bunch of barrels... and being used to 3e that would be glossed over by PCs as fluff (including a chocolate gyser that I can't believe they didn't use) mean while they would WANT to use things and not see things to use. something we do even to this day is players will stop and ask "What can I use around here?" from time to time (and even if I don't have something premade I will normally come up with something), and some times after the first round of a fight I will pause at the top of round 2 to say "Just FYI here are some key features I put in this fight"</blockquote>

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