Mini Encounters! Advice needed on how Mini is too Mini

[Trit One-Ear]

Been a little while since I've had time to post on the boards, but I come again seeking the advice of those 4E number crunchers and mathmagicians.

Rather than run a large scale series of battles within a city as a skill challenge or full-fledged encounters, I opted for a new method. I'm designing and planning many mini-encounters that I plan to string together with no rests in between. These encounters will take place all over the city, and will feel (hopefully) more like a montage of the heroes tackling many different threats before reaching their goal.

Despite all these helpful encounter building tools, I still feel like the math of 4E plays out different whenever it his the table. If I plan 4-5 mini encounters on an XP budget similar to a full encounter, I worry my players will be able to blow through the minions and fewer monsters easier than if they were built as one big encounter.

Any experience with ideas like this? Should I build them normally? Should I expect Hard level encounters to be Standard in this model? Or even Easy?

Thanks!

Trit

 

[MerricB]

Party composition and powers will make a huge difference here. Consider if most of them are with minions - the wizard using an Area of Effect spell will take them down quickly. Single standard monsters? The strikers take them down quickly. So, it's somewhat hard to give exact answers. This type of play can also be rather swingy depending on initiative and whether the party get surrounded.

My general advice here is to be prepared to add or remove monsters or encounters depending on how the players are actually going. You have the perfect chance here to tailor everything to your player's capabilities on the fly - the format of this allows it, as you don't have to reveal what all the encounters are at the start. It's not like a single fight where you can see every monster at the beginning.

I recently ran a big encounter for 22nd level characters where the enemies came in waves (so not dissimilar to the effect you're trying for). I think the total number of monsters was 2 elites, 4 standard and 54 minions. (Here's a report). That really pushed the players, so it might give you an idea of where to start.

Cheers!

 

[Balesir]

As [MENTION=3586]MerricB[/MENTION] says, it can depend a lot on surprise, ambush and so on. Are you going to give the players chances to pick a route and avoid some fights? Will some opposition "march to the sound of the guns"? At least I'm guessing there will be Perception checks to spot enemies in ambush, etc.

Have you considered a hybrid skill challenge/combat? This would work somewhat like a regular skill challenge, but failures lead to small combats. If 3 of these combats equals one encounter's worth (same level as the SC) and you don't give XP for the combats but give XP for the challenge it all comes out even. You can reduce the number of rolls in the skill challenge but make them harder, which increases the chance of getting a fight or two, and allow any number of failures (no "three strikes and out") but each failure means another (no XP) fight. On top of that, you could sprinkle in a level-2 fight or two if you felt so inclined - one at the gate and one at the destination, maybe. Maybe allow a skill check to find a place to short rest, if things look too grim?

 

[S'mon]

Why are very weak groups of monsters attacking the PCs in a city?

"I'm designing and planning many mini-encounters that I plan to string together with no rests in between."

If there are no Short Rests in between, then the whole thing is actually one big encounter and can be budgeted as such, up to EL+4 or so should be fine. Don't reroll init for the PCs until they eventually Short Rest, just roll for the monsters as they appear.

 

[Will Doyle]

An average difficulty encounter broken down into waves is going to be a cakewalk for most groups. Characters can most likely gang up on enemies, so the opposition is going to drop fast.

I'd do as Merric suggests and wing it, just bringing more mooks into play as needed. Don't bother tracking xp, just award a bundle for completion. Also consider adding in goals to each mini encounter (not sure what the situation is, but players could be racing to raise signal flags, rescue VIPS, or whatever). Add some jeopardy, without necessarily risking the PCs' lives.

 

[keterys]

If it's more of a montage as the PCs make their way around the city, roll initiative once for everyone and everything _and stay in initiative order_. Otherwise you might easily have the case where one (or maybe two) PC who is attack and init optimized tromps all over the whole thing, but this way the monsters and each PC all get a chance to act potentially.

 

[Trit One-Ear]

The part consists of one Paladin, one control-happy Wizard (Arcanist), one Cleric, one scary powerful Twin-Strike Ranger and a Monk (who either has a low to hit or rolls fairly poorly... I haven't investigated which yet).
Minion groups tend to go down quickly, which I'm alright with in this set up. Since so much of combat is in back streets and on roof tops, splitting the groups of minions into 3-4 smaller groups rather than one big cluster has been exciting and helps negate the Wizard's ability to destroy them all at once.

As it stands, I'm planning on hitting them with two lvl 12 (EL+4 per [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]'s advice) encounters before they reach the center of the town, where the evil mastermind is awaiting them. Many of these fights may be avoidable with successful stealth or streetwise checks, or clever tactics (for example, one fight has several imps who I plan on making flee once their devilish leader falls). Other fights may be avoided by simply moving on (snipers on rooftops etc). This may burn some healing surges and a utility power or two but shouldn't be as tough as the full XP budget suggests. The big goal here is flexibility to keep the momentum of the attack moving forward. [MENTION=3586]MerricB[/MENTION], thanks especially for pointing out the flexibility inherent in this format. It's lifted a weight off my shoulders, no longer feeling like I need to plot this whole thing out in advance.

Thanks for the advice all!

Trit

 

[Trit One-Ear]

So I decided after some thought to include these mini combats in a skill encounter! Here's the a link to the post with my framework thus far.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ill-Challenge-Framework&p=6186408#post6186408

Trit