Monsters attacks

[firesnakearies]

In general my advice would be to throw away the encounter design rulebook. A standard challenge is now +3. +5 encounters are now the difficult encounters (as long as the creatures and enviroment are designed properly).

I would seriously consider redesigning all the monsters the PCs fight, or at least making an assessment of their damage (and increasing it), also like you said giving all creatures an actual critical damage is a very good idea.

This.

Epic characters are crazy tough. Really skilled 4E players with well-built characters are crazy tough at any level. Combine the two, and you've got unstoppable killing gods against any standard published encounters.

Go nuts with encounter design. I'm consistently shocked by how much stuff 4E PCs can handle.

For example, a friend of mine and I are playing through the E1-E3 series. Two of us. The DM was running it as written, an adventure designed for a five-PC party, and we were mauling it with only two PCs. (A Warden and a Sorcerer, no leader!) So about halfway through E1, he actually started adding stuff and making it harder. He turned the final encounter of E1 into a level 29 encounter for a group of five. We were level 23, and again, there were only two of us. We still demolished it with ease.

As DM, I've thrown stupidly big encounters at my PCs, and they've pulled it out. I've had them fight 13 battles (all above their level) in a day without an extended rest. I've had them fight 17 non-minion monsters all above their level at the same time. (And these were LOW level characters, too.) I add tons of minions to already hard encounters without even counting them into the XP budget. The PCs prevail. It's amazing.

If you have good players with strong characters, at epic levels . . . take off the gloves. Just go crazy, they'll be fine. The encounter building guidelines and published encounters seem aimed at . . . well, pretty mediocre players, in my experience. Don't be afraid to move beyond that, if your PCs have proven themselves to be superhuman.

 

[Mesh Hong]

I'm already thinking the party, as it is now, has an outside shot at taking Orcus down right now (and he's the level 34 from the end of E3, with lots of minion and non minion help). (probably not, but when they do met him at level 30ish, I don't think it's going to be the epic battle it should be).

My advice here is quite clear, don't leave Orcus until level 30! My level 26 group walked all over him.

Here is an account of the encounter

 

[MrMyth]

My group has pretty similar defenses at the same level, and some of my solutions have been to:
1) Have some tougher (higher level) encounters and enemies,
2) Have lesser fights filled with high damage enemies (such as artillery),
3) Use the monster creation and NPC design rules to make tougher enemies,
4) Try to have a decent number of non-AC attacks,
5) Keep an eye out and make decent use of enemies with auras, damage on a miss, etc.

The big danger is having the high defenses combined with being rattled and hit by other penalties - but then, you can always have monsters with their own buffs as well, which can help with that.

 

[Mesh Hong]

One problem with a group all going for the same feats that pump up their defences is that it leads to an arms race. I would try explaining to them that they really arn't gaining anything in the long run as you are being forced to increase the monsters to keep up....

If they back off from having too godly defence boosts then you will be able to challenge them with more reasonable creatures and they can have more interesting feats.

Have you considered talking to your players about this?

 

[Jhaelen]

One problem with a group all going for the same feats that pump up their defences is that it leads to an arms race. I would try explaining to them that they really arn't gaining anything in the long run as you are being forced to increase the monsters to keep up....

This!

An arms race with the DM is something players cannot ever win (unless the DM lets them).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This.

Epic characters are crazy tough. Really skilled 4E players with well-built characters are crazy tough at any level. Combine the two, and you've got unstoppable killing gods against any standard published encounters.

Go nuts with encounter design. I'm consistently shocked by how much stuff 4E PCs can handle.

For example, a friend of mine and I are playing through the E1-E3 series. Two of us. The DM was running it as written, an adventure designed for a five-PC party, and we were mauling it with only two PCs. (A Warden and a Sorcerer, no leader!) So about halfway through E1, he actually started adding stuff and making it harder. He turned the final encounter of E1 into a level 29 encounter for a group of five. We were level 23, and again, there were only two of us. We still demolished it with ease.

As DM, I've thrown stupidly big encounters at my PCs, and they've pulled it out. I've had them fight 13 battles (all above their level) in a day without an extended rest. I've had them fight 17 non-minion monsters all above their level at the same time. (And these were LOW level characters, too.) I add tons of minions to already hard encounters without even counting them into the XP budget. The PCs prevail. It's amazing.

If you have good players with strong characters, at epic levels . . . take off the gloves. Just go crazy, they'll be fine. The encounter building guidelines and published encounters seem aimed at . . . well, pretty mediocre players, in my experience. Don't be afraid to move beyond that, if your PCs have proven themselves to be superhuman.

Hmmmm, I gotta wonder about that. Even the most insanely optimized and awesomely tactical players are going to die a horrible death at my table with those kinds of odds. Something just doesn't compute when I hear these stories of low level PCs beating hugely over level encounters or beating a dozen encounters in a row. I mean at epic tier you can get some crazy stuff going, but unless 'low level' means at least high paragon forget it. No heroic tier party is beating massive odds with a DM that is highly tactical, a well built encounter, and not holding back any punches, uh-uh.