Monsters not dishing enough damage

[Blackbrrd]

It really comes down to the encounter setup, not the encounter level.

I ran one encounter with teleporting mobs and a giant trap that left the party split up and out of synergy. It was maybe EL+1. The controller died because he got separated from the rest of the party. Several characters got bloodied. I critted the tank three times, but he wasn't in any danger.

Another encounter I ran had many tactical elements, it was an EL+3 encounter that might look much nastier, but it wasn't. They basically used all their dailies but I only managed to get two characters bloodied. It was great fun for the players though.

There is a lot of synergy between characters in 4e and removing that synergy is really devastating. These encounters usually don't look so dangerous - there aren't necessarily that many critters. On the other hand there is usually some terrain feature and critter ability that makes the fight hard - for instance by isolating one or more characters in an awkward positions.

Making the healer heal the controller with 45hp and an 11hp healing surge instead of the defender with 60hp and a 15hp healing surge makes a huge difference.

I give my players a good selection of: EL+0 encounter with easy terrain, EL+1 encounters with hard terrain and EL+4 encounters with mobs coming in waves.

The EL+0 encounters is usually fun for the players in the way that they can see how kickass they are. They are usually very quick and makes for a lighter feel, and not the DM-is-trying-to-kill-us-let-us-run-away mood. They are in other words important.

Oh, and yeah, minions are usually worthless except as ranged mobs where they take some actions to kill. If the players just ignore them, the plunk away for some decent damage.

Oh, and keterys, his DM is probably in need of your table with kickass monsters and crappy monsters. I know I would referense it nearly all the time when making encounters. (I would probably buff the crappy mobs before the fight and be a bit careful with the heavy hitting ones).

There are a lot of resources around for Character optimization, but nearly none for DM optimization. One can get around it as a DM by adjusting things on the fly, but it is better to do it before you start an encounter. Having a reference telling you want monsters to look out for would be a great start.

Hmm.. that got me thinking about what environment the different monsters pwns in. For instance mobs that can teleport on a hit are very good if there is a lot of elevation difference (cliffsides, buildings/rooftops, castle walls, etc). Monsters with AoE effects are good if there is little room to maneuver, and ranged mobs are good if you can space them out a lot with lots of corridors 5-6 squares straight with 90 degree turns - and a central killing ground.

Having pits filled with swarms is just evil btw.

 

[Cadfan]

Part of the problem is that "break a sweat" is awfully subjective.

My experience at paragon tier is that an equal level encounter will be managed awfully effectively by our group. Its not that the encounter can't threaten us, its that we have the tools and the knowledge to take it apart in such a way that it never gets the chance. But isn't that still the encounter doing its job? How should we think about an encounter that, due to player and team skill, is easily defeated, but which would be more difficult if the players weren't as skilled? I tend to think of it as an acceptable encounter.

Level +1 encounters, in my experience, tend to put some threat on one character. Never the group as a whole, but usually a striker ends up needing rescue. This rescue usually comes in the form of our very effective cleric fixing everything with a daily ability.

Level +2 encounters, in my experience, tend to threaten at least two characters. Usually our ranger and our wizard, but that's mostly our group dynamic. Again the players handle things pretty well once they get on top of the situation. But at least two characters usually end up at bloodied and in need of something other than routine encounter power healing.

Level +3 encounters tend to be kind of rough, with a real chance of character death even after rare special abilities have been used. The only exception is when the players know there's a really tough encounter coming down the line- if they plan ahead, they can activate some seriously powerful daily abilities in some really optimal ways, and smash through pretty effectively. If they can't plan ahead, they don't use their abilities as effectively at the beginning of the fight, and things are harder.

So I don't know if that means the game's working, or its not working. For my group, we're having fun, so its probably working. We tend not to have many encounters where losing feels like a major risk, but group makeup probably affects that- fighter, paladin, cleric, ranger, wizard. The two defenders lock things down, and the cleric keeps everything running. If the group had more strikers, we'd probably trash easy encounters even faster, but have a lot more risk in the hard ones.

 

[keterys]

Sounds like it's working to me, there, Cadfan!

Interesting points above on 'DM optimization'... very interesting.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I've also noticed that how challenging the party feels the encounter is can depend greatly on the number of healing triggers available - the party I DM with a laser cleric, eladrin taclord and a palladin (group of 5) has a much less tense encounters than the party I play in (only a half-orc melee cleric for healing). Chances are both can have the same length of adventuring day, but with the party I DM there is virtually no chance of anybody being knocked down and staying down - not without TPKing the party, that is.

That said, I've also noticed a big difference between how difficult things feel based on whether you are a DM or a player, the amount of focus fire the enemy is doing, and on whether or not it is your player that is being picked on.

 

[keterys]

Yeah, one trick I like to do when I think the party has no chance of losing is to alternate around who I focus on each fight. Even if it's not necessarily the smartest idea, at least make everyone have that one fight of the night/adventure they're bloodied and maybe dropping... briefly, before they completely win

 

[Ceramicwombat]

Our high-level campaign just hit 21st level. The party is a halfling cleric, elf archery ranger, elf fighter, and human rogue. All four are well-optimized builds.

In an EL+0 encounter, I don't feel like I'm able to threaten anyone but the fighter because he does his job so well. He is a sword n' board build, and monsters of his level are able to hit his AC ~30% of the time. Getting him down to bloodied is insane. Instead, the enemies use every status effect they have available to make him dazed, stunned, blind, teleported away to a pocket dimension, etc., just to get at the other characters. Most of the encounters I use are EL+1 or EL+2 and everyone seems to be threatened at least a bit.

Going from 1st level the day 4th came out to now, I have killed the rogue twice, the fighter twice, and the cleric once. The ranger is a new addition and I haven't managed to kill him yet, but he has been unconscious a few times. The newest deaths were the rogue and fighter, who had their souls devoured by a demilich. Even with the cleric granting them save bonuses, they rolled their 1s and 2s and died. These were the first deaths in 6 or 7 sessions, and they didn't come from HP damage, but from status effects. I think I'd have to roll out an EL+5 encounter for them to be seriously worried about a TPK from HP damage.

Minions pre-MMII were pretty worthless. Minions designed since MMII are a credible threat if used in hordes. I like using minions but for encounter design I give them 1/2 XP (8 minions instead of a regular monster at heroic, 10 at paragon, and 12 at epic). This has worked well. My players get to mow down hordes, and I actually get to hit them with a few minions before they all die.

 

[HP Dreadnought]

The reason monsters don't dish out massive damage in a single round is actually pretty simple. It means success hinges on a very few die rolls and combat runs only 2-3 rounds, which means there is no time for interesting tactics. Worst case you end up with battles like in 3.5 at higher levels where the initiative roll is practically a flip of the coin to decide who wins.

I don't want the combats to revert to the old "he who wins initiative, wins" of previous editions. . . but I do want to feel threatened, and I don't want to have to deliberately look for ways to nerf our party in order to feel that way. It may be ok for the DM to occasionally fudge on the part of the PCs (something that never has to happen currently) but it is definitely NOT ok for the PCs to have to fudge on the part of the DM.

Its hard to give specific advice on how your DM could up the difficulty or why things are so easy without knowing more specific details. How long are your fights? What sort of PCs do you have in the party and what kind of damage are they doing? What sort of monsters are you fighting?

OK, a few details. Party consists of (all 12th level)

Human Fighter/Dreadnought

Dragonborn Paladin/(some dragony-path)

Dwarf Cleric optimized for healing - although we rarely need even a fraction of his capability.

Then, we have a rotating DM, so we will have two of the three following characters at any one time:

Eladrin Wizard

Elven Ranger

Human Warlord

My Human Fighter/Dreadnought is almost certainly the most optimized character in the group, here are a few details:

AC: 29 (about half the time boosted to 31, can get as high as 33 if the right powers are used)
HP: 121 (inc. toughness & +10 from dreadnought)
Surge Value: 30
Surges/Day: 14
Typical Damage/Round: 25 - 30

I can't remember the last time I used more than 7 or 8 surges over the course of 4 - 5 encounters between rests. Between my surge value and the cleric bonuses to healing surges, I never need more than 1 or 2 per fight. . . and I'm never bloodied unless I want to be.

I will brashly charge the biggest and toughest group of monsters, and summon them to me with Come and Get if every fight. What manages to get by me, generally gets stopped by the Paladin. Its rare for anybody else in the party to take any significant damage - in many cases they take no damage whatsoever.

Minions should actually be moderately effective. Personally I haven't found them to be lacking overall. Sure sometimes they just die horribly, but that is after all part of their shtick. Other times I've had minions really over perform. It seems like at paragon tier and up minions would just start to be useless, but there are a couple reasons that isn't entirely the case. For one thing they still keep up in defenses, so they never become trivial to hit. Admittedly characters will eventually have a decent amount of auto-damage effects that can wipe them out, but that generally assumes the DM bunched a whole lot of minions in one place and left them dangling in front of the PCs noses. A smart DM will do that once, and then the next time they'll have a reserve wave of minions that show up right after the party is baited into expending their nice auto-damage minion sweeper. Tends to make them start guessing pretty quickly.

Minions have ZERO chance against me. Assuming any actually live to make it into melee with me. . . I will generally have Rain of Steel available for a minion fight. . . thus the minions adjacent to me all die at the start of their turn.

However, that is beside the point because the minions pretty much never even make it into melee with me. Usually the mage will drop a wall of fire in a strategically important location - ending the minion issue, occasionally supplemented by a BW from the paladin. When the mage is DMing the cleric has this Close BURST 8 ENCOUNTER power that pretty much wipes them out except for a couple stragglers.

The other thing is minions aren't really useless if they force the party to pay attention to them. Better even is a clever DM will create encounters with combinations of minions and other monsters that create catch-22 situations. Like some cheap minions backed up by say a spectre that will be happy to raise his minions into more spectres if you are foolish enough to kill them. OK, you can ignore the minions, but that may not be a real good alternative, especially if they happen to have some annoying power that puts out a status condition or an aura or something like that. Basically while my players enjoy minions and are glad to find out some of the monsters are minions, they have learned to stay wary of them nonetheless.

The point is that the minions DON'T force us to pay attention to them. They are so much fodder that as I noted, is generally dead by turn 2 - without me ever having to give them much consideration. Meanwhile I have tied up the big-nasty critters in melee and there's not much that can out-melee me.

Part of the problem is that "break a sweat" is awfully subjective.

Level +1 encounters, in my experience, tend to put some threat on one character. Never the group as a whole, but usually a striker ends up needing rescue. This rescue usually comes in the form of our very effective cleric fixing everything with a daily ability.

I would say this typically describes an encounter for us up to Level +4. At the higher levels, I might take a significant amount of damage. . . but if I am doing my job nobody else does, and my damage is healed pretty much at will by the cleric.



Maybe its because we have 2 defenders, and generally 2 leaders leaving the controllers/strikers to run roughshod over the opponents. . . maybe its just that we're all tactical geniuses (well. . . maybe just me. . . j/k). . . . but we are STRAIGHT out of the book + errata. . . ZERO house rules. . . and we're slaughtering the opposition. Something is not right.

 

[DanmarLOK]

Given your situation have the DM add +1/2 level to the creatures damage rolls and see if that helps?

 

[sfedi]

Parties with two defenders and two leaders tend to have an easy time in encounters.

Artilleries and Controllers should be your worst enemies.

Have you fought much of them?

 

[keterys]

Some suggested critters for your DM to use from the MM:

L12
Redspawn Firebelcher

L13
Balhannoth
Beholder Eye of Flame
Bearded Devil
Drow Arachnomancer

L14
Lich (Human Wizard)
Boneclaw
Githzerai Mindmage

L15
Destrachan Far Voice
Immolith
Thunderfury Boar

L16
Bodak Skulk
Shadow Snake

L17
Death Knight
Bone Devil
Cyclops Battleweaver
Firebred Hellhound
Yuan-ti Malison Disciple of Zephyr

There are lots and lots that don't do much damage that would probably be good for you guys to avoid. If you have a ton of resistances, some of those guys above won't be as effective due to energy damage auras, ongoing, etc. Though even with liberal fire resistance a Beholder Eye of Flame with 2 Immoliths and a Firebelcher can be quite threatening.

Edit: Though I guess that's only like 4800xp and you'd probably want at least a level + 2 threat, so toss on a Bloodfire Harpy to make it 5200xp. That should result in a fair amount of damage spread around, and a fighter with vulnerable 10 fire and ongoing 5 in an immolith's claw starts its turn by taking 35-50 damage piercing fire resistance, plus a possible eye ray, so yeah, that adds up fast.