Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5789433" data-attributes="member: 82106">I don't see the problem with any of this. The 4e design is deliberately meant to create a sense of urgency and danger, then allow the players to solve the problem of being behind the curve by properly employing their "dig myself out of a hole" abilities. That's what makes an interesting and fun encounter. The monsters come rocking in with their encounter powers and maybe APs, throw the party back on its left foot, and then make the players think. If the players can't effectively dig up ways to respond or they are pushed too far down the curve then they can be TPKed, but the system is pretty good about that not happening, mainly because monster's at-will attacks are generally enough below the curve that it gives the party room to work with after the DM launches his initial alpha strike. I don't think monster healing is a generally good idea. It tends to make things tedious and works against the whole model with really very little gained. The better model is again the one that 4e actually follows, which is to give the monsters some buffs or debuffs which let the DM employ some tactics without undoing encounter progress. Truthfully once the monsters rock the PCs back the best thing is for them to die reasonably quickly once the players get back on their feet. One way to reinject some tension in the later part of an encounter is to introduce some sort of timer. Recharge powers do this to some extent, and recharge on bloodied more explicitly. There could be some more interesting possibilities with say some monsters that could recover powers after N rounds or something like that. I'd have to say though that often this kind of thing is best incorporated into encounter design rather than monster stat blocks (and is a good reason for having wave encounters or other dynamic encounter setups).Finally, the 'negate an attack chit' idea isn't meant to be piled on top of the 4e model. It would be useful in the "much lower hit point advancement" model, and primarily because it would effectively represent 'more hit points' without number inflation. It also breaks from the to-hit/defense divergence enough to give PCs a wider level range of opponents they can take on. It would largely REPLACE some degree of existing recovery mechanics. The model would be that the monsters would have a more steady damage output. Instead of being front loaded they would do dangerous damage all encounter. The PCs would show up, take some hits, negate them, strike back, and then start to actually be HURT. This would shift the question of when the encounter is in doubt more to the later rounds, but make the danger apparent right up front. Smart players would try to use their chits optimally but at least that would imply they take some damage right off. This could be a complex decision to make since damage no longer has to be trivial to heal.</blockquote>

Verification