Opinion: better or worse encounter format?

[Morrus]

You've seen two 4E adventures now, and as you can see we abandoned the encounter format we used in WotBS (which was the style WotC was using at the time).

Better or worse? I know I personally prefer it this way, but I'm curious about others' opinions.

 

[Morrus]

69 views; no opinions?

 

[Falkus]

Well, it's been a while since I ran anything fourth edition; and I haven't had a chance to actually run WotBS yet; but, in my humble opinion, I agree that the change in Zeitgeist 4e is for the better. Speaking as a DM, it's much easier for me in having the encounter stats in the same area as the story information; and it means less flipping back and forth through pages while running an actual session. I'm speaking from experience for that; as I've run Shadowrun adventures where the stats are all gathered at the back of the adventure; and it's not really my most favorite thing.

As a sidenote: I find myself highly amused by some of the flavor text in the creature powers in the encounters. Well done!

 

[Morrus]

Well, it's been a while since I ran anything fourth edition; and I haven't had a chance to actually run WotBS yet; but, in my humble opinion, I agree that the change in Zeitgeist 4e is for the better. Speaking as a DM, it's much easier for me in having the encounter stats in the same area as the story information; and it means less flipping back and forth through pages while running an actual session. I'm speaking from experience for that; as I've run Shadowrun adventures where the stats are all gathered at the back of the adventure; and it's not really my most favorite thing.

As a sidenote: I find myself highly amused by some of the flavor text in the creature powers in the encounters. Well done!

I always feel that a lot of 4E powers don't make sense to me. You teleport and your ally heals and the next person to hit the third person in line to you gets +2 to hit. Why? It makes no sense!

So I felt every power had to justify its effects in the description. Ryan agreed, and we made it a policy.

 

[ve4grm]

69 views; no opinions?

I was trying to word my response, then got distracted. Sorry.

I greatly prefer the newer format (and I must say, like Falkus, the power flavour text has been a great help for running the game).

There are definitely some lessons to take from the old format, however. Particularly, I'd say that a large, complicated set-piece battle is easier to run when it is self-contained in its own 2-3 page spread, with nothing but the encounter on those pages. All of the text, tactics, environment first, monster stats on their own page, etc.

You guys do a great job in the new format, don't get me wrong, but it's occasionally wierd when text sections are split between pages, with a page of monster stat blocks in the middle. The Sea Gate encounter, for example, could have been two pages, rather than 1 full page, and 2 half pages.

Yeah, it would have required some different formatting to keep it in-line with the adventure, but I think the point stands.

So if given the two choices, I greatly prefer the new format. But if given free reign, my choice would be 99% new format, with the occasional 2-3 page spread for setpiece encounters where appropriate. (Note that these spreads would be best when in-line with the rest of the adventure, not split off like the old format did.)


Does that make sense to anybody but me?

 

[nayrelgof]

In WotBS, I keep two copies of the pdf so I could keep my place easily in front and back. I won't miss that.

Lately, I've started printing out the encounter pages, which has worked much better. It doesn't seem like this would be as ideal in the Zeitgeist layout.

My feeling is that if you use the physical book or stay purely electronic, the Zeitgeist format is better. However, if you mix electronic and print the WotBS format seems better. Take that with a grain of salt since I haven't actually run any Zeitgeist encounters yet.

 

[Noodle]

I'll chime in and say I vastly prefer the new format. I've run 6 SoW (WOTC) adventures, and now the first 2 acts of Island. I've been going all-PDF to date, and not printing anything out. I find it a lot easier to only have to page up/page down to see everything, rather than having to jump back 20 pages to find the room description, etc. I plan to get a physical copy of Skyseer, but I expect my reasoning will remain.

 

[Falkus]

In regard to the flavor text, after having fully read through both the fourth edition and Pathfinder versions; and prepared for my session on Saturday; I have a query for future adventures: Would it be possible to get some of the more descriptive and/or entertaining flavor test descriptions of powers from the Fourth edition NPCs and monsters worked into the descriptions/combat tactics of the Pathfinder variant?

There's some really, really good stuff there that I intend to use word for word at my session on Saturday during combat.

 

[Rugult]

In regard to the flavor text, after having fully read through both the fourth edition and Pathfinder versions; and prepared for my session on Saturday; I have a query for future adventures: Would it be possible to get some of the more descriptive and/or entertaining flavor test descriptions of powers from the Fourth edition NPCs and monsters worked into the descriptions/combat tactics of the Pathfinder variant?

There's some really, really good stuff there that I intend to use word for word at my session on Saturday during combat.

This is something RangerWickett and I have been interested in hearing about from the fans!

The original thought on the PF version was to keep it fairly streamlined in terms of rules, so that it kept most of the 4e NPCs intact, but stayed close to Pathfinder rules for what creatures could do. This meant removing a lot of the wacky abilities that can be put into any NPC/Monster in 4e and generally reserving it for monsters/special NPCs in the PF version.

One of the big problems (especially in lower level adventures like the ones we have now) is that 4e style abilities that translate to grappling/bull rushing are difficult to work in to NPCs, who need a variety of feats / equipment to properly pull off. This turns our NPCs into one-trick ponies, where the 4e version may have 3-4 'cool things' the NPC can do.

If more people are interested in seeing more 4e style uniqueness with monsters/NPCs in the PF version, I know I can work that into the adventures! Our concern up until now has been the reaction from hardline PF players who might not like the 'everything is special' approach that tends to come from 4e.

For those of you who've read the adventures, here are some examples on our thought process...

Spoiler

With adventure 1 we took a pretty hard approach to NPCs/Monsters. The major exception in this would be Ghillie Dhu, who is a unique fey entity.

The Bleak Golem in adventure 2 is an example of something where the PF version took more of a 4e approach to creating a monster (with the stages of the fight). We also gave some unique abilities to the gnomes Danisca and Blander that made them a pretty unique and (hopefully) memorable encounter.

One example of a dropped ability was the Kell-Guild's ability to grab someone to use as a human shield and then continue to make pistol attacks. Since this merges a sort-of grappling rule, shooting, and maintaining a grapple, it seemed too clunky to work in without making some special rule / exception. If we did introduce something like this, players would likely want to do the same ability, and we'd need to consider the impact for the remainder of the campaign...

Perhaps other people have suggestions/thoughts on this? Would anyone here explode in rage if we started giving level-based NPCs some wacky abilities to spice up encounters that aren't necessarily found in the core rules? Or, would you prefer if unique abilities were reserved only for the really important NPCs / specialty monsters?

 

[Falkus]

Speaking for myself, I would love to see more esoteric abilities given to Pathfinder NPCs. It's one of the strong points of Fourth Edition; and I think it would be a benefit to the Pathfinder to system to at least partially port over elements of it to NPC design.

I definitely agree with you that caution is required when it might overlap with existing. Like the ones in the

Spoiler

grapple and pistol shoot example you provided

. An example of one that I think would work for an NPC would be (more spoilers from Dying Skyseer)

Spoiler

Deorn Feldman's deafening pistol shot

.

I'm going to run this by my group on Saturday, get their reaction and feedback on it and I'll post what they think Saturday evening.