The Lethality of 4E

[Celtavian]

re

The problem of 4e lethality suffers from the extremely limited novaing ability of PCs. For example, a standard low level party might only have 2 healing words for the party and one second wind apiece available for healing. If you don't cut down your opponent's numbers fast, you will tap out healing wise early... and then die.

Basically, PC power stays roughly constant for the first few rounds (per encounters, maybe a daily or two per PC) and then plummets. If the fight isn't over by the time the PCs run out of abilities, life gets very ugly. So in 4e a fight is only interesting if you get towards the end of the PC's resources (otherwise nothing of importance is spent), but if you accidentally add even one monster too many, the PCs will be tapped out too early (monsters having rechargeable abilities at least puts PCs out of the misery relatively fast if it comes to that).

This means that DMs who tend to use easier encounters will run 4e with less lethality than 3e (slower combat=less swingy combat), but DMs who tend to use harder encounters will run 4e as more dangerous than 3e (no ability to nova if things go wrong). Finally, note that 4e is designed (not perfectly) for everyone to roughly need 10s on the d20 to do something. 3e was designed for the target to drop well into the single digits. This means that putting PCs up against higher level opponents (with better ACs/to-hits) is more brutal than in 3e (a +1 when you only need a 5 is worth less than a +1 if you need a 10). Add in the messed up PC/NPC scaling (NPCs scale faster than PCs on a level basis) and you have a recipe for DM failure.

I noticed to hit scaling being a limiting factor as well. A string of bad rolls by the party and good rolls from the enemies could lead to bad times for a 4E party. This was less so in 3E as you rose in level. But the scaling of AC according to level will keep to hit at somewhere close to 50% for even level encounters. Some other classes powers will help, but since their powers also are based on hitting the ripple effect of a missed attack by your warlord or cleric could be substantial negative for a given round.

It will be interesting for me as a player who has DMed alot to see how these combats play out. Looking at how the mechanics work, I haven't an obvious feel for them. Monsters sometimes gain stat bonuses I don't understand. They really skew their defenses making a main monster very hard to hit for equivalent level PCs. If this main monster (say a solo or elite) is grouped up with other tough monsters, I don't see how a party can win without very lucky rolls. I'm not sure how heroic that will feel.

But since I haven't experienced enough of the gameplay to know, I want to see if my speculations are accurate. I know I have speculated on how combat will go with hit scaling. But speculation doesn't mean much until you see it all in action.

 

[Crosswind]

Trouble with TPKs seems to be coming from:

1.) Players not playing well together in hard encounters (The Ettercap TPK above)

2.) A lack of understanding of how high above the XP budget for a party you can go and still have it be "hard" without "Impossible".

So, 1 is expected. Some times, your wizard decides to magic missile the ettercaps all day instead of doing something useful.

2, however, is a bit baffling to me. 4E makes it really easy to make hard fights that don't TPK a party. I've run a series of sessions where I had to improvise most of the encounters, and have had a great deal of success using the following guidelines:

1.) Stay close to your XP budget! It's not rocket science - if you put, for instance, a 5th level solo monster (1,000 XP) against a party of 4 level 2 characters (500 XP), it's going to be @#$%ing hard. I try not to over/undershoot by more than 30%.

2.) Higher level monsters will make it harder than lower level monsters. Despite the fact that 2 level 6 monsters are equivalent to 5 level 1 monsters in XP, they will make for a harder fight. Don't throw your PCs against something that's more than 3-5 levels higher than them, scaling starts to break.

3.) Know when you're giving the PCs an advantage/disadvantage that isn't reflected in the monsters, and adjust accordingly. Are the PCs being ambushed? Probably best to make the XP value of the encounter a bit lower, then. Do they have advantageous terrain? Give them a bit harder encounter.

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I played a lot of 3E, and by the end of it, had had exactly 1 GM who could reliably challenge a party, make them fear death, but fail to kill them without fudging rolls/making monsters play dumb. It was damn hard, and even he killed 6-7 people over the course of the adventure.

4E gives the players myriad ways to save themselves from a TPK. Action points and dailies come to mind. It gives them more ways to recover from dying, recover from bad situations, and less swinginess in dice-rolling. I'm pretty sure that if people stick to the above rules, the challenge of a combat is very, -very- predictable.

-Cross

 

[Vayden]

I'll also mention that 4e has the most lethal falling rules of ANY Dungeons and Dragons Edition, EVER.

On the subject of falling damage, it is really lethal, at least until you get someone trained in acrobatics. Take a 50 foot fall - 5d10 on average is 27.5 dmg. Then take a level 2 rogue, trained in acrobatics - Dex 18 (+4), trained (+5), 1/2 level (+1), without throwing in anything else, that's a +10 acrobatics check. Average result then is 20.5, turning that 27.5 into 7 points of falling damage from 50 feet up the cliff.

(PS - if you're having trouble remembering how you phrased your lethality comments in the other thread, check my sig)

 

[Mindseye]

I played a lot of 3E, and by the end of it, had had exactly 1 GM who could reliably challenge a party, make them fear death, but fail to kill them without fudging rolls/making monsters play dumb. It was damn hard, and even he killed 6-7 people over the course of the adventure.

4E gives the players myriad ways to save themselves from a TPK. Action points and dailies come to mind. It gives them more ways to recover from dying, recover from bad situations, and less swinginess in dice-rolling. I'm pretty sure that if people stick to the above rules, the challenge of a combat is very, -very- predictable.

-Cross

I thought this was interesting. In 3.x in our group, challenging our players seemed tough because of the varying character building prowess and abilities. As DM, to effectively challenge the 2 powergamers in the group, it seemed like the fights had a significant chance of killing others.

I haven't had the chance to test the 4E "sweet spot" we've been told about, but if character's relative strengths are flatter as you progress, it might make it easier to build effective encounters for me.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

I don't know why, but with 4e I don't feel the need to coddle the PCs like I did with 3.5. I'm running the Keep on the Shadowfell encounters as is, and I'm using the monster's abilities to full advantage. If they die, they die.

 

[MrFilthyIke]

I've played 3 games of 4E since release.

I've had two characters killed though poor dice rolls.

Seems so far that if your dice of hot, you're in the
zone. If your dice of cold, start running away.

 

[the Jester]

Let's see, we had two deaths in the infamous Irontooth encounter- one in the first round, when a series of crits and lucky rolls took the warlord from full to dead before he had a chance to act, and another near the end, when it was all about the Tooth.

This is more deadly than I had expected 4e to be, although my feeling is that older editions are deadlier at 1st to maybe 3rd level. But my guts tell me that 4e keeps a roughly equal deadliness all the way up to 30 (although at epic levels, death is a speed bump).

 

[Nightchilde-2]

I haven't had any deaths yet, but in every battle, almost every PC has ended up at least bloodied, and every few fights, one or two of 'em get knocked down to 0 hp.

They just hit 2nd level at the end of last week's session so we'll see if that makes any difference.

 

[Wormwood]

I'm in two groups, both playing Shadowfell.

No characters have died, but there has been death saving throws in every single combat but one.*

So yeah, there are more dropped characters but fewer dead ones.

* [sblock]the party, with Splug's gleeful assistance, snuck into Balgron the Fat's bedroom and got the drop on the entire lair. The PCs went through that encounter like a hot knife through butter---and Splug got his revenge![/sblock]

 

[Jonathan Drain]

Bear in mind that since players are still new to the rules, the game may be more lethal right now.