The start of a Nentir Vale campaign

[AbdulAlhazred]

The first quote point of view is using monsters straight from the monsters manual without changing them.
The second quote point of view is using the monster creator to alter the level of the monsters.

My way of doing it is a way between, very similar to 5e. HP/damage output scales depending on the level of the monster, while to-hit/defences remain relatively static relative to the players.

I have had encounters with hordes of low level mobs in 4e as well, and they were really boring. I played a Wizard who had gone for great AoE damage and just slaughtered them. They could barely hit us, and we could barely miss. I much prefer 5e's way of doing that, where a low level mob has a good chance of hitting you, but the damage might only be half of the normal. I have also been in encounters with mobs 5 levels higher, and the characters really do miss a lot. Sure the encounter went ok, but it's really boring when the PC's keep on missing. I just resorted to auto-damage attacks of assorted forms (Flaming Sphere and Magic Missile). The characters without such abilities kept on missing. Pretty boring for them.

Reskinning is super easy in 4e, since the 'core' aspects of a monster are pretty much defined by level, role, and type (minion/regular/elite/solo) and the specific mechanics of any given power/attack can be quickly reskinned its not really a huge challenge to add whatever elements you need. For instance I needed a race of half-ghostly ancient shape-shifting shadow creatures. The boss was a reskinned white dragon, the other major bad guys were reskinned NPCs stolen from here and there, the majority of the bad guys were reskinned Jackalweres and werewolves. I wrote up a monster theme to apply to all of them so they had a couple of fairly consistent abilities, but the end result was great. The 'white dragon' boss was awesome, his bite was a giant axe, his claws were claws, and his breath was an unearthly howl.

Its quite possible to build slogs and walk-overs in 4e if you don't pay careful attention. 4e can really reward good DMing, but it can also punish DMs. Any system will fall flat now and then. I think 4e is actually one of those systems that is easy to learn, but not so easy to really master. I learned a lot from running it, our games were all pretty successful, but there were definitely encounters that didn't pan out and the odd klunker skill challenge. I really do yearn for a more polished and perfected 4e!

 

[Blackbrrd]

I don't actually have any problems running 4e, it's just that the monster scaling doesn't fit my needs. The scaling has multiple elements that scale quite steeply: hp, damage, to-hit, defenses. The scaling is very quick (four factors, each increasing by maybe 5-10% (let's say 7% average), means a monster at +1 level is 30% tougher and vice versa ). I have therefore partially removed to-hit and defenses from the scaling, leaving me hp and damage to use as-is. This gets the scaling down to something like 15%, half the pace.

My partial removal of the scaling to-hit/defense puts the monsters in a to-hit/defense range thats +-2 compared to the party.
At level 1, the characters run into a level 1 kobold. It has +6 to hit and 15 AC. They run into the same kobold at level 5. I adjust the to-hit and AC to be at worst like a monster two levels below the part. In other words, it will get to-hit and AC like a level 3 monster, so +8 to hit and 17 AC.

At level 1, the characters run into a level 7 dragon, it originally has +12 to hit and 21 AC. I adjust the to-hit and AC to be at worst like a monster two levels above the party. In this case, it gets +8 to hit and 17 AC. If they run into it at level 6, it will have +12 to hit and 21 AC (it's just one level above the party, so no adjustment needed). If they run into it at level 12, it will get a bump, giving it +16 to hit and 25 AC.

What this accomplishes for me is that monsters straight out of the book are much more likely to be useable and that the players notice that they get more powerful, but at the same time, they can actually get swarmed by goblins at level 10, without me having to resort to some "super goblins". I can just use the same ones, and just check my handy little chart with to-hit and defenses that's calculated for the party level +-2. The players also know that they won't run into mobs that are nearly impossibly to hit, or impossible to miss.

I would probably have been running this campaign in 5e, starting at level 3 if it was finished, but until the official rules are released, I actually prefer running a modified 4e. Oh, and yeah, I changed am using inherent bonuses and magic weapon rarity similar to what 5e looks to be getting. No magic items shops!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't actually have any problems running 4e, it's just that the monster scaling doesn't fit my needs. The scaling has multiple elements that scale quite steeply: hp, damage, to-hit, defenses. The scaling is very quick (four factors, each increasing by maybe 5-10% (let's say 7% average), means a monster at +1 level is 30% tougher and vice versa ). I have therefore partially removed to-hit and defenses from the scaling, leaving me hp and damage to use as-is. This gets the scaling down to something like 15%, half the pace.

My partial removal of the scaling to-hit/defense puts the monsters in a to-hit/defense range thats +-2 compared to the party.
At level 1, the characters run into a level 1 kobold. It has +6 to hit and 15 AC. They run into the same kobold at level 5. I adjust the to-hit and AC to be at worst like a monster two levels below the part. In other words, it will get to-hit and AC like a level 3 monster, so +8 to hit and 17 AC.

At level 1, the characters run into a level 7 dragon, it originally has +12 to hit and 21 AC. I adjust the to-hit and AC to be at worst like a monster two levels above the party. In this case, it gets +8 to hit and 17 AC. If they run into it at level 6, it will have +12 to hit and 21 AC (it's just one level above the party, so no adjustment needed). If they run into it at level 12, it will get a bump, giving it +16 to hit and 25 AC.

What this accomplishes for me is that monsters straight out of the book are much more likely to be useable and that the players notice that they get more powerful, but at the same time, they can actually get swarmed by goblins at level 10, without me having to resort to some "super goblins". I can just use the same ones, and just check my handy little chart with to-hit and defenses that's calculated for the party level +-2. The players also know that they won't run into mobs that are nearly impossibly to hit, or impossible to miss.

I would probably have been running this campaign in 5e, starting at level 3 if it was finished, but until the official rules are released, I actually prefer running a modified 4e. Oh, and yeah, I changed am using inherent bonuses and magic weapon rarity similar to what 5e looks to be getting. No magic items shops!

Eh, I think its good to have a varying set of opponents at different levels. Of course if scaling up goblins for 10 levels works in the context of your campaign, then its perfectly fine. I just found reskinning to be the easiest thing to do. If I needed a level 10 goblin then I'd probably reskin an ogre or something. OTOH you can always go with the 'downgrade but level' option. The level 1 warrior goblins become level 6 minion goblins. The party now wades through these trivial foes, but they can still get in a few hits (ranged weapon minions are actually kinda nasty in a decent tactical setup). The 'goblin king' might be a reskinned ogre mage, and his chief lieutenants would be perhaps one or two of the level 6 goblin elite leader types.

IME the 'narrow level' thing is also highly variable. The second 4e encounter I ever ran was a level 1 party against a Carrior Crawler (level 8 elite controller IIRC, the one from MM1). It was a GREAT encounter, the PCs had some trouble hitting, but they got in their licks and eventually killed the thing, after some rather white knuckles moments where all but on PC was paralyzed and making saves. Now, this monster had a bit weaker defenses than most, and it was a controller, so limited damage output. A level 8 elite soldier would have sucked. Still, you can relax the level limits a lot if you pay attention to what you're doing (I lucked out with the CC really, I was pretty ignorant of this stuff back then).

 

[Blackbrrd]

Eh, I think its good to have a varying set of opponents at different levels. Of course if scaling up goblins for 10 levels works in the context of your campaign, then its perfectly fine. I just found reskinning to be the easiest thing to do.

I wanted the monsters in the area to be consistent with the area they are in. Kobolds being at the bottom of the heap, goblins above that, the hobgoblins and orcs. So, at level 10 I will probably not use too many goblins, and certainly not as the "main attraction". The characters will be fighting trolls, giants or dragons. Any kobolds or goblins at that level will be (dangerous) fodder, a bit like in earlier editions.

I think that if I re-skinned the typical kobold to be a normal level 10 mob, the players would wonder why they haven't taken over all the local villages...

The re-skinning is something I feel works best in a location based adventure (as in, change location every 2-3 levels, never going back). That way, it can actually be logical that you suddenly meet level 10 goblins. You just walked into a more dangerous neighbourhood. I have run campaigns like that and had no questions asked, but I wanted another kind of campaign this time.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I wanted the monsters in the area to be consistent with the area they are in. Kobolds being at the bottom of the heap, goblins above that, the hobgoblins and orcs. So, at level 10 I will probably not use too many goblins, and certainly not as the "main attraction". The characters will be fighting trolls, giants or dragons. Any kobolds or goblins at that level will be (dangerous) fodder, a bit like in earlier editions.

I think that if I re-skinned the typical kobold to be a normal level 10 mob, the players would wonder why they haven't taken over all the local villages...

The re-skinning is something I feel works best in a location based adventure (as in, change location every 2-3 levels, never going back). That way, it can actually be logical that you suddenly meet level 10 goblins. You just walked into a more dangerous neighbourhood. I have run campaigns like that and had no questions asked, but I wanted another kind of campaign this time.

Yeah, that's really I would imagine what the designers mostly assumed people would do, is play a pretty classic setup like previous editions. So you progress over levels 1-10 from fighting kobolds and goblins at level 1-3 say on up through your orcs (a bit tougher than the AD&D ones) from levels 2-6, your hobgoblins are about the same, but top out a bit lower than orcs, then your bugbears are good for levels 3-5, ogres, some trolls, maybe a Hill Giant or two, etc. You can throw in any of the various young dragons here and there throughout if you need one, etc.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

IME the 'narrow level' thing is also highly variable. The second 4e encounter I ever ran was a level 1 party against a Carrior Crawler (level 8 elite controller IIRC, the one from MM1). It was a GREAT encounter, the PCs had some trouble hitting, but they got in their licks and eventually killed the thing, after some rather white knuckles moments where all but on PC was paralyzed and making saves. Now, this monster had a bit weaker defenses than most, and it was a controller, so limited damage output. A level 8 elite soldier would have sucked. Still, you can relax the level limits a lot if you pay attention to what you're doing (I lucked out with the CC really, I was pretty ignorant of this stuff back then).

I think that's group-dependent. IME, both as a player and a DM, facing a much higher-level opponent meant having trouble hitting them. The exact "okay" level variance would of course depend on optimization and how much content you allow.

Before 4e even came out I playtested the pre-release version of Raiders of Oakhurst. Needless to say, there were no expertise feats! I don't blame the writers of the adventure for this. We didn't have monster generation rules and very few examples. The PCs faced level 4 jumping spiders and level 5 kobold swashbucklers (it was a reskinned hman that never got officially published) without too much problem. The end of the adventure involved a level 4 solo black dragon (effectively level 6 in terms of defenses, because of old solo math). Between high hit points (solos were x5 hp at the time) and high defenses, the fight got boring and grindy.

Keep on the Shadowfell did something similar. The boss was an 8th-level elite (PCs were supposed to be 4th at the time, but mine were 3rd, against a defense-equivalent level 10 enemy!) and ... it ended in lameness. It didn't help that the opponent had a single encounter ability, and behind the scenes I just cut the boss's hit points in half to cut the fight short.

A couple of new DMs with my non-regular group also thought it was a good idea to use enemies of level +3 or +4, or whole (non-boss) encounters of level +2 enemies. Not fun! (At level 3, we faced a level 6 shadar-kai skirmisher. The DM was excited about Dance of Death, and I agree, that's exciting for me too, but a level 3 elite skirmisher would have been just as tough and less frustrating to deal with. Same with the level 7 or 8 giant spider controller we faced at level 4. An elite probably would have hurt us more, but without the grind.)

For my own group, I've avoided this (I learned my lesson after Keep on the Shadowfell). I found paragon PCs roll over standard enemies of level +4, but players of heroic PCs will complain if the level difference is more than +2. (One time, I ran a hard encounter with my 7th-level PCs, which included a named level 11 standard and an elite 8th-level enemy as a test. The PCs didn't even notice the level difference, but unanimously called out the 8th-level guy as being more dangerous. They also killed Mr. Eleven very quickly. You get a lot stronger at level 7!) Now when I make bosses, I always make them at least elites of the PCs' level, or a tad higher.

If I'm looking for a hard encounter, I just build a level +4 encounter with twice as many bad guys (or make them all elite). If I use the same level I don't even have to calculate XP. For my last campaign, the last two encounters were level +4. The second last had an elite monster version of each PC (not a magic mirror example, but they "just happened" to run into enemies with the same classes) and boy does healing NPCs change the dynamic of the fight. It was so close, an enemy missing by 1 in the last round finally put the PCs over the top. (The attack was a Healing Strike-like power.) And the last one had a solo plus a bunch of enemies of the same level, and again it was close. I think that's more entertaining than a nearly-unhittable opponent.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Reading through this thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?350039-L-amp-L-December-16th-Can-you-feel-it/page4 really made me think of how my scenes were resolved.

Scene one: decrepit manor house. The players slog through most of the encounter before realizing they might not need to finish of the two last ghosts that actually are just defenders of the manor and maybe even related to one of the characters.

Scene two: the knights house at Redwood. No combat what so ever, but probably two hours of role-playing, with each player using their characters strong sides, interacting with the scene and the other players. Discovering the clues to what's happening.

Scene three: camp by the river. The PC's scout the area, the druid gets noticed, but in wolf-shape, one sentry stabbed to death by the Rogue. The players throwing caution to the wind, gets spotted after getting relevant info. Two of the characters bluff their way out of trouble. Some combat, but not really important.

Scene four: ambush of messenger. This is basically a player introduced scene, with some very fast combat as the messenger is clobbered, bound and healed up, and then interrogated, bargained with and finally made a deal with.

Scene five: confrontation on the road to Fallcrest. A big ugly fight, with the knight or Redwood dying early on, removing all cohesion among the rest of the foes. They try to split and get hunted down, or in one case turns after some nice intimidate/diplomacy.

The thing I find really interesting here is that none of the fights ended with the PC's killing all opponents. I am really happy with the players not trying to just attack the river camp, and instead went for a role-playing heavy solution. Instead of thinking that combat is the way it's meant to be resolved, they ended up scouting and bluffing instead.

Just two of the five scenes had combat as a major motif. Stealth, Percetion, Intimidation, Diplomacy, Bluff, Religion and History were all important skills that affected the outcome of the events.

That one of the players reacted to my knight cursing the PC's, calling them false by showing of his own crest of arms, defying him and saying he was the imposter made it much easier for me to go along with the intimidate/diplomacy to end the fight with one extra ally.

Even more importantly for me, the clue discovery happened mostly through role-playing, not dice rolling. The players built upon the clues I gave out freely to get the rest of the clues there were to find. It was very easy for me to wing it when the players initiated role-playing because they gave me plenty of inspiration for what was going to happen.

 

[Gilladian]

IME the 'narrow level' thing is also highly variable. The second 4e encounter I ever ran was a level 1 party against a Carrior Crawler (level 8 elite controller IIRC, the one from MM1). It was a GREAT encounter, the PCs had some trouble hitting, but they got in their licks and eventually killed the thing, after some rather white knuckles moments where all but on PC was paralyzed and making saves. Now, this monster had a bit weaker defenses than most, and it was a controller, so limited damage output. A level 8 elite soldier would have sucked. Still, you can relax the level limits a lot if you pay attention to what you're doing (I lucked out with the CC really, I was pretty ignorant of this stuff back then).

That encounter was SCARY! We finally toasted the damned thing with a keg of oil, as I recall.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I just finished up my third session in this campaign. The second session focused on them getting the information they knew to the Baron without getting themselves hanged and getting a chance to reclaim Redwood for one of the characters (Stellian).

The third session started out with the actual adventure, Reavers of Harkenworld. It went really well, with the PC's going for Tor's Hold first, and then striking at the Bullywugs there. All the time, stripping the dead Iron Circle soldier groups they met on their way of their armor and stashing it in a wagon they stole from the Iron Circle, donating it to the cause at Tor's Hold.

Analysis of my DM-ing
Looking back at the session I find that pacing in my group is very much up to me as a DM. Sometimes my players just start going on and on about something inconsequential. In situations like this, I like to move things a long with a quick: "Is this what you do?" Players: "yeah". Me: "Ok, then this happens and you are on the way to X".

The reason I started doing this was as a reaction to what the players mentioned in some of the earlier campaigns I ran several years ago. They commented that it got kind of boring when they just didn't quite know what to do, and every plan somebody had got shut down by the arguments of another PC.

Because of this, I started thinking about it, and started giving out hints that the PC's should know, maybe with a bit of skill checks and such. After some back and forth and they are still stuck, I do as mentioned above, suggesting that they run with one of the plans they have come up with. Sure, it's a bit pushing them a long, but it really beats having 2-3 out of 4 players getting bored because they can't really agree to what they should do.

Another thing about pacing is how to handle PC's that comes up with good ideas that will involve a lot of role playing, but it slows down the pace of the adventure. I know that about half the players don't enjoy sessions that are mostly RP, so sometimes run situations that would be suitable to run as pure role playing as skill challenges and summaries of actions instead of running the actual thing.

For instance, last night, the players wanted to to a quick recruitment run before going to Harkenworld (I was just about to start "Reavers of Harkenworld"). There was a huge refugee camp right outside Fallcrest, so we all figured it should be pretty easy. I ran a quick skill challenge and within 30 minutes of the idea being hatched, they had 8 guys on the way to train peasants in Harkenworld to help in a revolt they hoped to setup.

Looking back, it worked out very well, but if I had planned for it, I could probably have run it as regular RP, and had some interesting situations occur (combat and some proper conflict) in between all the talking.

Lastly, I just wanted to say that I do find it amusing how an optimized party can plow through an encounter. In Reavers of Harkenworld, there is an encounter, E3 that happens in a tavern, that they absolutely bulldozed through. This is even with a 4-man party, instead of 5 as it's written for.

4e plays quite differently* when you run with MM3 monster stats and optimized characters. Instead of combats dragging on, you get some good spikes in damage from both sides. For instance, the Rogue regularily one-shots ordinary monsters of the same level, and if the monsters get their encounter powers to hit, they might bloody a character in one hit. Instead of encounters lasting for 5-6 rounds, most encounters are resolved in 3-5 rounds.

Initiative managment
I have started doing the initiative with small cardboard triangles with the name of the PC or monster written on both sides. When we roll for initiative, I set them up in the right order in front of me so both the DM and the players can see who's turn it is, and who comes next. I then use a token that I move along to show who's turn it is. This has really sped up combat, since the players intuitivly knows when their turn is up, plans ahead, and usually start rolling their dice immidiatly when their turn is up.

*I am also playing in a 4e group of unoptimized characters, running in an adventure with MM1 stats. Combat there has a tendency to really drag on, at level 7+ often up to 7-8 rounds.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Another option when moving things along is to just have something happen. This is the old "wandering monster" solution of Gygax basically. "Oh, you spend 20 minutes poking and prodding everything in the room, OK roll for initiative!" except you can be a little more subtle about it than that of course.

I think the SC for recruiting was a good plan. In terms of the adventure such an 'encounter' might not add to the daily encounter flow, but it puts a bit of life into it and makes it move on pretty quickly. You can still have the RP, just use your 'and then moving on..." technique by asking for a skill check. You can get a 'narrate, decide, check' flow going that is fairly snappy, almost like combat. So an SC like that can be resolved in 10 minutes and the players feel like they've accomplished something, put some plans in motion, etc and then its on to the rest of the adventure.