Ways to assess an encounter early

[Quickleaf]

I hang two-sided monster cards over the DM screen when I run 4e. The cards have a picture, initiative score (pre-determined), and defense scores. Yes, I was inspired by Mike Shea's blog I realize that's not dealing with the subtleties that have been brought up, but it extremely effective at giving the players the information they most often ask for and speeding up combat. Anything else they need to know they can either interpolated from my description or make checks to learn.

 

[Tony Vargas]

As a player, one of the main problems I have in an encounter is figuring out when to deploy daily and other resources. Sometimes it's easy, such as when a character really needs healing to stay in the fight (you spend the surge), or when targets are perfectly positioned for that area-affecting daily power. But I often horde my non-encounter resources waiting for either a dire circumstance or a perfect opportunity to use them.

Nod. The best guideline, IMX, is "if you see a good (not perfect) opportunity to make use of a daily and accomplish something worthwhile, use it." If you wait for desperation you'll make poor use of your dailies - using dailies with great riders when the rider doesn't matter because you're desperate to do that extra couple dice of damage, that kind of thing. If you make good use of your dailies, you're less likely to get to the point of desperation.

The phenomenon I often see is dailies vs surges. Early in the day, players will horde dailies, making fights take longer and taking more damage in the process, until they start running low on surges. Then they'll bust out dailies to try to end fights before their few remaining surges get used up.

Another thing to consider is that even at 1st level, as a (typical) /party/ you have 5 dailies. You can afford to let one character expend a daily in every fight - even if a fight doesn't seem /that/ important or overwhelming, if one daily can be used very well in it, and save you all a number a surges, it may well be worth it.

The same goes for action points (though their milestone-renewable) and consumables (which tend to have 'expiration dates' in the sense that, as you level, the consumable drops off precipitously in value.

Another issue in 4e, again, perhaps only for me, is figuring out if you can take a certain enemy. Some knowledge or insight checks might convince the DM to give you some intel, but it's rarely gonna forecast the outcome of the fight. And 4e fights are often properly engineered so that the party is at the brink of losing, sometimes several times, before finally winning a fight. This is intentional: PCs have fewer HP than monsters, but many more ways to recover HP. Plus, it makes the fight much more fun.

4e's approach to adventure design is /very/ different from prior eds. If a DM has really bought into it, this issue basically doesn't exist. Any challenge you in encounter will be statted out based on what it represents to you. If a creature is far out of you league, it won't have combat stats, you won't be able to fight, rather, you'll have a skill challenge to escape it or negotiate with it or it'll be a plot device to make something else happen. Ideally, guessing at what critters you can 'take' mechanically (or memorizing monster manuals and metagaming the same question) isn't an element of 4e play, at all. Rather, if a creature is overwhelming or contemptible, that will be represented in the story, rather than via pointless combat statistics.

But, as in 3e, the DC on monster knowledges really don't help. Monsters that you should avoid like the plague because they're way out of your league you won't even be able to identify, while you'll have encyclopedic knowledge of obscure monsters that should be beneath your notice. Prettymuch backwards from what would be really helpful for playability. Unbeatable uber-monsters should be legendary, everyone knows to avoid or placate them.

 

[S'mon]

4e's approach to adventure design is /very/ different from prior eds. If a DM has really bought into it, this issue basically doesn't exist. Any challenge you in encounter will be statted out based on what it represents to you. If a creature is far out of you league, it won't have combat stats, you won't be able to fight, rather, you'll have a skill challenge to escape it or negotiate with it or it'll be a plot device to make something else happen. Ideally, guessing at what critters you can 'take' mechanically (or memorizing monster manuals and metagaming the same question) isn't an element of 4e play, at all. Rather, if a creature is overwhelming or contemptible, that will be represented in the story, rather than via pointless combat statistics.

Yeah, I don't really buy into it - it creates the feeling of a movie-set world where everything is just a facade built around the PCs. I think there's a happy medium between a) this and b) OD&D fantasy-effin'-Vietnam; having the PCs be the heroes of their own tale, but within a milieu that feels like a living world.
WoTC did their best to make this difficult by stripping out many of the tools that helped create the feel of a living world, random encounter tables & treasure tables are the ones I miss most. Where WoTC adventures present the unbeatable monster as a skill challenge, I end up having to stat it out anyway, which is a bit annoying.

 

[S'mon]

But, as in 3e, the DC on monster knowledges really don't help. Monsters that you should avoid like the plague because they're way out of your league you won't even be able to identify, while you'll have encyclopedic knowledge of obscure monsters that should be beneath your notice. Prettymuch backwards from what would be really helpful for playability. Unbeatable uber-monsters should be legendary, everyone knows to avoid or placate them.

I agree with that strongly - identifying an elder red dragon should be much easier than identifying an obscure 1st-level critter. There's a similar problem with detecting magic - per RAW the more powerful the magic, the harder it is to detect! In general I find the level-based DC system of 4e to be badly designed for my purposes.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Part of the problem stems from the assumption that a PC's knowledge about a creature is somehow related to the level of the creature.

A creature like a dragon -- one that is iconic and has lore and study surrounding it for generations -- should be very easy to know some basic information about. The dragon's minor minions, however, minor drakes and kobolds, might be too inconsequential to have developed the same sort of infamy and lore around them -- so they would be more difficult to have information about.

At the same time, there may be high level, shadowy, mysterious creatures, outsiders and aboleths, that have never been seen in the world before -- why would there be any knowledge about them to be had?

The trick is that basing the monster knowledge check on the level of the creature makes game sense -- it keeps the check interesting as the players advance in levels (it doesn't just become an autosuccess past a certain level), but it doesn't really make sense outside of the dice/game mechanics.

-rg

 

[Ferghis]

I agree that monster knowledge checks are poorly implemented. Better known monsters (such as orcs and dragons) should be simply better known, and even common peasants should know that dragons have breath weapons.

Perhaps monsters should be divided up into three categories (well-known, known, unkown) referring to how much knowledge has been distributed about them. I also abhor the fact that skill check DCs change as characters go up in level. What do you think of something like the following DCs and the knowledge yielded, where better results include the lesser results, and "description" means that the DM doesn't have to give the details, just a vague description:

10: type, role, temperament, and habitat of well-known monsters
15: approximate level (relative to characters), description of basic attacks and aura or main trait (selected by DM) of well-known monsters
20: trained skills (including perception), description of encounter and rechargeable powers of well-known monsters
25: description of vulnerabilities and resistances, at-wills and secondary traits of well-known monsters

20: type, role, temperament, and habitat of known monsters
25: approximate level (relative to characters), description of basic attacks and aura or main trait (selected by DM) of known monsters
30: trained skills (including perception), description of encounter and rechargeable powers of known monsters
35: description of vulnerabilities and resistances, at-wills and secondary traits of known monsters

35: type, role, temperament, and habitat of unknown monsters
40: approximate level (relative to characters), description of basic attacks and aura or main trait (selected by DM) of unknown monsters
45: trained skills (including perception), description of encounter and rechargeable powers of unknown monsters
50: description of vulnerabilities and resistances, at-wills and secondary traits of unknown monsters

 

[Herschel]

You should use a daily when there's an opening to use a daily.

Hoarding Daily powers is something many (most) players new to 4E do until they really (if ever) understand what's going on. As others have said, surges are more important than Dailies, you have enough of them and they're there to use. For defenders, I like ones with stances and encounter-long effects. That means I'm rolling them out early as soon as I figure out which enemies aren't minions. I played with someone the other day who has played for a number of years though and still missed it. He broke out an attack with a sweet, encounter-long self buff and used it to clean up the last enemy in a hard-fought battle.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

+1 for spending dailies as early as possible/reasonable.

The tactical side has a huge element of resource management, and spending a daily early has a good chance to end encounters/take out opponents earlier, which means they have less opportunity to deplete other resources (surges, expendables).

-rg

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yeah, I don't really buy into it

Well, then, the issue of conveying to your players that a given critter is 'out of their league' is still something you'd want to deal with in some more traditional way.

Unfortunately, the usual d20 handling of knowledge checks (higher level subjects have higher DCs) is little help. (Beyond the metagame, "hm, I failed my knowledge check on a natural 19, better bug out," I suppose).

I agree with that strongly - identifying an elder red dragon should be much easier than identifying an obscure 1st-level critter. There's a similar problem with detecting magic - per RAW the more powerful the magic, the harder it is to detect!

Yep, it's an issue with d20's DC-target approach, in general. A fair compromise, I think, would be to have the high DCs be for knowing obscure weaknesses that might help in defeating the monster, and/or (mechanical) details of it's abilities. The DC for identifying the general level/power of a monster, OTOH, should go /down/ for the higher level monsters, as they're likely to be notorious and/or radiate sheer badassness. Similarly, for items, identifying that the powerful item /is/ magic should be easy, easier than determining that a minor item with a 'faint aura' is genuinely magical (as opposed to a Nystul's Magic Aura type sham), while identifying how to use a powerful item (safely?) could carry the higher DC. The same could go for all manner of knowledge and other skill checks. Famous things, general knowledge, etc, should be easy, even if it involves something 'high level,' Mordenkainen should be a household name, anyone seeing a Prismatic Sphere shouldn't doubt what it is. Being able to do anything about it should be a whole 'nuther DC.

Having 'tiers' of knowledge about a thing isn't something you're prevented from doing with DCs in d20, it's just not pushed much in the presentation. For instance, knowing that an architectural feature of a castle is a 'bartizan' isn't a big deal, knowing how to build one, demolish one, or man one effectively in a battle is a very different question.

 

[KarinsDad]

In real life, I don't know if the guy passing me on the street is a physicist, a serial killer, a hot dog vendor, or a Navy Seal. Clothing and physique give a little bit away, but for the most part, I have no idea who any given person is, or what they are capable of.

The concept of PCs knowing the difference between a goblin cutter, a goblin hexer, a goblin blackblade, a goblin archer, and a goblin sharpshooter is illogical. At best, one should know that one has a bow and another has a rod.

So, the DM really shouldn't hand a ton of info out that the PCs themselves cannot perceive. Race and a bit about racial abilities should probably be about it. Notorious creatures like Dragons should have more info, but then again, they should also have more inaccurate info.

"Everyone knows that Dragons lay their eggs on mountain tops."

Well, some dragons might, but many wouldn't. The 4E designers introduced this bizarre concept that misinformation shouldn't be handed out and PCs should be encyclopedias of actual information, even though they are low level and inexperienced. All in the name of ease of play or some form of fun (if one equates fun to the DM telling the players what is going on a lot even if that info is stuff that the PCs really shouldn't know). As a player, I do not want the DM telling me the actual defense numbers of NPCs (which some DMs houserule into the game) or the fact that the Frost Goblin Hexer can put out a freezing zone that creates difficult terrain whereas a Glowmetal Hexer puts out one that lowers Will and grants concealment to the goblins. I want to discover this stuff by playing the encounter, not by being told about it ahead of time.

So with regard to the OP's original question, a party of 5 first level PCs should be walking out into a nasty world where they have very little in the way of experience. That same party of 5 PCs have 5 Dailies and 5 Action Points, and they regain 1 Action Point every 2 encounters after the first. So, they should be using an average of 1/2 to 1 Daily per encounter and about 2 Action Points per encounter (nearly every encounter). By doing this, they will shorten the length of earlier encounters, use up slightly fewer healing surges per encounter, giving them more encounters per adventuring day and resulting in them having fewer unused resources at the end of the day. The real limiting factor for PCs is Healing Surges, not Dailies and Action Points. As the PCs acquire more Dailies per day, the players should multiply the number used by encounter by the number that they have. So, 1 to 2 Dailies used per encounter once the PCs have 2 Dailies per day.

The way to handle the fact that higher level PCs have been around the block a bit is by the very fact that they have more Dailies and special abilities per day. They have more resources, can spend more per encounter, and this is how the game handles the fact that the PCs are becoming more badass and more experienced. The PCs shouldn't just suddenly out of the blue have information about these high level Devils that 6 months ago when they were low level, they didn't know. Instead, they have more abilities to handle thse high level Devils that they didn't have earlier in their careers.


The one exception to not handing out too much information is minions. Very few things in the game are as annoying as a player dropping a Daily or an Encounter power on minions when the player didn't know that they were minions (or worse yet, dropping it on a single minion).

There are two ways to handle this:

1) Let your players know ahead of time that you will not be giving them neon signs pointing out the minions, so that the players need to figure out if there are any minions in an encounter before they start pulling out Dailies.

2) Let your players know early in each Minion Encounter that there are minions there. Some DMs even put the neon signs on minion's foreheads by telling the players exactly which foes are minions right away, either directly by stating it outright, or nearly as directly by giving big clues.

I prefer #1, but some DMs do not want to force the players to figure it out. My take is that until PCs actually fight with minions, they really do not know that these are mooks that have a hard time not walking into a mace to the face.