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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8862989" data-attributes="member: 42582">I used plenty of swarms to represent massed forces (hobgoblin phalanxes, flying squads of vrock demons, etc). 4e makes this sort of thing very straightforward.Because of the way levelling works on the PC side, the most natural way for the players to have their characters confront a hobgoblin phalanx is not to lead a force of soldiers against it, but to wade in and destroy it themselves. As per my post just upthread, in the context of combat resolution soldiers in the service of the PCs are more likely to be an assist rather than the main game.Political skill challenges are easy to set up and resolve. At paragon tier the PCs in my 1st to 30th level game became the dominant actors in the city that had become the focus of our play. At epic tier they shaped the politics of the Abyss and the Elemental Chaos, freed the drow from Lolth so they could return to the surface world, and turned the duergar from servants of Admodeus to servants of Levistus (that last one was not necessarily an unalloyed success).My observation, based on comparing my own play experience with 4e to a lot of what I saw others talk about, is that a fair number of 4e GMs were very reluctant to let the course of play - especially skill challenges - change the underlying fiction to any significant degree. These GMs seemed to use skill challenges essentially as a form of complex skill check for adjudicating how the players had their PCs step through a series of hoops to resolve a GM pre-conceived puzzle. (Literally disarming a trap, say; or something with different fiction but the same basic play structure.) At those GMs' tables, it did not seem - at least to this external observer - that the scope or character of play changed with the tiers of play.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8862989, member: 42582"] I used plenty of swarms to represent massed forces (hobgoblin phalanxes, flying squads of vrock demons, etc). 4e makes this sort of thing very straightforward. Because of the way levelling works on the PC side, the most natural way for the players to have their characters confront a hobgoblin phalanx is not to lead a force of soldiers against it, but to wade in and destroy it themselves. As per my post just upthread, in the context of combat resolution soldiers in the service of the PCs are more likely to be an assist rather than the main game. Political skill challenges are easy to set up and resolve. At paragon tier the PCs in my 1st to 30th level game became the dominant actors in the city that had become the focus of our play. At epic tier they shaped the politics of the Abyss and the Elemental Chaos, freed the drow from Lolth so they could return to the surface world, and turned the duergar from servants of Admodeus to servants of Levistus (that last one was not necessarily an unalloyed success). My observation, based on comparing my own play experience with 4e to a lot of what I saw others talk about, is that a fair number of 4e GMs were very reluctant to let the course of play - especially skill challenges - change the underlying fiction to any significant degree. These GMs seemed to use skill challenges essentially as a form of complex skill check for adjudicating how the players had their PCs step through a series of hoops to resolve a GM pre-conceived puzzle. (Literally disarming a trap, say; or something with different fiction but the same basic play structure.) At those GMs' tables, it did not seem - at least to this external observer - that the scope or character of play changed with the tiers of play. [/QUOTE]

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