When the Unspeakable Happens

[Totte]

Now, if PCs actually ran deep in the dungeon to trigger two different encounters from two distinct area... That's a bad decision on their part. That's also a looney toon scenario; I have never seen actual players do it. Usually, when in a fight, they finish it before exploring further!

The "I run away looking for loot by myself" is the typical Chaotic Selfish Rogue from 3.5, leaving the party in the midst of battle to try to "find something precious for my self".

Someone playing the 4E rogue that way might likely trigger a second encounter.

What will happen? The rogue runs back to the rest of the party with a hord of angry monsters on his tail, yelling for help.
If the monsters doesn't kill the rogue, some in the party probably will, if they survive. ;-)

 

[Branduil]

We had an experience like this in KotS. We were able to survive because of smart use of a 10-foot corridor + Flaming Sphere.

 

[WalterKovacs]

The only example of a second encounter joining the first, that I've run, ended up with the party retreating. It was from the KOTS, but it wasn't the Iron Tooth fight. It involved the Warlock open up a door to an "empty room", where a solo eventually came out of. The party had wasted a number of encounter powers clearing out minions, before the Elite was able to make it to the fight ... and the Solo being added in didn't help. Since it was a pair of oozes, it wasn't hard to run away when they saw it was a problem. They had to go back and fight the combined solo and elite fight when they got back, but they knew what they were up against.

The way that relatively easy encounters can be combined into a single hard encounter is a good way to design areas to reward players for their tactics. It gives you the ability to have a hard encounter where the individual monsters aren't that hard (since you wouldn't necessarily have them above the PCs level, so they aren't hitting too often, or not getting hit often enough), plus the rolling waves of monsters makes it a bit easier for the PCs to handle (assuming they don't make tactical mistakes like using dailies or encounters at the right time). For PCs with encounter long powers (flaming sphere, barbarian rage, etc) it can come in very handy.

In a campaign I've been playing in, we had a TPK encounter that was a combination of issues. It was near the beginning of the SOW. The combination of no one in the party bothering to crack a sunrod, the inability of the defenders to get over/out of pits, my warlock failing his stealth check to "scout ahead" around the corner, and the fact that it was a combination of encounters (the people attacking in the dark hallway fallback to a second encounter, which gets a couple people from a third encounter, not sure entirely.) I just know that we went through the encounter once, it ended in a TPK. It was "just a dream", the second time a few things were changed, but it still ended up with a few PCs surviving via stablization by the monsters (in an attempt to take us alive).

 

[Nytmare]

The only double encounters my players managed to run into in KOTS were:

• The Kobold Lair - Kobolds start to retreat and the group splits up so that they can chase the ones who went inside. TPK.
• Keep Entrance - Players try to move the fight to the doorway to the east and get hit from the other side by goblins at the excavation site. 1/2 PK.
• Maze of Caves - They run away from the rats and the jelly straight into the blue slime's room. 3/4 PK.
• The Torture Chamber - The players force the goblins out of the room so the goblins turn around and get everyone at the Chieftan's Lair to help them out. TPK.
• Zombies in the Crypt - The tactical geniuses take up a position off the edge of the map to the east and run into what would have been the Skeletal Legion. Instead I make all the sarcophogi empty so that they don't get TPK'd again.
• The Chamber of Shadows - I had already set up that the ritual was taking place in the chamber alone, so they couldn't dawdle. This translated into them pushing past the encounter in the room above, rushing downstairs to stop things, and having to deal with both encounters at once. Tee. Pee. Kay. Also the bad guys win.

I think that all of us managed to learn from this first adventure. They now have a healthy fear of assuming the world ends at the edge of the battle map, and I feel comfortable ignoring what the adventure says is sitting in the next room. Looking back (and had I been running this adventure NOT trying to learn the system at the same time) I know that I could have tweaked things down so that the entire thing was closer to their power level instead of an out and out massacre, but man... I've never had this kind of revolving door of characters in one of my games.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I'm suprised no one has mentioned it but at least when I am DMing and two, or more, encounters get mixed together I always try to let the players know that getting out of there is an option. I mean they may be heroes but stupidly charging into hordes of monsters just because they're there will usually result in dead heroes.

Is it really? In my observation, most monsters seem to have speed 6 or higher while at least half of the character roles (most defenders, most leaders, all dwarves and a few strikers) end up with speed 5. On first glance, that does not seem to present much opportunity for escape.

 

[Smeelbo]

What will happen? The rogue runs back to the rest of the party with a hord of angry monsters on his tail, yelling for help.
If the monsters doesn't kill the rogue, some in the party probably will, if they survive. ;-)

In EverQuest, we called it "pulling," and we did it on purpose.

Smeelbo

 

[Mistwell]

Nope. Adjusting XP by difficulty is a 3E thing.
4E uses static XP.

I absolutely think it is in the spirit of 4e to reward players with additional ad hoc experience if the encounter level (which does exist in 4e) is unintentionally higher than intended because of a double encounter. Your players are supposed to face a mix of high, standard, and low encounter levels, and if that mix is heavily thrown off because of double encounters then the XP formula doesn't function as well as intended. Like all D&D situations, when things do not go exactly as planned ad-hoc adjustments are called for.

Besides, I think the best option to deal with XP in 4E is to simply ignore them and have the party level up when it makes sense for the story.

Well, that is a fine way to deal with it, but then why the initial "that's a 3e thing - use static XP" response (which is a rote by the book type answer) when in reality you also agree that dealing with things as the come is a better system?

 

[Jhaelen]

Well, that is a fine way to deal with it, but then why the initial "that's a 3e thing - use static XP" response (which is a rote by the book type answer) when in reality you also agree that dealing with things as the come is a better system?

Well, some people prefer 'by the book' answers. So, I try to provide these, unless I completely disagree with the books.

The second answer reflects my (current) personal preference which I always include since I believe it's the thing that is most useful when someone is asking about advice of any kind.

The reason why I wouldn't grant an xp bonus for double encounters is that double encounters are typically caused by players making a tactical mistake.

It's definitely not behaviour I'd want to encourage. I'd rather encourage them to learn that sometimes it's better to retreat from an overwhelming encounter.

 

[LittleFuzzy]

Is it really? In my observation, most monsters seem to have speed 6 or higher while at least half of the character roles (most defenders, most leaders, all dwarves and a few strikers) end up with speed 5. On first glance, that does not seem to present much opportunity for escape.

The party also has, in my observation, a greater general ability to apply conditions which are going to hinder pursuit, at least in the short term, than the monsters have. And in most situtions, I expect DMs aren't going to try and maintain a pursuit after the party has managed a disengagement. It tends to be a hassle and is frequently not very fun, for anyone at the table.

 

[Saeviomagy]

1. The party can run, and are usually better at delaying pursuit than the foes are at maintaining it. Conversely if a party wants to stop a foe from fleeing, they're usually pretty good at it. The simple fact that the first person to move through a door has to spend an action opening it (and typically doesn't get full use of their move action because of that) makes it hard to escape a small room unless you're leaving the dungeon.

2. The party can handle double encounters, as long as they're not both originally tough encounters (people's aforementioned kobolds+irontooth has been won multiple times: it's a tough fight, no doubt, but it's doable).

3. Parties with controller-style characters (ie - anybody with decent AOEs) actually scale their damage with the size of the opposing force.

4. If you're concerned about realism, sounds of fights attracting more guards etc, then treat the entire scene as a single encounter. If you KNOW that the PCs will fight a roomful of guards PLUS the three rooms of guards that respond to the commotion, then it's an easy thing to make a large number of the foes minions (as an example). And if the PCs come up with some clever plan to prevent this and make the fight easier... so what? They'll remember their clever plan or an epic battle one way or the other.