D&D 5E You can't necessarily go back

[pemerton]

The environments that PCs will be navigating are likely extra-planar in nature or remote, toxic and/or extremely inhospitable. Create environmental conditions inherent to these environments that are either constantly in effect or use the Condition Track and subject the PCs to things daily. Something as simple/mundane as a low oxygen or extreme humidity environment should be extraordinarily taxing, even for the most well-conditioned.

This is a significant feature of the hydra encounter: the PCs have come down an underground river that meets a lava pool, creating five distinct terrain "zones":

*The ledge on the non-lave side of the river: safe terrain (if you can fly/climb/teleport up to it), but with lightly obscuring steam between it and the rest of the caern.

*The river, heated by the lava, that inflicts 10 fire damage when you enter or start your turn in it, and carries you 2 squares downstream.

*The cooled lava adjacent to the river, that is difficult terrain and inflicts 10 fire damage when you enter or start you turn on it.

*The lava itself, that is difficult terrain, inflicts 20 fire damage, plus prone and dazed, when you enter it, plus 20 ongong fire damage and dazed (save ends once you get off the lava), plus a DC 17 End check to avoid falling prone if you start your turn on it. If you are adjacent to it, you take 10 fire damage at the start of your turn.

*The solid (higher melting point) rock beyond the lava. This is safe in itself, but is full of salamanders and archons.

*Finally, throughout the cavern except (i) on the safe ledge on the far side of the river, and (ii) in one part of the cavern which has a natural vent in its ceiling, there are fumes coming off the lava that require a DC 17 End check at the start of the turn: failure inflicts 5 poison damage, plus Slowed until the end of your turn.​

The tiefling PC is enjoying this terrain, but the dwarf fighter is being a bit punished. The drow sorcerer had already set his variable resistance to poison (when checking out the fungi), and is using fire resistance from his Demonskin Tatoo to reduce the fire damage. The invoker has a Book Imp familiar to give him some fire resistance too.

So far only salamanders have been pushed into the lava, and they have fire resistance but still suffer the conditions. But the PCs are planning to use their Fire Horn to strip all the enemies' fire resistance off, and then have a bit of a lava-fest! Which could be amusing.

At this stage I don't think I'll get a PC into the lava, but the hydra - which has some forced movement from a fire breath - has been getting some push into the river, which has also been amusing.

 

[Manbearcat]

@pemerton

That's all great stuff. I'm certain that you won't have an issue with Epic tier play.

 

[Manbearcat]

@pemerton

I somewhat flippantly replied earlier as I had a lot to do at the present moment but I just gave your post another run-through. That post parallels my post awhile ago (the Inn encounter with hazards, limited-use terrain, etc) quite well in the effort to convey the richness/depth of the 4e mechanical structure with regards to creating dynamic, compelling encounters/environs. Further, I'm quite sure that the construction of the encounter was a very intuitive process for you (demonstrating the ease of use of the system) as I can read your post and easily reverse engineer your methodology and your mechanical and fiction intentions.

 

[Tony Vargas]

In fact, one option might be to have a few classes do better when things come fast and furious and a few others do better when things are nicely spaced out; then let each DM find what works for her group and-or just mix it up over time.

Meh, that comes down to one-right-way-to-play balancing, like the 'fix' for the 5 MWD where you just say "don't do that," and call it fixed. If you have some classes that over-perform with slow pacing and others that theoretically do better on 'longer' days, you're just stuck pacing your campaign on or around some point between the two - you don't have the freedom to run at a given pace that fits your vision. Or, as you say, 'not worrying about it,' and letting your players sort out which classes are favored in your campaign and which are non-viable.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

To me, the hit point totals appear to be a relatively free parameter that various designers and writers have moved around to try and achieve things with the game. I have no problem with the numbers looking like anything from 1e to 4e inside D&D Next, provided the 5E designers are also looking at it this way, and have a goal in mind other than hitting some magic number range for nostalgia value. (And in fact even that goal is OK, provided it is secondary to delivering a workable game).

I wonder if the rise in HP isn't inflation so much as increased granularity.

 

[Iosue]

I wonder if the rise in HP isn't inflation so much as increased granularity.

That's certainly my take.

As an example, I certainly recall thinking, "Wow! Look at all these hit points!" when I first played the new Red Box and made a new character. Then I took my wife on the sample adventure. First encounter -- goblins and wolves. I naturally adjusted it so there was just one wolf and one goblin -- ostensibly a level appropriate modification of the encounter-as-written. Then I was rather surprised to see my fighter and my wife's cleric very close to buying the farm. I ran ahead thinking all my hp would protect me; it didn't occur to me that the goblin would be hitting a lot more.

(This is when I also learned that, for all of its strong points, 4e is not very good at handling less than 3 people in a party...)

 

[Tony Vargas]

(This is when I also learned that, for all of its strong points, 4e is not very good at handling less than 3 people in a party...)

Nod. D&D's never been great for solo or duo play, but 4e made the holes very obvious with it's adoption of formal roles. IMHO, a trio can do without a controller, a duo should lean on secondary role support for Defender or Leader, and a solo-PC should go striker or, ironically, controller. But the DM will never have quite the luxury of throwing anything that fits the budget at them that he has with a full 5-PC party with all roles & skills covered.

 

[pemerton]

4e is not very good at handling less than 3 people in a party

Three PCs is the smallest group for which I've run an encounter - once with an invoker, a fighter and a sorcerer (fighting rats, trolls and gargoyles in a belltower - the sorcerer flew and teleported, the fighter climbed, the invoker teleported the minimal distance up to get into range and then blasted), and once with a wizard, a sorcerer and a ranger. In the latter encounter, the lack of melee control was quite noticeable.

A two-person party really needs a striker, I feel, but in virtue of that is likely to have one reasonably squishy member. But if you go ranged striker and (say) dwarf fighter, that fighter is going to be taking a lot of hurt!

Three PCs certainly gives the players a much greater range of options in trying to take control of the situation.

I just gave your post another run-through. That post parallels my post awhile ago (the Inn encounter with hazards, limited-use terrain, etc) quite well in the effort to convey the richness/depth of the 4e mechanical structure with regards to creating dynamic, compelling encounters/environs.

I remember your inn encounter, and agree that they are built along the same basic logic which is inherent to 4e's encounter build system.

I'm quite sure that the construction of the encounter was a very intuitive process for you (demonstrating the ease of use of the system) as I can read your post and easily reverse engineer your methodology and your mechanical and fiction intentions.

Yes. I was never able to do this sort of thing in Rolemaster or classic D&D, because they don't have the mechanical support (on either the player or GM side) for setting up and running this sort of situation.

My take on 4e's support for this is that it has 4 key elements: (i) position and movement matter; (ii) it provides players with the resources to make and implement choices around position and movement; (iii) it gives the GM guidelines on how to build these situations in mechanical terms; and (iv) it has resolution mechanics that permit this stuff to be resolved without the GM having to take too much responsibility for whether or not the players' choices will be mechanically effective.

Mechanically, the "10 hp" terrain features are built on the basic "5 hp per tier" principle for terrain. The 5 hp fumes were stuck in to add some extra flavour, toned down in damage because of the slow effect - that in turn is intended to favour the hydra, which has better melee than ranged attacks. The DC 17 checks are Easy Endurance checks - I know only one of my group's PCs (the dwarf fighter) is trained, so he will auto-succeed while the others have a bit over a 50% chance of doing so.

The only mechanical complexity was designing the lava - I wanted it to matter, but not be instant death, so went for 10 per tier (ie 20 damage), and the daze and prone for obvious reasons both in terms of verismilitude and also dramatic impact (I mean, you should feel it if you end up on lava!). When the PCs pushed a salamander onto lava, and I described "20 ongoing fire and dazed, save ends once you get off the lava" the players were suitably shocked and impressed - especially by the "once you get off the lava" clause - which was the desired outcome.

Narratively, I'm glad you can see how the set-up works - a safe space for the ranged strikers that's non-trivial to get to, and that has its own disadvantage (there's steam providing cover to the hydra and elementals), a river with forced movement for the hydra to push people into, difficult terrain to favour the (mostly) non-ranged attacking hydra and elementals, and some safer bits of terrain (the vented part of the cavern, the solid rock etc) that can potentially become contested.

When I designed the encounter area, I actually expected the PCs to come in from the other end - I had a corridor into the big cavern drawn up, with ledges at multiple elevations with salamander archers and artillery archons on them, and lava pooling below them. So I envisaged the hydra as the culmination of the fight, and the river as something that may not come into play at all. But then, when the PCs failed the skill challenge, I decided to go for the river instead, and when they kept going down it ran the encounter from the opposite direction. (At the start of the first turn their Phantom Steeds evaporated as they took 10 hp fire damage, dropping the PCs one-by-one in the river - this in itself was a dramatic start, as the drow flew off using Dominant Winds and rescued the invoker also, the fighter swam to the hydra's shore, the paladin surfed in on his Floating Shield, and the ranger swam to the bottom of the river ledge and then flew up on his flying carpet.) So my lovely ledges and archers with clear fields of fire behind pools of lava didn't get used!, but the river became central instead, and the hydra is the start rather than the end, with the real challenge becoming how to survive the elemental riff-raff.

But anyway, I'm glad the logic of the design is clear to you. It's all set out in the DMG and DMG 2 (mobility; hindering, blocking and obscuring terrain; etc): I'm just doing what they told me to do! And, I guess not too surprisingly, they knew their game! - when you follow their advice, it works!

 

[Tony Vargas]

Three PCs is the smallest group for which I've run an encounter - once with an invoker, a fighter and a sorcerer (fighting rats, trolls and gargoyles in a belltower - the sorcerer flew and teleported, the fighter climbed, the invoker teleported the minimal distance up to get into range and then blasted), and once with a wizard, a sorcerer and a ranger. In the latter encounter, the lack of melee control was quite noticeable.

A two-person party really needs a striker, I feel, but in virtue of that is likely to have one reasonably squishy member. But if you go ranged striker and (say) dwarf fighter, that fighter is going to be taking a lot of hurt!

I've run the odd two-player game. One, with a Paladin and Rogue, was quite successful. It's also remarkable how lightning-fast the game gets with fewer players. I also played in a two-player session where companion characters were needed to pull it off, since only the Cleric and Wizard showed up.

Your budget also gets really small with a two-player party. An 'intermediate boss fight' I had planned with an Elite as the leader became /just/ the Elite, for instance.

 

[Manbearcat]

(This is when I also learned that, for all of its strong points, 4e is not very good at handling less than 3 people in a party...)

Nod. D&D's never been great for solo or duo play, but 4e made the holes very obvious with it's adoption of formal roles. IMHO, a trio can do without a controller, a duo should lean on secondary role support for Defender or Leader, and a solo-PC should go striker or, ironically, controller. But the DM will never have quite the luxury of throwing anything that fits the budget at them that he has with a full 5-PC party with all roles & skills covered.

Three PCs is the smallest group for which I've run an encounter - once with an invoker, a fighter and a sorcerer (fighting rats, trolls and gargoyles in a belltower - the sorcerer flew and teleported, the fighter climbed, the invoker teleported the minimal distance up to get into range and then blasted), and once with a wizard, a sorcerer and a ranger. In the latter encounter, the lack of melee control was quite noticeable.

A two-person party really needs a striker, I feel, but in virtue of that is likely to have one reasonably squishy member. But if you go ranged striker and (say) dwarf fighter, that fighter is going to be taking a lot of hurt!

Three PCs certainly gives the players a much greater range of options in trying to take control of the situation.

It is a little more "unwieldy" than with standard fair 5 party group covering all of the role basis.

However, my gaming group has long since existed of only 3 PCs (since about 2006). We've run 2 games of 4e, one of which was played through level 26. If anyone is interested on how we/I made this work, I would be willing to post something. However, it would likely be a long post (something that I would have to devote some time to) to explain it with the required granularity. The short version is that:

- The PCs have to diversify their repetoire of powers. Allowing multi-class power swaps for just the multi-class fit assists in this. I allowed 2 multi-classes so that each PC could multi into a leader role (if they wished) to get the "Healing Word" ability or its martial, arcane, primal analog. Further, it is a good idea for people to go heavy on activatable defense abilities/immediate actions. Picking appropriate themes is also quite helpful to this end. All of this "Leadershipesque" secondary and "self-sustainability" alleviates the need for a primary leader which allows for Defender, Striker, Stiker/Controller as a setup.
- Second Wind should be moved to a minor action (a la Dwarves).
- Point Buy needs to be amped up a wee bit.
- As we progressed into Paragon and then Epic tiers I did some more complex things (that were premised upon Solo/Elite action economy rules) in order to properly model the balance of a 5 player group through those tiers.
- The DM needs to playtest these groups of characters against multiple encounter types (and significantly) against the output of a standard 5 man group in order to attain congruent output. This may be right out for some folks because it may be a pain. However, I can run an entire encounter by myself in 20 minutes or so (develop standard methodology for group dynamics, use a pre-set group of rolls and repeat). I suspect I'm not a special and unique snowflake in this regard so I think proficent DMs should be able to do this testing.