Your experiences: Are high level 'named' monsters too easy?

[Matrix Sorcica]

I was reading this thread where 6 26th lvl PCs apparently are wiping the floor with Orcus, 20 lvl 23 minion ghouls and 5 greater flameskulls plus an Atropal.....

The conclusion among the posters is, that many of the 'named' monsters are just too easy. Orcus, Graaz't, Dispater. They just go down. Exceptions seem to be Tiamat and others that have multiple turns in a round.

What are your experiences? My campaign is woefully lowlevel, but I'm planning my story arc. Is the PCs should face Ashardalon 5 levels before the planned 27, or Orcus can just stand up to a 25th level party, I would like to know now and plan accordingly.

Thank you for your input.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Three points:

1: Solos need multiple actions per round. Otherwise they get out-muscled. (Even elites do if they are to represent two monsters - normally a minor attack or an interrupt).
2: Being single targets, solos are very vulnerable to debuffs. (IME even Jinx Shot's normally pretty nasty against them). Multiple turns gives them more chances to shake off any (Save Ends) conditions.
3: That was the only fight of the day. By my reckoning, that meant that in the first three rounds the PCs could let rip with 24 daily attack powers (including action points). That's going to really hurt just about anyone.

 

[firesnakearies]

I find that when discussing the difficulty or lack thereof of 4E, especially its published adventures or official encounter design advice, it's important to note that there's a very wide range of possible "power levels" for the PCs. This is true of most RPGs, of course, and was definitely true in (at least) 3.x D&D as well.

By "power level" of the PCs I mean two things, mainly. One is the skill of the players -- their experience with 4E, their experience with D&D or RPGs in general, their level of system mastery, their tactical-mindedness, their "powergamery", and so forth. The other is the degree to which the characters are mechanically optimized or well-built to take advantage of the rules, handle their roles well, and generally kick ass.

I've seen VERY different tables full of players as far as this goes.

There are players who TPK in every adventure out there, who complain about certain encounters being "way too hard", and so on. Newer players, inexperienced gamers, or people who make less combat-focused or mechanically strong characters can be quite challenged by published scenarios at any level, and I think that the core encounter/adventure design philosophy which is expressed in the DMGs and evidenced in the written modules is mostly aimed at this sort of PCs. Fairly mediocre players running fairly weak characters. If this is what your PC group consists of, then you'd do well to ignore the "it's way too easy" comments, because the official encounters are probably tuned just about right.

But there are also PCs who are considerably more potent, both because of strong character builds and experienced, tactical players. When you have PCs like this, the published encounters and official design advice really fail to challenge, and this becomes more and more obvious as the game goes into higher and higher levels. So a lot of the anecdotes you see here about how the modules or the big named enemies are so very easy are coming from groups with these above-the-curve PCs.

I DM for and play with some guys who are really quite brilliant at D&D, and have 4th edition in particular mastered. This includes myself. We build very strong characters, and we know the game very well. We can handle a LOT. As a DM for these guys, I have to step up the difficulty dramatically in order to challenge them at all. As a player, I nearly always find myself experiencing the game as extremely easy, and urging any DM I play with to make the encounters harder, harder, and even harder.

So, from the perspective of skilled 4E players with a tactical mindset, using well-built (for combat) characters, yeah . . . the monsters are really very easy. The published scenarios are really very easy. The special named NPCs who are supposed to be a really big deal are, in fact . . . really very easy. This becomes more true the higher level the PCs get. At epic tier, you have to really completely abandon the official encounter guidelines in a big, big way in order to legitimately threaten a party of "strong PCs".

So, in order to know whether or not Orcus is going to be scary and "epic" feeling to your PCs, or a joke that they'll trounce like a kid who owes them lunch money, you really need to be aware of how "good" your players, and their characters, are. But in my experience, if they're even "fairly decent", they'll overpower just about anything as written without too much risk.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

Three points:

1: Solos need multiple actions per round. Otherwise they get out-muscled. (Even elites do if they are to represent two monsters - normally a minor attack or an interrupt).
2: Being single targets, solos are very vulnerable to debuffs. (IME even Jinx Shot's normally pretty nasty against them). Multiple turns gives them more chances to shake off any (Save Ends) conditions.

So what you're saying is, that most solos and elites at high level are underpowered as written?

Then, in your experience, is the 'real' (RAW says about +4) level of foes that epic characters can hope to defeat?

3: That was the only fight of the day. By my reckoning, that meant that in the first three rounds the PCs could let rip with 24 daily attack powers (including action points). That's going to really hurt just about anyone.

True. But isn't most überboss fights planned to be the great finale where the party give everything they got?

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

But there are also PCs who are considerably more potent, both because of strong character builds and experienced, tactical players. When you have PCs like this, the published encounters and official design advice really fail to challenge, and this becomes more and more obvious as the game goes into higher and higher levels. So a lot of the anecdotes you see here about how the modules or the big named enemies are so very easy are coming from groups with these above-the-curve PCs.

But if you've played all the way to epic level, won't you have system mastery by that time plus have retrained to maximize your PC?

But in my experience, if they're even "fairly decent", they'll overpower just about anything as written without too much risk.

Noted.

So the key is observing how things go at Paragon tier? Or does things change dramatically at Epic? (like I said, the campaign is still lowlevel)

 

[Black Knight Irios]

But if you've played all the way to epic level, won't you have system mastery by that time plus have retrained to maximize your PC?

No not necessarily. I regularly play with players (some since AD&D 2nd) that have never mastered any of the systems, have never built a strong char on their own or have a knack for tactics. Even if you give them a strong char-build they wouldn't be able to "abuse" it.

Depending on player skill an encounter can be hard, ok or too easy. And that has nothing to do with the level of the chars. It can be at any level.

 

[Mesh Hong]

1: Solos need multiple actions per round. Otherwise they get out-muscled. (Even elites do if they are to represent two monsters - normally a minor attack or an interrupt).

Absolutely. Late Paragon and Epic Solos need to act twice a round or more, in each of these turns they really need to be able to target multiple enemies or really focus on a single target.

As you say most solos and elites should make use of auras, reactions and minor actions to maintain a decent threat level. Bear in mind though that reactions and minor actions can quickly become impossible for a solo or elite to use if they are dazed or stunned for instance. The higher you climb the tiers the more common daze and stun effects become for PCs to chain.

2: Being single targets, solos are very vulnerable to debuffs. (IME even Jinx Shot's normally pretty nasty against them). Multiple turns gives them more chances to shake off any (Save Ends) conditions.

This is very true, but like I said be aware that PCs can time and chain their power use to work around this to some extent.

3: That was the only fight of the day. By my reckoning, that meant that in the first three rounds the PCs could let rip with 24 daily attack powers (including action points). That's going to really hurt just about anyone.

Yes that was the only fight of the day, and it allowed the PCs to go Nova crazy. Even so this was and encounter that on paper was worth 236750 xp, a standard level encounter for that group by the book was 42000 xp.

I will also say that I very rarely use creatures from the MM's and prefer to use my own so I can challenge my group, but I used this encounter as a benchmark for gauging the required power level of more important plot encounters yet to come.

I am hoping that MM3 will show a continued learning curve by the official D&D monster creators that will generally increase damage output by higher level creatures. Though why it has taken them so long to come to that obvious conclusion is beyond me.

Personally I also think that solos (and important elites) should have more HPs (maybe even double!), but I realise that I am the only person on these boards who thinks that so I try and keep that sort of insane rambling to myself

 

[firesnakearies]

Well, it depends a lot on the mindset and playstyle of the players. Some people never really develop much system mastery or build powerful characters, no matter how long they play. Either because they don't care about that (maybe they're more of a social gamer, or more into roleplaying or story, or what have you), or they're just the kind of players who aren't especially talented at that aspect of RPGs, and never quite "get" how to really play the game at a high level of mechanical effectiveness. Experience should help, but either you've got "that kind" of players or you don't.

There's nothing wrong with players who are less tactical, less powergame-y, more into their character concepts and roleplay, and just less focused on kicking ass in combat. But when you have one or more (or a whole group of) players like that, you just have to be aware of it and scale the difficulty level of the encounters appropriately. Likewise, if you've got a bunch of amateur Sun Tzus at your table, you've got to kick it up several notches, or they're going to run roughshod over the default stuff as written.

I think that as written, epic level stuff in 4E should be about right for players who aren't "super tactical optimizing rules masters", but have at least been playing the game through all of those levels up to that point. For them, the encounters, stat blocks, and scenarios as officially designed would probably be a decent, but entirely manageable challenge.

But to whatever extent your players ARE more focused and talented at the mechanics and combat aspect of the game and character building, the official assumptions and creature designs are going to prove increasingly too tame. I don't think that anything radically changes at epic, it's more of a gradual, consistent process of growth. The PCs just get better and better as they go on, and the challenges don't really keep pace, at least not for "strong" PCs.

So yeah, watch them through paragon. If they seem to be perfectly challenged by core published stuff (encounter budget assumptions and default monster designs), then that's probably not going to massively change all of the sudden at epic. But if you're having to up the difficulty even at earlier levels, running more higher-level encounters, tweaking the monsters more and more to be tougher, and your players are still handling things just fine, then you'll find that it becomes even more obvious at epic tier. The gap between the game design assumptions of how tough the PCs will be, and how tough they actually are just continues to widen, so by mid-to-late epic levels, it's quite wide indeed. For "that kind" of players, anyway.

 

[babinro]

My long standing campaign has managed to reach level 30 and in doing so, we are having all those fun 'named' battles. Dagon, Graz'zt, Demogorgon and Orcus have all been fought between levels 29-30. My next session will battle against Tiamat, who, unlike the above should prove challenging to the party (I hope).

In all cases, they were push-overs. Orcus proved the most challenging as he succeeded in using Touch of Death 3 times during the encounter. That power aside, he never brought any party member near death.

It is important to note that my whole party: Sorc, Warlock, Druid, Cleric...can function at range. These super bosses, tend to have a lot of extremely mean close range effects to lock down targets. My parties composition is such that they easily shut down super bosses until they are about %75 dead, at which point the battle grinds down to at-wills where these monsters start to become somewhat of a threat. In my case, it has always been too little too late for the monster.

These same fights against a melee centered party would likely prove to be extremely difficult as most bosses have strong auras combined with at will means of dazing/stunning creatures that enter into melee. In the above party formation, the druid character was frequently locked down as he acts as the parties defender.

Since it was the first time running such battles, I did not modify the bosses at all, and often only ran them with one or two normal critters as distractions with minimal terrain hindrances. However, going forward, I'd highly recommend making some of their powers minor actions 1/round, and adding in a minor action ranged attack as well. These two changes would add significant difficulty to such battles. I'd also consider doubling the non-rolled damage output of all powers for solo monsters without an aura.

These battles against 'named' creatures are based a lot on luck. Generally, a PC needs to roll a natural 11-15 to hit one of these monsters before combat advantage. This means that there is a high chance of key powers that stun/dominate/blind will miss. My party tends to get one of these conditions every round be it due to luck, or simply a lot of power options. If those key powers were to miss about 1/2 the time the battle would prove to be much more difficult.

 

[Herschel]

True. But isn't most überboss fights planned to be the great finale where the party give everything they got?

Not quite. It's the finale where they give everything they have LEFT.

That's a very important distinction.