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

[Herschel]

Also remember there are vast numbers of players who aren't out there just to try and squeeze every ounce of bonus out of a character. Some people even use stats, feats and ability score points for *gasp* flavor.

 

[Mengu]

Isn't this why we have a DM instead of a computer running the game?

Depending on the group composition, equipment, individuals, etc, you tweak the encounters to be an appropriate challenge.

In a recent delve, we fought a red dragon, that the DM had tweaked to have 3 initiatives (losing 1 initiative when bloodied). It mopped the floor with us (though we did take it down to where it only had 41 out of 300 or so hit points), but I was playing with some inexperienced players. Later a more experienced group took the dragon down with 3 or so casualties. I think an experienced group who knew how to use the characters, got their action points off quickly taking the dragon down to bloodied, would have beaten the dragon with maybe 1-2 casualties. (Being a delve at a Con, the encounter was designed to be especially lethal of course.)

The DM is always free to make adjustments for a more fun experience, for both sides of the table. In my games, I always take party power into account (from equipment to player experience) when designing encounters. I might use more lower level monsters, I might increase damage, I might lower defenses on higher level monsters, or increase defenses/add tough on minions, I might add minor/immediate/free actions to elites and solos. I play with a DM who likes to add action points to a few standard creatures, or maybe add a second action point to an elite. It's all a matter of finding that balance of where an encounter is appropriately challenging and fun. There isn't a single right answer.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

There are a couple of other variables that haven't been mentioned yet:

1. How tactical is the DM? A great DM might build awesome settings and tell great stories, but not be very good tactically.

2. What is the environment for the encounter? How many fiendish traps or clever obstacles are there? Does the BBEG have different areas to go to, depending on the nature of the threat that the party brings? For example, if the entire party is ranged, are there places where the BBEG can go that cannot be targeted except from close range?

3. How liberal is the DM with magic items? Does the party have enough, do they have a choice of items, are they customized, are they chosen with party synergy in mind?

4. Was the party created for synergy? Does the nature of the synergy match the needs of the encounter? For example, a party which synergizes well to enable awesome mobility will not help much if the encounter does not reward mobility.

Finally, remember that the results discussed are merely probabilistic. Let's say that one of the keys to a (hypothetical) encounter is that the Warlord landed Lead the Attack, and everyone else proceeds to hit the BBEG with impunity. What happens if the dice go sour and the attack misses, in spite of the bonuses, rerolls, etc. that are so common with epic characters?

 

[DarkLord Of DForce]

Terrain/locale can make a huge difference. In at least 2 of our fairly recent encounters, our DM has used those to great effect.

Once, he had us fighting a Hydra on a small island, surrounded by swamp water. If you went in the swamp water, nasty things came for you, and happened to you. So our group, squishy casters and all, were forced to stay on the island and fight -close- (melee range) to the Hydra. Nasty.

Another time we were in Sigil, in a bar fight that had a lower level that was actually part of another closed universe. Point being, in Sigil, we were not allowed to use any powers that teleported. Our swordmage was hit hard by this, and my Avenger to a lesser degree. Took away a lot of our mobility and made the encounter that much more difficult/interesting.

So there are things you can do...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

Totally. You really cannot generalize a lot, especially at epic. Character optimization, tactical ability of the player, tactical integration and team play capability of the whole party, these are all key factors.

One party can take down Orcus as a trivial exercise at level 26 and another group might find the same encounter a serious challenge at level 30.

The encounter challenge XP budget system works pretty darn well in heroic and mostly in paragon tier, but when you start getting into epic its a LOT more about how tactical the players are and how well they play together.

Basically all you can do is keep using ongoing encounter results as a check on what you're doing. If things start to get too easy or too tough, then tweak it up or down in whatever way you're comfortable with. A less tactical DM can simply pour on the monsters, and a more tactical one could bring on a whole new level of synergistic effects and nasty terrain, etc.

Just have fun with it. The absolute encounter level isn't that important.

 

[brainstorm]

One tactic may be to introduce Epic Tier named creatures, such as Orcus, much earlier in the campaign, say in the Paragon Tier, just to illustrate how bad-ass they are to the lower level characters. Allow the characters to survive that encounter so that they can face the named creature again when they hit the Epic Tier and are now an actual threat to the creature.

Consider the Darth Vader/Luke Skywalker conflicts. In Empire Strikes Back, Vader played with Luke and eventually defeated him...easily. Clearly, Vader was superior to Luke at that point in the young jedi's career. When they met again, Luke was more of Vader's equal and the battle ended badly for Vader.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

I've been thinking - could it be that 'earlier' monsters suffers more than those designed later? It's no secret that WotC's design skills with 4E has improved since the MM1.

So it this true? Orcus gets owned (which is why they beefed him up in E3), and Torog is bad news (as presumably Lolth will be)?

 

[Argyle King]

I've been thinking - could it be that 'earlier' monsters suffers more than those designed later? It's no secret that WotC's design skills with 4E has improved since the MM1.

So it this true? Orcus gets owned (which is why they beefed him up in E3), and Torog is bad news (as presumably Lolth will be)?

I think some of the monsters from later books do perform better. However, you also have to keep in mind that many of the newer PC options have made the PCs stronger as well.

In my experiences, the game starts to feel like it's on easy mode somewhere around 14th level. There are monsters which are exceptions to this; in particular, the Marilith turned out to be pretty nasty for the party in one quest, but generally, this has been my experience.

While I do agree that group experience matters, and that character set ups matter, I'm not sure how much. There have been characters with which I tried to challenge myself by choosing options which weren't recommended, and it didn't seem to matter. On one hand this is very good because it means char op need not be the first priority all the time; on the other hand, there were times where I felt as though some encounters weren't meaningful. I actually remember one warlord character I had with which I challenged myself by seeing how many encounters I could get through without needing to use any healing or any dailies. Eventually I did use dailies and broke my challenge to myself when I wanted to speed up how quickly an encounter was going.

IIRC (and if anyone cares), the warlord character I am making reference to was a half-elf warlord/angelic avenger/eternal seeker. Some of the unlikely combinations I've created as a way to challenge myself have included a halfling fighter who paragon multiclassed into rogue, a warforged warlock, and a minotaur bard named Moosik.

 

[ArcaneSpringboard]

Another thing is that monsters in the Paragon and Epic tiers just don't do enough damage. WotC seems to have come to this realization as all of the higher level monster previews have significantly higher damage values.

 

[Jhaelen]

Another thing is that monsters in the Paragon and Epic tiers just don't do enough damage. WotC seems to have come to this realization as all of the higher level monster previews have significantly higher damage values.

Is that really the case, though?

I noticed a much higher damage expression for the Dark Sun monsters that were previewed, but what about the others? I also noticed that e.g. the Dark Sun soldier had a lower attack, probably to compensate for the higher damage.

Where else did you notice significantly higher damage expressions?