4th Edition Encounter Levels

[Flawless P]

I am toying with the idea of trying out a 4th Ed. game and I wanted to know from people who have experiance with the system, how accurate are the Encounter Levels.

Like for instance, is a Level 8 Solo monster, really a challenge for an average level 8 party? Min-Maxing aside.

Also if so, how much does Min-Maxing skew this?

[Tadanori Oyama]

There's not an easy answer.

Generally, yes, they are. There are glaring exceptions like the Needle Drake Swarm or the poor MM1 Hydras. The more recent the monster manual you pull from the more likely to be well balanced it is.

Since it's 4th Edition you also have alot of power as the GM to make alterations of the fly. The players hitting the monsters too easily? Raise their AC a point or two. Monsters not doing enough damage to be a threat? Move up a die size or just add a few points onto their damage. Making quick math adjustments is really easy.

[Flawless P]

There's not an easy answer.

Generally, yes, they are. There are glaring exceptions like the Needle Drake Swarm or the poor MM1 Hydras. The more recent the monster manual you pull from the more likely to be well balanced it is.

Since it's 4th Edition you also have alot of power as the GM to make alterations of the fly. The players hitting the monsters too easily? Raise their AC a point or two. Monsters not doing enough damage to be a threat? Move up a die size or just add a few points onto their damage. Making quick math adjustments is really easy.

I usually end up doing that with 3.5 now, hand out some ranks in a skill here, to a feat there or a few extra hit points and slightly better natural armor...

What'd they do to the Hydra? Is it underpowered?

[Tadanori Oyama]

Yeah, not enough damage dealing potential to make it a reasonable threat to the PCs. But it had a ton of hit points so you'd end up with all the PCs wailing on the thing while it cat scratched them until it finally died.

I believe that was the heroslayer hydra. Can't say for sure, don't have my book on hand.

[Dom]

Though the encounters in 4th edition are easier to create than in other editions, there are still some things that you want to take into consideration while building one. First, PCs are much more powerful than they were before. An encounter of their level or lower will they can win easily given enough time. To make an encounter challenging, you have to make it a level or two higher than normal. This can happen often with solo monsters that are not Solo Soldiers, a good example you can find in the episode of the New World game when the Water Barons fight a beholder while on the Iron Heart's airship, the encounter was probably their level, yet they easily won that battle. Beholders are controllers, and their low defenses and low hit-points will be no match for PCs.

To be honest, I think Soldiers were a pretty bad design choice in 4th ed. As an example, look at the level 8 Ogre Savage's defenses on MM1 page 199 compared to a level 3 Hobgoblin Soldier's defense on page 139. Sure, the Ogre has more hit-points, but if the PCs have less chance to hit and damage the Hobgoblin it becomes an even greater challenge than the Ogre. When you take a Soldier of a higher level than the PCs and give him Solo status, you're looking at a very tough fight which will soon turn into a grind.

The DMG1 has most of this information on page 56, on the step-by-step encounter. DMG2 also provides good ways to balance out encounters on pages 50 and 51. Overall, I'd give the chapters on building encounters a read, they can be a great help.

[Maze]

Very important: an easy boss can become a really hard one if they've already spent their daily powers and lost half their healing surges on previous battles.

[Kroack]

solution: rest a day and come back.

[Tadanori Oyama]

solution: rest a day and come back.

Well that's always been true. Wizards and other casters did it before. And in 4th Edition, everybody is a "caster".

[iceemaker]

Actually Tad, the Heroslayer is the MM2 reiteration of the abysmal MM1 hydras. It follows the new Solo design precepts with less overall health but more damage, more tricks, more lethality as the fight progresses, etcetera. Even then, it does not adhere to the more recent developments in monster design (MM3), which emphasizes higher damage and larger overall threat to the group. You should definitely look at raid encounters from MMOs like WoW if you want to see great solo monster design. But I digress.

Generally speaking, I have found a solo monster to not pose too much challenge to a full group (five) of equivalent level. The economy of actions (group gets five turns, monster gets one/two) and debilitative effects (dazed! slowed! restrained! weakened! 2d10 fire damage if it moves!) being thrown at the monster means that, even with additional actions and almost guaranteed saving throws, solos are hard-pressed to pose much of a threat without being extremely well-designed or a few levels above the party.

I do agree with Maze's point, though. Fourth Edition combat is much more frequent (at least in game terms, if not in actual play), discouraging prolonged rest or retreat. Solo battles should either be the climax of a war of attrition or a devastating affair requiring every single shred of power the characters can muster. The RPPR crew gravitates towards the latter format, and one can definitely adapt Fourth Edition to meet that style. But the former style is reinforced by all of the game's mechanics: healing surges, encounter and daily powers, action points. magic item uses, milestones, ad infinitium ad infinitium ad nauseum.

[Maze]

First off, the players don't always know that they're going to walk into a boss battle, so they might not have necessarily rested.

Fourth edition was designed for the players to fight more encounters in a day than previous one. The concept of fighting one tough battle, resting, then fighting another one, takes away the dailies and healing surge management aspect. If the players are going through hordes of enemies to go slay the evil Orc general, they'll have to choose whether or not to use their daily powers and action points on this tough Goblin Lieutenant or save it for Lord Orking Facesmasher. It would be anti-climatic, to say the least, for them to leave for 6 hours then come back like you would in a JRPG.

GMs who feel throwing same level enemies to their players isn't enough of a challenge need to have them fighting more than just one encounter. Perhaps you can also have them gain bonus XP for each additional encounter they face before resting, or simply have a roleplay reason why they can't simply rest anywhere at any time.

I'm speaking only from a point of view of the mechanics as I'm not much into encounter heavy games, partly because of this:

Two days agos, my group resumed our 4E campaign (which we had taken a 5 months break from) and as we rotate GM, the GM of the day was the ultimate Dungeon Master. This guy, regardless of the story, will find a way to add a dungeon anywhere and anytime, while we two other GMs, do more roleplay-oriented games.

He has the exact same problem described above. Since he finds normal encounters too easy, he throws up to lvl 14 monsters at our lvl 6 group. The thing with lvl 10+ monsters is that they have +20 attack bonus against my AC 24 paladin. Themselves have AC 27, which my +11 Attack bonus has a hard time hitting. Thus, they hit us all the time and we waste most of our encounters and dailies. It says something about fourth edition that we're able to kill them at all, but we could easily get wiped if the dices don't roll our ways. I believe it is poor GMing to have a fight rely solely on luck instead of tactics. We did tell him and he will try to adjust, but the best way to teach is by example so next game, I'll do what I never do: a actual dungeon.

[Kroack]

solution: rest a day and come back.

Well that's always been true. Wizards and other casters did it before. And in 4th Edition, everybody is a "caster".

exactly. simplest tactic in d&D.

[Ryo]

Make the quest time dependent or have the npcs leave or refortify.

So the party is tackling a bandit hideout. They get half way through and decide to go rest for a day before taking on the rest. There is no pause button in D&D. Have the bandit leader leave after half his gang gets wiped, then hire assassins, which attack when the party it at its weakest.

The problem isn't with encounters as much as DM's not using the tools they have. Do the npcs flank? Do they focus fire the leaders? Do they kill off wounded party members? Do they range attack the defenders? Do they move around? If a party is having an easy time of it, its because the DM wants them to.

[Flawless P]

Make the quest time dependent or have the npcs leave or refortify.

So the party is tackling a bandit hideout. They get half way through and decide to go rest for a day before taking on the rest. There is no pause button in D&D. Have the bandit leader leave after half his gang gets wiped, then hire assassins, which attack when the party it at its weakest.

The problem isn't with encounters as much as DM's not using the tools they have. Do the npcs flank? Do they focus fire the leaders? Do they kill off wounded party members? Do they range attack the defenders? Do they move around? If a party is having an easy time of it, its because the DM wants them to.

I have never had this problem to be honest I always pursue/harass the PC with more enemies when it is fair to assume such a thing would happen, but you have to figure that even a fairly well connected bandit lord is till going to end up spending 3-4 hours trying to find out who the pc's were and then another 2 hours hiring someone to kill them, by the time the assasin shows up its been nearly 8 hours which is the right amount of time for a party to rest up.

[Zeriken]

Make the quest time dependent or have the npcs leave or refortify.

So the party is tackling a bandit hideout. They get half way through and decide to go rest for a day before taking on the rest. There is no pause button in D&D. Have the bandit leader leave after half his gang gets wiped, then hire assassins, which attack when the party it at its weakest.

The problem isn't with encounters as much as DM's not using the tools they have. Do the npcs flank? Do they focus fire the leaders? Do they kill off wounded party members? Do they range attack the defenders? Do they move around? If a party is having an easy time of it, its because the DM wants them to.

I have never had this problem to be honest I always pursue/harass the PC with more enemies when it is fair to assume such a thing would happen, but you have to figure that even a fairly well connected bandit lord is till going to end up spending 3-4 hours trying to find out who the pc's were and then another 2 hours hiring someone to kill them, by the time the assasin shows up its been nearly 8 hours which is the right amount of time for a party to rest up.

That's why the assassin will follow them around and wait until the most opportune time in order to strike ^_^. It doesn't have to be as soon as he finds the group. Man, just thinking of it reminds me of Vlad Taltos from the Steven Brust's novels. Good stuff, man. Of course, they have a chance to realize somebody is following them, but yea. I like this idea.