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I was replying to something Shawnacy said in his game thread, but figured it oughtta be its own thread.

Shawnacy said:

I probably should up the challenges a little bit. You guys are cutting through enemies pretty quickly. It's not easy finding that perfect balance of challenge vs out-right TPK.

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Indeed. I'm finding that I'm erring on the side of caution. I've been thinking of scaling back my use of minions and seeing if that will make the combats a little more challenging, though. The published adventures Ed's been using rarely have minions and the combats have felt overly challenging, draining most of our resources - pretty much everyone's daily and a tonne of healing surges - each time. Sure, it turns out the last couple fights were designed for a party a level higher than us, but it was the same in the sancasshole quest.

Have you been using minions much, Shawnacy?

-- Sun Jun 07, 2009 7:48 pm --

Also: I'm glad y'all like my "ignore about the mundane purchases" rule. Moreso that Ed's adopted it since that means I don't have to deal with that shit on Quinn's sheet.

I've enjoyed Dave's fights-- but I also rarely get hit.

Granted, we've had 2 deaths so far and the only reason I wasn't killed is because our DM was very nice about not having a zombie eat me.

In your game Grue, I've enjoyed the fights, but we -definitely- rip through them. That battle with the giant-- he was what? Level 8? Well, we tore him a new asshole. Dave didn't even have enough time to explode him.

Shawn's game is probably in the middle-- He's got a decent number of minions, medium-strength people, and two or so "stronger" ones. Then, we usually have some kind of boss towards the end of a particular adventure.

Our first game was against some kobold minions + regulars, and then a summoned boss crocodile creature. Second game was a battle with stronger kobolds (who weren't even hostile :waah: ), a slime (which wasn't too tough, but it was interesting enough to be a really awesome fight). Next game was a band of tougher goblins, then a pair of cockatrices (interesting fight), and last game was a camp of goblins (decent toughness, but no "Oh my god we're gonna die" moments), then 4 crazy hobgoblins (tore through them), then a boss demon boy and his 2 Crenshaws. Wasn't too tough, but could have been.

I think something to consider is not the difficulty of the fight, but how interesting it is.

Like the slime battle. It was one slime with not many HP. But it dropped on a character and engulfed it, creating various ways to escape and do damage.

Also, I love fighting the undead. There are no moral dilemmas about destroying undead. My character in Shawn's game isn't going to get over killing innocent-ish kobolds for a while, but wouldn't have any problem blasting undead to bits.

Oh I love minions. Nothing makes a battle seem more epic than a bunch of them running around to give the PCs the feeling of being outnumbered but at the same time giving them a chance at victory.
Minions serve this purpose with great success because they have a decent chance of hitting the PCs with their attacks, but are also cut down immediately. Not only does this let the PCs feel like they are smiting enemies left and right in true Hollywood fashion, but it limits the amount of HP totals the DM has to keep track of. If the attack hits, you take the minion off the board. Easy as that.

doomdragon6 said:

and last game was a camp of goblins (decent toughness, but no "Oh my god we're gonna die" moments)

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Maybe not for you. :slywink:

Also: Halfling warwizard + 2 dragonbreaths = Minion death.

doomdragon6 said:

I think something to consider is not the difficulty of the fight, but how interesting it is.

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I must say that I agree wholeheartedly. In all the 11 years that I've been playing and DMing D&D I have never before had "regular" non-boss fights be so interesting and fun. I've always been into D&D almost strictly for the roleplaying aspect and the battles along the way were just roadblocks or plot devices. Now, in Shawn's game, I'm finding that I can love playing out the battles nearly as much as the non-combative bits. 4 sessions into this game, I've become very attached to everyone's characters and I really don't want any of them to die because we need "more challenging fights". Ramp up the difficulty as you please, but not so much that there's a good chance that we'll have to reroll. *huggles* Sankyuu!

Well, since death rules are different, losing all your HP isn't necessarily meaning you have to reroll.

I don't know. I trust Shawnacy to do what he needs to do.

escushion said:

Well, since death rules are different, losing all your HP isn't necessarily meaning you have to reroll.

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I keep forgetting how different 4.0 is from it's predecessors... ^^;;

(To preface this, I DM a 3.5 group on Tuesday nights, and these are some of my insights.)

I do like the intensity being ratcheted up by a difficult battle, but keep in mind that the combatants do not have to be overbearing in order to make combat interesting. For example, you could have weaker opponents but have environmental hazards or obvious deformable terrain that can be used for or against us. On the other hand, a particularly tough encounter, such as vampire or something, could be made easier if we use sunlight (via mirrors or broken boarded-up windows) to our advantage.

Mixing puzzles with combat is always memorable because it forces both player and characters to think on their feet. Also it allows for the rarely seen (but well-demonstrated by Adia in particular) in-combat roleplay. For example, say there are systems of pulleys and ropes in an underground mine, in a battle with a giant troll or something, and it's possible to cause a pile of large rocks to topple onto the troll's head. Imagine everyone in our Thursday game sees and recognizes what can be done with that setup. It could be entirely possible that Errik would try to use every possible advantage that his surroundings afford him, where a more direct or violent character like Kratash may see the opportunity, but prefer the more direct solution. Hell, Adia might not even recognize the solution in-character because of her confirmed low intelligence! :heythere:

It's stuff to keep in mind.

Well, minions in Dave's game have been very rare. When combat does have a lot of minions, they're arranged well. The zombies surrounding us, or the large amount of skeletons spaced out attacking us with bows.

In the other game I'm in, the DM loves making elite and solo creatures and giving them minions in some capacity. We've fought more minions than other monsters at this point.

Combat in Dave's game is much harder. The monsters play off each other well and act similarly to how the players do in combat. In the other game, we quickly get rid of most of the other side's actions, and then have an action monopoly.

It feels like, most of the time, the less minions, the better. Occasionally shove a large group of minions into combat so the players feel awesome when they go through a large amount of monsters quickly, but mostly use all the other roles.

I definitely agree that the more situational environment options, the better. Like, if we're on a cliff? You'd better believe I'm going to try to knock the enemy off of it. As a matter of fact, I often cripple myself by trying to think of a way to do environmental damage when regular attacks would be better.

Example:

"I kick the goblin into the campfire!

"Alright. The goblin takes... *rolls a 1d6* 4 fire damage. Though, you could have just usd your axe, which would've done 1d12 + 1d6 + 5."

"... Well.. Yeah.. =[ "

Haha yeah, but environmental factors are just one idea. You can also experiment with having you opponents be abnormally organized, or smart, or prepared, or dumb, or cowardly, or whatever.

The most interesting encounter I've run so far was one that actually gave my party their first taste of the Loreno family (Errik is an enemy NPC in my game, and the Loreno family will be disbanded, hopefully, by the end of the campaign).

The Lorenos were trying to take over a small forest village by helping them rebuild after a natural disaster (actually the druidic BBEG, but whatever) and also by protecting them from lizardman encursions from the north. But it turned out that the lizardmen had been hired by the family to fake an attack periodically so that the halflings could fake a victory and increase their prices, gain more power/favour locally, etc.

The morning after my players got into town, one of these show-fights began, and the party, like the villagers, had no reason to believe it was anything other than a straightforward encounter. So there are mostly-innocent lizardmen and their pet raptors attacking the village, but trained not to attack any halflings (which they assumed, on the fly, to include the rogue in my party), and there are halfling guards who aren't REALLY helping in the fight and are worried to see the plan break down.

It was REALLY fun to DM, especially once my party realized what had REALLY gone down.

You also have to take into consideration that in Shawn's game, you've got a cleric who's been healing and providing bonuses when it counted. Our last fight was about a round from being very problematic. All my heals/dailies were gone, people who were in melee were running out of healing surges and I was bandaging people.

A few rolls going the wrong way and it would have been a much different fight. I think difficulty is completely in the hands of the luck of the dice. A few rolls can swing momentum before a wink of an eye. It's easy for some to claim it's easy when you haven't been attacked by multiple targets at once and don't take damage, once your character is bloodied, you opinion becomes different.

Be careful for what you ask for.

True. I think Adia has been damaged once in the whole game. Grendmir only been bloodied a single time. Errik has only been in danger once. Saryon's been doing fine aside from missing a lot.

Kratash and Serin, however... well, Kratash has no one but himself to blame for getting the shit kicked out of him again and again. Serin does have the rest of us to blame, as we keep sending her out as a decoy when she's a caster.

Hey Errik's been at less than 5 health a couple times, but mostly because I keep forgetting I have Second Chance.

Well, I'll happily send Serin into any place where shape changing might prove beneficial. And when she hits level 4, she can shape change medium beasts too, so she may even be able to walk around creatures' dens unhindered.

Even I get beaten to a pulp, I love using her shapechange ability. NEVER hesitate to send me in.

SeriousJay said:

It's easy for some to claim it's easy when you haven't been attacked by multiple targets at once and don't take damage, once your character is bloodied, you opinion becomes different.

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Right. Which is why I'm trying to consider it from the point of view of resources used, not damage taken

I mean, just in the last fight in Ed's game, my paladin was hovering around 2 hit points for a lot of the fight. That for me is fun, though, and that's why I chose to play a defender. Hell, I was even tempting death at that point by intentionally drawing multiple Opportunity Attacks. And while that was going on the other defender was still unharmed, the cowardly dwarf! So when I talk about resources, I mean that we seem to be forced to use our dailies in order to survive. Of course, the dice just suck, too, we've been short a lot of people, and we could really use a better healer than a paladin.

Whereas the party in my game is overwhelmingly strong on offense with the 3 strikers. Hell, it's really 3.5 strikers since the warlord can give the barbarian and rogue an additional attack (best used with the barbarian, I think, as Sneak Attack is only a once a round thing, and the melee basic attack is based on Strength, not Dex). And they've got all the roles filled. That's why the ogre didn't last, Doom.

Gruebeard said:

And while that was going on the other defender was still unharmed, the cowardly dwarf!

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I beg to differ, sir.

I just couldn't move in to take the brunt of the damage because you were clogging up the hallway.

Kratash and Serin, however... well, Kratash has no one but himself to blame for getting the poop kicked out of him again and again. Serin does have the rest of us to blame, as we keep sending her out as a decoy when she's a caster.

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well, if i weren't taking damage, someone else would be. the rest is just bad rolls. in fact, the worst i've ever been, 4 hp, was when i stuck to the plan, stayed calm, and didn't run in.

as for serin, actually, i've never seen her take damage.

Green slime.

Wahad said:

Gruebeard said:

And while that was going on the other defender was still unharmed, the cowardly dwarf!

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I beg to differ, sir.

I just couldn't move in to take the brunt of the damage because you were clogging up the hallway.

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Besides, I was repeatedly pushing that skeleton in a position to flank the dwarf. He wasn't unharmed due to lack of trying.

Eh, Serin's taken damage, but never enough to be worried. The kobolds got some hits in; the green slime did hurt, but her resistance helped a lot with that; and the cockatrice got in that one hit. But otherwise, yeah, she's sitting happily in the back throwin' spells at people.

That's kinda why I like scouting in disguise. There's a -chance- things can go badly, but if not, it helps us plan. That's why I picked a shapechanger- to scout, and potentially scam / fool townspeople.

Oh, and Gruebeard-- 3.5 strikers is definitely the reason we tear through things. It's just interesting because it's like, "BWA HA HA! I am the top bad guy leading this gr- OH GOD MY SPLEEN WHY!!!"

S'all.

Topic change. What do people think of Skill Challenges?
I think they are useful during physical activities, but using them for diplomacy or roleplaying purposes just to move things along and get right to the battles seems like a waste.

As a reminder to those who are unaware of skill challenges basically they are a 4th edition rule option that tries to simplify a complex challenge that may require different types of skill rolls. The Players need to get 5 or so successes before they get 3 failures, etc.

Well I've only encountered them in Dave's game. They worked well enough when we have enough people present to participate. However, it definitely makes it a numbers game versus roleplaying.

So if one is present, I'm fine with it. But -actually- convincing an entity of something feels best.

Though I do like skills handling things for us sometimes. Serin's Bluff is a +13. If I can't think of a legitimate bluff, I can just says, "She uses a bluff to accomplish this," and assuming I make the DC, it works. No thought on my part.

And, if you're playing an intelligent character, the numbers make it so you yourself don't necessarily have to be intelligent.

Final word: I pretty much agree with you and I'm useless.

I'm not sure I'm too keen on the skill challenges. I don't know why exactly but they just don't feel all that interesting ultimately.

Personally, I wouldn't mind them too much if they were used rarely for special situations just for a change of pace. (aka moments of ultimate discord)

I'd use them if the party was doing something that would involve a large amount of skill rolls that not everybody had access to. Say I had an extremely trap-filled dungeon with little combat. This would place a high emphasis on thievery to deactivate traps. I might make finding traps a skill roll and then deactivating them a skill challenge. That way, everybody is involved rather than just the thief.

Otherwise, they feel like a waste of time.

I have a hard time with party balance too, I made a custom "boss" type mob that was supposed to beat the party then leave them to live another day and the party wiped the floor with her to the point that I had to make her run from low health instead. I will actually go so far as to let some enemies live an extra round beyond death if I have to, just to do a little more damage.

A large part of combat is economy of actions. Since your players have more actions, in order to make it more challenging, you need to either increase the amount of actions the boss gets or increase the worth of each action. You don't necessarily have to up the damage, but can give the enemy the ability to inflict status effects or the ability to hit multiple targets.

I found this site/page/article/collection of articles(?) that has a lot of interesting ideas for a DM.

A lot of it is kind of "duh" but it's still a fun read. (Note that the full articles are linked at the end of each clip with the "More" link.)

http://rpgathenaeum.wordpress.com/categ ... t-tactics/

I am on the hunt for an article detailing it, but a dude incorporated skill challenges into combat where passing the skill challenge makes combat easier. For example, a successful skill challenge can reduce a solo to an elite.

Meh, as a player, I've never once been intersted in a skill challenge so far. Figuring out what sskill to use is either ridiculously easy or moronically hard, depending on what your DM will or won't allow as a skill to work; succes or failure itself is too much based on luck to be an actual challenge. It's like having a battle, but basing the whole outcome of the battle on just initiative.

Well, skill challenges as they are suck hard. Some successes don't grant successes, but give bonuses to future rolls. Takes too few to fail compared to how many it takes to succeed. Failure hurts. Oh, and it's entirely dependent on how flexible your DM is.

The way I'd do it would only be in special fights, they are optional, I'm very flexible about what skills can be used, and the only possible outcomes would be success or success-rounded-down. That way, anybody who engages the skill challenge contributes something to the combat, even if they fail the challenge.

I like that using skill challenges in combat like that introduces a large risk-reward scenario to combat. It might be safer to just attack and attack, since you're doing damage and ending the fight as fast as possible. however, if that turns out to be failing (players miss a lot and/or enemies crit a lot), there is something to fall back on.

I would like some way to accomplish what you're suggesting, Allen. It would be awesome if there was significant skill use during combat. Right now skill use in combat looks like it was an afterthought (always has, every edition) and the few places skills present themselves it's a horrible or or nothing thing.

For example, while I want Edrondol to use Intimidate during combat, I hate the mechanic presented. If the foe is bloodied, a successful check will get him to surrender. That's lousy when you realize how that works out. It's not the end result that I have any issue with, it's how the mechanic bypasses the normal flow of combat. I could probably describe that better than "flow" but read on to understand what I'm getting at.

A foe with 30 hit points will be bloodied at 15. Some At-Will powers can deal that, and most encounter powers will. If I use that as my baseline, that's cool. I think that a skill use should yield roughly the same benefit as an attack. However, then we get to my problem with this use of Intimidate. A foe with 150 hit points is bloodied at 75 hit points. There is no daily power that can deal that much damage, so Intimidate becomes way too good . . . when it works. And that's the second major problem I'd like to fix. Intimidate doesn't seem likely to work. It works way too well, and it doesn't work at all.

Would adding a morale factor in here work? My first thought is that once the foe is bloodied, enough intimidate checks bring him to his knees in surrender. I can see this working in two ways, and on first glance I like the second.

First way: If the Intimidate check is greater than the foe's current hit points, he surrenders. Multiple Intimidate checks against the same foe accumulate so that, say, 3 PCs each Initimidate the same foe with check results of 15, 20 and 25; given that they could force a bloodied foe with 60 hit points or less to surrender.

Second way: each successful Intimidate check inflicts a -1 morale penalty. When the morale penalty is greater than the foe's level, he surrenders or flees or something not so predictable every fucking time. The morale penalty, as implied, stacks and would affect the foe's attack rolls and defenses.

I like the second way because it gives that immediate benefit for the Intimidator's side through the morale penalty, and isn't tied to hit points. However, I'm not terribly keen on how many Intimidate checks would be required to take down a high level foe but I can live with that. (It probably should not go without saying that the -10 penalty to Initimidate checks for forcing an opponent to surrender would be cut down significantly if not eliminated)

Then, if we could get other skills in there for combat, that'd be sweet. Like Nature checks to grant bonuses to attack and defense against some creatures. Or whatever. Loads of shit.

I'd really like to find a way for this to work. Perhaps we could even write up some Encounter powers associated with Skills. So that Training in a skill grants you these powers. They'd perhaps be like the Channel Divinity feature where the cleric and paladin have several different powers, but can only use of them each encounter. Or maybe even let them be normal encounter powers (on the weak side for encounter powers, roughly equal in benefit to At Will powers) and give tonnes of options.

Weaker uses of skills could even be At Will powers use-able as move actions.

But I'd love to get away from Initimidate's current "Too good/too shitty" combat use while expanding its use and the rest of the skills' use in encounters.

The following is made up as I go along:

I think it'd be funny to retool things in the term of social combat and debate. Change HP to represent how much it takes until you've lost the argument. Death saves are you stalling for time trying to find some kind of defense for your argument.

Strength: How hard you can drive your point home
Dexterity: Ability to find holes in your opponents argument
Constitution: How solid your argument is
Intelligence: How smart of an argument you can make
Wisdom: Ability to keep the bigger picture in mind
Charisma: Attractiveness

Then all the healing things is bolstering the parties argument rather than arguing down the other person.

When you grant combat advantage, you're fumbling over your words for some reason. Say, you're dealing with two different people at once.

Retool the keywords in powers to things like Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, Volume, Insults, etc. Makes more sense than using lightning, cold, etc.

Hm...weapons...represent traditional argument tactics. Martial characters specialize in the traditional argument tactics which have been perfected over many generations. Thus, their arguments have the higher bonuses to hit, but since weapon attacks tend to target AC, the opponent may be aware of the classical defenses against each power.

Meanwhile, the spellcasting classes use different, less tried-and-true methods, but it's less likely for the enemy to be versed in the defenses.

Then with the monster roles, brutes have many holes in their arguments, but just never know when to quit. Soldiers have more sound defenses for their arguments, but know when to quit. Artillery can argue from far away (oh shit, high volume!), and controllers are good at making it harder for the PCs to argue.

Attacks of Opportunity are just taking free shots at people who are doing something else.

More as I think things up. This post is getting kind of long. Also, more about skill challenges in tradition 4e.

Man, I must be quiet. Consider a few short paragraphs to be a long post.

Okay, the defenses:

AC=AC (Argument Class)
Fort=Logos
Reflex=Pathos
Will=Ethos

Fort is logos because a good argument (a high argument class) is going to be pretty logical. Reflex is pathos since there are quite a few powers that target reflex, and a lot of ads on the telly try to appeal to pathos. Ethos, let's face it, how many things target will? A few, but not a lot.

For power sources, I want arcane to become abuse. Like Scorching Burst or Flaming Sphere are personal attacks implying the target is gay. So many arcane powers target reflex and insults try to draw a pathological response, it seems like a nice fit. Then you have this whole school of wizardry that targets ethos (illusionists targetting will), so I just see wizards doing personal attacks implying that the monsters are bad people for not donating to charity.

I'm thinking I want the martial characters to be a lawyer power source or something. Not too sure about the name, but I see this group of people having arguments that are hard to counter, due to high AC, and hard to make a logical argument against, due to high logos, but they tend to exclusively target AC with tried-and-true debate techniques.

Divine and Primal to come. Not going to bother detailing the class roles since they stay unchanged. Just change what they do in a fight to what they do in a debate.

So you'll have a whole different set of stats for "skill challenge combat"?

Edrondol said:

So you'll have a whole different set of stats for "skill challenge combat"?

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Wait. Are we supposed to be taking Allen seriously here? I'm laughing at his awesome joke.

Gruebeard said:

Edrondol said:

So you'll have a whole different set of stats for "skill challenge combat"?

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Wait. Are we supposed to be taking Allen seriously here? I'm laughing at his awesome joke.

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He's put a lot of work into this for it to be a joke. At first I thought he was kidding and then he made those two posts to show he's given this a lot of thought.

It's a joke. 4e combat is so abstract, I decided I could arbitrarily re-fluff combat to become debate. Actually makes healing surges and second winds become a bit more believable. And because I can't think of some things that have good parallels, I'm keeping them in. Like armor.

"Why couldn't you argue with him?!"
"He was wearing platemail and had a heavy shield! I was intimidated."

And then thinking of kick-down-the-door style gameplay. Enter the room, see a beholder, the party has surprise. All the melee fighters charge forward, yelling out debate points. Meanwhile, the casters stand back and yell things at the beholder from a distance.

Oh, and I decided to change intelligence. Having a well-thought out argument kind of bumps up against Strength's "having a strong argument". So intelligence becomes "knowledge of your debate opponent." What this means for the abuse is they try to find the target's buttons and push them.

Also, for Flaming Sphere's damage at the start of the turn: when an adjacent creature first has the floor, the sphere says "gaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaay." dealing 1d4+int modifier damage

edit: Oh, and all the thought is me being bored, hitting the reply button, and making stuff up as I go along.

ps: