4e Encounters for Big Groups, Transcribed Email

This post is going to be strangely formatted; it’s an email I sent to one of my DM buddies about how to deal with his larger-than-average group of players. They are playing 4e, and 4e can get out of hand very quickly. Eyes glaze when players get one turn every 25 minutes, and tempers can flare when you miss on that far-too-rare turn. Here is my input on how to craft 4e encounters for a larger group:

A few thoughts on how to create functional, engaging encounters for six players:

• One, Big Encounter: I think this is going to be the cardinal rule for six PCs; I’m learning the same thing for five paragon PCs. If you’re going to run a standard “deathmatch” style 4e encounter, only plan on having time for one, so make it count! The three-encounter work day just doesn’t apply when you have a million dudes on the table. See the next list for ideas.
• Cut Things Short: Having six PCs is going to get the fight into “foregone conclusion” territory very quickly. When the monsters are outnumberd 3 to 1, cut the fight early. Monsters running away, surrendering, or going berzerk and being slaughtered. When eyes glaze, move on.
• Alternate Victory Conditions: This doesn’t need explaining, but moving away from the “deathmatch” model allows you to have really compelling two-three round fights that only take 30 minutes. Boarding up doors to hold back zombies, shooting the eyes of the effectively invincible kraken to make it run, killing the magical demigog that’s rousing the commoners into a mob, etc. (Note to self: run a kraken fight.)
• Keep Monsters At Level: If there’s anything worse than missing and feeling like a turn is wasted, it’s missing and feeling like your turn is wasted when there’s five other players and six monsters between you and your next turn! Keep monsters relatively at your party’s level so their attacks hit more often. If you want a monster to be hard to kill, don’t boost defenses, give them 30% more hit points instead. (This option is in the monster builder, so it’s an established option in 4e that won’t break anything.)

So you’re going to have a deathmatch fight, because 4e heroes are Super Sayans, right? Here are my usual considerations on what makes a unique fight, through the lense of an abundance of players.

• Mutliple Arenas, Split the Party: Split the party and monsters into two arenas. Don’t make them inaccessible to one another, but some effort and expenditure of actions needs to be spent to move between them. A fight between decks of a ship, floating rocks in the elemental chaos, even the front and back of a house can work. Comitting to one arena is an interesting choice, can bring the value of party members into sharp relief, and most importantly lessens the factors for you and your players. (Sure the fight is huge, but the defender only has to mess with the three monsters he’s actually near.)
• Environment: Envirnonmental effects are an easy, book-keeping-less way to spice things up, and they’re by far my favorite part of running 4e. A simple, easy to run encounter that might have otherwise been too straight forward for the players can be magical with a few acid pits to get shoved into.
• Creative aside: You can even create environmental effects that play into the large number of players! A fight on rotting wooden floors in a haunted tomb could be amazing. If a player ends its turn within 2 squares of another player a 3×3 hole in the floor immediately opens up, dropping the players 10 feet into the rat-filled basement that requires actions (athletics or running to the stairs) to get out of. Starting your turn in the basement causes 5 damage from nibbling rats. Add in monsters that are insubstantial ghosts that push people around and you have one hell of a fight. Eeee that sounds fun.
• Twists, Fireworks, Epic-er-ness: If you’re comitted to running a 2-3 hour encounter already, the more epic-er the better. Plan on having something awesome happen on round 3 of the fight. Eyes are going to glaze on round 4 if daily powers have been used, monster encounter powers have been used, and it’s boiled down to d20 rolls and at-wills. If you’re only running a single encounter, ham it up and change the field mid-fight. Introduce new enemies, an alternate win condition, or even a third faction that just wants to kill everyone.

Shoot any ideas my way. I love brain storming!

Man, I write hella long emails.

WORK

As the tax season continues at grown-up-work, I find myself agreeing with this Sean more and more:

How is it only Thursday!? I’m going home. Regular programming to resume when I get a brain.

Problem?

Remember, your role as the wizard is to make your DM get so butthurt that they rage quit:

Spread the word! After you make that save against daze, of course. Original Content from The Modern Monster.

(Work is resembling a gladiatorial arena more than an office this week; it’s our busiest time of the year. I swear I’ll be back with actual posts longer than 150 words soon, I just need to fight off these tigers.)

Afterglow

Oh man, I just witnessed a DM running his first session completely off the cuff.

And it was awesome.

As some sort of arbitrary measure of “fun”, I had as much fun tonight making a character (using point buy!) and exploring the mystery set in front of us as I did with past games run by much more experienced DMs that plan like crazy. He paid attention to what we wanted, took the time to think things through, and rolled with the punches when we slapped his kobolds around with nary a scratch on us.

I think there’s a lesson in there somewhere, eh?

I’m giving myself leeway and writing a short post today. I do, after all, have to go prepare some things for my game!

It’s good to play again.

Rolling Stats is Boring

I’m on the cusp of creating a new Pathfinder character, and our DM has made an interesting choice when generating our attributes. We can choose either:

• 20 point buy: We spend a pool of 20 points to purchase our attributes, as per the core Pathfinder rules. To gauge power level, a pool of 20 points can create the attribute array of 16, 14, 14, 12, 10, 8.
• Roll: We generate 6 values by rolling 4d6, rerolling 1′s, and dropping the lowest, adding up the remaining three dice. We then assign the values to whatever attribute we want. “4d6R-L” generates stats around 13.25, give or take.

Some members of our group have defended rolling dice, saying that point-buy systems create cookie-cutter characters that all have the same statistics. I actually believe the opposite: rolling dice creates homoginized characters that are less interesting than those generated by a point buy system. Here’s why: Point buy systems guarantee interesting characters with both strengths and weaknesses.

 

Sure, same-y arrays are naturally going to come out of point buy systems. But that’s only when you write them in order on paper. A whole party could buy the standard 16, 14, 14, 12, 10, 8, which in theory should create a same feeling party, but that ensures that your character can do some shit and can’t do some shit. This actually creates niches that the other characters need to cover; built in focuses and forced deficits. Those 10′s and 8 are going somewhere.

 

Rolling dice with an average roll of 13.25 creates attributes that are more inclined to be like each other: 15, 14, 14, 13, 13, 12 is a reasonable spread for rolling dice. Even though it’s technically “stronger” than the 20 point buy array, it’s boring! You’d never get something that boring with a point buy. (Unless of course someone chooses to be boring, but boringness born of choice rather than statistics is different.)

 

Not only that, but rolling dice has the possibility of creating imbalanced and boring characters. Rolling very low is its own special kind of nerd hell, and rolling very high is still not interesting. (Though having abnormally high stats can be a fun indulgence.) Being able to do everything is against the core tenants of the fun that D&D tries to breed: groups of specialists aiding each other to accomplish heroic goals. In short: having 18, 17, 16, 16, 15, 14, 12 doesn’t make you fun.

 

So for God’s sake, guys, stop hating on point buy systems. It reinforces the very basic ideas behind D&D gameplay, and it creates fun choices for players at character creation without the statistical anomalies that can sabotage a character or party balance. While it’s true that in D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder some classes are less viable with point buy systems (Paladins just need higher stats than a wizard, and that’s that) that’s a fault with the system, not the mode of generation.

 

I will be choosing to buy my stats, for the record.

Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple

Unfortunately, I find myself unable to update with something more substantial. I find myself strapped for time as I prepare the first session of my upcoming campaign, which I will be writing about for next Tuesday, and applying to a number of area colleges. (I’m getting a B.A. in Unuseful Pomposity.) Unfortunate, considering I posted filler during my Florida trip, but alas, life sucks.

In the meantime, you should be paying attention to this:

One of indie role-playing games that I’ve been interested in is Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple. Created by Daniel Solis, graphic designer by day and game designer by night, Do is a story telling game about well meaning kids that want to help but get in trouble. Daniel’s own inspiration for the game is media like Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Little Prince. By using an extremely fun character creation system (mad-libs) and an extremely intuitive stone-drawing system that both solves problems and gets you into hijinx, you and your friends can create a hilariously awesome story in an hour.

Not only that, but the rules are on Daniel’s blog in their entirety. Seriously, free game. Play it.

On the surface, the game seems simple and immediately understandable, but is it fun? I’m very unfamiliar with story-telling games, so I wasn’t sold until I heard the guys from the Podge Cast play a full session. If you’re interested in a good story telling game and some entertaining nerds playing it, check out the episode here.

Daniel just started a Kickstarter to get the game to print, and it exploded to 300% funded in about 48 hours, if I recall correctly. There are some awesome rewards for donating (and he’s coming up with ideas for the “extra” money he’s raising) so you should scope it out.

Alright! I’ll be back next week with what I’m sure will be an exhaustive write up about the first session of my new campaign. Spoiler: The party may or may not be paragon-level Forsaken founding the Undercity post Warcraft 3.

Shit just got real.

New Characters: The Nugget and the Hook

My mid-week game is about to be resurrected by one of my good friends. He’s going to be running a Pathfinder campaign in the Eberron setting, a setting we have a lot of history with. I haven’t been a player in nearly exactly 4 months, and I haven’t played in an extended campaign in over 6. Come to think of it, I haven’t made a brand new character intended for a long-term campaign in over a year.

I’m looking forward to starting fresh; I’ve put 10 months of running a stellar D&D game with my friends under my belt since the last time I formulated a PC for myself. While the skill sets of what makes a good DM and what makes a good player aren’t identical, I’m eager to formulate a new PC and shape a campaign with my new found experience.

I had a long discussion with one of my fellow players about what makes a good starting character, and I blundered into this simple idea: make the nugget and the hook.

The nugget is the core set of values of your character that will be processing the world he or she explores.  I envisioned of the nugget as programming: all situations and decisions had to be run through the values of this nugget to see what comes out the other side. The values need to few, simple, and clear. Make sure they are comprehensive but not restrictive: they should be able to (perhaps with a bit of stretching) guide you through the encounters and decisions your characters will face.

The hook is the fun that you, as a player, are responsible for making for yourself. Characters that have built in conflicts are interesting! It can be something as heady as a paladin questioning the orders from his church or something as simple as being the last survivor from a village destroyed by goblins. Make it vague enough that your DM can integrate it into the story, or if it needs to be specific just make sure work out the details with the DM before hand.

Just make sure to follow this simple guideline: keep things simple, flexible, and straight-forward. A few well crafted sentences should suffice for both the nugget and the hook. Let the complexities come from the table! Trust me, your paladin’s inner termoil will be much more interesting when experienced by you and your friends, instead of just being a paragraph in your 3 page long backstory.

Man I can’t wait to roll up a new character.