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4 years ago ::
Dec 18, 2009 - 4:26PM
#41
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Date Joined:
Aug 22, 2007
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Probably the most common module structure I have observed is three fights and a skill challenge, possibly followed by another skill challenge.
My guess would have been that, for 1-4 and later modules, 2 combat/2 skill challenge adventures are by far the most common, with 2 combat/1 skill challenge being next. In either case, as long as a skill challenge shows up before the last combat, you get an action point for each combat.
Three combat modules are tough--either one (or more) of the combats is trivial, or it's a six-hour adventure masquerading as a four-hour one, so their popularity has faded after the lessons of the first three quarters were processed.
This is the sort of thing that's easy to determine, so someone who's either very hardcore or unafraid of spoilers should run the numbers as to the encounter breakdowns.
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4 years ago ::
Dec 18, 2009 - 7:14PM
#42
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Date Joined:
Dec 16, 2005
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Probably the most common module structure I have observed is three fights and a skill challenge, possibly followed by another skill challenge.
My guess would have been that, for 1-4 and later modules, 2 combat/2 skill challenge adventures are by far the most common, with 2 combat/1 skill challenge being next. In either case, as long as a skill challenge shows up before the last combat, you get an action point for each combat.
Three combat modules are tough--either one (or more) of the combats is trivial, or it's a six-hour adventure masquerading as a four-hour one, so their popularity has faded after the lessons of the first three quarters were processed.
This is the sort of thing that's easy to determine, so someone who's either very hardcore or unafraid of spoilers should run the numbers as to the encounter breakdowns.
That could be. (Though I think this thread was started by some people complaining that all combats were trivial which has certainly not been my experience). On the other hand, it wasn't true of Arts which is probably the most recent mod I've played. It wasn't true of Falling Petal either. I do suspect that there has been some change as the campaign has gone on and authors have adopted new formulas. I also think that's a good thing since it is easy for living campaigns to fall into a trap by adopting a routine and easy to master formula. (In Living Greyhawk for most of the campaign, it was three fights: EL+1, EL +2, EL +3 or some variation around there). As long as that does not happen, even modules where it is theoretically possible for every character to spend an action point in every fight will often not see it happen because (non replaying) players will not know whether or not they will get another before the next fight.
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4 years ago ::
Dec 18, 2009 - 11:40PM
#43
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- Dragon Slayer
- If only he would apply himself
- Dammit Jim, this is Star Trek, not D&D!
Date Joined:
Jan 31, 2006
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back to the OP comment:
Action Points. They're just too darn frequent in LFR. 90% of adventures have enough skill challenges (or too few combats) such that players know/believe they'll have an A.P. in 90% of combats (instead of maybe 50-70%).
As the OP, I was specifically looking for authoring ideas. But, DM tactics are valid as well. They are the next line, though to me they are the more perilous one because players can get really touchy about a DM's interpretation.
With APs, players just love using them. It does bump the players, but I hate not giving them APs. Some mods are almost famous for denying milestones. What do others think? How big a deal is it for players to get their milestones and be able to AP often?
Follow my blog and Twitter feed with Dark Sun campaign design and DM tips! Dark Sun's Ashes of Athas Campaign is now available for home play (PM me with your e-mail to order the campaign adventures).
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4 years ago ::
Dec 18, 2009 - 11:56PM
#44
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- Dragon Slayer
- If only he would apply himself
- Dammit Jim, this is Star Trek, not D&D!
Date Joined:
Jan 31, 2006
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Probably the most common module structure I have observed is three fights and a skill challenge, possibly followed by another skill challenge.
My guess would have been that, for 1-4 and later modules, 2 combat/2 skill challenge adventures are by far the most common, with 2 combat/1 skill challenge being next.
That could be. (Though I think this thread was started by some people complaining that all combats were trivial which has certainly not been my experience). On the other hand, it wasn't true of Arts which is probably the most recent mod I've played. It wasn't true of Falling Petal either. I do suspect that there has been some change as the campaign has gone on and authors have adopted new formulas.
I don't think there is a formula, outside of the guideline that fewer than two combats is not desirable. There has been no change in policy/guidelines to that since the beginning of the campaign.
I also feel that three combats is the most common, largely because it tends to tell story best. You get the ability to better paint the picture and provide interesting experiences. Two combat mods can be much harder, of course, because you have more XP in each combat.
As I said in the OP, this thread is about paragon because it sounds as if heroic tier is largely working fine now as a challenge level. Between new monsters and author tactics (terrain, better foe team construction, MM2 boosts, etc.), the mods are often fairly challenging. For paragon, I hear very few posts saying that the mods are tough. I actually hear a higher ratio of "too easy" than we did at the beginning of the campaign. (Speak out if paragon is proving tough for you, please!)
Now, there is always the swinginess factor. One encounter can be hard or easy for many reasons. But, in general, it seems that building a challenging paragon encounter is a hard task. In my mind, it should not be so hard to challenge players. In theory, you take the right amount of XP per the DMG and decently chosen roles and terrain and you should have a challenge. Just as in practice solos aren't a challenge, in practice paragon is usually not the challenge the rules say it will be. Escalation of PC power is a big factor, and to me a big factor is that the damage expressions for monsters is just inadequate for that power level. You don't want more defenses/HPs, because that will drag out combat and hurt non-striker tables. What you want is that threat that comes from a PC taking a serious enough wound to alter their tactics, not laugh. Too many paragon combats can be finished with no healing at all! None! This is because the damage level can be so low that it is a major challenge to bloody a few PCs, let alone most of them (or to focus on one and actually get a PC close to dropping). A level 15 monster does around 2d8+6 damage, with recharge or one-shot powers doing around 4d8+6. That isn't a whole lot of damage for P1. For P2, you have 2d8+7 and 4d10+7... not that impressive either, especially when the striker just did 120.
Follow my blog and Twitter feed with Dark Sun campaign design and DM tips! Dark Sun's Ashes of Athas Campaign is now available for home play (PM me with your e-mail to order the campaign adventures).
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4 years ago ::
Dec 19, 2009 - 1:26AM
#45
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Date Joined:
Oct 19, 2008
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Of course that 120 would have taken the striker from full to unconscious and all it did was bring a creature to just below bloodied etc. I'm not sure how i feel about paragon balance yet, it has seemed as though sometimes people roll through it and others they get their **** handed to them. Very swingy indeed.
Blah blah blah
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4 years ago ::
Dec 19, 2009 - 2:32AM
#46
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Date Joined:
Nov 10, 2003
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I also feel that three combats is the most common, largely because it tends to tell story best. You get the ability to better paint the picture and provide interesting experiences. Two combat mods can be much harder, of course, because you have more XP in each combat.
As I said in the OP, this thread is about paragon because it sounds as if heroic tier is largely working fine now as a challenge level. Between new monsters and author tactics (terrain, better foe team construction, MM2 boosts, etc.), the mods are often fairly challenging. For paragon, I hear very few posts saying that the mods are tough. I actually hear a higher ratio of "too easy" than we did at the beginning of the campaign. (Speak out if paragon is proving tough for you, please!)
Only with all 11s, playing up, in Core mods that exceeded the normal XP budget.
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4 years ago ::
Dec 19, 2009 - 2:59AM
#47
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Date Joined:
Aug 18, 2007
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Well not quite the split that we needed but...
First the worst thing to do is to engineer combats to make life hard for nova striking and optimised characters. Moving in that direction marginalises characters that are not optimised, and makes things even more difficult if your party happens to be missing a striker to do that nova damage.
Second cool terrain is indeed a good thing, but it is very hard to do effectively with the limited terrain pool that the Dungeon Tiles offer us. Still that said there is plenty that can be done.
Third when desinging encounters for 7-10 and up you need to assume that the PCs will have a daily in every fight. For Paragon while the Salve of Power remains as is, you need to assume that PCs will have their best daily for 2 if not 3 fights.
Forth put extended rests in modules. Putting them in negates milestones and resets everything. This makes it much easier to plan what the encounter is going to look like for most parties.
Use Minions. Put them there in front of the BBEG to give cover etc (they go great with things with "Look out Sir!" type powers). They also let you break fights up into waves more readily. The PCs come into a room and can see 8 monsters with a scattering of appearences - they might well be 3 or 4 different types of minion! They start attacking and then the BBEG arrives from behind the screen or whatever. In short minions are useful, sure they die easy but they can do a lot more set up as well.
Dependance on "Stun" and other PC disabling powers is a bad choice.
Insubstantial alone is OK, but it is best used in conjunction with other monsters that are not insubstantial. For example if you have a "leader" monster and it is insubstantial and it is pumping the other monsters, it is likely easier to kill the other monsters than the "leader", especially combined terrain and phasing etc. The trick is to then make sure the "leader" is interesting alone as well.
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4 years ago ::
Dec 19, 2009 - 3:53AM
#48
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Well, quite true, but don't forget that a table is rarely homogenous. Some people want the challenge and will become sad and dejected if they feel useless next to the hyper-optimized striker. This does not make the hyper-optimized striker a bad person, of course; it's just something to keep in mind.
It also doesn't automatically make the challenge-me player a better person. It's just the collision of two different preferences which are both equally valid.
I fing that too many of these threads have an undertone of "While this doesn't make the stroll-in-the park players bad persons, the challenge-me style is somehow inherently better".
At best players can be allocated to tables according to their play style. If that's not possible you'll just need a compromise and that means the challenge will be easier than the challenge-me crowd prefers and more difficult than the stroll-in-the-park crowd prefers. You shouldn't just up the challenge to the level the challenge-me-crowd wants and expect the stroll-in-the-park crowdto have to take it (incidently I actually have seen a table where a single player asked for and received an extra challenge from the DM to occupy his optimized character. So bascially all rolls from / against him were modified while the other players were left out of this upping of the challenge).
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3 years ago ::
Dec 19, 2009 - 6:20AM
#49
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Date Joined:
Oct 26, 2008
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First the worst thing to do is to engineer combats to make life hard for nova striking and optimised characters. Moving in that direction marginalises characters that are not optimised, and makes things even more difficult if your party happens to be missing a striker to do that nova damage.
Second cool terrain is indeed a good thing, but it is very hard to do effectively with the limited terrain pool that the Dungeon Tiles offer us. Still that said there is plenty that can be done.
Third when desinging encounters for 7-10 and up you need to assume that the PCs will have a daily in every fight. For Paragon while the Salve of Power remains as is, you need to assume that PCs will have their best daily for 2 if not 3 fights.
Forth put extended rests in modules. Putting them in negates milestones and resets everything. This makes it much easier to plan what the encounter is going to look like for most parties.
Use Minions. Put them there in front of the BBEG to give cover etc (they go great with things with "Look out Sir!" type powers). They also let you break fights up into waves more readily. The PCs come into a room and can see 8 monsters with a scattering of appearences - they might well be 3 or 4 different types of minion! They start attacking and then the BBEG arrives from behind the screen or whatever. In short minions are useful, sure they die easy but they can do a lot more set up as well.
Dependance on "Stun" and other PC disabling powers is a bad choice.
First off, there's a difference between establishing the encounter in such a way that nova strikers can't kill important monsters/NPCs in the first round and making the fight drag because the party has no strikers. Resistances, insubstantial and immunities fit in the latter (tho I still think can be very appropriate) and terrain, tactics and monster powers fit into the former. Fights can drag for a lot of reasons, Defenses, Resistances, Tactics, poor and excellent, bottlenecks, poor luck, and so forth. Saying that we should avoid dragging fights is a good thing. Gimping the strikers in one fight, and the controllers or defenders in another (where gimping == focused tactic to diminish their abilities) I think is just going to be one of those things that happens. And it should.
Second, I don't think, even though it is nice, that Dungeon Tiles have to be the way that terrain gets created. Last I checked, DTs are not a requirement for building module terrain so authors just need to be willing to do stuff that isn't as "easy" as DTs. Draw the darn map folks, we've been doing so since the beginning of time.
Third, and Fourth: So, if you put an Extended Rest into the mod, chances are you're going to have
just as many APs or more as if you didn't, given the LFR constraints. Most mods end up with the players getting 2 APs from milestones but only being able to use one (plus their first). With the right setup, that becomes 3 from milestones and ERs and the ability to use two (plus their first). If the players know that they will have an ER, which they will shortly after the mod comes out either because they'll have played it already or someone will tell them (I hate spoilers too but this is the world we live in), they'll know to spend their APs early. And even if you have spent all your dailies on an initial hard fight, the ER will give them back. And at Paragon, with some paragon paths allowing AP recovery, it gets even dicier. So, please no.
Minions are too high XP cost to use all but fleetingly. 4 minions to a normal monster is ridiculous but as long as LFR is bound by the D&D rules, that can't be changed. Minions are rarely a factor in a fight, though I have seen minions last to the end of an encounter ... because the PCs -ignored- them! Now, minion versions of real monsters, which I have seen done, can sometimes be cool. They get "real" abilities, but have no hit points. Those can be useful. Sometimes.
And finally, stun. And daze. I am definitely in the "I don't like this camp." but I've gotten a lot less rabid about seeing them in fights. If I was writing a mod, I'd use them if appropriate. And I think that so far the writers have been doing the right thing and not overusing those mechanics relative to the population of monsters that have those abilities. Statisically, according to the compendium, about a third of monsters have a daze or stun ability. I don't think I've seen even that many monsters in mods have those abilities. About a third of -fights- have a stunner/dazer, but not a third of all monsters used.
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3 years ago ::
Dec 19, 2009 - 7:46AM
#50
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Date Joined:
Apr 25, 2002
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Third when desinging encounters for 7-10 and up you need to assume that the PCs will have a daily in every fight. For Paragon while the Salve of Power remains as is, you need to assume that PCs will have their best daily for 2 if not 3 fights.
Forth put extended rests in modules. Putting them in negates milestones and resets everything. This makes it much easier to plan what the encounter is going to look like for most parties.
Extended rests mean that the PCs are coming in with Action Points and the ability to use all their dailies in a fight. What should probably happen is that for a game such as LFR, you get 1 action point max to use per 2 combats, round up unless you have a special ability that overcomes that. This is especially true because the more skill challenges that you have that generate milestones, the weaker the combats.
And needing to write around a magic item means the magic item is probably getting nerfed in the next couple of updates...
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