A flaw in D&D design is that a miss is pretty damn boring and to some players downright frustrating.
Thus, while I like the minion idea a lot (and use it frequently to challenge single target strikers), I'd recommend at-level minions, but more of them. And always remember minions can do a lot more than just attack - grant saves with Heal checks, grab, bull rush, aid attack/defense, threaten the PCs' goals while they're tied up with standard monsters, etc.
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If you're going to use minions, may I suggest Mossling minions? They're level 12 and potentially deadly. An horde of Mossling Hurlers on a featureless plain. Pretty damn scary.
Or, since you can change a monster's level , take an elder blue dragon (from MV). Level it down to 12. Now, as a level 12 solo, it should be worth 3500 xp. Use two of them, and you have a level 16 encounter (precisely 7000 xp). Make the party fight them on a plain, featurless desert. Keep the dragons constantly 22 squares high in the air. Spam Thunderclap/Lighting burst/Breath Weapon. Win.
You can also level up a young blue dragon to 12 and achieve similar results, if you want to be less evil.
A time limit before the entire complex sinks back beneath the waves... or the sand... or into the negative energy plane. This forces them to push ahead and actually have to budget resources.
What you're basically looking for is setting up almost a pure board game where it's just tactics.
I have a "pure board game" in my truck right now that has a time limit, and, while it involves tactics, is always about more than just one side killing the other. In the first mission, one side is trying to eliminate the other, and the other is trying to hide. In the next mission, the side that was on the offensive is now on the run and cannot win simply by killing all of the enemies. The game is "Mutant Chronicles: Seige of the Citadel" and it has more to teach about making combat challenging and interesting than most D&D products I've seen.
I pull out the stops on my players all the time. I defeat them on a regular basis, and they just go on to the next challenge because the statement "I want to win this (i.e. kill them)" is misguided. Not because a DM shouldn't want to win, but because killing them isn't the only (and probably isn't even the best) way to win (i.e. cause the PCs to lose.)
Salla's point of "During the night, your characters all had heart attacks and died. I WIN!" is the classic end point of this way of thinking but that's actually on the right track. If it was "During the night, the kidnappers you had been tailing reach their destination and sacrifice their victims. You lose." I think we'd be getting close to something everyone could get behind. The point is that the players can lose, clearly and decisively, and still be alive.
The flipside of this, the ideal I hope to reach myself, is having players who will choose to kill their characters - not risk death, but actually step deliberately off the cliff - in order to win.
Survive, and still lose. Die, and still win. Aim for that, for both monsters and PCs. Once you have interesting ways for them to fail, you can pull the stops out in terms of tactics, terrain, traps, etc.
[N]o difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions. - L. Tolstoy
To the OP: sounds like what you're after is a board game. A truly balanced DM vs. Players scenario is really outside the scope of 4e. I'm sure it can be done, but in reallity what you will be doing is playtesting a concept rather then "winning" against your players. Not that it won't be fun to try. (as an aside, play Dungeon Command. It's awesome, but more of a 1v1 game)
But regarding the concept of DMs winning as it relates to where this thread has gone: I thought the DM wins when the players have fun.
To the OP: sounds like what you're after is a board game. A truly balanced DM vs. Players scenario is really outside the scope of 4e. I'm sure it can be done, but in reallity what you will be doing is playtesting a concept rather then "winning" against your players. Not that it won't be fun to try. (as an aside, play Dungeon Command. It's awesome, but more of a 1v1 game)
But regarding the concept of DMs winning as it relates to where this thread has gone: I thought the DM wins when the players have fun.
Normally I'd agree with you, but in this situation both parties seem to be completely aware of the competitive nature of this challenge, so why not?
What you're basically looking for is setting up almost a pure board game where it's just tactics....
I like to be contrary, so I'll argue that the opposite would be true: you can run a tough dice game, and if you're really lucky you might cause them to sweat a little. But to be a truly evil DM, put the dice away, and present them with a story or setting that sticks a rusty knife into them and twists it around a little.
Make every victory cost them something.
Give them tough choices, and make those choices things that will haunt them in their sleep.
Freely give the PCs nice things: good friends, trusted allies, shiny stuff, but be sure they understand what sort of a crapsack world they are in during Session Zero. Let them get comfortable with the freebies, and take them for granted. But, once in a while, as Evil DM, you are obligated to take one or two of those nice, easy things and break them in horrible, heart-breaking ways: the Evil DM should learn to be lord of easy-come, easy-go.
Take alignment out of the game, and ensure that it's never as simple as "the orcs in black hats are bad guys, and the elves in white hats are good guys" - when two sides of an argument are basically good guys and friends of the PCs, and your story forces them to choose sides and kick the loser when he's down and then they have to go home with that on their conscience, you know you've been an evil DM. The Evil DM isn't doing his job, if he isn't at least occasionally making the PCs hurt the ones they love.
Hurting the PCs? That's small-time, it's for petty, tin-pot banana-republic Killer DMs. You're better than that. At the very least, hurting the PCs' friends and loved ones should be at the lower end of your ambitions as Evil DM. Aim a little higher than that... getting the PCs to voluntarily help you hurt their loved ones, and try to justify to themselves that they've done the right thing? THAT should be a little more worthy of a higher class of Evil DM.
"Failure doesn't have to equal death." In an ordinary game, that motto would inspire snorts of derision from tin-pot Killer DMs: "that's cheating, you're going too easy on your PCs!" But, ordinary Killer DMs are not artists, and they don't understand the subtleties of these things the way that a truly evil DM does. Failure doesn't have to equal death, in a world where fates worse than death are your bread-and-butter.
Failures should be interesting in ordinary games, but in an Evil DM's game, failures should be interesting in ghastly, horrific, and soul-chilling ways.
But don't paint everything black... any stooge with a paint-roller can do that. As an artist, you are painting something with depth, texture, perspective, subject, foreground and background and depth and heighth, light and shadow. Victories should be interesting, too, and interesting in real and genuine ways that give the PCs convincing illusions of hope. The Killer DM's kingdom is an iron-shod, dice-studded boot stomping on a PC's face forever and ever, but an Evil DM's glorious kingdom is a place where the PCs thank you again and again for lifting your iron-shod boot, and tell you how sweet the air is whenever they have time to breathe. The Evil DM's victims cheer for him whenever he puts the boots to other victims for a while.
Trying to solve out-of-game problems (like cheating, bad attitudes, or poor sportsmanship) with in-game solutions will almost always result in failure, and will probably make matters worse.
Gun Safety Rule #5: Never point the gun at anything you don't intend to destroy. (Never introduce a character, PC, NPC, Villain, or fate of the world into even the possibility of a deadly combat or other dangerous situation, unless you are prepared to destroy it instantly and completely forever.)
Know your group's character sheets, and check them over carefully. You don't want surprises, but, more importantly, they are a gold mine of ideas!
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." It's a problem if the players aren't having fun and it interferes with a DM's ability to run the game effectively; if it's not a problem, 'fixing' at best does little to help, and at worst causes problems that didn't exist before.
"Hulk Smash" characters are a bad match for open-ended exploration in crowds of civilians; get them out of civilization where they can break things and kill monsters in peace.
Success is not necessarily the same thing as killing an opponent. Failure is not necessarily the same thing as dying.
Failure is always an option. And it's a fine option, too, as long as failure is interesting, entertaining, and fun!
"Broken or not, unbalanced or not, if something seems to be preventing the game from being enjoyable, something has to give: either that thing, or other aspects of the game, or your idea of what's enjoyable." - Centauri
The main issue is to throw stuff at them that saps their resources. Permakill their HP and Surges. Up the damage equations and accuracy of your monsters but lower their defenses. Traps and puzzles should abound. Force the players into crappy situations where they have to choose what they can most bear to lose.
Dont just attack a player, attack their skills. If you have a trap heavy dungeon, kick the Thief in the teeth early. Lots of arcane stuff everywhere? Put some pain on the Wizard!
I like a lot of the suggestions and I think I have a few ideas for some encounters. Be aware, this might be long.
1) For encounter one I think using the minion idea is pretty good, but I want to try mixing things up in case there are characters with a good amount of AoE, since like I said the players will be optimizing themselves and I'm pretty sure they'll use a controller that can decimate a horde of minions.
I want to have a undead theme, so I'll try using several ghoul minions (with one or two non-minions hidden with them) with wight's claw grafts to serve as an alpha wave, using them to immobilize the PCs and then draining healing surges from them after getting them immobilized while also using the ghouls to act as disease carriers due to their nature as using touching attacks, maybe Melting Fury or Scarlet Plague.
After this alpha strike, I bring in several wights to drain more healing surges from the players who are backed up with level adjusted Deathlock Wights to aid the ghouls in immobilizing the players while the other wights close in to drain more surges, while also raising fallen allies. I also think I'll give the deathlock wights bestow curse and dying curse with Tomb King's Wrath and give the melee wights Thirst of the Vampire to help keep thier hp up.
I think using Orcus Blood Cultist monster theme powers for the encounter, giving the minions Rotting Strike to add to their damage and Death's Embrace in case they manage to down a PC before they die. I could give Bloodstained Strike or Aura of Impending Death to make players or monsters getting bloodied more interesting. Finally I could give Penumbra of Doom and Necrotic Burst to the Deathlock Wights to help buff and debuff.
The entire fight could take place in a lightless room with Defiled Ground terrain to best benefit the undead enemies and some of the monsters could be holding magic items so that the players will feel happy about making it through the encounter without being suspicious since the items are cursed.
2) For encounter two, I think I can go for a invisible enemy theme. First of all, the entire room is pitch black like the last and there are four columns throughout it with several pools of necromantic seepage to give players knocked into them Soul Rot. The players have to find the enemies and kill them while fending off their assault, however only one monster is actually able to go invisible.
I'll have several skeleton archers (reskinned drow snipers) who are hidden behind illusionary walls that pelt the PCs with poison bolts while one or two exalted brains in a jar, hidden behind an illusion that makes them look as though they're a part of the columns in the room who psychically assault the players (and dominating them when possible) while the players are skirmishing with a balhannoth.
The fight will harmlessly end if the players manage to kill the archers, giving more of a motivation to find and kill the archers than to fight all of the enemies. However I think I could add some traps, perhaps a mirror of life trapping or two that I can try knocking players or force dominated characters into walking up to them.
3) A third encounter counter could be more of a race than a fight. The players will be placed in a huge room filled a bunch of prisoners tied to posts. One one side of the room is a single wraith. The point of the encounter is to release the prisoners (through either a standard action or a minor action through a theivery check) while the wraith will target the restrained prisoners and kill them, turning them into new wraiths, making it a race to prevent the wraiths from killing as much prisoners as possible.
The wraiths will ignore the players unless attacked, however when the last prisoner is killed or released, if the players saved more prisoners than the wraith killed them, the wraiths simply flee. However if the wraiths kill more than the players saved, then the wraiths all attack the players, likly forcing them to flee.
Since the wraiths ignore the players unless attacked, the players could split their forces, one team to slow the wraiths and one to release prisoners. Then again since the encounter is mostly about preventing the wraiths from killing the prisoners, I guess more evilly inclined PCs could kill the prisoners if it is faster that way.
4) For the fourth encounter, I was thinking of something intellectually taxing rather than relying on dice rolls. Placing the PCs in a room in the middle of which is a chess board. One player has to remain playing chess against me (and by me I mean my computer). While the one player is playing chess, the encounter starts slow.
However whenever the PC has a piece captured, a monster is released into the room and the rest of the team has to deal with it to protect the PC who is playing chess (as he/she can't get up without forfeiting). There are two tricks to this. The first is that the higher the value of the captured piece, the stronger the enemy is released. A pawn= a zombie. A knight or biship= a ghoul. A rook= a wight. A queen= a vampire. The second trick is that the room has a custom terrrain feature that raises all undead killed within the room with half of their hp after a random amount of time after their death.
The motivation behind this room is that if the players win the game of chess, all curses are removed from them and their equipment, as well as any diseases they might have, restore any daily item and power uses, restore some of their healing surges, and give them a powerful magic item (this time non-cursed) that allows the wielder to change the damage type of any of their attacks to radiant (which would obviously help against the boss of the dungeon which comes after this encounter). Otherwise the players can simply skip and escape from the room if they want, but they won't get any of those winning benefits.
5) The final encounter will be the boss fight. The players will fight against a lich with the Ascetic of Vecna template that will blast the PCs from a safe distance at the top of one of four pillars of ice while using Lich Step to go back and forth between them. The pillars themselves are controlled by the lich so that they can raise and lower temselves from 10 to 20 squares in hight allowing the lich to go low enough to attack the players before rising up above the range of most attacks. At his side he'll be flanked by level adjusted Fallen Angels of Sorrow (reworked as undead), while level adjusted Fallen Angels of Death take the fight to the PCs themselves.
While the angels are more or less straight forward, the PCs have to use strength checks (or just do damage) to the pillars that the lich is standing on to topple them, forcing him to move from one, to the next, to the next before being forced to fight on the ground. Since the angels all have radiant resistance, the players can't rely on harming them with radiant attacks (though the lich is still vulnerable to them) so if the players get the magic item from the previous encounter, whoever is using it can go all out against the lich while the other players focus on the angels.
Anyway for those who managed to read all of that, what do you think? Any advice on how to improve these encounters? Anything that the players might do to get around them with little effort?
To steal a cue from ... X2 Castle Amber?, the room is the chessboard, with pieces arrayed in proper locations across the room. As soon as a player steps onto the floor/board (to include hovering or flying over), s/he becomes constrained by that pieces movements and no other player can enter that space (deity level magic). When taken, the PCs join a statue gallery off to one side as statues. Should a PC make it to the other side, the remaining PCs (if any) are whisked away to join him/her as the puzzle ends.
So it becomes not so much a game of winning chess, but a game of using chess-legal moves to reach the far side of the board.
Are the darkened rooms magically dark, or simply contain no light sources? I would think it matters.
Cheers!
A shout out to Gaming Grounds in Kent, Ohio and Gamers N Geeks in Mobile, Alabama.
www.zombiehunters.org for all your preparation needs.
http://shtfschool.com/ - why prepping is useful, from one who has been there.
Did the agreement on your end of it include not being able to create PC-type characters? A couple of clerics and wizards slightly higher, or at least equal, level than the PC's with spell penetration or other enhancers that make the spells most effective, ogres with weapon specialization, basically anything the players can use to max out their characters should be open to you too!
Some of what I've read from other posters here play into this: a bunch of moderately tough encounters that wear them down, and they don't have time to lay back and recover spells repeatedly (maybe once). A few fireballs of only 5 or 6 dice, while they're sleeping, can really mess them up. Dispel Magic as an area spell and NOT targeting a particular person can be used to cut into the defenses of the PC's wizards, without having it reflected back at your villains. FLANK ATTACKS, otherwise known a BACKSTABBING, can be nasty. In 1st, 2nd and 3rd edition games, Will o' Wisp are VERY hard to hit and immune to most spells, but aren't overwhelming in power level. I don't know about 4th edition.
Of course, nothing says one or more of the prisoners the heroes rescued halfway thru the adventure can't have a high disguise and acting skill to conceal that he/she/they are vampires...
