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Darth Stabber
2009-04-03, 08:42 AM
So I was playing 4e last night and my lvl2 party of 6 (in a module designed for 5) got through 8 encounters before taking an extended rest. And most of the encounters were Aproximatly lvl 3 encounters. The only reason we stopped was because the Druid ran out of healing surges and was at 1 hp.

Party Make up:
Human Melee Druid
Human warlord
Drow Wild sorcerer
Drow Warden
Elven Avenger of Tempus
Dwarf Guardian Fighter(me)

Out tactics tend to revolve around defenders and avenger charge, everyone else contribute. And we are resolving encounters with in two turns on alot of them. The Avenger in particular shortens encounters her normal first turn is Oath, Righteous Rage of Temus, Charge, Angelic Alacrity and the target will usually just die to that, if not, Action point, bonds of pursuit. And we got through 8 encounters before going back to the Inn, And most folks had atleast 2 surges left. The warden had like 4, I had 2 + dwarven Armor still to use. Only the Druid was out of surges. No one had any dailies (item or otherwise) left, except the warlord and I had not yet used our dwarven armor. Is the extra player that overpowering, or is the group overly powerfull (i doubt that one given we only have 1 ranged character, everyone else has a tendency to melee), or have we just gotten lucky on encounters?

Kurald Galain
2009-04-03, 08:54 AM
So I was playing 4e last night and my lvl2 party of 6 (in a module designed for 5)
Well, there you have it. Your group has 20% more members than the adventure accounts for :smallsmile:


The Avenger in particular shortens encounters her normal first turn is Oath, Righteous Rage of Temus, Charge, Angelic Alacrity
(1) RROT is known to be very powerful.
(2) I'm AFB, but isn't that four actions? And isn't charging supposed to end your turn?


No one had any dailies (item or otherwise) left,
That would mean you have quite a lot of items for level 2.

Also, is your DM new to 4E? Because it may take him a few sessions to adapt monster strategy. Also, is this homebrew or printed? Because several printed modules are known to be easy (and others are not!) Also, is everybody having fun? If so, who cares if this is a lot? :smallbiggrin:

Oracle_Hunter
2009-04-03, 10:11 AM
Well, there you have it. Your group has 20% more members than the adventure accounts for :smallsmile:

This is basically it.

Published modules do not adapt well for parties of varying sizes - your DM should be looking at the XP Budget of each encounter and adjusting it for your increased party size.

Also, RROT is hella-broken. It basically copies the 11th Level Divine Oracle power "Prophecy of Doom"... at level 1. That just ain't right.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-04-03, 10:30 AM
Isn't encounter level 3 for 5 PCs pretty much directly encounter level 2 for 6 PCs? The number of enemies is probably too low, too. The DM should just have increased the XP value of each encounter by 20%. (Possibly more; PC party power may not just increase linearly when you add PCs, because each new PC is likely to make the existing ones more powerful.)

Wizard_Tom
2009-04-03, 10:47 AM
As the DM of the game the Module is Scepter Tower of Spellguard and I have (in most fights) thrown in an extra monster or two to keep them about at their intended difficulty.

A big part of the reason it has been going really well is for them is the large amount of teamwork they have managed to maintain. Additionally the close quarters of most of the fights have given the very control-heavy party the advantage over monsters that want to be more mobile but are usually locked down by the party and walls being too close. Overall though I have tried to follow the tactics suggested in the booklet altering when they were obviously stupid and generally the wererat part of the module does not have particularly clever monster tactics.

The group also has a couple of new players in it and I don't want to scare them off with difficult encounters right off.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-04-03, 10:57 AM
Limited mobility will definitely be a problem, and I think it may affect monsters more than PCs, especially as the party has no rogue or melee ranger, for instance. Minions will be much less useful when squashed together, for sure, and many other monsters - like all Skirmishers and Lurkers - need room to maneuver.

Thajocoth
2009-04-03, 11:00 AM
When we had 6 people in a 5, the DM added 20% more enemies... Same fights & stuff, just with some of the monsters duplicated.

eepop
2009-04-03, 11:00 AM
But you don't want to bore them away with almost trivial encounters either. Looks like you were taking some good steps, but if they are really working well together step it up again.

Maybe set the encounters for a group of 6 at 2 levels over instead of 1.

And if they still are rolling through them well, go ahead and slide up to 3. Or keep most of them at 2, but adjust one fight to 4-5 above for a real challenge.

Awesomologist
2009-04-03, 11:10 AM
Besides adding monsters you may want to try adding stuff like traps, since the party lacks a rogue and most likely thievery, and some difficult or skilled terrain, such as slick surfaces that require athletics/acrobatics to cross. That should slow down your Avenger a little bit.
Also he should not be taking any more actions after a charge.
Sometimes adding more monsters doesn't really do much more except provide another punching bag.

All that being said, if your players are having fun don't ratchet up the difficulty too much. Let them have fun.

Darth Stabber
2009-04-03, 11:15 AM
Angelic alacrity(2[w] +wis) may be used as part of a charge in place of a basic attack, and with an +1 vicious executioner's axe(2handed, d12, brutal 1, High crit), a warlord buff (don't remember which one), and 19 wisdom, it hits pretty hard on an auto crit. Plus she gets to roll her to hit twice, and if, by some odd chance, she misses she's an elf so she gets to reroll it.

Avengers are F'n scary, especially Elven ones that are in tight with Tempus. So Basically once per encounter she gets to pretty much auto drop a guy. Now when she's done with that she is out of encounter abilities (namely alacrity, and RRoT, and possibly Elven Accuracy as well), but that combo is just beefy. Is there any other striker that can do anything of that caliber @ lvl 2? If you are a solo you are bloodied, if you are not, your dead.

As far as the DM not playing the monsters well: They don't have long enough to do anything more than a turns worth of actions, so that isn't even his fault. The only encounter that was seriously difficult for us was one against bats, and that was only because we only had one true ranged guy (the Sorc). We just keep plowing through milestones, and rolling along. And as far as traps go, we've just been taking them the hard way, and it has done little to impede our progress. Honestly, I am having a ton of fun with this module, I don't know if I want it to get harder or not. Besides how many times do you get to go 8 straight encounters with no extended rest.

As a note, I am not the GM.

Wizard_Tom
2009-04-03, 11:35 AM
Actually Angelic Alacrity just lets her shift 1 + dex. But that might as well be charging without the +1 to hit.

If this was a module I was designing the encounters would certainly be more interesting, but this is mostly just a once a week casual game to feed my cravings between my normal weekly games. Also we have a limited time together as several of us are moving in the next 2-3 months so I just decided to run a module. The next segment of dungeon looks like it will be a bit harder for the party. I'm basically limiting scaling to what I can do with just the module infront of me for speed of play and limited prep.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-04-03, 11:40 AM
Avengers are F'n scary, especially Elven ones that are in tight with Tempus. So Basically once per encounter she gets to pretty much auto drop a guy. Now when she's done with that she is out of encounter abilities (namely alacrity, and RRoT, and possibly Elven Accuracy as well), but that combo is just beefy. Is there any other striker that can do anything of that caliber @ lvl 2? If you are a solo you are bloodied, if you are not, your dead.

If there were another Divine Striker, then yes.

If a Rogue could get auto-crit with a 2[w] Rapier attack and had CA, he'd do 16+12(or 16) + DEX. Your Executioner Axe does 24+4+1d12. A Longbow Ranger using a 2[W] attack would do 20+6(or 8)+DEX. Heck, a Warlock using Vampiric Embrace would do 16+6+CON, and Warlocks suck at doing direct damage.

God, I hate RROT so much :smallfurious:

Grey_Wolf_c
2009-04-03, 03:40 PM
God, I hate RROT so much :smallfurious:

Out of sheer curiosity, where can I find RRoT? I've checked PHBII and I cannot seem to find any level-1 power in the avenger that comes close.

Thanks,

Grey Wolf

Hzurr
2009-04-03, 03:53 PM
A couple things about group size:

The group I'm DMing (4E) currently has 7 players (yes, it's crazy). I soon realized that just increasing the number of monsters so that the xp budget is correct is...usually not effective. If I was very good at choosing monsters that played to each others strengths and the party's weaknesses, it worked, but the majority of the time, the party plowed through the additional monsters. (Again, not always, but often).

I've only just recently realized that the way for me to challenge the party was to give them odd encounters. We recently finished H2: Thunderspire Mountain (heavily modified, especially the 2nd half, which didn't even take place in Thunderspire). The encounters that really pushed them were the ones in the Well of Demons, where the combat took place in odd environments with traps and things like that. Mirrors that are going to teleport the PCs places, and prevent them from using their larger numbers? Yes please! Giant statues that attack and slide them into pools of blood that poison them? Nearly killed some PCs!

We also had one that took place in the base of an old wooden tower, where the party were fighting some Shadar-Kai. A Shadar-Kai witch was able to make a zone of darkness in the base of the tower that all the Shadar-Kai could see in, but none of the PCs. The only way the PCs were able to win that battle, was when the Barbarian and the Warlord decided that some of the tower's support pillars would be much easier to hit than the Shadar-Kai. (amusingly enough, the wizard had readied his action, so when the Shadar-Kai witch dropped the darkness and tried to run because the building was collapsing, he grabbed her with Bigby's icy grasp, and held her in place. She got squished).

But yeah, that's just another example of how good use of the environment (especially one that doesn't harm the monsters, but does harm the PCs) can make a huge difference. It's what bumped encounters up from "Speedbumps" and into the "hmm...this could be a problematic" or even "HOLY CRAP" territory.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-04-03, 03:58 PM
Out of sheer curiosity, where can I find RRoT? I've checked PHBII and I cannot seem to find any level-1 power in the avenger that comes close.

Thanks,

Grey Wolf

Ha! You notice that it has "Tempus" in the name? That's because it's from the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide as a Channel Divinity feat.

What were they thinking?

EDIT:

But yeah, that's just another example of how good use of the environment (especially one that doesn't harm the monsters, but does harm the PCs) can make a huge difference. It's what bumped encounters up from "Speedbumps" and into the "hmm...this could be a problematic" or even "HOLY CRAP" territory.

Well, that and making sure you have a Controller in the monster group. Controller/Leader types can dramatically increase the effectiveness of a group of monsters.

One only has to look at the difference a Goblin Hexer makes when dropped into an Encounter :smallamused:

Grey_Wolf_c
2009-04-03, 04:09 PM
Ha! You notice that it has "Tempus" in the name? That's because it's from the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide as a Channel Divinity feat.

What were they thinking?

Thanks, found it. Yeah, Tempus should've been a clue.

And you are right, that's a ridiculously overpowered encounter ability. All I can think is that they ran out of space for the ability, and they put something that was only three lines long so it wouldn't mess up the page.

Grey Wolf

Flabbicus
2009-04-03, 08:22 PM
As the DM of the game the Module is Scepter Tower of Spellguard and I have (in most fights) thrown in an extra monster or two to keep them about at their intended difficulty.

A big part of the reason it has been going really well is for them is the large amount of teamwork they have managed to maintain. Additionally the close quarters of most of the fights have given the very control-heavy party the advantage over monsters that want to be more mobile but are usually locked down by the party and walls being too close. Overall though I have tried to follow the tactics suggested in the booklet altering when they were obviously stupid and generally the wererat part of the module does not have particularly clever monster tactics.

The group also has a couple of new players in it and I don't want to scare them off with difficult encounters right off.

Just from personal experience I remember my party had a ton of trouble with fighting Barthas. His blood-draining power whenever one of us became bloodied drew out the battle a lot.