[4e] Pimp my Fight (encounter balance Q)

[Urist Ironblood]

Pretty simple question, with a variety of possible answers. One of the wings of the dungeon I've built is crawling with undead who have been raised from the corpses of veterans of a forgotten war. The party is trying to find out what's raising the dead... and I'd love for the party (4x lvl1 PCs: fighter, warlord, cleric, archer-ranger) to try to tackle a Deathlock Wight and a small pack of minions.

Right now I'm looking at the following encounter:

Deathlock Wight (MM p262)
Witherling (MM2, p212)
2x Zombie Rotters (MM p274)
2x Decrepit Skeleton

Are they likely to survive the one-two punch of two level 4 monsters and a bunch of low-level troops? The XP total is just about right... but this seems really dangerous to me. What kind of odds would you give them? How would you tweak the fight to avoid a TPK?

[Mando Knight]

They should be fine. In fact, with two leaders, I'd say this is underestimating the players.

[Myshlaevsky]

Pretty simple question, with a variety of possible answers. One of the wings of the dungeon I've built is crawling with undead who have been raised from the corpses of veterans of a forgotten war. The party is trying to find out what's raising the dead... and I'd love for the party (4x lvl1 PCs: fighter, warlord, cleric, archer-ranger) to try to tackle a Deathlock Wight and a small pack of minions.

Right now I'm looking at the following encounter:

Deathlock Wight (MM p262)
Witherling (MM2, p212)
2x Zombie Rotters (MM p274)
2x Decrepit Skeleton

Are they likely to survive the one-two punch of two level 4 monsters and a bunch of low-level troops? The XP total is just about right... but this seems really dangerous to me. What kind of odds would you give them? How would you tweak the fight to avoid a TPK?

It looks alright; if you're worried about a TPK just facilitate a means for the PC's to escape. Earlier in the adventure consider having them find a lockable chamber or hallowed zone which undead cannot enter. If they can retreat to safety they'll be more likely to consider fleeing if things go very badly.

You might want to note that the Zombie Rotters are considerably worse than the Decrepit Skeletons, despite being a higher level of minion.

I would consider taking out the Deathlock Wight for a Battle Wight which has been reduced down to level 4. This will make the encounter a bit tougher but a strong soldier will prevent the group overwhelming your minions only to just lock down the skirmishers. Remember and use the Witherling's climb speed. It can attack, move up the walls and then jump and strike at a new target the following turn.

I'd be concerned with that PC's will deal with the minions quickly.

[Mando Knight]

I'd be concerned with that PC's will deal with the minions quickly.

They definitely will. There's an Archer Ranger for the Striker, who can take down half of the Minions in a single standard action, regardless of how far apart they are.

Also: the team has a cleric, and they're fighting undead. The cleric, especially if it's a "LAZ0R" cleric, will fire radiant damage around like crazy.

[Yoren]

They should be fine. I've found minions are significantly less threatening than I think was intended. Also, like Mando said, clerics can deal out plenty of radiant damage which will make the fight significantly easier. With 2 leaders and a ranged striker they should have more than enough healing especially if hey decide to use their dailies.

[Myshlaevsky]

They definitely will. There's an Archer Ranger for the Striker, who can take down half of the Minions in a single standard action, regardless of how far apart they are.

Also: the team has a cleric, and they're fighting undead. The cleric, especially if it's a "LAZ0R" cleric, will fire radiant damage around like crazy.

This is what I was thinking. I'd be tempted to lower the level of the Witherling by one or two and include an additional one. Another thought that occurred to me was to include 6 or 8 minions and/or allow the minions to resurrect until the wight is killed and/or give the minions an ability which deals explosive (read: close burst) necrotic damage when they are destroyed.

[Gralamin]

Suggestion: If the encounter seems to easy, have 1 or 2 ghouls break down a boarded up door in a crypt, and come running into the encounter.

[Yakk]

A level+3 soldier is the type of creature that massively over-rewards to-hit boosting. And down-leveled monsters tend to be stronger than a monster of that level.

To-hit boosting is already among the most powerful ways to boost a 4e character -- making it even more important isn't a great plan.

[Myshlaevsky]

A level+3 soldier is the type of creature that massively over-rewards to-hit boosting. And down-leveled monsters tend to be stronger than a monster of that level.

To-hit boosting is already among the most powerful ways to boost a 4e character -- making it even more important isn't a great plan.

I'm aware of the latter point but I hadn't really considered the former. You know the 4e system much better than I probably ever will - do you consider it a bad idea to down-level monsters at all? Do you think it's a better proposition to down-level Brutes or Artillery?

[Urist Ironblood]

They should be fine. I've found minions are significantly less threatening than I think was intended.

That's a good point. I've addressed this in another fight in my adventure (but still not play-tested it) by having all of the minions start out with a fistful of hit points and by giving their boss monster a ton of CHA and the warlord's Bastion of Defense power -- effectively making most of the minions into 2-hitters and breaking up the metagaming strategy of "okay, tag all the ones that look like that while we isolate the big guys."

Myshlaevsky, I like the way you think - perhaps when they kill any minion, it flies apart in a cloud of darkness like a Dark Creeper's Killing Dark power? Minions are immune from the resurrection power (as written) but I could start them with (say) 32hp and halve their hps each time they rise. Of course if I'm going to start them with 32hp, why can't I just use four Zombies (40-hp, lvl 2 brute, MM274) instead of a mish-mash of minions?

The encounter takes place in an underground cathedral with high vaulted ceilings, so having the witherling go vertical is definitely going to freak them out, especially if the only light is from sconces at head-height. This is only going to be the second or third encounter in the adventure with any real vertical dimension but I love making them think in three dimensions.


It looks alright; if you're worried about a TPK just facilitate a means for the PC's to escape. Earlier in the adventure consider having them find a lockable chamber or hallowed zone which undead cannot enter. If they can retreat to safety they'll be more likely to consider fleeing if things go very badly.

This is super useful. If I can give them this escape route then I can pile on some more cordwood and let them have fun with the bonfire. One of my players grew up in voudoun country and is likely to try salting or burning the zombies' corpses, which I think I'll probably house-rule as good-enough-to-prevent-rezzing-now-look-behind-you.

Thanks for the help everyone.

[Myshlaevsky]

Myshlaevsky, I like the way you think - perhaps when they kill any minion, it flies apart in a cloud of darkness like a Dark Creeper's Killing Dark power? Minions are immune from the resurrection power (as written) but I could start them with (say) 32hp and halve their hps each time they rise. Of course if I'm going to start them with 32hp, why can't I just use four Zombies (40-hp, lvl 2 brute, MM274) instead of a mish-mash of minions?

I'd not give Minions equivalent HP to a normal monster because for a given HP the normal monster is going to be a lot more exciting. It also affects the challenge they represent quite a bit - rather than increase xp for an effect during the encounter (like bringing back minions) you'd have to adjust the xp of the minions themselves. Consider just making a new zombie minion or monster with some annoying attack like a grab or a burst of darkness/damage when killed.


The encounter takes place in an underground cathedral with high vaulted ceilings, so having the witherling go vertical is definitely going to freak them out, especially if the only light is from sconces at head-height. This is only going to be the second or third encounter in the adventure with any real vertical dimension but I love making them think in three dimensions.

If it's dark above head height I'd be seriously tempted to give the Witherling the Rogue template or even just Sneak Attack.

[Yakk]

I'm aware of the latter point but I hadn't really considered the former. You know the 4e system much better than I probably ever will - do you consider it a bad idea to down-level monsters at all? Do you think it's a better proposition to down-level Brutes or Artillery?/shrug, it can work. The concern was that you had a probably slightly too powerful solder (being a down-leveled soldier), mixed with the problem of "level+3 soldier".

Being stronger-than-you-should-be-balance-wise matters more when your opponent is stronger and more important. I don't know if soldiers are particularly problematic with down-leveling.

[Urist Ironblood]

Yakk, I feel like you're making a general statement that I'm not grasping, and that it could bear on the easiness/difficulty of my future encounters. Is there a deeper rule of thumb on encounter balance beyond the XP totals that has to do with the right mix of soldiers/lurkers/etc.?

I've pored over the DMG for hints on this, but at level one, the DMG templates for encounters ("two lines", "wolf pack", etc.) are not applicable for a party of four, because there's no good way to get a challenging pack of monsters that sum to the right amount of XP without piling on minions (and we've discussed the problem of minions). I've been trying to design a "two lines" fight with soldiers or brutes in front and skirmisher minions with Reach weapons in the rear, for example, but so far it doesn't look like there's a good solution.

Another example: tomorrow night they're going up against a lvl4 Orc Berserker, a lvl3 "orc infiltrator" (basically an orc rogue rolled just like a PC, with slightly limited powers), and a goblin blackblade. For what it's worth, terrain is lightly obstructed and lighting is a central campfire with darkness around the edges. Having read the assessments of their likely damage output further up the thread, I'm thinking a bunch of lurker/archers in the darkness (led by the berserker) is going to be a more interesting fight.

In short, it seems like every rule of thumb I read breaks down at low levels, and that the real hard work of encounter design consists of eyeballing and guesswork... but Yakk seems to have a more intuitive understanding of the mechanics. What am I missing?

[Sipex]

The only thing I'd be worried about is that the PCs are level 1 and you're giving them a couple level+3 monsters. I found my PCs weren't great performers at the start of things as 1 level gives you only a little stretching room in terms of magic items and abilities.

If your PCs are experienced players they should be able to hold out ok though.

[Mando Knight]

but Yakk seems to have a more intuitive understanding of the mechanics. What am I missing?

He's Yakk. He does that. 4E mechanics are like grade-school arithmetic to him. :smalltongue:

Also, harder is better, generally. Broken-hard (like an auto-hit at-will burst 3 medium-damage attack) is bad, but hard because of the number of enemies, or because of a few higher level enemies (not too much higher, though...) is good. Because when in doubt, turn to a perennial favorite (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/6/22/).

[Urist Ironblood]

If your PCs are experienced players they should be able to hold out ok though.

One of them cut his teeth on D&D 1st Ed. (!), two have played other RPGs and min-maxed characters in WoW enough that they get the basic idea. The fourth player rolled her first d20 last week.

The orc berserker is carrying an Opportunistic Greataxe +1, so I'm a little nervous that he could roll a 20 and accidentally the whole thing, but other than that I'm pretty comfortable with amping things up a little. Thanks for the advice, everyone.

[Myshlaevsky]

One of them cut his teeth on D&D 1st Ed. (!), two have played other RPGs and min-maxed characters in WoW enough that they get the basic idea. The fourth player rolled her first d20 last week.

The orc berserker is carrying an Opportunistic Greataxe +1, so I'm a little nervous that he could roll a 20 and accidentally the whole thing, but other than that I'm pretty comfortable with amping things up a little. Thanks for the advice, everyone.

Yeah, that's potentially enough to instantly kill one of the PC's.

I would, like Mando Knight, advise using more enemies rather than a few higher level ones. I just find the Deathlock Wight pretty uninteresting as a monster.

Concerning my earlier advice about giving the PC's a bolthole to retreat to, you should remember that the effect of the Wight will be reduced if they can just rest away those lost healing surges.

[Urist Ironblood]

Yeah, that's potentially enough to instantly kill one of the PC's.

Agreed. I'm going to be rolling his d20 behind a screen because I do not want to kill the novice in her first session. I'm going to take away his level 3 rogue support and just send him in with goblin sharpshooters. The cover and terrain mean that the players can solve this in a variety of ways. As long as they're careful about provoking OAs and staying near the healer, they should be fine, but I think I can make it touch and go for them.


Concerning my earlier advice about giving the PC's a bolthole to retreat to, you should remember that the effect of the Wight will be reduced if they can just rest away those lost healing surges.

Maybe I need to add skeletal archers to my dungeon, so if the players decide to hole up, the Wight can fulminate outside their door for a few moments and then leave, and then show up a few minutes later with ranged support.

Or give the hallowed area two open entrances so that they can run through it and keep moving through the dungeon...? ...you've given me plenty to ponder.

[Yakk]

Yakk, I feel like you're making a general statement that I'm not grasping, and that it could bear on the easiness/difficulty of my future encounters. Is there a deeper rule of thumb on encounter balance beyond the XP totals that has to do with the right mix of soldiers/lurkers/etc.?
Hmm. I'm saying that high level soldiers are something you should use sparingly, and that down-leveled opponents will tend to be stronger than budgeted by a small amount (but it isn't going to be as bad as, say, unerrataed needlefang drake swarms, or fire beatles -- just a minor concern).

The soldier problem is a problem with the to-hit bonus feats and powers. Feats that grant a bonus to hit against 'normal' defence targets are about as good as the ones that grant a bonus to damage. Against 'high' defence targets, damage bonus feats fall off in usefulness -- while to-hit feats get better (relative to each other).

It is tempting to throw high-defence creatures at players -- be they MM1 solos and elites, or bumping up the level of opponents -- but doing so over-rewards "to hit boosting" on the part of players. Think about throwing more lower-level opponents, or low-level elites instead of higher-level non-elites, against players -- or at least mix them in.

I've pored over the DMG for hints on this, but at level one, the DMG templates for encounters ("two lines", "wolf pack", etc.) are not applicable for a party of four, because there's no good way to get a challenging pack of monsters that sum to the right amount of XP without piling on minions (and we've discussed the problem of minions). I've been trying to design a "two lines" fight with soldiers or brutes in front and skirmisher minions with Reach weapons in the rear, for example, but so far it doesn't look like there's a good solution.A party of 4 is pretty close in size to a party of 5. Once past level 1, don't be afraid to use larger numbers of lower level opponents -- a party of 4 level X+1 players has about the same XP budget as a party of 5 level X+0 players.

There are a few words of caution about using 'edge of range' brutes and soldiers. I'm saying that these concerns can cause problems even before you reach the edge of range.

Another example: tomorrow night they're going up against a lvl4 Orc Berserker, a lvl3 "orc infiltrator" (basically an orc rogue rolled just like a PC, with slightly limited powers), and a goblin blackblade. For what it's worth, terrain is lightly obstructed and lighting is a central campfire with darkness around the edges. Having read the assessments of their likely damage output further up the thread, I'm thinking a bunch of lurker/archers in the darkness (led by the berserker) is going to be a more interesting fight.
Sure, it will work -- but you note you are tending to use 'above PC level' opponents.

Range attack minions at low levels are generally not considered underpowered -- melee range minions are forced to clump up, which makes them overly vulnerable against area damage.

In short, it seems like every rule of thumb I read breaks down at low levels, and that the real hard work of encounter design consists of eyeballing and guesswork...
Using the XP budget, and limiting you to +/- 3 level monsters (with the occasional +/-4 or +/-5), will make enjoyable and doable encounters. I was just nit-picking that a +3 soldier could cause a wiff-fest, and over-reward certain kinds of min-maxing to the point that a striker who didn't pump accuracy might be doing less damage than a non-striker who pumped accuracy. It was a 'be careful with that', not a 'this will be an un-fun encounter'.

Repeatedly throwing level+3 monsters at PCs is not an ideal situation. Down-leveling even higher level opponents to being level+3 monsters is quite possibly not going to downgrade their power the right amount (down-leveling is an art, not a science). There are close to PC level monsters you can use instead -- Goblins, Kobolds, Bullywugs, Undead, Bandits, etc.

And not every fight need be extremely hard -- you can ramp up difficulty as the players learn how to play their characters.

And use minions. Sure, they might be under-XP valued, but use them anyhow. Maybe have 5 melee minions instead of 4 per normal monster.

[its_all_ogre]

personally i love the deathlock wight and think that should stay in.
another option would be to have some form of minion creation going, maybe an open crypt in the room or a series of mass graves?
every round a minion crawls out of this place and is ready to act.
this continues until the wight and other intelligent non-minion undead is destroyed.

alternatively a nice room i played through has a strong necrotic effect which automatically animates any undead minions in the room unless they are all dead. although i think you'd need mroe minions to make this work as with a mere 4 that could happen in one round very easily.
in my own game there were 10 decrepit skeletons in a room with this effect along with a deathlock wight and a boneshard skeleton.

also you can use the immortal line "arise my undead minions" to summon them...you know it makes sense :smallbiggrin:
just mix the wall climber in with the rest so it appears to be animated by this action too, that'll scare them when it starts climbing everywhere

[Urist Ironblood]

personally i love the deathlock wight and think that should stay in.

Oh, he's the anchor of that fight. He's almost certain to stay in. Sorry if I muddied the waters by talking about two different fights.


another option would be to have some form of minion creation going, maybe an open crypt in the room or a series of mass graves?
every round a minion crawls out of this place and is ready to act.
this continues until the wight and other intelligent non-minion undead is destroyed.

This is happening elsewhere in the dungeon; a large bronze bell has been cursed, and every time it tolls a corpse somewhere in the dungeon rises. The dungeon is (natch!) a set of catacombs, with tens of thousands of corpses in various states of disrepair, including the corpses of some powerful veterans felled in a forgotten war. Most of the corpses that come back are lvl1 minions, but every now and again...


Repeatedly throwing level+3 monsters at PCs is not an ideal situation. Down-leveling even higher level opponents to being level+3 monsters is quite possibly not going to downgrade their power the right amount (down-leveling is an art, not a science). There are close to PC level monsters you can use instead -- Goblins, Kobolds, Bullywugs, Undead, Bandits, etc.

Yeah, they'll be doing a lot of fights in the next few encounters where it's them versus a mid- to large-sized pack of low level critters:

A dozen or so gray wolves (with some "striped wolves" skinned as minions)
A platoon or so of undead lvl1 minions (plot advancement)
Rats (players' choice to face the rats or a skill challenge or both)
Goblins (low level, tight formations - tactical test mostly)


...so this orc berserker is the baddest dude they're going to come across in the next few days of adventuring. Storywise, the point of the encounter is that an orc warlord engaged in a serious campaign pulled this orc berserker off the front lines and sent him on a special mission to get the MacGuffin back. I want the players to start wondering what they've gotten themselves into.

The more I look at the encounters I've scripted and the obstacles I've placed in front of the PCs, the more I think they're going to be level 2 by the time they face the Deathlock Wight. Of course, by that time I'll have more experience crafting encounters around the party and I'll know what they can and can't handle.

[Myshlaevsky]

I'd say switch all minions to Decrepit Skeletons, add two more minions, drop the Witherling to level 2 and include an additional Witherling. That's still only 600 xp, so there's room to do more. Of course, if you keep bringing the minions back you should increase the xp reward accordingly.