4e Homebrewing and Encounter design sounding board.

[Morgan_Scott82]

Alright, I'm in the process of designing my first 4th edition adventure, with the goal of having something ready to play as quickly as possible when June rolls around and the books finally hit my doorstep in that wonderful, wonderful amazon.com box.

Of course designing adventures without a complete understanding of the rules or even proper reference materials, is challenging to say the least. What I'd like is to create a thread that can be used as a sounding board for people attempted to design for 4e before its arrival. Sort of a think tank, brain dump, prep site. Sound Cool? I know I'd appreciate the help and am totally willing to offer my limited insight in exchange.

Thanks.

[Morgan_Scott82]

So let me start things off with a couple of brain scratchers that I've been mulling over.

I've got an encounter in mind that I imaging being a blast to run. The PCs are in a row boat making their way to shore, en route they get into an encounter with several archers on shore and a Shark who attacks the boat from underneath attempting to topple the PCs into the water for a little snack time. The shark's tactics are to attack the ship from underneath then swim down, dissappearing into the murky water. If a PC jumps overboard, the boat is destroyed, or a PC ends up in the water for any reason the shark changes tactics to instead attack any bloodied characters in the water with "bite and run" style attacks.

So do I design the shark as a Lurker or a Skirmisher?

For powers I want some sort of charge attack, which I've tentatively been refering to by the placeholder "Air Jaws" in my notes until I find something better, and a power that gives a bonus against bloodied foes.

Oh I forgot to list it in the first post but here is the best resource I've seen for 4e design to date, its basically all the previews and information trickled out over the last several months compiled in one place: http://www.ucalgary.ca/~amwhit/4e_PrRC_v2.2.pdf