justaguy: Generally it hasn’t been a problem just to drop a monster, and my players have pretty strong characters so they can handle a bit more than they should. I have run into that problem in published adventures though and had to fudge it a bit or include allies, and whatnot.

Nicholas: I tend to agree with you about the sweet spot, and thanks! I need to update my bio.

Mike: I’m going to see how the damage works out in Paragon and try to use more recent monsters (like in MM2) and see how that works, and try tweaking from there, perhaps using your rule. I think 3/4 HP for the MM1 monsters is the right amount to cut.

Original Sultan: Thanks for weighing in! It reminds me that I should directly talk to my players about these things more often. Your comment about skill challenges is especially insightful, considering I had tried the opposite tack of pulling the rules back, but maybe I should put them more forward instead. Also agree on the melee/ranged distinction.

The O: That’s OK, because I’m just going to kill Gurias with a fireball anyway.

Wyatt: Yeah, I’ll have to give it a shot. I don’t want to continually harass his PC (well, I kinda do, but it seems bad) but I should use more encounters like that.

Saragon: I like it! I might consider something like it. Though my alternative that’s been floating around in my head is the ability to fast-cast any ritual by using a skill challenge. We’ll see if it gels.

But each time, I feel like I as a DM am fudging it: 10 minutes go by uneventfully. I WANT to reward clever use of rituals, so I just let it go.

I solved this problem with rituals in my game with a simple homebrew feat: Ritual Preparation.

During an extended rest, anyone with the Ritual Caster feat can “pre-cast” a single ritual they know. Material costs must be paid for when the ritual is prepared, and any focus required by the ritual must be present during both the preparation time and when the ritual is actually cast.

Once prepared, that ritual can be cast as a standard action, at which point that ritual “slot” becomes available again. I call for the requisite skill check at different times depending on what’s appropriate for the spell, but generally when it’s actually “triggered” so that players don’t know what the result of the spell will be ahead of time.

There’s an additional tier-based restriction: Heroic characters can use this feat on any ritual with a casting time of 10 minutes or less. Paragon characters can prepare rituals with a casting time of 30 minutes or less. Epic characters can do rituals with a casting time of 1 hour or less. (The continuing restriction into Epic is important to avoid having Raise Dead prepped.)

As a DM, and Dave is in my game as a wizard so he can tell you, I try to throw lurkers and skirmishers at the ranged PCs as much as possible. For the first 10 adventures of my game the Bugbear Strangler was one of my favorite monsters.

Wyatt´s last post: Might of Eden Week Part 4: Warlord

Then there was the time I disenchanted an ancient, evil artifact weapon while the city collapsed around us because, hey, residuum!

There are several things a PC has to worry about in combat.
1. dealing damage to monsters
2. absorbing/healing/protecting himself against damage from monsters
3. movement and positioning
4. other – includes defender’s attempt to occupy monsters/protect other PCs, leader’s attempt to heal other PCs, controller’s attempt to manipulate the environment/terrain, and other special circumstances (e.g. mission objective of placing the gem in the idol’s mouth before the golem is activated, etc.).

The more important each of these things are to your character (or the more your character has to worry about these things) the more fun combat is. Thus the fighter, to whom all 4 of those things are important, will find combat very fun. The spell-slinging eladrin wizard, on the other hand, only really deals with #1 and #4 from above – movement and positioning are unimportant because all of his spells are in range and he can easily escape combat if the monsters get too close, and absorbing/healing/protecting against damage from monsters is unimportant because he rarely even gets attacked, let alone damaged.

When using a map and minis, #3 really becomes crucial. If movement and positioning are important for your character, combat will be a lot more fun because every turn will present an opportunity to gain a positional advantage on the enemy – as well as an opportunity to attack. If you are a long range character to which positioning is unimportant, then most turns will consist only of an attack.

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that most PCs, being non-human, will only have 2 at-will attack powers (and until the higher levels of heroic tier very few other powers). This means that many turns the choice of attack is not really a tough choice at all. Thus, for a ranged character, may turns will simply consist of one obvious choice of attack power, and that’s it. For a melee character, there is the additional choice of where to move, doubling the number of important decisions that are made during the turn.

I sense that at higher levels, when PCs have 3-4 encounter powers, 2-3 daily powers, and utility powers, the lack of at-will powers will become less of a problem. But at the lower levels of heroic tier, I think the lack of at-will powers really makes playing a ranged character a lot less fun than a melee character.

1. Agree that the Wizard doesn’t seem very much fun. I think it would be more fun to use more blast or burst spells and less specific target spells, even though most wizard blast/burst spells will hit PCs as well as monsters, and would thus be less effective overall. But the potential Abe-like hilarity is just a critical hit on a PC away.

2. Love the minis and the maps. Always have loved them in D&D, now we get a ruleset that really encourages them.

3. Combat is a little longer than ideal, but frankly it doesn’t matter how long it is as long as it is fun. Which leads to…

4. Melee (or close range) characters are more fun than ranged characters. Characters that are versatile in combat are more fun than those that are optimized to do 1 thing really well.

5. Never really thought about the number of players. For me I had about the same amount of fun regardless of party size.

6. Agree that the published adventures have too many combats. For some of them, it just seemed like a mindless dungeon crawl, with one room of monsters entirely unrelated to the next.

7. The reason that you haven’t seen a completely successful skill challenge in your game is because your PCs don’t understand how skill challenges work. It’s really that simple. The first time you ran a skill challenge, you gave a very vague, bare-bones explanation of how they worked – which was fine at the time (no need to overwhelm the players, after all). But there should have been a more detailed follow-up the next time we did a skill challenge. Instead, no more instruction was given. You gotta remember that some of your PCs don’t even know how their own powers/items work. How many of them are really going to dig through the rules in the DMG to figure out how skill challenges work – other than me, that is ?

Omitted from the initial explanation was any mention of the primary skill / secondary skill distinction. Omitted was any explanation that you can use the same primary skill more than one time – even if you are successful (in fact you are supposed to do that – but observation from our skill challenges indicates that the PCs don’t understand this).

Additionally, I don’t think that the primary skills are even disclosed during our skill challenges; the PCs are left to figure them out on their own. That is fine when you are running more experienced players (read: ones who understand how skill challenges work) or when the skills are incredibly obvious, but IMO, until our group becomes more comfortable with how skill challenges work the primary skills should always be disclosed up front.

8. Damage doesn’t scale with level, but with new magic items and feats / powers, your damage should be increasing. The game expects you to be able to upgrade your weapons and armor as you level up, but in practice this is rarely possible.

9. Agree that 4th edition is my favorite. Every combat is challenging, if not for the PCs then at least for the tactical/strategic minds of the players. Every character can do cool things. Plenty of options in combat. Plenty of options in building a character. Still the same D&D feel. Looking forward to paragon tier.

10. The Game has proven once again that going the extra mile as a DM really pays dividends in terms of the players’ enjoyment. Things like music, appropriate miniatures & terrain, and putting everything on the Wiki really makes the game more fun for the players. It’s been great so far and I’m looking forward to paragon tier.

I’ve been complaining about the speed of battles for a while until I just started incorporating the 3/4 hps and +1/2 level damage to monsters. Houseruling on the DM side means players don’t have to even know what you’re doing although my players are now a lot more worried. Our sticky fighter lost 7 surges in one battle, going to bloodied in the first round. Fun!

Things get a little weirder in Paragon too. Now PCs deal a LOT more damage

Mike Shea´s last post: Three Tips for Thunderspire Labyrinth

I’ve been in a huge range of group sizes in 4e, from 2 players to 7 players. I think 3-4 is the sweet spot. Combats are faster, people stay more focuses and there is more freedom to roleplay.

Good article all around, also congrats on the graduation!

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