In reading and eating up Popcorn, I’ve done what D&D ‘DM to the Stars’ Chris Perkins does on the fly before, to make an encounter more challenging and “cool,” though I also knew it wasn’t “by-the-book” either at the time. I have to say, I often feel a bit conflicted when I do this, even though the encounter definitely becomes more engaging for everyone, DM included.
Thing is, especially with the overlong 60 minute combat encounter average time in D&D, you may end up having little room for multiple combats – never mind anything else core to D&D like exploration and roleplay opportunities – in a fairly typical 3-4 hour D&D session. And so it’s usually a good idea to get in at least one engaging and challenging combat in the session at some point.
So if a fight starts going south fast into “Easy and Boring Land” – for both players and the DM – why shouldn’t the DM make a few tweaks on the fly?
True Encounter Difficulty: What to Include?
The thing with minions is, like Chris talks about – or actually, with any encounter – perceived difficulty may change quite a bit in actual play. Sometimes what seems easy ends up hard, and more often, a hard encounter in actual play comes out super easy.
Deciding on and gaging encounter difficulty is a unique balancing act for the DM. You want to challenge and entertain, but you need a rules framework so it’s fair, too. Encounter challenge and engagement definitely have this blend of art and science feel to them, and maybe it’s because we don’t codify enough relevant qualities of an encounter. Though minions’ all-or-nothing quality is a design issue. Sometimes they’re great, sometimes they’re a waste.
Along those lines, we don’t codify terrain features, illumination or weather elements into XP or as part of an encounter’s challenge level, do we? Yet some things that are close, like minions, traps or hazards, are indeed “rated” towards the challenge level of an encounter.
Yet maybe – like minions who do nothing, or minions who leave a lasting impression – we should codify or rate more encounter features with XP or encounter difficulty modifiers? Maybe that would get us closer to the true challenge level of an encounter? Maybe the way we define a challenging encounter right now by XP alone into easy, standard, hard isn’t accurate enough?
No Time for Multiple Encounters = Increase the Difficulty
With combat encounters taking up a greater percentage of D&D session time on average compared to any edition before it, set-piece encounters that are memorable and engaging are important. (That’s why the traditional random encounter is unfortunately extinct if not endangered in D&D 4e, though The New Random Encounter has some ideas on how to best modify and include the random encounter for 4e.) So if we’re going to have room for only a few combat encounters or sometimes just one per session, make sure it’s a great one!
What makes such an encounter great? Start with its challenge level. Don’t use easy difficulty, skip most standards, and go right to the shallow end of hard difficulty, at the very least. Then add engaging and colorful components and features (with plenty of clues and hints). It all adds up: minions, fantastic terrain, character backstory connections, alternative victory conditions, story goals and whatever else you prep or improv.
You’ll notice with the power creep of 4e being out a few years, along with good ol’ player experience, your playgroup will be more than able to handle most sessions where only one dramatic, high-stakes battle occurs. Challenge your players. They’ll be energized during and excited to have fought in such an epic battle. Now that’s how you conclude a game session on a high note!
Kilsek
I’m definitely in favor of tweaking encounters during play and sometimes in prep I’ll even pick one or two monsters as “reserve” for an encounter that I can drop in if the planned fight looks too easy after the first couple rounds.
The Dragon Age RPG has a neat idea for awarding XP: a GM gives rewards based on how difficult an encounter actually was during play rather than a fixed value based on its components. This means that one group might easily beat an encounter and get a low reward, while another group that struggles more to win the same encounter would be rewarded with a higher XP amount.
Glimm the Gnome recently posted..Join the Gaming Community
Wow, that idea of awarding XP based on *actual* difficulty after the encounter is over and done with is… brilliant! Simple to remember, easy to execute. The flavor is cool too – we all tend to learn more from setbacks rather than easy victories.
Your reserve monsters are a great idea Glimmm. In this way, you sort of create an encounter difficulty range instead of a specific target. I’ll have to experiment more with this – starting with minions, who are my usual X factor monsters for when I do spontaneously adjust encounter difficulty on the fly.
Monster stats mean very little to me in-game. A typical battle is supposed to last 6 – 8 rounds or so. Players should generally hit something if they roll a 12 or more, and miss if they roll an 8 or less; reduce or increase the extremes for difficulty. At the beginning of every encounter, I watch the rolls made vs the various creatures and can quickly adjust their stats accordingly. Likewise with damage, I declare a monster bloodied based upon rounds more often than hit points.
As for minions, there are multiple uses.
~ A minion takes up a square just like any creature would, regardless of level. That means a high level artillery creature can be shooting from within a sea of level 1 minions. Melee characters will need to spend actions to clear away the rabble if they want to get adjacent to the real bad guy. Try this, “minions can shift 1 square as a free action whenever an adjacent ally dies.”
~ Minions still grant cover to their allies, regardless of level.
~ The “Ghost Warg Packmate” has a cool minion trait; when hit roll a d20, on a 10 or higher that minion does not die. I add this trait to lots of minions now.
Lastly, get a benchmark. I purposefully killed the entire party recently. I was amazed at how resilient the party was, how much more they were able to take than I had expected. Now I know how high I can raise that bar.
I really like your ring-of-minions meatshield idea, Jonny. Minions are tough to execute sometimes, but that’s one great way to use them.
The ghost warg packmate reminds me of the 2-hit minion idea I see a lot on the D&D forums. There’s plenty of design space between minion and standard creatures, so it’s good to see something different there.
A benchmark “very hard difficulty” encounter definitely gives everyone a better sense of their capabilities and limits. Like they say, you have to test your limits to know them. Plus, death isn’t as a big a deal or setback as it use to be, as I’ve blogged about before – the story continues!
Here’s a tactic i use often with minions when they are defending a big-bad
-> Aid another (skill, attack and defense)
It helps the big-bad when 4 surrounding minions gives him +4 to defenses and +4 to attack
For minion powers, i liked the Infernal Battle Armor (now removed from compendium, One Dark night in Weeping Briar, gameday adventure) had this as an aura :
Bloodlust aura 2; non-minion devils in the aura gain a +1 bonus to damage. This bonus is cumulative, so a devil within the aura of 4 infernal armors deals 4 additional points of damage per attack.
And this effect when i was destroyed : When an infernal armor dies, it transfers its essence to the nearest non-minion devil within 5 squares. That devil regains 15 hit points. (mix these with a Chained Cambion.. humm, delicious)
There’s also Banite Converts that had action points (yes, minions with AP) from the Scales of War (dungeon #155). Some players where looking at me funny when i first used that AP!
Excellent ideas. Minions, especially in numbers, providing small leader-like buffs is a great design direction for most minions. Also, immediate or lingering on-death effects are becoming more and more common with minions.
Both of these design approaches aim for more consistent encounter impact. Minions that lack these sorts of abilities tend towards a waste of encounter design space. Today’s Magnificent Minions article by Chris Perkins has some cool minions along these lines, with my vote going towards the Clockwork Wasp Drone.
cool, i’ll have a look
[…] True Encounter Difficulty: Challenge Your Players […]
[…] make sure to throw plenty of “Hard” and “Too Hard” encounters at your party. Many practical benefits, ranging from using your limited session time wisely, to […]
[…] 8. True Encounter Difficulty: Challenge Your Players […]