What makes the tiny encounter unique? It’s not about the numbers or even tactics, so much as the strategy or potential outcomes.
The tiny encounter is a rarity in 4e. With this edition of D&D designed with large set piece combat encounters in mind, the very small but outcome-rich encounters usually go by the wayside.
It doesn’t have to be that way in your 4e game. Here are some things to look for, whether as a player or DM, when interacting with tiny encounters, including a gong and a certain tower the party is trying to break into to help illustrate the concepts.
Tiny Encounter Aspects
Tiny encounters have a challenge or goal that is greater than the sum of its monsters, and these encounters’ size and difficulty are dynamic.
What does that mean? Most consequences of fighting, communicating with, or avoiding tiny encounters are high impact and obvious. For example, however you interact with the pair of goblinoid guards posted outside a ruined tower near golden, blood-stained gong, there’s a ripple effect that the party can already envision based on context clues.
Perception and Insight checks feed the party those subtle and obvious clues. The eladrin avenger sees (Passive Perception, Moderate DC) the shadows of more guards a few hundred yards behind some rubble on the opposite side of the tower. But only the elf ranger sees (Passive Perception, Hard DC) a groggy or drunk ogre scout with its elbows sitting atop a tower window, plus the strange group of violet-robed figures milling about at the very top of the tower near a huge, floating black gemstone – the magical treasure the party seeks.
Everyone in the party also hears (Passive Perception, Easy DC) the distant sound of lumber being chopped and moved in the surrounding forest, accompanied by the occasional goblin laugh or curse. And don’t forget, there is that gong…
This example illustrates how a tiny encounter has many tendrils that can quickly change the course of its own difficulty or challenge, and even the entire adventure. It potentially breaks the mold of easy/standard/hard difficulty encounters into something more organic. The party might even have to consider incredulous things in 4e should things go very wrong, such as (gasp) running away!
So what is the challenge here? It’s about strategy now. It’s about bigger goals and consequences than just two inept guards, Austin. Messing this tiny encounter up quite possibly means an army of goblins from the tower and the forest descending upon the party, a gong sounding the alarm to destroy all intruders. A “Too Easy” encounter can suddenly swing into “Too Hard” – and the party already sees it coming!
Tiny Encounter, Many Questions
Given the context clues, the party quickly figures out that the encounter goal isn’t so much about going right into tactical combat mode like a set piece encounter to kill the pair of goblinoid guards. The questions and options become more rich, such as:
- How do we kill these guards without making any sound and alerting the rest of the tower – and forest?
- How do we sneak past them into the tower?
- Maybe we can disguise ourselves (Thievery) as goblinoids using the gear from the ones we beat down on the way?
- Maybe we can bribe the guards with food or coin (Insight and Diplomacy)?
- Maybe we can can force the goblinoids to stand down and give us information or die (Insight and Intimidate)?
- How do we disable that gong permanently?
- How do we take out that sleeping ogre quickly?
- Should we take care of all the goblins, hobgoblins and bugbears in the forest first? How?
As you can see, things get immersive and exciting fast. Social skills matter, and Insight provides a useful tool for gaging the effectiveness of such an approach.
For example, as a PC, you might realize or make an active Insight check to learn that the goblin guard and bugbear guard are hurling playful but crude insults at eachother, yet sound genuinely upset about being paid very late and very little, and that they’ve been on watch all day and night, with little time for food or rest. You or the elf in your party happens to speak goblin. Opportunity to attack with your social skills? You bet!
What other questions or options have you come up with? What other ideas, actions, skills and languages might be helpful?
Hybrid and Organic
Here’s what I simply love most about the tiny encounter, or any encounter-as-story situation: it’s a more organic, believable encounter, filled with all sorts Choose Your Own Adventure-style potential outcome goodness. It combines the best aspects of a skill challenge – without overmechanizing the encounter into one – and a variable difficulty combat encounter.
The tiny encounter is, in fact, huge. Can you think of a more immersive and dynamic encounter situation for your D&D game?
What Are Your Experiences?
Have you played through or used tiny encounters in your D&D 4e games? How have they worked out similar to or different from the above goblinoid guard example? How well do you think tiny encounters fit into 4e?
Would you rather see more tiny encounters designed into published adventures? Or do you think they’re best left in the hands of your playgroup’s creative problem solving and improv skills?
Kilsek
didn’t you just invent a skill challenge?
not all skill challenges make sense to have 3 failures or 8 successes.
sometimes 1 overwhelming success is enough.
sometimes 1 critical failure ends the challenge.
Welcome to Leonine Roar and thanks for your comment, TheBeanBag!
What you say is part of my point: adventures have always included the components of skill challenges without needing to add more structure and focus only on skills. Rather, there are storytelling actions that take place – decisions and strategies with consequences – that are sometimes not even skill-related.
I feel we lost some of the storytelling balance by introducing skill challenges in 4e. Since their initial release though, the designers have gone to great pains to broaden how they can look and run in-game. Once again though, I don’t see why they’re called skill challenges sometimes. They’re just parts of the adventure with choices to me, and sometimes there’s skills involved, and sometimes there isn’t!
Thanks for the Welcome!
I agree. The story must come first.
The skills, attacks, and challenges only add statistical probability to the game.
Before 4e there were many more roleplaying pieces that were just not covered by the rules adequately. Even how far you could actually move, who was paying attention, and who noticed you sneaking into the store and stealing that potion. This was fine, because it left the results to the DM. It was all fluff, no substance.
Now that everything can be resolved somewhere on the character sheet, we need to add flesh and blood to these bones. Add fluff back to the substance.
And skills should only be one tool from the toolbox for these “tiny encounters”.
Rituals, reputation, equipment, attack powers, and good old fashioned roleplay should get the players to the end of the encounter.
[…] Encounter as Story: Tiny Encounters (brand new to the milestone list, the biggest mover by […]
[…] should you. Your friends and fam who play with you will thank you for it, trust me. (Remember Tiny Encounters? Yeah, feels like […]
[…] even more at Leonine Roar: Encounter as Story: Tiny Encounters, A Year Has Passed… How to Include the Passage of Time in Your Campaigns, What is Atmosphere? Not […]