Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 elder_basilisk Jan 10, 2010 3:10:24	Recently, I've been doing a bit of experimenting in the MYRE format. These are a few of the lessons I have learned: 1. Monster Builder is a great tool, if you have DDI but don't have Monster Builder, download the beta and use it, but... Adventure Tools Monster Builder is a great resource and enables you to quickly transfer monsters from the monster builder tool to a Word document and print nicely formatted encounters, but the database appears to have a number of typos in it. For instance, all of the gnolls from the monster manual and most from the monster manual 2 have a pack attack feature that deals 5 extra damage in melee whenever two or more of the gnoll's allies are adjacent to the target. (Range focused gnolls like the huntmaster also get this at range). However, the deathpledged gnoll has pack attack listed as "encounter" and specifies that it gets the damage bonus against an enemy "that has two or more gnoll allies adjacent to it." Notice the difference? The deathpledged gnoll text suggests that, unlike other gnolls, it only gets the pack attack bonus if the allies are gnolls. The normal gnolls get the damage from evistroi, hyenas, or any other kind of ally they like. I don't know if that is a typo or if it is a distinction present in the original source material (I don't have the monster manual 2, but the gnoll gorger (also from MM2) has similar wording). So, give your monsters a quick read-through for this kind of thing before you assume that all of your gnolls' gnoll features work the same way. (In any event, this is a classic drawback of exception based design--before a year is out, you have several identically named abilities that appear to fill the same role in the game world but which function in significantly different ways. Keep an eye out for it). 1b. Monster builder will let you upgrade a monster to elite, downgrade it from elite to standard, and level or delevel it with a few mouse-clicks. But make sure to do a sanity check before you take the output and put it in an adventure. Elite and solo monsters--or good ones at least--often have mechanisms to gain multiple in-turn attacks or to make out of turn attacks every round. While this is good for an elite or solo (it helps them mitigate the PCs' action advantage), those powers should not generally be at-will for standard monsters. (They might make good encounter powers though). 1c. Monster builder has NPCs from a lot of LFR mods, non-LFR RPGA mods, published non-RPGA WotC mods, and books. And it (unfortunately) doesn't support creating standard monster NPCs using the DMG rules (yet). But keep that DMG handy anyway. Often, the monsters you can create using those rules would be miles better than the ones that come out of mods. To pick on an particular example, Dungeon 157 had a level 2 elite skirmisher called "Myrissa, Shadar-Kai dark warlock." Now, for all I know she was ideal for whatever mod she was created for, but as a generic level 2 skirmisher, she's terrible. She barely has the offense of a standard monster manual monster; either a standard NPC created using the DMG rules or a monster upgraded with an class template would be far better. (For starters, they would have a daily power (something to be a bit careful of since things like dazzling ray, brute strike, and lasting threat can be overpowered in the hands of NPCs--on the other hand, warlocks don't get dailies that will perform at that level--something like tyranny of flame or contagion, star shackles, your glorious sacrifice, or decree of khirad) would give the NPC an interesting power and a third turn before she has to start repeating her actions). 1d. If you expand the margins to maximum, Monster builder output fits onto two collumn pages in MS Word. I have found a 1 page per encounter format to work very nicely. 2. Write for four players and scale up If you know exactly the party you are writing for and only plan to run your MYRE once, feel free to ignore this and write for exactly the party you know you'll get. But, if you are writing while you are still organizing and having people sign up, confirm, and/or cancel, you would be well-served to write the four player version and expand rather than to write for five and subtract. Here's why: when you write an encounter, you have an image and a plan in mind. The bad guy will be flanked by henchmen. Or a snarling gnoll and his leashed hyenas are pursuing the hapless villagers before they are rescued. You also probably have a mechanical idea in mind. For instance, the gnoll huntmaster will provide ranged support while his hyenas harrass the PCs, providing combat advantage and pack attack-granting allies to the gnoll claw-fighters. Both of those are good, but if you discover that the only way to scale down appropriately is to drop the claw fighter (since the hyenas are each less xp than you need to shed and the huntmaster is more xp than you want to shed), you may well find that by subtracting monsters, you have ripped the core out of your encounter and it no longer works as intended. This happens to regular LFR writers too Radiant Vessel of Thesk and the Sea Drake --in Radiant Vessel of Thesk, for instance, the final encounter is much easier with four players than with five because once the PCs talk Braal down, there just aren't enough orcs for the Eye of Gruumsch to grant attacks to; similarly the low-tier 4 player Sea Drake (Moon 1-2) loses the howling hag from the final fight--and she is the factor that usually makes the fight a challenge
#2 Mind_Flayer_Monk Jan 10, 2010 5:18:47	Good post, thank you.
#3 Keithric Jan 10, 2010 8:13:09	Good post! One thing I like to do is aim for two level +2 combats instead, but keeping the same principles of using artillery, skirmishers, brutes, lots of minions, etc to keep things moving quickly. I try to aim for most critters being n-1 to n+1, although brutes I'll trend higher and soldiers not. I love to have minion generation, waves, or reinforcements. I often try to have two MYREs ready to run, if we finish early or folks don't bite on the RP hooks (and sometimes they bite _hard_ on the RP hooks so it's no problem)
#4 Thanlis Jan 10, 2010 8:17:27	Seriously awesome post. Thanks!
#5 elder_basilisk Jan 10, 2010 12:00:42	Good post! One thing I like to do is aim for two level +2 combats instead, but keeping the same principles of using artillery, skirmishers, brutes, lots of minions, etc to keep things moving quickly. I try to aim for most critters being n-1 to n+1, although brutes I'll trend higher and soldiers not. I love to have minion generation, waves, or reinforcements. I often try to have two MYREs ready to run, if we finish early or folks don't bite on the RP hooks (and sometimes they bite _hard_ on the RP hooks so it's no problem) How long do a pair of level+2 combats typically take for your parties to finish? (I'm not asking about the non-combat time here, just the combats themselves.)
#6 Keithric Jan 10, 2010 14:13:01	Depends more on the party than the module, it feels like, though obviously at least part of it is my setup. 45 to 90 minutes per combat.
#7 Alphastream Jan 12, 2010 16:59:46	Really good stuff in this post. I've linked to it from the DME and MYRE thread. It will be mined for ideas whenever I get to writing the MYRE portion (more likely now that I'm done with authoring projects for a bit). Your idea of scaling to 4 is interesting. It is probably about keeping both in mind, for me. 5 seems about right for what you are doing with roughly equal-level monsters in terms of choosing roles. Then, when you go to 4, it can be hard to decide what to drop. However, you have some really nice bits for 5 players. If you write for 4, it can keep you from considering some options. Maybe we should ask what is the priority? Is it better for a combat to be sweet at 4 or at 5? It is hard to achieve both. One real lesson I have found is to consider control carefully as you scale. One controller may have too easy a time controlling a party with 4 PCs that one with 5, and too hard a time controlling a table of 6. 4 also stresses roles much more, so you have to watch for an encounter that demands a role (such as striker for damaging brutes/elites or healer for combats that really start with a lot of damage).
#8 elder_basilisk Jan 12, 2010 18:43:13	Really good stuff in this post. I've linked to it from the DME and MYRE thread. It will be mined for ideas whenever I get to writing the MYRE portion (more likely now that I'm done with authoring projects for a bit). Your idea of scaling to 4 is interesting. It is probably about keeping both in mind, for me. 5 seems about right for what you are doing with roughly equal-level monsters in terms of choosing roles. Then, when you go to 4, it can be hard to decide what to drop. However, you have some really nice bits for 5 players. If you write for 4, it can keep you from considering some options. Maybe we should ask what is the priority? Is it better for a combat to be sweet at 4 or at 5? It is hard to achieve both. One real lesson I have found is to consider control carefully as you scale. One controller may have too easy a time controlling a party with 4 PCs that one with 5, and too hard a time controlling a table of 6. 4 also stresses roles much more, so you have to watch for an encounter that demands a role (such as striker for damaging brutes/elites or healer for combats that really start with a lot of damage). I don't know about that. The first two MYRE mods I did, I wrote for five and scaled up and down. (I had six players every time I ran them so it didn't work out to be an issue). The last three I did, I did, knowing that I probably had four or five players for the New Year's Day gameday I was running them at. I could have had six if one player who was a question mark joined us and another decided he could make it after all, but four was the most likely possibility. What I found was that, five players is easier to write for. I can run two artillery and three brutes, or two artillery, two skirmishers and a brute, or even one elite and three allies. In the first two cases, I have a solid front line of monsters to give those artillery a bit of protection. In the elite case, I easily have enough monsters that that it won't be a slightly shorter solo fight after round 1. If I write for four players, on the other hand, I have to make hard choices. Can I really run two artillery, one brute, and one skirmisher? If I have an elite, a standard, an a few minions, will it look like a boring solo fight by round 2? The point of writing for four players is that I actually have to look at those decisions and make the choice that makes the best encounter (or so I hope) rather than grabbing a monster who looks to be worth the right xp amount and hitting delete. Scaling up, on the other hand, is easier. Since I know what I really wanted in the encounter but had to sacrifice in order to make the xp budget, it is easy to put it back in. I can add the second artillery that I passed up for the four player version because I wanted at least a 3 monster front line. And adding that second standard monster to the elite encounter won't make it degerate to a solo grind. Perhaps more to the point, if you think of it as adding rather than subtracting, you can add monsters from anywhere, but you can only subtract monsters that are already in the encounter. Thus, if I am adding to a gnoll encounter, I might add hyenas, I might add a deathpledged gnoll, a gnoll mockery priest, a gnoll huntmaster, another claw fighter, a marauder, or anything else that seems potentially appropriate and that I can squeeze into my expanded xp budget. On the other hand, if I am subtracting monsters to balance my xp budget, I can only subtract monsters from the ones I have already selected and among those, I can really only subtract from the ones that weigh in at the right xp value. (If I wrote a five person encounter with gnolls and hyenas at level 4-7, I can't drop the hyenas very easily since they are not worth enough xp to balance my budget individually but are worth too much xp if I try to drop a pair of them). Thus it is more flexible to scale up than to scale down since my reserve of monsters that fit the xp slot I'm looking for is much greater when adding than when subtracting. Now, scaling up thoughtlessly (let's just put another two duergar theurges in, what's the worst that could happen?) can have bad results too, but since I try to stick with brutes, skirmishers, and artillery (preferably single target artillery), and limit controllers to maybe one per mod and soldiers to "once in a blue moon," those issues come up less than one might think.
#9 newpaintbrush Jan 22, 2010 6:30:31	General stuff: 1.  Think about how much time you want to put in on the adventure.  Think about what you want.  Think about what the players want.  But mostly think about yourself, because you're the one writing it, and you're the one that needs to be satisfied. 2.  If you don't have a lotta time, just write a few encounters, and run the adventure on rails - that is, the players aren't given much choice.  Say the PCs start on the road traveling, and get ambushed by gnolls; when the PCs search the body, they find written orders telling the gnolls to kill anyone in the area so the way will be clear for the second band to abduct the prince; skill challenge to get to the prince on time, second combat encounter to save the prince, conclusion.  Railroad, but not too bad. 3.  If you got a lotta time, I'd do like this - write six or seven skill challenges and six or seven combats, and write a flowchart (nothing special, just notes to myself usually) linking them.  Then after you run your first MYRE, you take the encounters that weren't used, add some additional encounters to supplement the flow, write a new flowchart, and run a new MYRE. Example: PCs are in town.  Rumors of gnoll activity.  Wazup? Skill Challenges: 1 PCs try to gather information on the gnolls. (counts as half a combat for exp) 2 PCs try to track down the gnolls. (counts as half a combat for exp) 3 PCs try to find the informant in town working with the gnolls. (counts as half a combat for exp) 4 PCs try to reach the prince that the gnolls are attempting to abduct before the gnolls reach him. 5 PCs try to calm the dim-witted animal handler so he won't unleash his hyenas. (counts as half a combat for exp) Combats: 6 PCs protect caravan from gnoll attack 7 PCs fight gnoll scouting party 8 PCs fight hyenas 9 PCs fight humans Now for the linkages:  Letters indicate major decision points, numbers indicate encounters above. A.  PCs are in town and know of gnoll attacks.  What do PCs want to do?  Entirely up to players. If PCs try to gather info on gnolls (A1), track down gnolls (A2), or suspect an informant (A3), skill challenge. If PCs want to try going out with a caravan (A6), combat when the gnolls eventually attack. If A1, then perhaps the PCs discovered rumors of where the gnolls were located, so have an easier time of tracking down their physical location (A12 with bonuses).  Maybe the PCs discovered the gnolls are suspiciously well-informed, so suspect and try to find an informant (A13 with bonuses).  Maybe the players succeed at A1, but have no plans from there. From A12, the players could discover and fight a gnoll scouting party (A127), then discover notes that the scouting party was part of an attack on the prince (A1276), put "prince" in the central wagon of the caravan and move PCs to edge of map approaching the caravan instead of starting inside the caravan.  That's the end. Or, from A13, the PCs fight the human allies of the gnolls (A139), discover the prince will be under attack (A1396) If at any juncture in the A1 branch, the PCs were subdued, run encounter 5 as the PCs attempt to escape the dull-witted animal handler, and encounter 8 if the PCs fail the skill challenge as hyenas attack. Suppose the players just went for A6 directly to protect a caravan from gnolls. After the caravan is saved, the party finds notes that the prince will be under attack, then run into encounter 7 gnoll scouting party (A67).  Since the caravan encounter was already used, the prince has already been abducted by the human allies of the gnolls - but there's a dimwitted animal handler watching over the prince who the PCs can trick with a skill challenge (A675).  Either way, the PCs must fight hyenas to rescue the prince (A6758) (successful resolution of the animal handler skill challenge means the animal handler manages to keep a couple hyenas back). If at any juncture in the A6 branch, the PCs were subdued, run encounter 5 as the PCs attempt to escape the dull-witted animal handler, and encounter 8 if the PCs fail the skill challenge as hyenas attack. There are more links to put in as well - say the players really like skill challenges; you could run encounter 4 instead of, say, a second combat encounter, perhaps having the PCs reach the prince in time to avoid combat altogether. So after finishing this MYRE, take whatever encounters weren't used, and write them into a new MYRE.  The prince has just been saved by the PCs heroic intervention, but he isn't going to take this attack lying down - he knows the gnolls were working with infiltrators in the area, so there are still enemies to track down in town, and gnolls and gnoll allies to fight.  Write new combat challenges and skill challenges as required. So - if you used gnoll fights in the first MYRE, since those were used up, now the PCs will be fighting humans.  If the PCs fought humans in the first MYRE, now the PCs fight gnolls.  Either way, there's a change of pace in the combats - and the noncombats as well. With your re-using encounters that you wrote but never actually used, the players still have a lot of freedom of choice, while with your writing new encounters, the players should get the distinct impression that a real change has been made - it's not just the same old story. Specific stuff: 1.  Don't write for a TPK.  It is easy for an optimizing DM to kick PC ass, so don't feel like you have to meet some kinda deranged challenge to kill the PCs.  Now, if you really want to run a TPK adventure, warn your players first, and if they're OK with that, then take the gloves off.  But in general - write to give players a challenge, not to kill their PCs. 2.  Remember there's going to be different players with different PC builds, so you want to give each a chance to shine.  EB made comments in another thread like "don't give the monsters multiple resistances".  I'm not going to recommend that specifically; there's times and places for everything - but do remember that if you're gonna make an encounter that's basically "death on ranged characters", you should REALLY not do it again in the very next encounter.  Switch things up a bit.  Give different classes time to shine. 3.  Remember levels.  Level 1-4 players aren't gonna have the items and weapons and gear to run around kicking butt all over the place, so don't max out the optimization on combat encounters for those levels.  You can uncork a bit on level 4-7, and more so as you go up in level.
#10 Kensan_Oni Feb 08, 2010 11:31:41	Just some things from my experiences Creating Encounters The first thing I do when designing an encounter is I choose the Encounter level, and then I choose one monster to be the base monster for the encounter. For example, in one encounter, I decided my base monster for a ECL 2 Encounter would be a Grey Ooze. You must have that ONE monster in the group. Then design the rest of the encounter as a 5 party encounter. If you are short one player? Take out that monster. If you have an extra player? Stick in another of that monster. That works beautifully. Lower Level Encounters are Harder I don't know why this is, but every time I have an even level fight, the players end up more hurt and hazarded by the end of that particular fight then if they were facing a encounter one or two levels higher. Maybe they just are having cold dice, maybe they just don't spread out the dailies. I don't know WHAT it is, but every equal level encounter I pull, I have people close to or are falling. It's nuts. Minions still Rock Don't forget to throw minions at players at times. I had an encounter that I threw 12 minions out against a table, and not a single player had any area control, and the party fought a very hard battle. Sometimes, minions mean that the controllers have fun and a cake walk. At other times, they create a challenging encounters. Use those minions.
#11 Alphastream Feb 08, 2010 14:40:04	Minions still Rock Don't forget to throw minions at players at times. I had an encounter that I threw 12 minions out against a table, and not a single player had any area control, and the party fought a very hard battle. Sometimes, minions mean that the controllers have fun and a cake walk. At other times, they create a challenging encounters. Use those minions. Minions are all about positioning and the role they play in monster tactics. They work well when, based on tier, their positioning brings some pain to the PCs and/or benefits to the others. They can create a really cinematic feel if they show up over time, dropping in via cool methods (jumping in through windows, crawling up through floorboards, etc.). Minions are very poor in low-terrain rooms. Also, if they are supposed to be a secret, make sure to note that in tactics so DMs don't advertise them with certain minis. But, always recall that the #1 reason for minis in 4E is so the players feel empowered as they mow through them. As such, they are an excellent addition to your easiest encounter. On the topic of easy XP encounters being harder, I know what you mean. I have often designed an easy or lower-XP encounter only to have it be the hardest, even without trying.
#12 Hibiki54 Feb 08, 2010 18:05:26	I wrote an adventure MYRE with Orcs. The players couldn't tell which ones were minions as I had specific Orc minis for my skirmishers, controllers, lurkers and BBEG. But my minions were anything that wasn't the former. It's more fun when the PCs dont know which ones are minions or not. PC: "Oh look at all the mooks with Red Shirts!" Zap! Elite with Red Shirt: "Sucker! This is Next Generation. Minions have yellow and blue shirts and don't have speaking lines!"
#13 Madfox11 Feb 09, 2010 3:34:44	Of course, the DMG discusses Gotcha stuff extensively and if one thing is "gotcha" it are minions disguised as non-minions... It is one thing to keep the players somewhat guessing, as long as they realize there is big likelyhood of minions, it is another to keep the fact completely hidden that some of figures visible on the boards are minions. Of course, that is not the same as minion reinforcements arriving spread over several rounds from different directions. I am all in favor of such tactics ;)
#14 timlagor Jul 06, 2010 14:38:10	The non-minion disguised as a minion (hibiki's idea) strikes me as a much better move than the other way around (madfox): * powers don't get 'wasted' on a minion * the non-minion can more plausibly think of and implement such a tactic * I thought I had more points to make here Still the gotcha with the minions looking tough can work if the BBG makes sure to mock the PCs mercilessly for any overkill and the encounter is designed to not be utterly deadly anyway. I'm about to do my first MYRE but from GMing and playing I would urge people to give some consideration to how the fight starts: - where are the monsters? - where are the PCs likely to be and what can they do to change that? - what triggers initiative? this one is really important: if the monsters trigger initiative by bursting out of hiding then they are already out of hiding when initiative is rolled (and they may have a surprise round but that won't stop the guy who spotted them coming getting a clear shot). Starting combats with no enemies on the map is really annoying and also wrong (well I'm sure someone can come up with an exception). [it's possible you'll need to have things run in rounds without initiative and very occasionally non-combat initiative can be useful but then you should reroll initiative for the actual combat] The point is that this needs some thought if you want to try something clever with it. Surprise round can be interesting but don't forget to give the PCs a chance to avoid them and be sure that they don't bring on a TPK.
#15 battles14 Jul 07, 2010 13:34:37	3.  If you got a lotta time, I'd do like this - write six or seven skill challenges and six or seven combats, and write a flowchart (nothing special, just notes to myself usually) linking them.  Then after you run your first MYRE, you take the encounters that weren't used, add some additional encounters to supplement the flow, write a new flowchart, and run a new MYRE. I'd like to disagree without being disagreeable. While not entirely useless, I feel like that type of cookie-cutter approach is exactly what keeps mods from being memorable. Looking through the official mods that have already been released, I can't count how many mods are either: (1) Monster X is attacking the town -> Find Monster X -> Defeat Monster X or (2) NPC X is lost/kidnapped -> Find NPC X -> Defeat whatever's keeping NPC X lost/kidnapped Your gnoll example falls squarely into camp (1).  Fighting gnoll/goblin/troglodyte raiding parties is played out.  The LFR mods that are memorable, the ones that people keep talking about and wanting to play over and over, are mods with interesting stories (great example: CORM 1-1 Black Knight of Arabel -- C'mon, baby sacrifice!) When I write my MYRE mods, I focus on memorable storytelling and unique encounters. A skill challenge at a masquerade ball where the PCs have to find clues to their contact's identity. A fight with a dragon under a circus tent in front of a crowd of enthralled onlookers. That's what makes for a good LFR mod.
#16 kenobi65 Jul 07, 2010 13:49:26	The LFR mods that are memorable, the ones that people keep talking about and wanting to play over and over, are mods with interesting stories (great example: CORM 1-1 Black Knight of Arabel -- C'mon, baby sacrifice!) That module is probably not a great example of what you're trying to say.  IME, CORM 1-1 gets played over and over, but that's because it's a very easy module with a very desireable treasure bundle.
#17 battles14 Jul 07, 2010 14:40:07	Notwithstanding my personal mod preferences, I think my point remains.  White Flower, Falling Petal is another memorable one—a fight with a bear in a three-tiered arena with combatants blended in among the onlookers.
#18 timlagor Jul 08, 2010 1:29:47	Well you picked from a good series but the caravan skill challenge is so much more awesome! CORM 1-1 definitely gets *re*played for the ease+loot but is still a really good module imo. I'm pretty sure Newpaintbursh's point was that you can give players options but still use the work you did on the encounters they didn't take by putting them into the next one you do: I assumed he chose a simple plot to easily illustrate his point.