Unless you’re planning on a encounter string, i.e. at least 3 encounters back to back, plan on building your encounter at the far side of Medium or short side of Hard. You have to adjust this of course for the abilities of both your players and your player’s characters. So start with medium hards before you go into hards. I can realistically and demonstrably give my group, warden, avenger, ranger, artificer, warlock(barbarian) level+3/4 encounters. And yes they’re hard but they’re doable for the most part. I’ve only had one character death from tossing the party into this mix as their sole fight for a day. And that was due to bad death save rolls as well as heal checks.
When you’re building your monsters, remember that they’re going to be alive for all of maybe 5-7 rounds for the most part. In the interests of making them interesting give them all 2 or 3 encounter only powers and give them a little bit of synergy among them.
Example: A standard skirmisher might have his basic +7, 1d10+5 Warclub attack, then encounters of Smashing Blow +7, 1d8+5 and target is knocked prone. Head Blow: +7 2d6+8 and target is dazed. Target must be Prone. And finally Aim Low: +7 1d8+5 damage and target is Slowed.
Then drop them in pairs or trio’s. One of them does a Smashing Blow on a PC and another one follows up with a Head Blow now that he’s down and the last one Aim’s Low and slows the PC. So now you have a PC that’s dazed, slowed and bleeding on the ground.
Typically that means he’s going to be able to stand on his turn or attack from the ground. If you have a trio of these guys then they can simply alternate their three encounter powers over three rounds and beat the heck out of the PC.
The point of this is not, well mostly not, to kill a PC but to force others to interfere on his behalf. A defender marks the attackers, a warlord pushes one, two people bull rush two of them, a wizard thunderwaves, an artificer thundering armours, whatever it takes to get them off the PC they’ve singled out. In all things you as the DM should be striving to make them work together as a team, watching out for each other, buffing each other, taking hits for each other.
4th Edition is a balanced edition, significantly more so than any previous edition (please keep the 4e hate spam down about that). As long as you follow the general guidelines or the Adenture Tools (well worth a one month subscription to get it and the Character Builder) it’s hard to build an unfair monster with just a tiny bit of common sense. Some combination can be wicked hard, a creature with a minor action to knock prone and a bonus to damage on prone targets is harsh (Needlefang Swarm). Creatures with auras that stack can be really harsh (Chillborn Zombies) or creatures that have resistances to damage and reduce damage at the same time (Wraith). These are all examples of monsters that are significantly tougher than their level or exp value warrants as a result (and just bad monster design IMO).
Also as a general rule I really think monsters that Stun should used VERY sparingly. I don’t use it all, forcing a player to skip their turn “Is Not Fun”. Dazed is as much of a screw over as I will ever give a player in terms of costing them their turn.
But over time this balance design can lead to encounters that feel the same. So don’t be afraid to take those guidelines and manipulate them a bit. With just two or three tiny changes you can drastically alter the feel of an encounter.
By changing the hit points or attack bonus in conjunction with the damage dealt with a power you can rachet up the tension of an encounter in many ways.
As an example, let’s say I build an encounter that’s designed to depict a bandit party that’s venturing into hobgoblin lands to negotiate a deal and the players have been chasing them. I put in one elite, 5 standards, and 5 minions and generate roughly a level+2 encounter as the culmination of a 3 encounter string, the first two encounters level/level+1 encounters with hobgoblins.
I take the elite and drop his health by 20% but I boost his damage output accordingly. So he goes from 200 hit points to 160 hit points. His average damage per round per attack goes from 15 damage to 19 damage. He’s got a shorter lifespan but hits for more damage so it should equal out assuming no major ‘swinginess’ in the attack rolls.
Two of the standards are his body guards. They’re not ‘elite’ but I want to show them as being highly trained. I boost their attack chance by +4 (20% more likely to hit) and drop their damage output by 20% (15 damage becomes 11 damage).
3 of the standards I want to be really annoying as a whole but individually they’re not much. As a group of highly trained archers who go for the sure shot rather than the damaging shot, I up their attack by +6 and drop their damage from 15 down to about 8. So they’re a steady unswerving health bleed on the party.
You could also model the boss of this encounter as a little more brutish but not a true brute, a giant of a human who’s armed with a big slow greatsword, easy to get out of the way of but don’t let it hit you whatever you do. Let’s decrease his attack chances by -6 and boost his damage by 30% instead. So he doesn’t hit often but when he does, a player REALLY feels it.
As a DM if you take this to an extreme in terms of damage per hit and 30%+ is bordering extreme then you HAVE to keep an eye on your dice and your players. You’ve changed the encounter from a fairly steady progression of damage sinking on both sides to something that with a little good/bad luck can be very swingy and really hammer your players and you’re not there to do that. Or if you are you probably won’t have players for long.
With these simple few tweaks though you can have players leaning forward when the boss rolls, wincing as you roll high and breathing a sigh of relief when you roll low. And cursing out loud as ‘those %$(!*% archers are chewing my ass off. Would someone kill those little @$@*(*!s?!”
In terms of encounter make up, make sure to mix things up. Sure throw in the encounter that’s six giant slug like abominations and make it a straight forward bug hunt. Easy, simple, not complicated, something every group needs from time to time.
But your encounters that are comprised of intelligent creatures are very likely to run something like boss, bodyguards, guards with optional groups of support and minions. Or that’s how I see it. The boss is going to want at least one or two people dedicated to his survival in my opinion. Warriors or casters that stick with him, intercept attackers that kind of thing. Then there are the general purpose guards, standards that keep the attackers occupied while the boss does his boss thing, they’re the defensive/offensive line of your encounter.
Then you have support groups that consist of artillery, control and/or healing. Typically these should be the smallest presence on the field as they’re the ones that usually sit in the back and go with range powers, they die easily but sometimes getting to them is just flat out hard.
Minions are just that. Masses of incompetents who die in a loud messy fashion to the enjoyment of the players. And once the group gets past level 4 or so, plan on your minions having little to no impact on the battle other than to waste a round or two as the party AOE’s them down. Any more I don’t even count them against the XP budget of the encounter unless they’re artillery that is going to be widely spread out. It’s realistically impossible to spread out melee attackers, they have to bunch up to get at the players who typically hang out fairly close together. They’re there to make the heroes cool as they kill six guys with one blast, that kind of thing.
I’d also advise you not to get too crazy on your encounter makeup complexity. The more creatures with different powers you throw out there, especially if you take my advice and give them all some ‘fun’ powers for you to play with, the more likely you are to forget to use them. I regularly forget to use Immediate powers that I give to my creatures for instance.
Trying to keep track of multiple powers on multiple types of creatures in one encounter servers not much more than to slow things down. Any more I strive for (but frequently fail to accomplish) no more than 3 types of creatures per encounter although with humanoids it’s hard to do. My bandit, slavers and hobgoblin tribes just like to cover their bases, they want front line, back line, support, artillery, control, pure power and leadership in every fight. And it’s hard to say no to them as they make sense when they send in their manpower requests. 
Also keep your players’ characters’ abilities in mind. A group with a lot of radiant output is going to rip your undead encounters to shreds. A group without any way to control creatures should run into encounters with fewer but tougher creatures. A group with massive amounts of AOE’s shouldn’t get encounters comprised of mostly minions as a steady diet. A group without a lot of ways to spend surges during an encounter needs smaller easier encounters but more of them during their ‘work day’ or few but tougher encounters per day. Things like this keep in the back of your mind as you’re planning their almost but not quite demise.
And the flip side of that, keep your players abilities in mind as well. A group who’s sole tactic is “I got this one, you go get that guy.” needs a lighter hand on the encounter difficulty than a group that knows exactly how their powers mesh with the powers of the rest of the team and acts accordingly.
So to wrap this up -
- give all your creatures some nifty encounter powers because that’s fun for you
- don’t be afraid to deviate from the monster building guidelines but do it in a balanced fashion because that’s fun for the players
- don’t make your encounters too simple or too complex, not fun for you
- keep the abilities of your players and their characters in mind, not fun for the players
- and most importantly make sure you and your players are having a good time or you’ll be putting your books away to gather dust and that’s a very un-fun thing to have to do…
I hope this is of some benefit to someone, putting it down at the very least helped solidify it for myself and that’s never a bad thing. Next week (or month or whenever) I’ll try and come up with some thoughts on how to actually run the encounter and give you some excuses for why the archers are all focus firing on the cleric for the 800th time.
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