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Encounters for Dummies (and everyone else)
tilt42
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I decided to take a look through the Foundry's encounter groups and write down some of what I learned. This is to a large degree based upon my D&D 4th Edition knowledge, so it may not apply in the exact same way. I'll give a quick explanation in those cases where I believe details differ. It would be nice to have this thread stickied, but if it's not, feel free to bump it once in a while to keep it relevant. 
First of all, encounters are divided into three difficulties: Easy, Standard, and Hard. These should be pretty self-explanatory.
Clicking on an encounter, you'll see a little pop-up window with some more information about that specific encounter. Some of what you see here may be hard to understand, so let's go through it in detail:
The first line displays a summary of the Critter Group, Difficulty and Composition. This is straightforward. Example: "Winterforge, Hard, Mixed", where Winterforge is the critter group (ie. the general type of enemy in the encounter), Hard is the difficulty, and Mixed is the composition (ie. it's a mix of enemies with both melee and ranged capabilities).
The second line contains the same information, but in a more readable way. Example: "A tough mixed Winterforge encounter".
After that, you'll see a collection of titles describing each individual enemy in the encounter. Let's start with some terminology.
Each enemy has a name. This is the main text you'll see when you meet them in combat.
They also have a role, describing their behavior, strengths and weaknesses in combat, at least in general terms. The possible roles are:
- Artillery: Ranged combat. Vulnerable in melee combat.
- Brute: Heavy melee damage. More hit points.
- Controller: Improve their allies and hinder their enemies.
- Lurker: Stealth, avoiding combat. These are not in the game as far as I can tell, and I only mention them for "historic" purposes.
- Skirmisher: Mobility. Quickly move in and out of combat to attack vulnerable characters. I assume Neverwinter does something else with these, such as improve their damage output.
- Soldier: Tanks. Draw attention to themselves and soak damage. Like Lurkers, these do not seem to be in Neverwinter.
There's also a second kind of role, which represents the enemy's magnitude in combat, for lack of a better word. These are:
- Minion: Minions are very weak. In D&D 4E, a group of 4 minions is roughly equal to a Standard monster. These should be considered cannon fodder to keep the player busy while the stronger enemies dish out damage from safety. Use minions often, as they are satisfying to kill.
- Standard: These are the typical monster. In D&D, a standard monster represents a challenging encounter for a single player character. In Neverwinter they are considerably weaker than that. Most of the enemies you place should have this role.
- Elite: These are roughly the strength of 2 Standard enemies, and should be used for pack leaders and enemies that should stand out. Use Elites for situations where you don't want to use a boss, but still want one specific enemy to stand out as tougher than the others, most likely being the last one standing of all the enemies.
- Solo: Roughly the strength of 5 Standard Enemies, these can be used alone, hence the name. Use these for bosses until we get the functionality to implement real bosses.
Finally, each enemy type may include a number in parenthesis. This number shows the amount of enemies of this type the encounter contains.
Let's go back to my example encounter, the Hard Winterforce Mixed encounter. It contains the text "Winter Wolf - Winterforge - Skirmisher Standard (3)" and "Sharpshooter - Frost Goblin - Artillery Minion (2)". This tells us that there is a total of 5 enemies in the encounter. 2 of them are weak minions that will use ranged attacks, and they are some kind of frost goblin. The 3 others are of the Winterforge type and focus on mobility and melee attacks. These are standard monsters, and thus tougher than the goblins. The best use of this specific encounter would be to put the minions away from the front lines to keep them alive for as long as possible, while the winter wolves keep the players busy in melee.
For convenience when designing bosses, here's a list of the Solo monsters that I'm aware of in the current version of the Foundry, and where you can find them:
- Shocktroop Devil under Ashmadai encounter groups.
- Plaguechanged Maw under Abolethic encounter groups.
- Magma Brute under Fire encounter groups.
- Hulk under Foulspawn encounter groups.
- Thoon Hulk under Mind Flayer encounter groups.
- Savage Ogre under Orc encounter groups.
When building your encounters, you should try to avoid stacking them on top of each other unless you are very aware of what you are doing. Foundry content might seem very easy at lower levels, but it quickly grows very difficult indeed. Even just stacking a Hard encounter with an Easy encounter can make it nearly impossible to win for some classes, at least from what I've been told. I've seen many Foundry quests where the author made this mistake, and the enjoyment I got out of them was reduced tremendously as a result. I know it can be tempting to do, but don't do it!
Of course, there are caveats with anything. As you grow in author experience you'll be able to spot situations in which encounter stacking can be appropriate, and there may be other circumstances in your quest that makes them easier to handle. For example, if you have the player fighting alongside friendly encounters, you might very well find it reasonable to stack two enemy encounters on top of each other since the allies can keep some of these enemies off the player for a while. Just be careful, and don't stack without thinking long and hard about what you are doing.
Now you should be better equipped to challenge the player in a constructive way.
List of updates to this post:
- Added some information about stacking encounters (don't want to step on your shoes izatar, but I felt this was important enough to be in the first post)
- Added a solo monster (Hulk) that has been introduced to the Foundry after the original post was written.
First of all, encounters are divided into three difficulties: Easy, Standard, and Hard. These should be pretty self-explanatory.
Clicking on an encounter, you'll see a little pop-up window with some more information about that specific encounter. Some of what you see here may be hard to understand, so let's go through it in detail:
The first line displays a summary of the Critter Group, Difficulty and Composition. This is straightforward. Example: "Winterforge, Hard, Mixed", where Winterforge is the critter group (ie. the general type of enemy in the encounter), Hard is the difficulty, and Mixed is the composition (ie. it's a mix of enemies with both melee and ranged capabilities).
The second line contains the same information, but in a more readable way. Example: "A tough mixed Winterforge encounter".
After that, you'll see a collection of titles describing each individual enemy in the encounter. Let's start with some terminology.
Each enemy has a name. This is the main text you'll see when you meet them in combat.
They also have a role, describing their behavior, strengths and weaknesses in combat, at least in general terms. The possible roles are:
- Artillery: Ranged combat. Vulnerable in melee combat.
- Brute: Heavy melee damage. More hit points.
- Controller: Improve their allies and hinder their enemies.
- Lurker: Stealth, avoiding combat. These are not in the game as far as I can tell, and I only mention them for "historic" purposes.
- Skirmisher: Mobility. Quickly move in and out of combat to attack vulnerable characters. I assume Neverwinter does something else with these, such as improve their damage output.
- Soldier: Tanks. Draw attention to themselves and soak damage. Like Lurkers, these do not seem to be in Neverwinter.
There's also a second kind of role, which represents the enemy's magnitude in combat, for lack of a better word. These are:
- Minion: Minions are very weak. In D&D 4E, a group of 4 minions is roughly equal to a Standard monster. These should be considered cannon fodder to keep the player busy while the stronger enemies dish out damage from safety. Use minions often, as they are satisfying to kill.
- Standard: These are the typical monster. In D&D, a standard monster represents a challenging encounter for a single player character. In Neverwinter they are considerably weaker than that. Most of the enemies you place should have this role.
- Elite: These are roughly the strength of 2 Standard enemies, and should be used for pack leaders and enemies that should stand out. Use Elites for situations where you don't want to use a boss, but still want one specific enemy to stand out as tougher than the others, most likely being the last one standing of all the enemies.
- Solo: Roughly the strength of 5 Standard Enemies, these can be used alone, hence the name. Use these for bosses until we get the functionality to implement real bosses.
Finally, each enemy type may include a number in parenthesis. This number shows the amount of enemies of this type the encounter contains.
Let's go back to my example encounter, the Hard Winterforce Mixed encounter. It contains the text "Winter Wolf - Winterforge - Skirmisher Standard (3)" and "Sharpshooter - Frost Goblin - Artillery Minion (2)". This tells us that there is a total of 5 enemies in the encounter. 2 of them are weak minions that will use ranged attacks, and they are some kind of frost goblin. The 3 others are of the Winterforge type and focus on mobility and melee attacks. These are standard monsters, and thus tougher than the goblins. The best use of this specific encounter would be to put the minions away from the front lines to keep them alive for as long as possible, while the winter wolves keep the players busy in melee.
For convenience when designing bosses, here's a list of the Solo monsters that I'm aware of in the current version of the Foundry, and where you can find them:
- Shocktroop Devil under Ashmadai encounter groups.
- Plaguechanged Maw under Abolethic encounter groups.
- Magma Brute under Fire encounter groups.
- Hulk under Foulspawn encounter groups.
- Thoon Hulk under Mind Flayer encounter groups.
- Savage Ogre under Orc encounter groups.
When building your encounters, you should try to avoid stacking them on top of each other unless you are very aware of what you are doing. Foundry content might seem very easy at lower levels, but it quickly grows very difficult indeed. Even just stacking a Hard encounter with an Easy encounter can make it nearly impossible to win for some classes, at least from what I've been told. I've seen many Foundry quests where the author made this mistake, and the enjoyment I got out of them was reduced tremendously as a result. I know it can be tempting to do, but don't do it!
Of course, there are caveats with anything. As you grow in author experience you'll be able to spot situations in which encounter stacking can be appropriate, and there may be other circumstances in your quest that makes them easier to handle. For example, if you have the player fighting alongside friendly encounters, you might very well find it reasonable to stack two enemy encounters on top of each other since the allies can keep some of these enemies off the player for a while. Just be careful, and don't stack without thinking long and hard about what you are doing.
Now you should be better equipped to challenge the player in a constructive way.
List of updates to this post:
- Added some information about stacking encounters (don't want to step on your shoes izatar, but I felt this was important enough to be in the first post)
- Added a solo monster (Hulk) that has been introduced to the Foundry after the original post was written.
Post edited by tilt42 on
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Comments
Here is an important tip for encounters: do not stack encounters to increase difficulty (this means don't make the player fight more than one encounter at a time). Instead, trust Cryptic to do encounter balancing.
It may seem at times that some of the 'Hard' encounters are too easy. And you may think you want to make your quest more fun by making it more challenging. There are a couple of flaws with this thinking.
First, the difficulty of encounters changes relative to the level of the character; so a fight that is easy for a 10th level character can be difficult for a 60th level character. Also, some fights that are easy for a rogue are impossible for a cleric.
For example, a 60th level cleric can barely kill many 'Hard' encounters because at 60th level, the encounters can heal themselves, but cleric damage doesn't go up much since they are healers, so it takes all their burst just to get a Hard down over several minutes!
And don't forget that Cryptic changes the way encounters work as they balance the game, so one day an encounter can be too easy and the next more challenging.
Most importantly however is the fact that the vast majority of game players are not very pro; however, they still want to feel pro. People play these types of games to feel powerful! So don't just crush them into dust!
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Ah, he must have been added since I originally wrote this then. I'll have to go through the list again once OB is upon us.
Nice work, may I use this on nwugc.com?
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Look what I started! hahaha but for real this is great info here!
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Not a problem.
Appreciated.
Website Dedicated to Foundry Tutorials: www.NWUGC.com Twitter: @NWUGC
Gold or Bones!!
Well, I wouldn't go that far. If you want to have a quest that is well balanced for a solo player, then you probably don't want to stack encounters. But that means a group will rip through it without hesitation, so if you want to create a quest that will challenge groups then you must stack encounters. You can also stack encounters to give a specific feel, like being swarmed under. Place down 2-3 easy encounters that have a bunch of minions and you'll have a nice little swarm.
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My original post is focused on single-player content. I think a second thread (made by someone else since I don't care about MP quests) would be needed to cover that.
Pretend one of the hardened units is patrolling four points A, B, C, and D. These points are far enough away that if a player attacks them - it will not aggro any other mobs - unless the patrol is near that point. For example, if the player attacks C and the patrol is also at C then the player has to fight two "HARD" and difficult encounters at the same time. I find that acceptable. Players need to learn about situational awareness and learn not to charge blindly in. Likewise, if Points A and B were north and south of each other (A is the north point and B is the south point). If a player attacks a mob from A that is south it will aggro B as well. That I find acceptable as well. Likewise, we add a patrolling unit in the mix - it is now possible to get three "HARD" encounters solo. However, if played right - the player will not have to face all three at the same time. That is acceptable to me for a solo foundry adventure.
However, for group adventure - then I will throw in additional mobs and encounters that are purposely close together. After all, that is why you have a group to CC, heal, DPS, and tank - right? So... a few extra mobs are welcomed.
This is true... very true. I still believe do not cave into other peoples play style, and create what you want to create! Just expect to get some review that are very low score for out of the box quest.
I want to add bosses but I don't want say a pirate captain to start shooting fireballs from his head.
aye I use them in one of my quest friendly as can be!
I have listed exactly where to find them. If you can't find them, maybe you don't understand what I mean when I say "Solo monster". It's not a monster that is alone. Please read my original post again.
it's exacty what I was looking for!!!!!! >.< Thanks so much
p.s. Tilt42 - "Soldiers" are in Neverwinter but I've only seen them in the "Friendly" Guard Encounters
I get that this is a good/ great tip for new foundry authors, but [imho] I think it doesn't stay true... if you can take the time to learn how Encounters work, "which is why this thread is awesome!" you most defiantly can stack encounters "In fact I think it's a must if you ever want to progress how the combat works in your quest/ campaign" because the encounters offered in the Foundry list are extremely basic/ limited".
:] making "art" to suit the wants of the public is one way of going about things. making "art" that you love and sharing it with the public, leaving them to decide if its for them or not is another (I think both are just as valid) sorry I just wanted to add my 2cents
yes you need to change your map filter to detail and select the mob in the encounter you wish to change, but that's kinda off topic
THIS THREAD NEEDS TO BE STICKIED!