Difficulty planning in D&D 4E

So I've been looking at using 2d10 in place of d20 in D&D 4E… I've written about 1200 words on the subject so far, but I haven't come to a strong conclusion yet.

I went down this path of seriously considering 2d10 in pursuit of improved consistency, and one of the primary drivers of that is that I'm having trouble planning encounters.

I threw a "really tough" encounter at the PCs, five levels above their level, and they waltzed through it with hardly a scratch because of a string of really great rolls right at the beginning, while I was rolling badly. I threw an "even level" encounter at them and the ranger almost died because of the reverse. And this keeps happening over and over. I feel like the dice have total, random control over the tension and outcome of the encounter to the point that choice of foes and player actions don't matter as much as the dice do.

All it's going to take is one encounter just a couple levels above the PCs when that good/bad die rolls run in my favor to get a TPK out of an encounter I did not expect to risk the life of even one PC.

In other games, I've not had a problem tweaking damage and even die results behind my GM screen. But in D&D 4E, I feel like this is somehow wrong… this isn't a half-freeform game, this is a tactical system. I feel like I'm robbing the players of a real victory, creating an illusion of successful tactics when in reality I've handed them the win. But then I feel like the dice are also doing a similar thing… overshadowing the player's decisions.

So I'm having trouble delivering a consistent experience. I expect one combat to be really intense and it turns out a bit dull. I expect another combat to be not so exciting and it turns out to be full of tension. We're back to my core problem with dice, in that they don't know how to tell a good story. And in the case of D&D 4E, I think system is tuned to give really random results. I think 2d10 might give me the consistency I need if it just doesn't break other aspects of the system.

Mechanics matter

Before I started playing D&D 4E, I pretty much played Fudge exclusively for twelve years. Various iterations, all trying to figure out the style that best fit me, and primarily aimed at reducing the rules to a bare minimum. It was a years-long, ongoing game-design fest, aimed at eliminating all the "unnecessary" rules, because I felt that they just got in the way.

One of the things I've discovered in the last year or so… I want important character decisions/actions to be reflected in the rules. In story-games parlance, I want the rules to be about the stuff that matters. In Fudge, I had pretty much boiled combat down to your skill versus my skill, and player/character creativity theoretically gets a bonus. Thing is, my players, in multiple groups over many years, were never really creative. And I as GM wasn't really creative either. What mattered to me was flavorful combat and that the game result in a "good story"… but I left those things out of the rules, thinking that the rules were getting in the way of producing those things.

So after about three levels worth of playing D&D, I've decided… mechanics really matter. As Rob Donoghue says (to paraphrase), the mechanics still have to be fun as a game if you strip the roleplaying layer off of it. And my Fudge game, mechanically, had turned into… well, something about as exciting as rock-paper-scissors. It relied entirely on the players' freeform/improv abilities to create the things that mattered most to me. When the players couldn't carry the day, the mechanics didn't do anything to help. And I think they actually hindered, because I think players tend to use what's clearly before them. And if all that's before them is "basic attack" without even options to trade offense or defense… that's all they do. "I hit the orc." Over and over until it falls dead. Or if they do try to be creative, they feel like they have to ask for permission… "Can I kick sand in the orc's eyes to distract him? How much of a bonus is that worth?"

In most cases, D&D 4E has been different. With the mechanics clearly defined, it eliminates the "Mother, may I?" problem of players asking for clarification/permission concerning what they want to do. It's really great to look at the battle map and know where everyone stands and what you can do… especially as the GM, when I can whip out cool monster powers without the player feeling like I had just hosed him with a "creative" maneuver that was somehow "unfair."

I think the Encounter and Daily powers system really solves one of my biggest problems with "stunts" or neat combat tricks. If kicking sand in my opponent's eye is good for a bonus, why don't I do it every darn combat, every darn round? Heck, I'll start carrying around a bag of sand just so I'll always have some. Doesn't matter how stupid it looks, many players will find that one thing the GM will give them a bonus for consistently and use it to death. "I throw sand in his face and hit him" every time is no better than "I hit him" ever time.

The 4E powers system solves that by saying, "Yes, that's a cool trick. But you can only do it once a combat." 4E's take is a little heavy-handed, but it gets the job done in a pretty effective manner. It adds flair and gives little combat "bumps" to add tactical flavor.

And the big thing in the end… nobody's worrying about being abstractly "creative" all the time. There are options laid out before us, a variety of things to do. There are times when the fighter stands toe-to-toe with an enemy and hits it with the same attack over and over, but I realize that I haven't presented a tactically-rich challenge. The setup was wrong, not the player's approach to it. One of the things I did that minimized this was to take the recommended "cut all monster hit-points in half, except for elites and solos". That's worked out pretty well for me so far. Keeps the combat moving fast, and avoids the players bogging down into "I hit it" at the same target over and over.

(Though it makes getting the drop on the enemy pretty serious. The last combat started with a surprise round when all the enemy were sitting on the ground around a fire. Half the monsters didn't survive long enough to even take a swing… a lot of that was because the wizard popped Freezing Cloud around the main force (all my non-minions) in the surprise round and rolled really well. Every one of them got hit by it twice before it got to move. Then when it got to move, it blew a Move action just to stand up, a Minor action to draw weapons, and a Standard action to move out of the Cloud… and precious few PCs were in Charge range. And they had to move out of the Cloud to avoid a potential second turn in it. It was a slaughter.)

The theory of dying in D&D

From the Design & Development column, "Death Matters", one of the designers says…

At the lowest levels of the game, we figured, death could very well mean making a new character. When you've only played a character for a couple of levels, you're not that attached to it yet. Making a new one isn't that terrible a price to pay for an encounter gone terribly wrong.

This is one of those places where my play-style clashes with D&D pretty badly. Just because I haven't accumulated a lot of XP doesn't mean I have nothing invested… I have a backstory, I have a personality, I have an inkling of the kind of story I want to tell. This character, this character and no other, represents, and is a vehicle for, what I'm expecting out of the game. In a lot of ways, this character is the game for me. Kill my character, force me to create a new one, and you're forcing me to play a different game than what I had in my head.

It's like reading a novel and having the main character die at the end of chapter two, and then pick up with an entirely different character as the main character.

But at advanced levels, where the designer says characters should be better protected from permanent death, I still take an opposite stance. Sure, I've got a bajillion XP invested, but the character has more or less told his story… at 25th level, the character's story can end on a satisfying, if bitter, note with his death. But killing the character at the beginning of his story is just plain disappointment.