Although I’m still running my players through Keep on the Shadowfell, I find that I’m modifying encounters a lot, and in some cases rebuilding them or adding new encounters to the adventure that weren’t there at all. I’m doing this mainly because it’s fun, but also because I’m chomping at the bit to run my own material when KotS is done.

The thing that strikes me most about that paragraph is the simple fact that encounter design is fun. Really, really fun. It didn’t used to be in 3rd Edition (at least, I didn’t find it that fun). It was like doing math homework. And it took forever. And, if you design encounters at your computer like me, you had to have several different books spread around your computer in order to create an interesting encounter. Here’s what I do now.

First, I decide what I want the theme of the encounter to be. I come up with some sort of memorable terrain feature or monster or plot element that the encounter is going to focus on because, if there isn’t something memorable about an encounter, it may as well not be in there. Oftentimes I’ll have a monster or two in mind that I want to use, and that helps a lot. Then, I fire up the D&D Compendium (you’ll need to be a D&D Insider subscriber in order to really use that link). I absolutely love the monster search engine in the Compendium; it makes things so easy. I’ll search for the monster or monsters that I want, call up their stat blocks, copy a screenshot of them to the clipboard with the screenshot tool of my choice, then paste the image into a document. Once I’ve taken care of the specific monsters I want in there, I fill it out with other monsters. Usually, this means deciding what role I want those monsters to fill; maybe the monster I picked is a brute, and I want some artillery and maybe a controller in there to make things interesting for the PCs. Maybe I want them to be level 2, and maybe I want them to be undead. I put all those criteria into the search engine and call up a list of potential choices. Then I just scroll through them until I find something that looks interesting, and copy/paste the stat block into my document. If I need a map for the encounter, I’ll usually use Jai’s Dungeon Tile Mapper, but Wizards has a dungeon creation tool in the pipes, so I imagine I’ll use that eventually (Jai’s mapper hasn’t been updated for a while, so not all of the tile sets that I own are in there). And there you go, done. At least, for a simple encounter. I might also want traps or a skill challenge in there (sadly, the Compendium doesn’t allow you to search for those yet, if ever), and that’s another story that I haven’t really tried my hand at too much yet.

Once the encounter is done, I need to assign some treasure to it. I love the 4th Edition parcel system for the ease of use and flexibility of it. If I’m putting magic items in there, I’ll generally either search for items of the appropriate level using the Compendium, or the Character Builder. I like to use the Character Builder to print out my magic item cards, so that’s what I normally use.

At any rate, that’s the process that works for me so far. It’s easy, and it’s fun; it’s kind of like going shopping for cool stuff, and buying it with the XP budget that you’re using for the encounter. The fact that monster stat blocks are small enough to paste a few onto a page or two of a document is pretty nice, but the thing that really makes this whole thing a breeze is the presence of all the digital tools that Wizards is gradually making available. I love the fact that, being an Insider subscriber, I can search the compendium for monsters from any source, regardless of whether or not I own it. It’s fantastic value for money.

So, just before our last D&D session (session report here), I allowed my players to do a little re-imagining of their characters. This was mainly because three of them were martial characters (fighter, ranger, and warlord), and characters were made before I owned Martial Power. Everyone jumped at the opportunity (including the paladin, who swapped out an at-will power that he didn’t like; basically I allowed him to retrain mid-level instead of waiting until he leveled up). Here’s what we’ve got now:

Kraygin was once a two-handed weapon fighter. He still uses a halberd, but he ditched the +1 to attack with two-handed weapons in favor of the battlerager vigor class feature, and he swapped out reaping strike (4 damage on a miss) for crushing surge (has the invigorating keyword, which grants temporary hit points on a hit). Basically, now Kraygin gets a temporary hit point every time he gets hit with a melee or close attack, and he gets a temporary hit point every time he hits with crushing surge, and his temporary hit points from crushing surge (and any other invigorating powers) stack with all of his other temporary hit points. Oh, and he downgraded to chain mail, so now he gets a +2 damage bonus whenever he has temporary hit points. The net effect is that Kraygin’s AC is a point lower than it would be, but he compensates by being more durable, and he’s definitely leaning toward striker as a secondary role. He’s got a halberd, which is a pretty high-damage weapon. If he’s bloodied, he gets a +1 to attack (dragonborn fury) and a +2 to damage (dragonborn frenzy); if he also has temporary hit points (which he frequently does), that becomes a +4 to damage, for a total of 1d10+8 damage on a basic attack. If he uses his daily, villain’s menace, on an enemy, against that enemy he’d be at +3 attack and +8 damage (1d10+12). Pretty darned good, if you ask me. The image that this inspires is a warrior who thrives on battle and laughs at pain, who is at his peak when the chips are down and he’s running on pure adrenaline. Kraygin might want to think about picking up blinding smash as an encounter power at level 3, and depending on what you get from multiclassing into barbarian, he might want to do that eventually.

Shava used to be an archery ranger, but has dropped the archery combat style and prime shot in order to pick up beast mastery, along with a predatory bird as a companion. This bird gives her some nice versatility; she can use it to more carefully select her quarry by positioning it near her intended target, and if she’s in a sticky situation where she can’t get out of melee with an opponent, her companion can swoop in and attack for her (and deal hunter’s quarry damage to boot). Shava wants to play up the ranger’s connection to nature, so she may or may not multiclass into a primal class later on. Now, she still uses ranged attacks primarily, and her Strength isn’t that high, so many of the beast-themed powers won’t be all that useful to her, unless they’re powers that allow her beast to attack rather than her.

Sredni Vashtar, the warlord, used to have the tactical presence class feature, but traded it in for resourceful presence. Before, any time an ally spent an action point, that ally got a +1 to the attack roll. Now, they get a +4 to the damage roll if they hit, or 3 temporary hit points if they miss. The nice thing about this is that either is helpful, and it makes Sredni and Kraygin a great team because Kraygin either increases his already high damage bonus, or gets some temporary hit points, which are arguable much more useful to him than to anyone else. Sredni also traded out furious smash (4 damage, and a bonus to an ally’s damage) for opening shove, a much cooler power (in my opinion) that allows him to push an enemy and allow an ally to either attack or shift 4 squares. Between opening shove, wolf pack tactics, and knight’s move, Sredni has lots of powers that allow his allies to move around when it’s not their turn. Between resourceful presence and bastion of defense, he’s got lots of stuff that can grant temporary hit points.

Chance is the least changed character, mainly because he didn’t really have any new options available to him. He dropped bolstering strike because his Charisma is lower than his Strength (it’s a Charisma-based power), and it grants him only 1 temporary hit point when he uses it because of his relatively low Wisdom, making it a trade-off that’s usually not worth it. In its place he took valiant strike, an Strength-based power that grants him a +1 to attack for each enemy adjacent to him. This makes him a great defender, because it encourages him to really mix it up with big groups of bad guys. He’s got a pretty high AC, being the only party member who uses a shield (a magic shield, no less), and it might be to his advantage to make it even higher by picking up some plate mail. There’s also a feat that he’s got his eye on, cleansing challange, that makes to so that every time he uses his divine challenge power on an undead creature, he deals 2 radiant damage to it. This would be a good way to improve the party’s general offense against undead creatures, and would make Chance great at killing minions; even though divine challenge can be used only once per round, being able to automatically kill one undead minion per round with a minor action and no attack roll, as long as its within 5 squares, is pretty darned potent.