Review: D&D 4e Pt 10 - DMG 3-4 - "Combat Encounters", "Building Encounters"

Book Two: Dungeon Master's Guide
Part the Third: Combat Encounters

1. When I saw all the additional rules in this section, I got worried; but mostly they're just good guidelines. In fact, the sense of the section is that they're here only if you really need them, and not as hard and fast rules of the land. Rules lawyers may disagree, but for me, I think if a situation from here came up and no one at the table knew the rule off hand, I wouldn't feel bad about improvising on the spot. The cool thing about these rules is that an improvisation probably wouldn't be too far off -- they're pretty common sense.

2. The disease and poison rules are always fun things to have in the DMG. I love all of the made-up diseases they list off, like Mummy Rot and Slimy Doom. (Both were in earlier versions of D&D, but I still like them, even though as of yet I haven't found a place for them in my campaigns.)

Part the Fourth: Building Encounters

1. Just as the roles for party members is handy when creating the player characters, so too the Monster Roles is going to be helpful in making encounters. I can't wait to get to the Monster Manual! That's always my favorite part of D&D anyway.

2. There's a big change here from the way encounters were constructed in 3.5. "CR" stats are gone, and the sliding scale of XP is also gone, and that's probably a good thing. Now monsters give a set amount of XP. Creating an encounter is as easy as taking the average monster XP for the characters' level, multiplying it by the number of characters, and then filling in threats until you have an amount of XP to match.

3. And Encounter Templates make it even easier! They give example scenarios, and you just plug in monsters of the appropriate level and role. Ka-pow! Mischief managed.
Same with traps, minions, and bosses.

4. One of the things I'm actually excited about for this version of D&D is the battle grid. Why is this the case, when back in 3.5 I never, ever used a grid (and probably missed out because of it, really -- 3.5 probably would have been a greatly improved experience for me if I had, in retrospect). But with 3.5 the problem was that the rules were really trying to do everything: in 4e they've narrowed the focus down, and encounters just make a lot of sense with a battle grid. That's why sections like "Encounter Settings" get me excited about running the game.