Great question! I think that simplicity really helps. If there's less information, then it is easier to remember everything. I'd also try to keep relevant information together. I had the number of attacks listed in one spot, and then the attack stats in another. That made it easy to overlook.

That's right! I use Maps, really like how it can pull in stuff from 5e. I even use it to run OSE and Shadowdark.

I also managed to completely overlook the berserkers' multiattack last session. So mid-fight they started attacking three times each. Things got a lot deadlier!

Thanks!

Had some good meetings about it here at Gamehole Con. Plan is coming together…

Had a great time running for you! Glad I didn’t murder your character with my crazy hot dice.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Anyway, I know that we fixed the math in Monster Manual 3.

I do know for a fact that the MM creatures had ACs that were too high. I built the math assuming that feats gave an attack bonus, but then they didn't. Somewhere someone decided feats that gave +ATK were too good and didn't say anything.

Pyramid of Shadows looks like it does because we had to build the individual encounters and staple them together at the end. On Monday I'd do room A, Tuesday room B, etc, until we had enough rooms. Zero time or bandwidth to do anything more elaborate.

That's a great observation, and I think it speaks to a core problem with the mechanic. It's like tic-tac-toe. Once you know how to beat it, it doesn't adapt.

Yes!

I think this approach has an added, fatal flaw - the difference between at-will and alpha damage is so big that opting out of a long rest when you could take one is strictly a misplay. There's a *massive* incentive to long rest as often as possible.

How do you fix this? I think you need to design boss monsters with a different hit point scale, one that assumes the party is alpha striking. That causes CR to break down, but I think it's a viable path to introducing boss monsters that can stick around.

A party that unloads with their best powers simply breaks the system. Their output is off the scale when you assume that everyone fights for 20+ rounds per day and spreads their at-will powers out.

It's quite likely that a semi-optimized party can vaporize boss monsters in a round or even less.

We did the same thing in 5e, and time has shown that it does not work for boss monsters.

Why? The gap between daily and at-will damage is far bigger in 5e than in 4e. Spreading that extra damage across every round of a day misses the real benefit of daily abilities - a massive damage spike.

In 4e, we assumed a certain number of encounters per day. In each encounter, we assumed you used encounter powers, then at-will. We spread out the extra damage from daily powers across the day.

And it worked! The monsters had too many HP out of the gate, but we eventually fixed that.