Feature Focus: Encounter Decks
The encounter deck is a feature of D&D 4e that, if I had to guess, I’d say most people do not use. And that’s a shame, because in a sense it’s the spiritual descendant of the random monster tables from previous editions, and it can be a lot of fun.
Encounter decks have been a part of Masterplan since the very first release, in February 2009. They were functional but limited: you could create decks using the AutoBuild feature, and use them to generate encounters in the encounter builder. Good enough.
But as time passed we began to think that this implementation was a bit Spartan. Why was there no way to build encounter decks card by card? Why could you not refill a deck once cards had been taken out? Why was there not a better way to view the cards in a deck?
The encounter deck builder, which will be available with Masterplan version 8.4, addresses these issues.
The list of encounter decks is accessed as before, but the encounter deck builder takes the place of the grid view from earlier versions. The grid is still there, but as you can see the right-hand side of the window contains a list of creatures (just like in the encounter builder). When a grid cell is selected, this list is updated to show all the creatures that fit that cell. Creatures can then be dragged and dropped into the grid to add them to the encounter deck.
This arrangement provides us with the ability to build decks on a card-by-card basis, which is great, but we also wanted a better way to view the cards. The deck view feature now gives us this.
As you might expect you can scroll through the cards with your mouse wheel, or click on a particular card to bring it to the top of the deck.
With these new features, do you think you might be more likely to use encounter decks in your campaigns? Were you using them already?
March 24th, 2010 at 12:48 am
I do use the encounter deck as it is but I do think these changes will be major improvements and worth the time you put into it
March 24th, 2010 at 1:18 am
Woohoo!! THis is the #1 feature I’ve been looking forward to!!
March 24th, 2010 at 7:51 am
Wow. Masterplan is going better and better. I don’t use encounter decks and didn’y use random encounters in prevoius editions, but I am sure willing to try. Especially good for sandbox campaign I guess, which is I start very soon.
March 24th, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Excellent. Yes, I’ve been using the encounter deck, though I generally tweak the specific creatures recommended — but I agree with KM, this will be a major improvement to the system. MP keeps getting better.
March 26th, 2010 at 9:01 pm
Niiiice. I honestly couldn’t figure out how to get encounter decks to work before this, but I did wanna use them. So, improvements in this sphere are certainly good!
Also, the addition of “difficulty” tweaks across the board? Practically read my mind. I like to lower monster HP to keep things moving fast. Being able to do this automatically… it wouldn’t be more perfect for my needs if I’d designed it myself. Well done.
April 13th, 2010 at 11:13 am
I like this a lot. Is there a way to print all creature stats from an encounter deck?
April 13th, 2010 at 6:03 pm
Not currently; we might add this in a future release.
April 24th, 2010 at 4:13 am
Is there a way to insert custom creatures into encounter decks?
April 25th, 2010 at 7:06 am
This will be a feature of version 8.7.
May 1st, 2010 at 3:58 pm
Will there be a feature availble to save an encounter deck so that you don’t have to go back and put all the same cards in over and over if you find yourself using a particular deck more than once?
May 2nd, 2010 at 10:24 pm
Good idea; we’ll probably add this to the upcoming version.
January 2nd, 2011 at 1:54 am
I see what you do and how you can make a deck. but then what do you do with it? nowhere in the docs for masterplan or in this article does it say what encounter decks are actually FOR.
January 9th, 2011 at 11:25 am
Encounter decks are used to build randomised encounters – nothing more or less. They’re in the DMG.