(obviously not minions). One of my beefs with 4E is that monsters have way too many HPs, causing most combats to last way too long. What are the balancing, game implications of this, and by what value do you reduce? 1/2? 3/4?
The implications for my group would be that the creatures go down a lot faster. They take them down fast enough as it is. I would be concerned with the combats ending too quickly. Also, the player characters would probably use up less of their resources and would probably push on through more encounters. That may be a good thing for some, though.
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Have you thought about keeping the level the same and increasing the attack and damage rolls at the same time as you increase hp? I would think that would be a good way to preserve the effectiveness of the badguy while speeding up combat.
One other note - it seems like reducing hp would also reduce the effectiveness of the secondary effects. It's like in the old Final Fantasy games - it's generally the better strategy to do as much hp damage as you can rather than put in status effects if you can kill a foe in a round or two. I think that might be a large reason for the larger hp pools in 4e - to make such status effects more useful/powerful.
My group and I have the same problem and I decided to simply reduce the hit point of monster by one level (depending of the role). Anyway the hp calculation for monster add one lever over the PC and I'm not sure I understand the reason behind this increase (a goblin Brute 1 have more hit points than a level 1 human fighter)...
The combat end a little bit quicker and this is more significative with Elite and Solo (monsters lose 2x level or 5x level in hit points)... At lower level, this help a lot to make the combat quicker without really changing anything to the challenge or the danger the character could face... On average, we can complete one more encounter every game session... wich is a good thing... and the HP of monster are now more equivalent to those of the character of equivalent level...
Have you thought about keeping the level the same and increasing the attack and damage rolls at the same time as you increase hp? I would think that would be a good way to preserve the effectiveness of the badguy while speeding up combat.
Last year at GenCon, Rich Baker mentioned that in one of the playtests, the monsters all had 1/2 the HP, and did one die larger damage. (this to some degree is represented in the early DDM 4E stat cards). Seems feasible to put this back into play if you're having issues.
One other note - it seems like reducing hp would also reduce the effectiveness of the secondary effects. It's like in the old Final Fantasy games - it's generally the better strategy to do as much hp damage as you can rather than put in status effects if you can kill a foe in a round or two. I think that might be a large reason for the larger hp pools in 4e - to make such status effects more useful/powerful.
That's my impression too.
My group and I have the same problem and I decided to simply reduce the hit point of monster by one level (depending of the role). Anyway the hp calculation for monster add one lever over the PC and I'm not sure I understand the reason behind this increase (a goblin Brute 1 have more hit points than a level 1 human fighter)...
The combat end a little bit quicker and this is more significative with Elite and Solo (monsters lose 2x level or 5x level in hit points)... At lower level, this help a lot to make the combat quicker without really changing anything to the challenge or the danger the character could face... On average, we can complete one more encounter every game session... wich is a good thing... and the HP of monster are now more equivalent to those of the character of equivalent level...
Seems like a good idea on the face of it.
Given that this change could significantly affect the game's balance and the effectiveness of a lot of powers, I'd use this only as a last resort. Are your players taking too long to resolve their actions? If each player takes a full minute to take their turn, you can finish a single combat in about an hour. Players packing power cards and who are planning their turn before the initiative order reaches them should be able to get it down to 30 seconds per turn or less, which means a combat shouldn't last more than a half an hour on average.
I am going to go ahead and attempt the 1/4 HP and an increased damage die. (1/2 maybe to much and that is probably why it was changed later on) I like my combats to be extremely fast but deadly. I've played the full rules and then I was using a method of picking a high level monster and lower level monsters to make the encounter level be "easy" for the group.
One of my ideas to speed things up a bit was to let all creatures and players add half their level to damage as well. Not sure if that would speed things up enough for you, though.
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If each player takes a full minute to take their turn, you can finish a single combat in about an hour.
That still is a large amount of time spent resolving a conflict! Is this the "expected" norm? Please keep in mind that I come from the non-miniature D&D background (even in 3.xE) and combats rarely took more than 15-20 mins even for 6 players.
Scott of all the people on the board I guess you have the best chance to answer this. Was "about an hour" per combat encounter the goal of WotC when they designed the system? This I think was the problem that turned my main group from 4E, long combats that people just got plain bored of. The first few rounds of stating power, rolling dice were fun and cool - but by the nth round of combat it seemed to degrade into people saying "x hp damage, is it dead yet..."
For the original poster, in my current 4E group we just change to number of creatures in the encounter. Anywhere from 1/2-2/3 the number, then more of the party can gang up on a single creature and dispatch it in a timely fashion. Many would say that this moves away from the whole concept of 4E, but it's easier than trying to work out the correct amount of hp's per critter without devolving into just keeping the creature alive until as DM you think it should be dead (i.e. no real hp's just gauge when the combat is becoming stale).
I enjoy 4E but think it needs a little work - still as I have always said 4E is "D&D new system 1st edition" really. 2nd ed. (i.e. 5E) will be better...
S.
I vary it from fight to fight. Sometimes I run with 1/2 HP and +2 to damage, sometimes the 3/4 HP and +2 to damage, sometimes I leave it as it is. I generally do a run of 1/2 HP fights, then a 3/4 HP, then a full HP. It gives a feeling of danger escalation.
That still is a large amount of time spent resolving a conflict! Is this the "expected" norm? Please keep in mind that I come from the non-miniature D&D background (even in 3.xE) and combats rarely took more than 15-20 mins even for 6 players.
My experience with combats has been that they run from an hour to an hour and a half with five players (with 10th level characters), slightly more with six players, and from half an hour to almost an hour with three players.
I've not played D&D without minitures... like pretty much ever. So the hour of combat is pretty much the norm when it comes to gaming as I've remember calling sessions during our Age of Worms 3.x tabletop game before a fight because we were under the hour mark.
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I've not played D&D without minitures... like pretty much ever. So the hour of combat is pretty much the norm when it comes to gaming as I've remember calling sessions during our Age of Worms 3.x tabletop game before a fight because we were under the hour mark.
Thanks, I wasn't poking holes in either miniatures based RPing or 4E - I just had no reference other than my experience to tell if that was excessive or not.
Cheers,
S.
That still is a large amount of time spent resolving a conflict! Is this the "expected" norm?
Yeah, pretty much.
Scott of all the people on the board I guess you have the best chance to answer this. Was "about an hour" per combat encounter the goal of WotC when they designed the system?
"About an hour" per encounter was roughly their design goal. This was true of 3rd Edition, 3.5, and now 4th Edition as well. Whether the encounter involves combat or not, the idea was that the average game session lasts between 3 and 4 hours, and that 3 or 4 encounters per session is a pretty satisfying number (and their research showed that most groups tended to adhere to this ballpark figure anyway).
Sometimes I think it can be helpful to view the hobby as we might view other, socially analogous activities. Watching a football game, for instance, is a 3- or 4-hour activity, split into quarters with their accompanying breaks in play, play analyses, commercial breaks, half-time shows, etc. D&D is not too dissimilar from this sort of activity, though it does ask more attention of its participants.
My LFR group, on the other hand, has incredibly short fights, with a very striker heavy party (and less intensive battles.)
This is another worthwhile point to make: LFR games (and, previously, LG games) are designed to be completed in four hours, the official duration of a "slot". This is a necessary design element to have your adventure playable at conventions where people sign up for game slots ahead of time. As a result, LFR games usually contain in the neighborhood of 3-5 encounters.
If you want combat to remain dangerous and you want to speed it up by reducing the hp of monsters then I think you definitely need to ramp up the damage they do when they hit.
Alternatively, once you see that the PCs have a fight well in hand try to wrap it up quick instead of dragging it out. Have monsters surrender or flee or just have them go down from the next hit. You're the dm, you know how much hp a monster has, and that number can be as many as you need it to have. If you want it dead to end things than let it die, don't let the rules get in your way. Of course if the fight still looks like it could go either way or you think you've got a chance to put some nasty hurt on a PC still, I'd let the monster live until the end of its "natural" life span.
For our group, I guess that 1 hour to 1.5 hour is fine for a high level combat... but taking more than 1 hour to kill a bunch a kobolds (Keep on the Shadowfell) where it could have taken 15 minutes in 3.5 is way too long to our taste...
I don't mind a final combat with the master villain and is minions that could take that long, but for trivial encounters it's just a pain... So beside reducing the number of hit points by one level for each creature, i've decided to recuded the level of opposition for minor encounters... Not every encounter need to be 'standard' challenge... I prefer to have the time to complete two trivial encounter instead of one standard that took so much time that we lost interest in it's resolution and that often force the characters to spend daily powers only to survive...
For exemple the goblin in Monster in the Closest (Pathfinder Burnt Offerings) was not meant to be a challenge for a party of 4 3.5e characters... A single goblin armed with a knife could possiblity not be anything but anoying to a group of armed character... there is no need to make this encounter a challenging one and make this goblin Elite and add 3 other level 1 goblins warrior to make this a "Standard" encounter... this was simply a roleplaying opportunity that have a specific role in the storyline...
I prefer to take less time on what should be trivial encounters to make sure that my players are ready for the big final encounter. Since we applied those few change, our enjoyment of the game have really increased. Does it make the encounter a little bit easier.. probably... does it make me and my players happier... certainly! (And most of the time I increased the challenge of the final battle to compensate the lost of XP for the less challenging other encounters)
For exemple the goblin in Monster in the Closest (Pathfinder Burnt Offerings) was not meant to be a challenge for a party of 4 3.5e characters... A single goblin armed with a knife could possiblity not be anything but anoying to a group of armed character... there is no need to make this encounter a challenging one and make this goblin Elite and add 3 other level 1 goblins warrior to make this a "Standard" encounter... this was simply a roleplaying opportunity that have a specific role in the storyline...
This is, as presented in Burnt Offerings, completely untrue. You may see it as a role playing opportunity, and it was intended as a role playing opportunity, but it was also intended as a viable combat encounter in its own right - its encounter level is even indicated at the beginning of the Monster in the Closet write-up. In D&D 3.5, a single monster of the party's level in CR is an average fight for the party of that level. In fact, it has the same encounter level as the fight against three goblins that the party encounters at the beginning of the adventure.
Furthermore, since it seems you're calling out my conversion here, I added two goblins, for a total of three. And yes, in order to maintain the integrity of the design intent, the Monster in the Closet encounter had to be made a viable combat encounter, because that's what it was intended as in the original adventure. In fact, both the original encounter and the converted encounter are level 1 encounters. Bear in mind that the "annoying" goblin you describe could drop a party's wizard or rogue into negatives with a well-placed knife attack, and it only gets worse if it manages to get ahold of another weapon during the fight.
For an example of a truly "trivial" combat, see The Skinsaw Murders' fight with Grayst Sevilla. And, even in that particular encounter, he stands a chance of taking a chunk out of a character before he can be subdued, which is what the average fight in 3.5 was about - depletion of party resources.
Trivial encounters should be sparse, if they are used at all. In a narrative game, combat is just another way to deliver that narrative. You don't want your role playing encounters to be trivial, you don't want your riddles and puzzles to be trivial, and you don't want your combat encounters to be trivial for the same reason. Every combat is an opportunity to engage your players in the game within the game, as well as provide them with plot development, resolution or exposition. I've taken some criticism from others for making the Monster in the Closet fight a serious combat, but I think it was the right decision.
Monsters who flee to warn other monsters has become a running gag in my real-lfe games. Such fun.
For our group, I guess that 1 hour to 1.5 hour is fine for a high level combat... but taking more than 1 hour to kill a bunch a kobolds (Keep on the Shadowfell) where it could have taken 15 minutes in 3.5 is way too long to our taste...
I think my group agrees with this completely. An hour to kill a group of hobgoblins or zombies is too long.
That's why I was interested in the options and opinions. I think it is a GREAT point to understand that status effects can differ wildly, though I can see it both ways. If a monster can survive 3 rounds of damage, stunning him for one round is much more valuable than if he can survive 5 rounds. So I see status effects being MORE powerful when monsters have less HP.
I was not calling out your conversion Scott (and by the way you've done a colossal job). But we obviously don't agree on what a encouter level 1 represent in 3.5E VS a standard encounter in 4E.
A goblin armed with a knife (dealing 1d3 dmg) could possibily drop to uncounscious a level 1 Wizard but will not live more than one round after the three other character beat the crap out of him. In 3.5 this encounter end in less than 5 minutes. I just don't see why I should convert this encouter into a 1 hour battle (standard encounter) in 4E... it serve no purpose in the story and even if this encounter could be fun and challenging in itself by upgrading it to a standard encounter I prefer to keep those good moment with major and significative encounters. One hour to kill the equivalent of a goblin in 3.5 is just not the kind of fun we enjoy. And this is exactly were we find that 4e become more a boardgame than a roleplaying game.. we don't want our gaming night to become a succession of 1 hour battle encounters (at least not in lower level adventure). We prefer to skip a few of those long encounter to advanced the storyline... To each is own but we have a blast so far in keeping the spirit of 3.5 adventures...
I wish I knew how people were getting such quick combats out of the adventures. Age of Worms was slug-fest after slug-fest... and Savage Tides wasn't much better. I haven't tried to run Rise or Curse but I doubt the design changed that much.
I wish I knew how people were getting such quick combats out of the adventures. Age of Worms was slug-fest after slug-fest... and Savage Tides wasn't much better. I haven't tried to run Rise or Curse but I doubt the design changed that much.
Well to be honest, from my experience (yours may vary) Most 3.x encounters I have been apart of end in 15-20 minutes tops until 15th+ level, and that is only when something insanely unfrseen happens and throws things for a loop. In Second Darkness my group initiated a fight with 3 seperate encounters twice ina row (2 sets of 3 groups) and the first only took 30 minutes and the second was over in a matter of 10 or so except or a sneaky caster who drug it out forever. In published mods I have seen combats are only slow if mass DR and inadequate weapons are involved or everyone is approaching high level (or a dragon is involved). IN a friend of mines homebrew even at 18th we still have no combats last longer than 3-4 rounds and less than 45 minutes. Heck we honestly 2 rounded a Collasal Black Dragon Druid who we got surprise and initiative on, although he did 1 round the duskblade :P So the average length of an encounter is possibly the hour benchmark and I have seen this occaisonally, but on the same token I have seen the people I play with who have alot of gaming experience go through nearly an entire AP book in 1 6 hour session (so 3 levels worth of xp and 30+ battles and such). As always YMMV. :P
Also Scott I love your Rise Conversions, I do. If I ever go to running 4E it will be with your conversions, but on the same token I will throw my hat in there and say I understand why people would feel the encounter isn't meant as a typical combat in that it shouldn't be a hard fight and should be less dangerous overall. Again its a personal thing, however that being said I can see why you would make it that way and I must admit 1 goblin in your closet os scary but 3? Chilling, and a pretty cool fight I'm willing to wager.
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To chime in on a topic that came up earlier...
I was recently asked to run an impromptu D&D game for some nieces and nephews over the holidays. Because I didn't want to dig through the closet for miniatures, pray the Expo markers worked, and lay out the mat; so I just ran a visit to Sandpoint's Swallowtail Festival and subsequent combat without figs - like I did with AD&D. It was so smooth and fast compared to the drawn out slugfests from Living Greyhawk adventures under 3.5. I don't know if I'll ever use miniatures again.
My experience with the 3.5 group I currently play in is that at high levels our combats are generally taking a couple of hours to run, but that may be partially due to the bad guys we are running into seem to have a lot of very weird/complicated abilities. A different 3.5 group I previously played in "nuked" it's way through most high level combats very quickly.
With regard to the Monster in the Closet encounter, I can see both points of view, and it seems to me to be largely a matter of style. If you want to emphasise the darker aspect of the encounter (as per the sidebar in the module) then how easily the party defeats the goblin (or goblins) makes no difference to the fact that they were too late to save the husband. In my 4E game however, this was likely to be the only combat for the session, so I wanted it to be slightly more challenging and ran it as detailed in Scott's conversion (where Gresgurt ended up dropping the fighter with a crit while under the effect of Bloodied Rage... definitely made the party wince!)
One other note - it seems like reducing hp would also reduce the effectiveness of the secondary effects. It's like in the old Final Fantasy games - it's generally the better strategy to do as much hp damage as you can rather than put in status effects if you can kill a foe in a round or two. I think that might be a large reason for the larger hp pools in 4e - to make such status effects more useful/powerful.
I'm not all that sure I'd worry about the power of secondary effects. With 4e's generous saving throw system, many secondary effects aren't likely to last long anyway.
I'd probably consider putting the hit points at 50-75% for most monsters, multiply elites by only 1.5 instead of 2, and solos only 3 instead of 5.
I think the DMs role is not only Referee but Director. So if a fight seems to be taking too long I have no compunction to knock off 1/4 the hp on a baddie, especially if it is obvious that the PCs are going to win without too much exciting happening.
For instance recently my PCs were in an arena kind of situation trying to get a key from a green dragon. There were a lot of ways to deal with the problem but they mostly went with beating on it. I knew the next encounter was a little more cinematic so when the Swordmage critted his daily I ruled the dragon was beheaded instead of letting them plow through the last 80 hp. I know some flip about 'dm fiat' but this is an imagination game, make things happen that stimulate the imagination and suppress things from happening that bore.
Now if half the party was down and the players were looking scared I would spin it harder, gotta play it by ear.
If you get it wrong the worst thing that can happen is a fight is too easy, kick their ass next time.
I think the DMs role is not only Referee but Director. So if a fight seems to be taking too long I have no compunction to knock off 1/4 the hp on a baddie, especially if it is obvious that the PCs are going to win without too much exciting happening.
This is a good point. The DM should feel free to adjust the pacing on the fly (though expect your particularly observant players to raise an eyebrow when your monster drops dead well before reaching double its bloody value in damage).
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/254630-stalker0s-guide- anti-grind.html
This is an awesome article on reducing thr "monster grind". Both my DM, and I both use it when designing encounters for our respective parties.
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It seems to me that in 4e combat is very different from 3e at both low levels and high levels, and maybe less so in the mid levels. At low levels, PCs and monsters have way more hit points, so they will die slower. But the curve is much more shallow as you go up in levels - i.e. a PC doesn't have twice as many hp at 2nd level in 4e, for example. At high levels in 4e a PC has fewer powers and abilities than a high level 3e PC, lacks multiple attacks a round (by and large) and so on, and there is much less of a massive transformation into a super-human killing machine at higher levels, and probably less increase in combat times too (3e combat is notorious for how long it takes at higher levels).
It strikes me (and I guess it was a design goal) that combat would be relatively similar in time as levels go up in 4e (it seems "streamlined" to me compared with 3e). I think that means that low level combat in 4e is fairly "long" compared with the truly puny 1 HD monsters from 3e. I think it is the nature of the beast and probably one of the biggest discontinuities between the editions. On that basis, I would hesitate to make big changes as it might make higher level combat too easy. I would suggest than once a few levels are gone through this problem will be much less of a problem.
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Perhaps the problem arises from DMs running encounters like 3e rather than 4e? They are very different animals as everyone well knows. My concern over this topic is simply that people don't get how to run 4e as a game*. This from the RPing side of things stands out in that the DMG2 will have a "how to roleplay with 4e" section. Which is sort of like having to explain a joke to someone. Perhaps a "how to run a 4e combat without it becoming a grind-fest" also needs to be included? The worry is that such extreme house-rules are deemed required to make 4e "fun". Perhaps in the designers heads it was all crystal clear from the exciting combats to the roleplaying aspects, but the writers/editors have missed the point the designers were trying to make?
Maybe 4e combat (at lower levels) isn't broken and it's meant to take that long and involve grinding OR we are doing it wrong?
S.
*Argue if you like but the inclusion of "how to RP with 4e" in the DMG2 seems pretty clear evidence that a reasonable amount of people "just don't get it".
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Monsters who flee to warn other monsters has become a running gag in my real-lfe games. Such fun.
That happens a fair bit in my campaign, but I tend to have my monsters "get away" as the pc's go 20ish and monsters go 30ish (sorry thinking in my PFRPG game at the moment.)
Still an hour battle for a typical fight, expect the penultimate encounter which was a prolongued siege by the PCs of their old bosses tavern (Second Darkness AP) The fight really was 3-4 encounters that just kept rolling. I think we went out of initiative once for the whole session.
It seems to me that in 4e combat is very different from 3e at both low levels and high levels, and maybe less so in the mid levels. At low levels, PCs and monsters have way more hit points, so they will die slower. But the curve is much more shallow as you go up in levels - i.e. a PC doesn't have twice as many hp at 2nd level in 4e, for example. At high levels in 4e a PC has fewer powers and abilities than a high level 3e PC, lacks multiple attacks a round (by and large) and so on, and there is much less of a massive transformation into a super-human killing machine at higher levels, and probably less increase in combat times too (3e combat is notorious for how long it takes at higher levels).
It strikes me (and I guess it was a design goal) that combat would be relatively similar in time as levels go up in 4e (it seems "streamlined" to me compared with 3e). I think that means that low level combat in 4e is fairly "long" compared with the truly puny 1 HD monsters from 3e. I think it is the nature of the beast and probably one of the biggest discontinuities between the editions. On that basis, I would hesitate to make big changes as it might make higher level combat too easy. I would suggest than once a few levels are gone through this problem will be much less of a problem.
I don't think its purely a matter of the system just needing to self correct. For one thing the complaint just seems to common for it to be purely an illusion. Another aspect is that it often seems to be on some kind of a negative curve. Combats start a little slow but get faster as the 'bonus' hps everyone got at first level become an ever lower percentage of everyones overall hps. However after a point it seems to shift and start rising again due to the fact that damage output does not really scale with the increases in hps and surges and such.
I think another possible issue is that players tend to be fairly good at upping the effectiveness of their characters. The standard DM response to feeling that the characters a bit to powerful for an encounter exactly equal to their level is to ramp up the levels of the bad guys. The problem here is it ramps up the bad guys defences and hps and the players suddenly find that they have a tough time hitting and have to wade through bucko hps to kill the bad guy - which just exaggerates the grindy feeling.
In any case I can't say that I much care for the idea of giving monsters less hps unless they are going to be compensated some how. Give them a better attack bonus, or have them do more damage, or give them some APs or some such. Otherwise it just seems like one is making the monsters less effective which will make the encounters easier - which defeats the purpose because then the DM goes and uses more powerful monsters with higher ACs and more hps.
My feeling is if ones going to give the monsters 75% hps they should do the same with the players. That said I think the biggest culprit is ACs might be too high. The design goal seemed to be that a PC attacking a bad guy of equal level should hit ~50% of the time. Its probably where I would have started if I were designing a game too but I think its a bit flawed - fundamentally misses are boring. Its boring when the monster misses you (unless your down to your last few hps) and its boring when you miss the monster - its even boring when they miss on a podcast (except when some one rolls a 1 twice in a row - but that could happen even if all attacks got a +2). Giving +2 to hit just across the board might solve most problems. My only concern with this would be minions and I'd probably handle that by giving them +2 to all their defences. Lessing missing is, generally more fun all around. I think it even makes it more fun (in a frustrating kind of way) to actually miss when you are generally more likely to hit (because now your counting on a hit).
*Argue if you like but the inclusion of "how to RP with 4e" in the DMG2 seems pretty clear evidence that a reasonable amount of people "just don't get it".
I'd save the baiting for a flame war until after we have actually seen what they do with the DMG2. As it stands there is at least as good a chance it will be comparable to the role playing pointers we found in DMG2 in 3.5 and the role playing pointers in that were in Catacombs in 2nd edition (an excellent book, btw, I read it over before starting any campaign).
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I'd save the baiting for a flame war until after we have actually seen what they do with the DMG2. As it stands there is at least as good a chance it will be comparable to the role playing pointers we found in DMG2 in 3.5 and the role playing pointers in that were in Catacombs in 2nd edition (an excellent book, btw, I read it over before starting any campaign).
*Argue if you like but the inclusion of "how to RP with 4e" in the DMG2 seems pretty clear evidence that a reasonable amount of people "just don't get it".
Apologies, wasn't meant to come across in that way. Just trying to say actually what you said. Too many people seem to have issues with aspects of 4e for it just to be just a problem of disgruntled 3e players.
*Argue if you like but the inclusion of "how to RP with 4e" in the DMG2 seems pretty clear evidence that a reasonable amount of people "just don't get it".
I think this comes more from the fact that so many people were at a point that they associated roleplaying with their stats. They needed to have representative stat in their character in order to roleplay him. If he wanted to build a weapon, he needed ranks in Craft (weapon). If he had a background in thievery as a youth before becoming a soldier he needed to, at least, take a rank or two in associated skills (Hide, Move Silently, etc.) or, at most, take a level of rogue. Everything had to be quantified or it couldn't be roleplayed. It was one of the reasons I was playing D&D less and going into other systems more, like Savage Worlds.
Now, all the mechanics are heavily on the combat side while the non-combat stuff is left more to the imagination. This is why the new edition reminds me much of my earlier play experience with my blue box set and AD&D days. The mechanics came into play when in combat, but outside of it we were just having fun "making up stuff as we went along". Which is exactly what you were supposed to be doing. By 3.5 mechanics had invaded so much of the game that I think many people forgot how to just "make it up as you go along" and still have fun. I think that the "How to RP in D&D 4E" article in the DMG2 is a reminder to those that have forgotten that mechanics are not an integral part of roleplaying, only your imagination is.
I've not played D&D without minitures... like pretty much ever. So the hour of combat is pretty much the norm when it comes to gaming as I've remember calling sessions during our Age of Worms 3.x tabletop game before a fight because we were under the hour mark.
It was definitly faster in 2nd when very few groups used miniatures except for the odd 'climatic' encounter. I've played without miniatures for about 2/3rds of my gaming life - but having played with them for D&D I'd not go back. Obviously others mileage varies but I personally feel that having miniatures helps make the fights more interesting and more dynamic. Longer combats are, for me, a worth while trade off for more interesting combats.
That said a boring or crappy combat with miniatures is far worse then the same thing without miniatures. Miniatures enhances good combats but makes bad ones even worse. Hence modern adventures feature far fewer 'throw away' combats then was previously the case in older editions. We no longer have dungeons with three rooms in a row that each have 5 orcs (use the stats from the previous rooms) because that's mind numbingly boring. Random encounters are a lot rarer in the WotC editions of the game as well for much the same reason.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/254630-stalker0s-guide- anti-grind.html
This is an awesome article on reducing thr "monster grind". Both my DM, and I both use it when designing encounters for our respective parties.
Interesting article. On the upside this is a good 'official' way to handle the problem. Which means we might see less 'grindy' combats from official material as editors get a handle on this. On the other hand I'm not so happy with the number of restrictions this idea seems to put in place. Forcing encounters to nearly always be of equal level to the party strikes me as...well boring. For one thing combats of equal level to the party rarely challange them. How am I supposed to do the really tough boss fight under these kinds of restrictions? I'm essentially stuck trying to force my players to run through a whole bunch of fights in order to challange them becuase the first handful exist merely to drain healing surges from my players so that the later ones can be nail biting.
In other words this 'cure' seems almost as bad as the disease. Instead of boring my players with 'grindy' fights, I'm boring them with too many fights. Make one adventure that follows these guide lines and we have no problem, make two and its all good but make every adventure try and follow these guide lines? That I have issues with - Its to confining if the plot now has to always conform to 5 fights of equal level to the party. Thats not to say that I think the article is all wrong or anything - I think its chalk full of good rules of thumb but some of its basic presumptions are bad for the game even if they are good for combats in the game.
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It seems to me that in 4e combat is very different from 3e at both low levels and high levels, and maybe less so in the mid levels. At low levels, PCs and monsters have way more hit points, so they will die slower. But the curve is much more shallow as you go up in levels - i.e. a PC doesn't have twice as many hp at 2nd level in 4e, for example. At high levels in 4e a PC has fewer powers and abilities than a high level 3e PC, lacks multiple attacks a round (by and large) and so on, and there is much less of a massive transformation into a super-human killing machine at higher levels, and probably less increase in combat times too (3e combat is notorious for how long it takes at higher levels).
It strikes me (and I guess it was a design goal) that combat would be relatively similar in time as levels go up in 4e (it seems "streamlined" to me compared with 3e). I think that means that low level combat in 4e is fairly "long" compared with the truly puny 1 HD monsters from 3e. I think it is the nature of the beast and probably one of the biggest discontinuities between the editions. On that basis, I would hesitate to make big changes as it might make higher level combat too easy. I would suggest than once a few levels are gone through this problem will be much less of a problem.
I don't think its purely a matter of the system just needing to self correct. For one thing the complaint just seems to common for it to be purely an illusion. Another aspect is that it often seems to be on some kind of a negative curve. Combats start a little slow but get faster as the 'bonus' hps everyone got at first level become an ever lower percentage of everyones overall hps. However after a point it seems to shift and start rising again due to the fact that damage output does not really scale with the increases in hps and surges and such.
I think another possible issue is that players tend to be fairly good at upping the effectiveness of their characters. The standard DM response to feeling that the characters a bit to powerful for an encounter exactly equal to their level is to ramp up the levels of the bad guys. The problem here is it ramps up the bad guys defences and hps and the players suddenly find that they have a tough time hitting and have to wade through bucko hps to kill the bad guy - which just exaggerates the grindy feeling.
In any case I can't say that I much care for the idea of giving monsters less hps unless they are going to be compensated some how. Give them a better attack bonus, or have them do more damage, or give them some APs or some such. Otherwise it just seems like one is making the monsters less effective which will make the encounters easier - which defeats the purpose because then the DM goes and uses more powerful monsters with higher ACs and more hps.
My feeling is if ones going to give the monsters 75% hps they should do the same with the players. That said I think the biggest culprit is ACs might be too high. The design goal seemed to be that a PC attacking a bad guy of equal level should hit ~50% of the time. Its probably where I would have started if I were designing a game too but I think its a bit flawed - fundamentally misses are boring. Its boring when the monster misses you (unless your down to your last few hps) and its boring when you miss the monster - its even boring when they miss on a podcast (except when some one rolls a 1 twice in a row - but that could happen even if all attacks got a +2). Giving +2 to hit just across the board might solve most problems. My only concern with this would be minions and I'd probably handle that by giving them +2 to all their defences. Lessing missing is, generally more fun all around. I think it even makes it more fun (in a frustrating kind of way) to actually miss when you are generally more likely to hit (because now your counting on a hit).
I think the issue is expectations - 3e and 4e have a fundamental difference in the way the encounters are set up. My first 4e game I nearly wiped out the party by casually increasing the number of goblins in 3e-style - the whole CR/xp thing works differently, powers work differently, as do the monsters. The problem is that people expect goblins or kobolds to go down with a single hit, and they don't anymore. No one complains much if it takes a long time to kill a dragon.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/254630-stalker0s-guide- anti-grind.html
This is an awesome article on reducing thr "monster grind". Both my DM, and I both use it when designing encounters for our respective parties.
Interesting article. On the upside this is a good 'official' way to handle the problem. Which means we might see less 'grindy' combats from official material as editors get a handle on this. On the other hand I'm not so happy with the number of restrictions this idea seems to put in place. Forcing encounters to nearly always be of equal level to the party strikes me as...well boring. For one thing combats of equal level to the party rarely challange them. How am I supposed to do the really tough boss fight under these kinds of restrictions? I'm essentially stuck trying to force my players to run through a whole bunch of fights in order to challange them becuase the first handful exist merely to drain healing surges from my players so that the later ones can be nail biting.
In other words this 'cure' seems almost as bad as the disease. Instead of boring my players with 'grindy' fights, I'm boring them with too many fights. Make one adventure that follows these guide lines and we have no problem, make two and its all good but make every adventure try and follow these guide lines? That I have issues with - Its to confining if the plot now has to always conform to 5 fights of equal level to the party. Thats not to say that I think the article is all wrong or anything - I think its chalk full of good rules of thumb but some of its basic presumptions are bad for the game even if they are good for combats in the game.
In the main I agree with you. I tend to run most encounters based on the ideas presented in the links, but every now and again I just chuck all the "rules" (as much as they are) out the window and throw something crazy at them. Im also a big BIG fan of "reskinning" things to keep things fresh and interesting. The next encounter I have planned is the party against a bunch of Kobold's riding peradactyl type things, and all im really doing is sending them up against a bunch of Spiretop Drakes. I think thats really the key to keep fights interesting rather than the encounter level you sending them up against. In fact thats a good idea for a thread.
I think the issue is expectations - 3e and 4e have a fundamental difference in the way the encounters are set up. My first 4e game I nearly wiped out the party by casually increasing the number of goblins in 3e-style - the whole CR/xp thing works differently, powers work differently, as do the monsters. The problem is that people expect goblins or kobolds to go down with a single hit, and they don't anymore. No one complains much if it takes a long time to kill a dragon.
Actually they do (though I have to say that the one time I fought a dragon in 4E it was totally awesome). If you look at the article Ratchet posted you'll note that Solo's are singled out as being particularly prone to 'The Grind'.
Now up to a point I agree with you in terms of expectations. If some one is complaining that 'they are just kobolds - this should be fast' I'm not so sure I agree. Better if there are not combats that are seen as being that 'throw away'.
Still I think there really is something mechanically in 4E that makes it prone to feeling like a drag near the end of a fight when the players and the DM both seem to know that the bad guys have lost, they are all going to die and the party is not really in any real danger any more. This is exacerbated by the fact that as we move into the tail end of such encounters the players have gone through their encounter powers and are just using their at-wills over and over again, they've seen the monsters schtick and its no longer new and interesting, they won't be using APs or daily's in this fight because that'd be a waste of resources and the whole thing is just about a beat down that seems to take far to long.
The mechanics seem to be designed so that no player or monster just goes from full strength to straight out dead without ever getting to do anything and so that the players all get to participate in killing the baddies instead of combat sometimes just being player X steps up and kills the baddie and then everyone moves on. Its a goal I agree with but it seems to come with a price where combats have a bad habit of being over except that they still require four or five more rounds from everyone to actually finish them up. Its especially bad if the baddie has a really good AC because the players miss and miss with their at wills - the baddie can't really do much damage to them but round after round goes by with the players only rarely landing a hit. Its been pointed out that Soldier Monsters are the most problematic in this regard because they have high ACs, good hps but only very moderate damage dealing abilities.
In the main I agree with you. I tend to run most encounters based on the ideas presented in the links, but every now and again I just chuck all the "rules" (as much as they are) out the window and throw something crazy at them. Im also a big BIG fan of "reskinning" things to keep things fresh and interesting. The next encounter I have planned is the party against a bunch of Kobold's riding peradactyl type things, and all im really doing is sending them up against a bunch of Spiretop Drakes. I think thats really the key to keep fights interesting rather than the encounter level you sending them up against. In fact thats a good idea for a thread.
One of the problems I have with the concept of 'The Grind' is that its really hard to pin down. There seems to be some very broad, very loose, ideas regarding what causes it and when it comes up but I think that their are a lot of factors that can either exacerbate it or, alternatively, minimize its problems. Everything from party make up (lots of defenders probably make things more grindy then lots of strikers) to how well the DM is playing the encounter out (if the DM is fatigued and can't keep the energy up then things can start to feel grindy earlier and the effects of boredom at the table are going to be more pronounced and worse).
Beyond there is a thread kicking around the 4E forum that discusses this very issue from some months back. One of the things I noted about that thread was how often an encounter with a certian kind of creature could feel 'Grindy' to one group and not at all to another depending onm circumstances. The Goul was a monster that sticks out in this regards. Its got a lot of the characteristics of a grindy monster (I'm not sure if we were fighting an elite Goul or not). Its fast and hard to hit, has lots of hps and has a paralyzing attack that shuts players down. Epitomy of a Grindy monster...The thing is my group fought one in Scales of War and it was an awesome encounter. As the cleric I especially loved it because I had all sorts of interesting choices to make - do I use my nasty radiant powers on it? Or should I use an attack that gives the paralyzed fighter a bonus save if I hit - or maybe I should forgo attacking at all and use my power that will give him a free save with bonuses for sure (thus avoiding the problem where he'd only get a bonus save if I was able to hit this friggen hard to hit baddie).
Still maybe this combat was good while others have had problems with Gouls is due to the fact that we hit one Goul as a boss monster. Three levels from that point if we had just run into 5 Gouls it might have been a bad encounter. The Gouls are no longer really dangerous - they just are hard to hit and tend to slow up the party by paralyzing members.
That said it still seems like the examples of creatures that make one groups fight 'grindy' are often the same creatures that made another groups fight awesome.
If I were going to go looking for a rule of thumb here I'd probably go with something like - Use high damage but vulnerable creatures in early in the adventure and transit to creatures with more staying power for the climatic end fights.
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I think the issue is expectations - 3e and 4e have a fundamental difference in the way the encounters are set up. My first 4e game I nearly wiped out the party by casually increasing the number of goblins in 3e-style - the whole CR/xp thing works differently, powers work differently, as do the monsters. The problem is that people expect goblins or kobolds to go down with a single hit, and they don't anymore. No one complains much if it takes a long time to kill a dragon.
Actually they do (though I have to say that the one time I fought a dragon in 4E it was totally awesome). If you look at the article Ratchet posted you'll note that Solo's are singled out as being particularly prone to 'The Grind'.
Now up to a point I agree with you in terms of expectations. If some one is complaining that 'they are just kobolds - this should be fast' I'm not so sure I agree. Better if there are not combats that are seen as being that 'throw away'.
Still I think there really is something mechanically in 4E that makes it prone to feeling like a drag near the end of a fight when the players and the DM both seem to know that the bad guys have lost, they are all going to die and the party is not really in any real danger any more. This is exacerbated by the fact that as we move into the tail end of such encounters the players have gone through their encounter powers and are just using their at-wills over and over again, they've seen the monsters schtick and its no longer new and interesting, they won't be using APs or daily's in this fight because that'd be a waste of resources and the whole thing is just about a beat down that seems to take far to long.
The mechanics seem to be designed so that no player or monster just goes from full strength to straight out dead without ever getting to do anything and so that the players all get to participate in killing the baddies instead of combat sometimes just being player X steps up and kills the baddie and then everyone moves on. Its a goal I agree with but it seems to come with a price where combats have a bad habit of being over except that they still require four or five more rounds from everyone to actually finish them up. Its especially bad if the baddie has a really good AC because the players miss and miss with their at wills - the baddie can't really do much damage to them but round after round goes by with the players only rarely landing a hit. Its been pointed out that Soldier Monsters are the most problematic in this regard because they have high ACs, good hps but only very moderate damage dealing abilities.
Well, OK, if you (and several others) say so - it isn't my experience particularly with my players. I think you may have a point with ACs - soldier monsters do have pretty high ACs for their level (which is sort of the point). A sufeit of soldiers can certainly be hard to kill quickly. But arguably the answer there is to use fewer soldiers, rather than rejig the whole game hit point-wise. (Of course, the main alternative to a soldier is a brute, and that brings its own challenges, mainly the seriously increased damage output.)
Also, I also wonder if there might be an element of play style in this. Most monsters have a bad defence somewhere - after all, if you are just htting AC over and over and over it suggests that you maybe aren't looking at the powers you have as a player to mix up what defenses you can attack. Sure, as a martial character you may struggle to attack any other defence much, but the non-martials shouldn't have much of a problem. Is the mix of character classes appropriate?
Also, if the combat is a bit boring, that might be a problem with encounter design. One of the points of 4e, it strikes me, is that combat should be a mobile affair, and with various obstacles, challenges and difficulties thrown in to add extra interest and challenge to the encounter. The DMG makes that quite clear, and encourages the use of terrain as a factor in encounter design. I agree that it's boring to walk up to a foe and bash them in a static combat round after round, but throwing in a pit you can push people into (for example) makes it more interesting.
That said, not every player gets off on the tactical side of it as much as my guys. But I wouldn't say they have dramatically intense powers of concentration. They haven't complained about the grind. And my experience as a DM is that combat is quicker in 4e than 3e.
(obviously not minions). One of my beefs with 4E is that monsters have way too many HPs, causing most combats to last way too long. What are the balancing, game implications of this, and by what value do you reduce? 1/2? 3/4?
I am of the same mind, way too many HP's for the critter means some of the combats do drag on a bit.
To beat the 'GRIND' I generally modify the critters HP's depending on the flow of the encounter. If the PC's are wading through them too quickly I add some HP's but if it looks like the PC's are taking ages to deal with critters I adjust there HP's. Some critters I just asign a two hit lifespan so if it gets hit twice then it goes down. Other times I break the critters into Full HP Foes, half HP foes and 1 HP minions.It seems to work for the flow of the game and keeps things from getting stale. The only suggestion that I do use is putting a couple of hard hitters into an encounter that have specialist powers that do a lot of damage. Keeps the PC's on their toes and gets them using their healing surges as if the combat were the 'proper' length if the monsters had full HP's. The PC's will never metagame in my games by guessing the critters HP's or their damage output.
At the end of the day, playing the Critters 'characters' is more important than how many HP's they have, along with keeping the story flowing for the heroes.
My groups more recent experiences with this have been to handle it player side. What we do is make sure the party is 50% strikers and has no more then one defender. So far that has worked really well in eliminating Grind from our game, especially capping the number of Defenders as they are, in some sense, a huge cause of Grind. Their high defenses and low damage out put really exacerbate Grind in the game.