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HMS Invincible
2009-03-25, 09:18 PM
If a PC takes a round, and having everyone taking their round is consider a "turn" then what would be a good cap for the number of turns combat takes? How many turns can you guys take before you get bored?
Remember, if you're in a party of 5. A 4 turn combat sequence means you only get 4 actions and 4/5 of the time, you'll be sitting there waiting and watching.

What are good ideas during the grind of combat to help speed things up?

Gralamin
2009-03-25, 09:27 PM
If a PC takes a round, and having everyone taking their round is consider a "turn" then what would be a good cap for the number of turns combat takes? How many turns can you guys take before you get bored?
Remember, if you're in a party of 5. A 4 turn combat sequence means you only get 4 actions and 4/5 of the time, you'll be sitting there waiting and watching.

What are good ideas during the grind of combat to help speed things up?

First: Turns are player actions, rounds are length of combat. 4 round combat means going through the entire initiative 4 times.

Second: I've run 20-25 round encounters without anyone getting bored. The key is to capture the players in the battle. If you don't have players that like combat, then avoid it as often as you can and try to make it exciting the few times you do.

Hal
2009-03-25, 09:32 PM
Ways to speed up combat? Ease up terrain restrictions. Nothing slows things down like being unable to reach your opponents.

Part of what makes combat exciting is the ability to do awesome things. Make situations where each of your players can shine. Have parts of the environment that they can interact with (cliffs to push enemies off of, ropes to swing on, debris to hide behind, etc.) or throw in something that changes things up.

Flabbicus
2009-03-25, 09:38 PM
One problem I noticed with longer combats in 4E is that you tend to run out of encounter powers. For example, my party and I went up against Barthas from the Scepter Tower of Spellgard Adventure. It took us around 16 rounds to beat the guy. We needed diam fiat to help defeat the guy. He was nice enough to allow a large boulder to fly through the wall and allow light through that would harm the vampire. The part that artificially stemmed the encounter length was his bloodied power, which let him gain back 100 hit points if one of us became bloodied and he made a strike against us when he had combat advantage. Also his mind control power was annoying as our perennially unlucky Dragonborn Warlord could not save out for five rounds.

Even when our party warlord unloaded, and I critted a few hits, taking away half of his HP in three rounds, it was very slow going.

So the moral of the story is: vampires suck.

Colmarr
2009-03-25, 09:58 PM
My group's average combats last 4-6 rounds.

The longest combat we've had lasted 11 rounds (Irontooth from KotS).

Having said that, we're only level 4 and we haven't met a solo yet. By all accounts, it's the solos that drag the game to a halt.

In terms of speeding up combat, make sure the players are planning their moves ahead of time. Nothing slows a combat down more than everyone taking a minute to "think" every time their turn comes up.

TheOOB
2009-03-25, 10:18 PM
Solo monsters last too long for their own good. I've heard that cutting their hp in half and lowering their level for experiance by 1 is an effective compromise.

Your taking someone who counts as 5 people and giving them 8 peoples worth of hp without letting AoE's do extra damage.

Saph
2009-03-25, 10:45 PM
In my experience the real issue with 4e combats isn't length of combat - as long as a combat is fun it doesn't matter how long it is. The problem is the "cleanup phase".

Once about 50% of the monsters have been killed, then unless the PCs have taken similar losses, the battle is effectively over. The surviving monsters have zero chance of winning - the only question is whether they're going to force the PCs to spend an extra healing surge or two. So you effectively get 2-3 rounds of combat, and at least an equal amount of time of "cleanup" - ie, execution.

- Saph

Nightson
2009-03-25, 11:19 PM
If players are getting bored then the players need to spice it up a bit with the DMs help.

HMS Invincible
2009-03-26, 12:18 AM
I've employed rules such as:
Death by massive damage (I haven't decided on an exact rule for this yet, any ideas?),
The monsters run when the encounter group is at 50% combat efficiency,
Replaced solos for elites, elites for standard, and standard monsters with minions in many encounters,
Replaced combat encounters with skill encounters

The first 2 rules help, but the making players plan out their move ahead rarely works. I'm running a first time campaign, and I have new players.

As for death by massive damage, is killing the monster when it was hit by its bloodied value or more, too generous?

TheOOB
2009-03-26, 12:48 AM
I tend to have many monsters escape when they are injured and have no chance of winning. The players can pursue if they want, but that is up to them. Helps shorten the "clean up" phase

Olo Demonsbane
2009-03-26, 01:31 AM
The combats that my friend and I participate in have a wildly varieing lengths. Sometimes, we're down to zero healing surges and have to run through an entire cave complex throwing daggers to kill minions, and sometimes my rouge falls from the celing and kills a solo in one turn. We're first level :smallbiggrin:.

I think the key to making the combats seem shorter is for:
A) There not to be an effective "cleanup" stage, which we solve by using hard enough fights that we are usually running out of healing surges two fights in.
B) Make the long fights exciting! Don't just stand there and slug it out! We have decided to basically wave most opportunity attacks that player's cause to help this one.
C) Imminent Fear of Death is Good.

Just my 2 cp

Kurald Galain
2009-03-26, 04:53 AM
In my experience the real issue with 4e combats isn't length of combat - as long as a combat is fun it doesn't matter how long it is. The problem is the "cleanup phase".
I completely agree.

Once the outcome is obvious, combat gets much less interesting, especially if this coincides with the point where people start spamming their at-wills without having to think about tactics anymore. Where I play, it is considered good DM'ing to have the remaining monsters surrender, run away, or perhaps de-animate (in the case of e.g. skeletons) at this point.

Artanis
2009-03-26, 08:32 AM
I agree about running when it's obvious the monsters lose, but it can be further spiced up by having said monsters still carrying their loot. You want the guy's big glowy sword? You have to chase his ass down. So the fight turns from a struggle for survival into an equally desperate struggle to finish off the enemy and get his shinies.

It's working especially well in the current campaign I'm in, which is an airship-based campaign in Eberron. When the enemy breaks and runs, we have all of one round to either lock them down or finish them off before they throw themselves over the edge from half a mile up (using a feather token to survive the fall, of course). We don't get screwed overall since most of what we lose this way is relatively non-noteworthy (like said feather tokens), but it still provides a great incentive to keep fighting our asses off AND to save something for the end of the fight, rather than just going nova to obliterate everything immediately.

Asbestos
2009-03-26, 09:13 AM
I agree about running when it's obvious the monsters lose, but it can be further spiced up by having said monsters still carrying their loot. You want the guy's big glowy sword? You have to chase his ass down. So the fight turns from a struggle for survival into an equally desperate struggle to finish off the enemy and get his shinies.

That takes adventurers from the morally ambiguous "Sure, I killed this dude and took his stuff, but he attacked me first" to "Yeah, this guy was running from us and he had something I wanted so I ran him down and shanked him."

Possibly if the running away baddie has information that the PCs need.

Hal
2009-03-26, 09:56 AM
Where I play, it is considered good DM'ing to have the remaining monsters surrender, run away, or perhaps de-animate (in the case of e.g. skeletons) at this point.

Yeah, this is a problem in my game. The first time it happened, we had an orc surrender to us, my cleric patched him up, and now I have an orc barbarian cohort following me around. Everytime monsters surrender to us, the other players at the table joke that I'm just adding to my little zoo.

The real problem is that, when enemy combatants surrender to us, we get into in-character fights about what to do about them. My cleric thinks that simply executing them on the spot is wrong. The party fighter, a former military man (in game), argues that they'll just be executed for their crimes if we take them back to a city, and besides, we're so far out in the wilderness and have other pressing matters, just kill them and be done with it. The other players look at us in an annoyed fashion, hoping we'll move on to actual gameplay.

So, yeah . . . surrendering monsters can open up a new host of problems.

oxybe
2009-03-26, 10:22 AM
speed up combat?

roll confirmation + damage at the same time: if everyone gets this practice underway, it reduces overall time per round a lot. by the time the dm tells you if you hit or miss, the damage is already rolled and added. I've been doing this for years now out of habit and i only take long turns if i REALLY need to think strategy.

power cards: whether actual WotC brand or just colored index cards, having all the math done & the descriptions in front of you reduces book flipping. not needed but very nice. after seeing our Bard use them on monday, i've printed out a few for my Swordmage.

sharing the workload: initiative & statuses, i've found, are best handled by one of the players instead of the DM for example. by sharing overall prep time, it reduces the time spent figuring things out and generally speed things up. this is a lesson learned in 3.5 as we have a VERY large group for our wednesday game.

have players prepare their actions before their turns: instead of turning your brain on at the start of your turn, plan during the turn of the others & the monsters. by the time your turn rolls around you're ready with all the dice in your fist to throw. should be common sense, but you'll be amazed how many people zone out when it's not their turn.

Lapak
2009-03-26, 12:37 PM
So, yeah . . . surrendering monsters can open up a new host of problems.Fleeing monsters are easier to handle. Most real creatures would be fleeing by the time they took 50% casualties anyway, especially if they hadn't taken down an enemy yet. And if the monsters flee while there's still 2 or 3 of them standing, and they scatter in different directions, the party has to choose between chasing them (and splitting up their own group to chase into unknown territory) or letting them go. Most groups I've worked with will let them go unless they've got good reason to chase one in particular, like if one of the fleeing guys is carrying all the loot.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-03-26, 02:36 PM
sharing the workload: initiative & statuses, i've found, are best handled by one of the players instead of the DM for example. by sharing overall prep time, it reduces the time spent figuring things out and generally speed things up. this is a lesson learned in 3.5 as we have a VERY large group for our wednesday game.

I'd disagree on initiative. It is easier for one person to know everyone's initiative and to call out whose turn it is, instead of having each player try to remember the overall order, or the last initiative number called.

For statuses, I've used poker chips. I toss reds to players with Save Ends and blues to players with Next Turn status effects. This way, I can look at the table in front of a player to jog my memory about who has ongoing damage or is under a status - and it reminds my players to roll a save at the end of their turn.

oxybe
2009-03-26, 02:53 PM
isn't that what i said? our dwarf's player is the one who usually handles the initiative tracker for the entire group, it eases up the DM's workload by that much. English isn't my native language so sorry if i wasn't clear originally, hope it clears it up a bit.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-03-26, 03:08 PM
isn't that what i said? our dwarf's player is the one who usually handles the initiative tracker for the entire group, it eases up the DM's workload by that much. English isn't my native language so sorry if i wasn't clear originally, hope it clears it up a bit.

Ah, yes I see now. When you said "one of the players" I thought you meant for each individual player to handle initiative :smallredface:

Personally, I DM off my laptop; Excel is an easy way to deal with initiative, thanks to auto-sorting.

oxybe
2009-03-26, 03:30 PM
only one PC in the place we game at and i doubt the owner of the FLGS would let us use the store computer for personal gaming purposes.

we use the "gamemastery combat pad" to track initiative, status & other statuses. it's pretty nice.