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esoteric scribe
2010-05-04, 12:11 AM
I'm running a game with two Martial Defenders, an Arcane Striker and a Martial Leader. The party has just hit lvl 16 and combat has been dragging for the last few games.

Everyone is invested in their character to the point that they don't want to change over to another role, but it's harder and harder to make challenging fights that don't become back and forth slugfests.

I've heard about, but been unable to find information on something that might help: lowering the HP of elite and solo encounters while raising their damage output. Is anyone familiar with this, either in practice or by word of mouth?

gbprime
2010-05-04, 12:13 AM
How about capping the number of healing surges that can be used in one combat? More challenge, less time spent beating down the monsters that are regenerating as fast as the players?

Thajocoth
2010-05-04, 12:18 AM
I've heard of those things, but haven't used them. Here's what we've done:

We fold cards in half and put each player's name on both halves of one each, and have additional cards for Enemy A, Enemy B... Enemy E. When initiative is rolled, we hang the cards in order over the DM screen. The player closest to the DM handles initiative.

We have colored tokens for status effects that go under our minis while we play. The player closest to the board handles the tokens.

Two of us use handwritten cards. One uses the builder's printed out cards. Two have all their powers printed out on an excel grid arranged for easy lookup. It really depends on what the player needs to decide things fairly quickly.

This has been plenty for us. We've got a Martial Defender, Martial Striker, Martial Leader, Psionic Controller (who has little glass beads he uses to keep track of his Power Points) and a Primal (Melee) Controller (as seen in my avatar). Despite having more controllers than anything else, we don't take too long to get through a battle.

We also don't "nova everything, then spam at-wills", a common complaint I've heard about but never seen. Keeping in mind the situation and using the right powers for the right jobs, I don't think I've ever actually run out of encounter powers in this campaign. I've seen the Fighter and Ranger go to Reaping Strikes & Twin Strikes a couple times for a round or two near the end of our toughest battles, but that's about it. Not that we never use our at-wills. They can occasionally be better than a daily if the situation is right...

Also: Remember that rushing players actually makes them take longer... Which reminds me... When we attack, we usually say the defense we're attacking as we roll, then give the number when we've got it. We say the static part of the damage before rolling as well. Often enough, it's enough on it's own and the DM says "he's dead" before we've begun counting our dice. When we use a power with multiple targets, somebody next to the board points at targets while we roll, so the DM can see who each roll is against without us saying or stopping. Also when there are multiple targets, we roll damage first. It lets the DM subtract it from the enemies as it hits them instead of going back to figure it out.

We're not rushing, we've just got a few little tricks. If someone needs a minute to decide what they're doing, then they need a minute. We usually plan out our turns ahead of time, but often enough stuff happens between the turns that makes any plans you might have worthless.

HMS Invincible
2010-05-04, 12:29 AM
Cut the hp of the monsters in half and double the damage. Or just cut the hp in half. Stupid 4e monsters are fat as heck.
The other options you can use situationally, is surrendering, running away, or something else that you can't justify every single encounter.

Thajocoth
2010-05-04, 12:38 AM
Cut the hp of the monsters in half and double the damage. Or just cut the hp in half. Stupid 4e monsters are fat as heck.
The other options you can use situationally, is surrendering, running away, or something else that you can't justify every single encounter.

If our DM did this, there would cease to be a difference between Elites and Minions. There's already no real difference between Standards and Minions. (Well, Minions are actually a little tougher as they've got higher defenses than Standards... And our Warlord can't kill a Standard in 1 hit with his whip.) I don't know how fun 2-3 round encounters would be.

Do combats really last consistently longer than 5-6 rounds for people?

We've had a few longer, but it was always due to complications from interesting terrain and/or side-goals that made it more of a combat/skill challenge combo.

Ichneumon
2010-05-04, 12:40 AM
I usually fudge monster hp. If the players hit it twice real hard. Its dead. Combat also shouldn't last longer than 3-4 rounds, unless it is the end battle.

Sophismata
2010-05-04, 01:02 AM
To increase monster damage, lower player HP.

To increase player damage, lower monster HP.

Try 75% / 75% and take it from there.

cupkeyk
2010-05-04, 01:14 AM
Other stuff we do is an initiative board. This lets people plan while waiting their turn.

+1 on power cards.

Also, we used to have really long rounds because of immediate actions and opportunity attacks until we learned that we can't use them on our own turn. This may be a phenomenon limited to our groups but we thought countering a counterwas awesome. Lolz.

Skrizzy
2010-05-04, 05:50 AM
If our DM did this, there would cease to be a difference between Elites and Minions. There's already no real difference between Standards and Minions. (Well, Minions are actually a little tougher as they've got higher defenses than Standards... And our Warlord can't kill a Standard in 1 hit with his whip.) I don't know how fun 2-3 round encounters would be.

Do combats really last consistently longer than 5-6 rounds for people?

We've had a few longer, but it was always due to complications from interesting terrain and/or side-goals that made it more of a combat/skill challenge combo.

There can be a lot of reasons why that is the case, from a max-mining player (so as bad as possible, and they do exisit) to players that don't think about tactics. DM's can make it a major issue by making the encounters in the encounter builder and not paying any attention to the fact that the total hp pool of the monsters is more than the players can output on average in 5-6 rounds.

I assume that the issue isn't character stats or Dumbgeon Masters but is that fights that should take 30 minutes take an hour or something similar. That generally means that players are taking their good sweet time on their turns and aren't ready to go as their turn comes around. Fixing this has a few methods, depending on cause. If its people wandering off online then you lock the wifi, if its a case of people not deciding what to do till their turn then just skip them or use the notecard thing. If its people needing to roll a lot of dice, get players to buy as many dice as they need so they never have to pick up a dice and reroll it (having 1d8 and rolling 3d8). Pre-rolling can work, but watch out, I had a player pre-roll 100d20 before a game and then match up attacks to the results.

Duos Greanleef
2010-05-04, 07:32 AM
My group is rather frequently reduced to the dreaded At-Will Grind.
About three or four rounds in it becomes apparent who is going to win the encounter.
I just give it to the PCs if they've killed enough of the bad guys.
If it's not so clear, or maybe clear that they're gonna die; I give them the option of sticking it out or turning tail.

Another thing that I've found to speed things up:
I sat down and rolled.... 600 some odd dice once. I recorded the results on a MS Word doc and printed it off. Now, I just go down the list for my next number. It works pretty well.
EDIT: I won't let the PCs do this. It promotes treachery and lies.

Another thing that works well is calling out who's on deck and in the hole.

And don't ever act frustrated with the slow guy. He's gonna be slow. Get over it. When everyone else starts speeding through things, he'll eventually get the hint, and pick up the pace.

Blas_de_Lezo
2010-05-04, 07:53 AM
There's this unofficial rule that halfs down all HP of monsters and sums up +4 damage input for every succesful blow.

DragonBaneDM
2010-05-04, 09:23 AM
Haha, one thing I've noted in this thread is that everyone is afraid to use class names. I find the fact that you said "Martial Defenders" hilarious! Now, can you give us the exact layout of your party?

If you're giving them appropriate level encounters then it shouldn't be rough on them if they're a good party. I'm guessing right away that "Arcane Striker" = Warlock, cause Sorcerers are the class that prevents long encounters.

Indon
2010-05-04, 09:28 AM
I find that leader powers resolve faster and more interestingly if they are of the extra-attack type rather than the someone-gets-a-big-bonus type, because tracking and summing bonuses is time-consuming.

valadil
2010-05-04, 09:40 AM
Cut the hp of the monsters in half and double the damage. Or just cut the hp in half. Stupid 4e monsters are fat as heck.
The other options you can use situationally, is surrendering, running away, or something else that you can't justify every single encounter.

I was going to suggest this. I don't have this problem (my group prefers to nova everything - maybe I should have a battle with multiple waves of foes) but a lot of other people do. There was also an article on sly flourish that had a related idea. Give monsters powers that cost HP. The monsters get to be cooler, but don't last as long. Like, they can burn 25 HP to succeed at a save ends effect.

If your players get distracted, call out who is on deck when you call initiative. Then your players will have a whole turn to evaluate the battle and decide what to do before they act.

Person_Man
2010-05-04, 10:36 AM
You could use traps and hazardous terrain as part of combat. This makes the encounter more unpredictable and dangerous - but the traps don't need to be killed (they just need to be avoided, or survived once they sprung). This also lowers the number of monsters you need to use, which in turn could be killed by the PCs more quickly.

Meta
2010-05-04, 11:09 AM
There are plenty of free to download combat trackers. If you don't mind dming with a laptop in front of you, it will certainly help speed things along.

The only time when a long combat is bad is if the skewed towards one side. A combat that goes down to the wire, is pretty darn epic, especially when missing one in that 'at-will grind' is the difference with getting to heal the fighter before he dies or not.

We've had some long (12+ turn) combats, but 'at-will' grind shouldn't happen every round after your encounters are burned. If you use your encounters on turns 1-4, thats probably bad playing, and you need to think more strategically. Most encounter powers don't come with encounter long effects attached so hold off on those till you they can be optimally used. It's more realistic, (have you ever seen an amazing swordsman utilize all his best techniques in the first 18 seconds of a duel, and then use nothing but horizontal, left to right slashes for the next minute?) more entertaining, (if everyone uses encounters at the same time, you're more likely to miss w/e cool effects your allies may have inflicted) and more optimal (effect redundancy, pushes monsters into bloodied quickly, but kills them no faster, etc.)

Ohh and maybe get more interesting at wills? :smallwink:
There are quite a few EXTREMELY effective builds that turn a classes at wills into absolute monsters mechanically and adding enough effects and uniqueness that using them is like having but encounter powers

Mando Knight
2010-05-04, 11:14 AM
If you're giving them appropriate level encounters then it shouldn't be rough on them if they're a good party. I'm guessing right away that "Arcane Striker" = Warlock, cause Sorcerers are the class that prevents long encounters.

If the Sorcerers roll well enough to hit. There's this one encounter in a PbP game I'm in... monsters have high Reflex, and with the exception of the Daily, my Sorcerer only has vs Reflex powers (stupid me). Gonna retrain Acid Orb for something else. The range and d10 damage dice are handy, but I need an at-will that targets not-Reflex.

Yakk
2010-05-04, 11:24 AM
Double monster damage.

Increase monster XP value by 50%.

Now, players will be fighting fewer monsters (or maybe lower level monsters -- 2 levels lower, with +50% XP, is about a wash), but with the damage output increase...

Meta
2010-05-04, 11:59 AM
Double monster damage.

Increase monster XP value by 50%.

Now, players will be fighting fewer monsters (or maybe lower level monsters -- 2 levels lower, with +50% XP, is about a wash), but with the damage output increase...

This is flawed because it makes monsters more akin to solos, which are already more easily defeated than 5 monsters of same level. For instance, 5 lvl 36 properly designed monsters would be far more fearsome than mighty bahamut.

As for sorcerer to hit, its a bit mitigated by the fact that you can attack multiple monsters more easily than probably any other striker. But yea reflex can be rough