Help with short but challenging combats

[incandescent]

I've tried all sorts of methods to cut combat time down while keeping things dangerous, but everything i try ends up being thwarted by my players in one form or another. I've tried using lots of minions but i can't seem to get them into the fight quick enough and they don't stick around long enough between the party psion and druid|ranger. The Magic stones power has become almost memetic at the table as the hybrid character keeps plinking all the undead horrors in this arc with rocks, it's pretty much an area power he gets to spread wherever he needs it :smalltongue:. The other thing i've been doing is tweaking the monster math as follows: a level X monster is actually X+2 with half health, nearly double damage, and -2 defenses (to put them in normal ranges for the suboptimal in the group). I keep getting mixed results. Either the players curbstomp what i send their way or a decent fight results. I came close to really hurting them once using an elite before I implemented the -2 to defenses bit (about half have starting stats in the 16s, haven't taken expertise as far as i know, and they're level 6 so far).

Maybe a rundown of the party would let someone else spot a strength i'm overlooking:
-Genasi vampire (long story, low stat rp type, mixes it up in melee with his skirmishery defenses and generally takes most of the beating. Though with lowered health, his spend a surge to do extra damage riders are impressive.)
-Askyl ranger (homebrew race. Basically yuanti with a climb speed. Standard twinstrike spam ranger)
-Goliath druid|ranger (running a "wall of fur" character if i'm using terms correctly with fey beast tamer, ranger beast companion and some third beast as a sentinel druid. Probably the most optimized of the group, but not opt for damage (he twin strikes with a scythe. Though he doesn't have a heal, two of his companions have an aura of combat advantage so he functions like a leader in that respect.)).
-Dragonborn paladin (uses a maul when he shows up)
-Warforged wizard (a player still pretty new to rpgs in general who pretty
Much chose his spells at random. Has a spectre familiar and spends all his money on the familiar mount ritual and holy water and monocles.)
-genasi psion (competent controller that uses powers wisely for the most part. This guy's mainly responsible for the debuffs)

I even offer a fast acting incentive: +1 to attacks if you've acted in 10 seconds. Maybe i've skewed things too far from the norm, but with my players i need to employ every method to make combat go by faster. The first one we ran several sessions ago took nearly the whole night (we only play for 3 hours at a game store). So i guess my overall question is, given these players and the strengths amd weaknesses in their party, how can i challenge them while keeping combats short? I have a sort of town siege planned for whem we next meet so combat will dominate the session (im addition to two more people new to rpgs) and i'd be glad to incorporate any more tricks you can throw at me. Thanks!

[tcrudisi]

How well do your players know the system now? Here's how I run fast combats:

I use playing cards for initiative. The highest initiative gets the Ace, the next highest gets the 2, and so on. Players keep the card in front of them so that they can see where initiative is and who is coming up soon at all times.

I tell the players what the highest and lowest defense in the combat is. If the highest defense is AC at 28 and the lowest is Will at 22, I'll say, "The lowest you can roll to hit is 22 and the highest you need to roll is 28." I won't say what those defenses are or which monsters have them - but that information alone is enough to speed up combat. If they roll a 28+, all they have to say is they hit and if they roll a 21 or below, they just say they miss. Easy peasy.

I mostly skip turns. Once the player has rolled to hit, the rest of his turn is superfluous to me. They rolled to hit and they hit. Great - next player. As soon as the first player figures out his damage, he'll tell me. I know about how much damage my players will do, so if there's a chance it will kill a monster, I'll linger until he tells me the damage - otherwise, I go to the next player immediately. Yes, the first player may have a move action left, but he can take those without telling me about it unless it incurs an OA. They know if it does or not - so they tell me if they'll incur one.

I've never seen anyone do otherwise, but I group like-monsters with other like-monsters in initiative. All Orc Sexydancers move on the same initiative. All Troll Pyromaniacs move on the same initiative. The only exception? If I'm running a very small combat with like 2 elites, I'll give them separate initiatives. So if I only have two Dragon Flowerbreaths and nothing else, I'll give them separate initiatives.

I do one thing that slows down combat: I describe every combat attack action. I encourage players to give me fluff for their attack and not the name of the attack. I don't care if they are using Donkey Punch (the at-will) or Summon Flying Spaghetti Monster (the epic daily), I want to hear a description of what they are doing. Likewise, my monster School Yard Bully will not use a Slam attack, he "dances around you, disorienting you momentarily while he suddenly gets you in a choke hold and painfully digs his knuckles into your scalp, running them back and forth until you cry out for your mama."

Once the combat is in clean-up mode, I'll ask the party if one of them would like to give up a healing surge to end the combat early. It's already over, why force them to roll it out?

Also, I know this wasn't exactly what you were asking for, but the root of your question is, "Combats take too long - how can I speed them up?" so I answered that. If it's not what you wanted, I apologize.

[Tegu8788]

Based on your descriptions alone I want to play in one of your games. Or, maybe, I don't. Monsters sound fun, until Orc Sexydancers happen to you.

To make things quicker, make sure your players are familiar with their characters. Have them know what their powers do, and what their feats do. If they are constantly checking if they can actually do something, or what the effects of various things are, that will really slow things down.

[incandescent]

How well do your players know the system now?

The psion seems to know his way around a character, but runs his out of a phb. His first turn in combat last session was digging the book out. I should probably give him some index cards to write on so he doesn't have to rifle through the power lists. The hybrid is a close friend who started gaming pretty much when i did and shotguns each of his turns. The first thing he does is throw dice and assigns attack rolls laterally (the dice on the left is vs the creature on the left, etc.) so he's not a concern for speed. He even discussed with me about moving his beasts on the next person's turn like you suggested. The paladin sort of takes his time since he normally has to count all the d6's and the vampire (also a long time friend) is slow because he likes to give fluff a sometimes takes a minute to parse his hand written character sheet. The ranger defaults to twin strike half the time but sometimes has the "let me look at my powers" syndrome of the others.

I really like the playing card idea, it keeps initiative a public thing. Sometimes it's a bit overwhelming to keep track of all that mess on my side of the screen. And it gives me the perfect excuse to use the heavily discounted hanna montana playing cards i bought from the store :smallbiggrin:. Frugality over dignity. I think i'm going to steal surge cleanup though, as i always am afraid i'm just handing them the encounter when there's still a few people left and it's obvious there's only a few turns until victory. I also use like on same initiative, but it's still slow as i use a lot of the same types. I'm not the best at monster tactics because i run in a loose, off the handle way and the players generally stumble into a fight and i use several similar monsters from my list of baddies and try to place them logically (this is probably what leads to the varied quality of my combats, but it's hard to coax them into a particular area.)


Also, I know this wasn't exactly what you were asking for, but the root of your question is, "Combats take too long - how can I speed them up?" so I answered that. If it's not what you wanted, I apologize.

Honestly, i'm looking for any advice i can get. :smalltongue:. And yours was very helpful. :smallsmile:


To make things quicker, make sure your players are familiar with their characters. Have them know what their powers do, and what their feats do. If they are constantly checking if they can actually do something, or what the effects of various things are, that will really slow things down.

I sort of take a punitive approach here. If anyone wholesale forgets some immediate action power they could use or something similar, their character forgot it as well. Especially if we're well into the next turn. I make exceltions for small things like "oops i forgot to quarry that guy" but other than minor things, they can use it next time (unless character death is imminent or something and people are scrounging for anything they could do).

EDIT: typo scan.

[tcrudisi]

One thing that may help out a couple of your players is to get a character builder. The online one is decent and fairly cheap. I'll let others fill you in on the details for it because I don't use it. I use an offline character builder. It's not WotC sanctioned, so I won't say anything else about it other than a google search will probably reveal it to you.

The real advantage of the character sheet is that they will always have their details in the same spot. So they always know where to look to find their defenses or their attack. Once they get used to that, it's a matter of learning their characters better. Once they have the familiarity with their characters and the knowledge of their character sheets, turns will speed up.

[valadil]

If they kill your minions that easily you shouldn't bother with those minions. Most people tend to throw them in as an afterthought just to fill up the xp budget but you're really just giving the players free xp. What I found more useful was to use soldier minions well above the players' level. These took several rounds of attacks before the players connected. Exploding minions are great too since the players won't want to kill them unless they're not adjacent to the minions.

My other advice is terrain. Monsters cost xp. So do traps. But terrain is free. Make terrain that favors one side of the fight and then it the monsters on that side. And archer in a tower uses just as much xp as an archer on the ground.

[incandescent]

I'm about to swear off minions forever, but i don't have a good idea on how to simulate larger combats without them (especially for something like a town siege). I've never considered the high level soldier minion approach, that's something i'll have to meditate on.

I run things kind of fast and loose, usually drawing terrain on the fly in a random generation sort of way. I'd have to be cateful not to look like i'm stacking the encounter against them from the get go, but i'm taking extra time off to plan for the town under attack so i'll take more terrain advantages into account.

Also, about half the group uses DDI (myself included) so we've got character sheets covered, it's just general slowness when combat happens.

[Tegu8788]

Tell everyone to make power cards. Simple index card, with all the crunch of the power written down on it. When the power is used, you flip the card over. It's a really easy way to keep track of what powers are available at a glance, and doesn't require erasing that can get smudgy or rip your sheet. The DDI account may let you print cards, I don't use it so I can't say for certain.

[incandescent]

So next session i think i'll pass out a bunch of note cards and let everyone write down their powers while i talk to the two new guys and get a feel for how much they know about the system and about their characters. When combat gets set up, i'm going to either pass out playing cards to make initiative public or write initiative straight on the map (the hybrid player suggested this to me while i was talking to him about the speed issue. I'm honestly surprised i'd never considered it.) In combat, the advanced players will have the option of overlapping turns after the main action of their turn is done to speed things up. The quick among them will be rewarded with the +1 to hit while the exceedingly slow will be forced to delay actions until they get their head straight. The new guys will get to take all the time the other players would have wasted rifling through books and such.

Anybody got any more tactical advice? I think i've adressed the 'slow' part and now i need help with the 'challenging' part. I've used terrain as an advantage before but it usually ends up happening by accident or i plan for it to be a big partoif combat and it gets sidestepped due to poor implementation. How do i make monsters synergize well without it being too aparent? The basic theme of this arc is "plague of undead attack half the continent". The source isn't some organized force, more like a byproduct, and i'd like the resultant monsters to be a combined threat with abilities that work well together without seeming engineered (if i didn't garble that too much). About as tactical as i'vw gotten in the past is using defendery monsters with ranged attacks mark people to cover closing skirmishers and using a custom controller/skirmisher elite to knock people of platforms with a sliding at will.

[tcrudisi]

I disagree with Valadil when it comes to terrain. I use it extensively, but I don't always use it to make the encounters tougher. Sometimes I'll throw in some blood rock in locations where it will favor the characters. After all, terrain can (and should!) occasionally help the PC's.

My general thoughts on the subject is that I'll try to make a couple of the combats mediocre. I won't design something that I'm afraid will TPK them. But I try and do one or two tough combats per session, too. (A boss fight will be a step up from that and be very tough.) I try not to worry about synergy when it comes to the easier ones. For the harder ones, feel free to make the archers harder to get to, have a couple of annoying skirmishers to deal some serious damage and the defenders to protect the archers and skirmishers. Nothing wrong with that.

Some of the nastier combats might involve a minion generator. I'll assume you have 5 players. Perhaps there's a portal where monsters come out of it every round. The players will have to do a small skill challenge (4 successes needed) to stop the portal from summoning in 4 new minions every round. Sure, your party is good at killing minions, but when so many are coming in every round it becomes a threat. Or they do the skill challenge and your bigger monsters get a free round on them. Either way, it's a better challenge.

Basically: don't be afraid to do skill challenges in combat. Traps are an example of this. Any time you can get the players to have to make a strategic decision about whether to use a skill or an attack, you've done something right. Obviously don't do this for every combat -- but some very memorable combats can be done this way.

tl;dr -- Traps, skill challenges, and minion generators. Terrain features that help out the PC's every once in a while and otherwise help out the monsters.

[valadil]

I'd have to be cateful not to look like i'm stacking the encounter against them from the get go,


I disagree with Valadil when it comes to terrain. I use it extensively, but I don't always use it to make the encounters tougher. Sometimes I'll throw in some blood rock in locations where it will favor the characters. After all, terrain can (and should!) occasionally help the PC's.

If I came across as a killer GM there, I apologize. I was typing on my phone and wanted to keep it brief.

The fight as written should give the bad guys the advantage. When the players are clever, you take that advantage away. Let the bad guys set up an ambush. Have their archers in towers and their mages behind soldiers. If the players do long range scouting, they'll spot the archers and approach from another direction. If they players are stealthy they'll approach from the rear and drop the mages before the the spells start flying. If the players are patient, they'll start the fight when the defenders are out taking a leak.

The point is, you give the enemy some well laid plans and let the players disrupt those plans. You either get a challenging fight or a simple fight because the players were smart. Players actually like fights that they made easier by being intelligent. I've see way too many GMs treat the fight as a static thing that goes down only one way. They'll let you scout it out all day, but nothing you do can change the fight. Show your players a hard fight, but let them know that if they're smart they can turn it into an easy fight. That's all I'm really suggesting.

[incandescent]

We've never really run more than one combat in a session due to time constraints, build up, giving exposition, and occasionally me trying to drop a hint as to what's next :smalltongue:. This next session will be the first where i run multiple successive combats in between collecting survivor NPC's and planning a counter attack. You guys have given me a bunch of ideas to plot out this next section of the campaign. Hopefull the siege of watertown will be something to remember as a result.


The fight as written should give the bad guys the advantage. When the players are clever, you take that advantage away.


After all, terrain can (and should!) occasionally help the PC's.


Basically: don't be afraid to do skill challenges in combat. Traps are an example of this. Any time you can get the players to have to make a strategic decision about whether to use a skill or an attack, you've done something right. Obviously don't do this for every combat -- but some very memorable combats can be done this way.


Sure, your party is good at killing minions, but when so many are coming in every round it becomes a threat. Or they do the skill challenge and your bigger monsters get a free round on them. Either way, it's a better challenge.

I like the last bit because it rewards the minion killing strength they have.