LOOOOOOONG combats

[Calthropstu]

So yesterday, I ran a combat that took nearly 4 hours. It lasted a total of 23 rounds.
The combat took place in a place where ranged attacks were impossible (see pathfinders rules for windstorm) flying was difficult (see same) and everything was stacked in the bad guys favor. Between being able to freely fly (active spells) where the pcs could not, a high sr, and effective immunity to ranged attacks this fight was horrendeously stacked against the party.
The party's only saving grace was the fact the primary "attack everyone" abilities it had were very low damage and mitigated by the channel of their support dmnpc life oracle. It doesn't help that I am good with tactics and was fully able to utilize those advantages.
The purpose of this post is this:
By the time the fight was over it had become so repetitive the pcs wanted it to be over. They rendered 60% of builds completely useless, and 85% of other builds extremely close to it in this published adventure fight. So basically mage types are blowing spell after spell after spell, ultimately likely relying on wands while other party members are forced to just basically sit on the sidelines.
How do you handle player boredom during long drawn out battles where their character is nearly useless?

[Kayblis]

Well, first I'd say "don't make a long, drawn out fight where most of the party is useless". By design, a published adventure is never 100% suited for your party. This results in some being extremely easy and others being simply hell for a given party. Analize at least the big climax fight in a given adventure and see if it can be toned up/down to fit the party better. Overly long battles usually happen thanks to a single variant, usually a spell effect, that could very well be changed into something more immediate.

Then, expand on the experience. Use this sad encounter as an example to sell the party a plethora of alchemical or magical items that work under many conditions, and some that specifically solve problems like those. Almost anything alchemical works under an AMF, and low-level wands are cheap. Silent Rods let you cast underwater. Anything that blocks gas is valuable. Make sure people have at least something to do when facing a relevant opponent.

[Calthropstu]

Well, first I'd say "don't make a long, drawn out fight where most of the party is useless". By design, a published adventure is never 100% suited for your party. This results in some being extremely easy and others being simply hell for a given party. Analize at least the big climax fight in a given adventure and see if it can be toned up/down to fit the party better. Overly long battles usually happen thanks to a single variant, usually a spell effect, that could very well be changed into something more immediate.

Then, expand on the experience. Use this sad encounter as an example to sell the party a plethora of alchemical or magical items that work under many conditions, and some that specifically solve problems like those. Almost anything alchemical works under an AMF, and low-level wands are cheap. Silent Rods let you cast underwater. Anything that blocks gas is valuable. Make sure people have at least something to do when facing a relevant opponent.

Alchemical = ranged attack = wind fail. There's literally 0 chance to hit, and since flying, all the party would be doing is bombing themselves.
An alchemist would have been useless here. Ranger useless. Barbarian useless unless flying... and no fly ranks means likely blown away.
All melee and ranged attacks were useless. Spells were about 40% effective (needed a 13 on the die to overcome sr)
When I went through this ap, this fight was a cake walk. I summoned a bunch of medium air elementals who eat fly checks for breakfast.
I spammed about 4x summon 4 spells, spammed a bunch of magic missles and she went down.
We also put air walk instead of fly on our melee which meant they were checked, not blown away.
The wizard in this case had less resources to play with. One case out of many where sorc trumps wizard.

[Ellrin]

Sounds to me like your players needed some cyclonic (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-weapons/magic-weapon-special-abilities/cyclonic) bows or crossbows.

[SirNibbles]

We had a naval battle where our ships were several hundred feet apart. I'm a Monk. I spent 30 rounds hiding behind a barrier until the ships got close enough for boarding.

Try to make your combats so that your players can at least do something. Why wouldn't your players run away if they can't do anything?

[noce]

You're the DM, so saying "the adventure is written this way" is not a valid excuse.

You control what enemies do: they could have striken hard on the party in the first rounds, almost killing them, and then, underestimating the party, land to finish them off in melee.

This way the fight would have been harder, better, faster, stronger and funnier.

[Calthropstu]

You're the DM, so saying "the adventure is written this way" is not a valid excuse.

You control what enemies do: they could have striken hard on the party in the first rounds, almost killing them, and then, underestimating the party, land to finish them off in melee.

This way the fight would have been harder, better, faster, stronger and funnier.

I play chreatures as I think they would act. This creature HAD no melee. No weapons, no str bonus... just spells and more spells.
It DID, in the course of the battle, summon a large air elemental. However, the wizard dispelled it rather than dispel the numerous buffs the creature had.

[daremetoidareyo]

Did the enemy fight to the death? Because that is bad tactics for anyone who fears the cessation of their continued existence.

[Calthropstu]

Did the enemy fight to the death? Because that is bad tactics for anyone who fears the cessation of their continued existence.

Yes, it did. And, while I would ordinarily agree with you, the site was... holy to it. And she was a cleric. She believed her demon lord would ultimately protect her. And she nearly had the whole party wiped out. The life oracle was down to her last channel, and she had 6 left. The fight collapsed on her when the wizard got really lucky with his magic resistance rolls and got in a few good magic missle shots.

[Grod_The_Giant]

If I realized I screwed up and the players are miserable, I'll cut the encounter short. Even if it means fudging ruled-- the player's fun is more important.

[Bronk]

However, the wizard dispelled it rather than dispel the numerous buffs the creature had.

Did you remind the wizard of the option of dispelling the flying cleric?

It can be as simple as looking through some notes, then saying, 'Now, did you want to dispel the elemental, or the cleric?' Then mention that the elemental would disappear, or the cleric would fall to the ground and be vulnerable.

Your players beed the help. You're DMing as it is sounds like it's too tough for them.

[Darrin]

I would suggest looking at using some "scripted events". As in, after 5 rounds, {Event A} happens. After 10 rounds, {Event B} happens. These events change the environment in a dramatic way (winds die down), or shifts the balance of power in a significant way (an unexpected ally shows up). This allows the combatants to take stock of the new situation and decide if they want to continue, break off, switch tactics, and so forth. Then it's not so much a "grind one side down to zero HP" as it is "survive until X happens". Or rather, think of it as if you get stuck in a traffic jam and all the cars are just barely crawling forward, then make sure you build yourself a few extra off-ramps so you can go down a different road and try something different.

[Ualaa]

In Rappan Athuk, we had a combat last 9 hours and 51 rounds...
I believe that one was six PCs against four vampires (with class levels... but I replaced their generic fighter/cleric type classes with classes from the same sources all the PCs were using), after they decided to un-stake them so that they could be slain for experience.
The PCs ended up destroying two of the Vampires, and losing two PCs in the process, before Teleporting away and leaving the surviving Vampires now free...

In the current campaign, we had a 14 hour fight go to round 72...
That one was five PCs against three named/class level Drow (again, I gave them classes that the PCs were all using (Spheres of Power magic & Path of War melee), plus thirty odd drow attacking a caravan of forty odd dwarves...
That included glossing over the dwarf/drow actions, and just giving 10 drow and 15 dwarves average damage each round, when their portion of the battle wasn't where the PCs were.
The challenge was surviving the situation, and having as many dwarves survive as possible... so limited AoE options.
Lots of wagons to hide under or behind, rocks etc... a cliff edge fall... not a lot of flying height in the cavern, so not a straight slug fest, but still... full session battle, with the PCs winning without deaths amongst the characters.

.
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Edit: Forgot to add, none of the PCs really felt useless in those though.

[Quertus]

So, I'm going to go against the grain, congratulate you for sticking to your guns, and suggest using this as a teaching opportunity.

Tell your players different ways that they could have handled that fight to have been more successful. Other gear they could have to allow them to contribute. Show them the same party you used to test the encounter (kudos on that, btw).

And ask them how they would like you to handle such situations in the future. Me, I'd want you to run the module exactly as written, and it's on me to figure out a way through. But not everyone's me. :smallwink:

Still, encounters that are designed to limit people's ability to contribute are generally bad encounter design. Hopefully, this is the exception in this module, designed to encourage creativity, rather than the rule.

[The_Jette]

I take it nobody had access to Control Winds?

[Deophaun]

I believe that one was six PCs against four vampires (with class levels... but I replaced their generic fighter/cleric type classes with classes from the same sources all the PCs were using), after they decided to un-stake them so that they could be slain for experience.
The PCs ended up destroying two of the Vampires, and losing two PCs in the process, before Teleporting away and leaving the surviving Vampires now free...
And the kicker should be "and no experience," because experience is for overcoming obstacles, which the staked vampires were not.

So, I'm going to go against the grain, congratulate you for sticking to your guns, and suggest using this as a teaching opportunity.
Going to partially agree here. The party should have retreated when they realized they weren't cutting it and gone back to rethink their strategy. Still, boredom--even if self-inflicted--is something the DM is supposed to prevent. There should have been something for the ground-pounders to do while the main combat was in the air.

[Barstro]

By the time the fight was over it had become so repetitive the pcs wanted it to be over. They rendered 60% of builds completely useless, and 85% of other builds extremely close to it in this published adventure fight. So basically mage types are blowing spell after spell after spell, ultimately likely relying on wands while other party members are forced to just basically sit on the sidelines.
How do you handle player boredom during long drawn out battles where their character is nearly useless?
Nobody having fun is the only part that bothers me. I would hope that several times throughout an adventure, certain PCs would be useless due to their builds.

That being said, this was an example of an extremely long time where several people were unable to play. Since OP did not mention that there were tactics that they players hadn't considered, I will take it at face value that this was all just poor luck.

I've not DMed, but I do consider it a DM's onus to tailor even pre-written encounters in a way that they correctly fit the party. If this part of the campaign was supposed to be a fight the PCs couldn't win, then it's their faults for sticking with it. But if they were supposed to win, then some things needed to be changed.

I agree with others that it might have been a time for the DM to remind the players that the PC's found a "scroll of ___" a few sessions ago that can take this down. After all, the PCs are native to this world and would probably have remembered that. No need to punish the PCs just because the Players are getting frustrated and forgot.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I'm with Darrin here. You had a DMPC oracle fighting a demonic cleric. You can use that to justify almost any sort of divine intervention. Okay, you don't want to be too obvious, but you can drop some terrain in there, a magical cave that suddenly appears, a rainbow you can mysteriously walk on, a gust of wind that blows the enemy down (encourages Ready + trip/grapple), all predicted one round ahead by the oracle.

[jdizzlean]

had a fight deep underwater at party lvl 3, we were fighting 8 cr4 creatures in the first wave. our big hitter was a lock or a archer. the archer couldn't hit **** beyond 5 feet due to how water interacts with projectiles. the rest of us spent about 2 hours going, "i roll to hit, i miss" followed by, "whats your ac? take x damage"

the encounter before this was fighting a single one on the shore, and that took 10 mins...

it got to the point that the DM was obviously fudging rolls, and making the baddies run away instead of a TPK 10x over.

and to get there in the first place we had to get a gift of a portable hole for the quest, and 6 scrolls of water breathing from a dragon...

sometimes you just need to tone down the encounter so people can actually contribute, yourself included.

[Elder_Basilisk]

Ordinarily I'm in the design interesting encounters and let the PCs figure out how to deal with them category. Things like windstorms, flying enemies, etc can often make for fun and interesting encounters.

However, this encounter sounds like it is stacked to go the way it went from the get go. We have an enemy with strong defenses (flight, etc) made even stronger by circumstances (windstorm, etc) and very weak offense (low damage area attack). That's a recipe for an encounter characterized by frustrating grind rather than anything fun. What's worse, the primary options that the parties have for dealing with it are also likely to cause tabletop framerate slowdown or otherwise be unfun. If a dispel magic drops the foe in the middle of the party and that's that, then solving the puzzle makes it quick and boring. Better than slow and boring but still boring. If mass summoning is the answer, that also tends to be slow and boring. (How many attacks are you rolling for those air elementals again?) So, the encounter sounds like it needs to be re-designed in a way that the correct tactical responses for the players and bad guys result in a fun combat rather than a dull grindfest. It's the high level equivalent of a 1st level encounter that has a fire resistant brooch of shielding, fullplate and tower-shield wearing fighter armed with a dagger and a middling strength bonus. It has some interesting tactical elements but they all add up to an encounter that is not going to be fun no matter how it ends.

[Calthropstu]

I'm with Darrin here. You had a DMPC oracle fighting a demonic cleric. You can use that to justify almost any sort of divine intervention. Okay, you don't want to be too obvious, but you can drop some terrain in there, a magical cave that suddenly appears, a rainbow you can mysteriously walk on, a gust of wind that blows the enemy down (encourages Ready + trip/grapple), all predicted one round ahead by the oracle.

My dmpc oracle did the least damage of the party. She has nearly all healing spells and abilities. The party would rather I NOT "divine intervention."
But they earned the win. It was a tough tough fight. The oracle had few spells left, the wizard was tapped out and the poor magus was blind.