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I made the same mistake by having my group fight in knee-deep water against a swamp monster. The DMG even cautions against it, and I won't be making that mistake again.
For me, it was a fight staged within a tangle of underbrush. I too learned the hard way that a little goes a long way with DT.
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Interestingly, I routinely craft fights 2-3 levels higher than my PCs, and there's no grind. That's because they're striker-heavy, with 3 strikers in a 5 man group. With no leaders they're screwed against foes that impose status conditions, but they've gotten good at fast takedowns to help compensate. Even fighting solos is a fast, fun joy.
Well, I have a five-man group of three strikers and two defenders and we grind routinely. In fact, two owl bears was a near TPK for our party of 5-6th level characters. It's just too easy to shoot the ol' wad and then have to wear down two or three hundred HP (depending on the hit/miss ratio) with at-wills.
I really feel like more encounter powers are needed. Also, many daillies don't yield meaningful dividends on a miss. My warlock, for instance, only gets to throw 5 pts of ongoing fire damage when he misses with a daily.
There's too much micro-damage in powers. Powers like cleave that deal piddling damage to a creature that has three-figure HP. That's one of those "what-were-they-thinking" elements of 4e. Nickel-and-diming a monster feels very grindy, perhaps even moreso than missing it.
I allow weapon and feat bonuses to increase damage effects on powers like Cleave and Reaping Strike. Generally this means the extra damage is equal to the damage bonus on a hit (the damage dice "rolled zero"). While 3 or 4 damage to the other guy is not much, at decent levels this is more like 10 to 12 damage, which can be noticeable even to bigger creatures.
My minions are normal critters with 1/5 normal HP (I don't have trouble tracking HP for large groups). They are always "bloodied" or "not bloodied", whichever state is less advantageous to them. Their damage is fixed, as if they rolled a 2 on all their damage dice, and any bonus effects are made milder or removed (stunned becomes dazed, immobilized becomes slowed, ongoing damage halved, etc.). Low level guys will be pretty close to the game's normal minions (6 HP goblins won't last long), but high level ones might be somewhat of a threat even without Aid Another.
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I've also noticed that multiple creatures that cause the weakened condition can drag a fight on a very long time. Wratihs are really bad about this, and I'll never use more than one at a time again.
Great guide, as others have said. I love the monster roles; at first I thought they were superfluous fluff, but after I staged a fight comprised solely of soldiers, I realized role matters. Role matters a lot.
My favorite roles:
1. Brute. Before I select a soldier, I'll always look for a brute of the same level, and use that instead. My group is four players with two of them playing strikers, so the bloated HP doesn't contribute to grind as much. Good use of brutes can make combat exciting, in a very 4e kind of way. Players will be thrilled that all their cool powers are hitting the brute's crappy defenses, but they'll still be threatened by their high damage and staying power. I do wish their damage was a bit higher though.
2. Artillery, for basically the reasons Stalker0 has already laid out. My only complaint; I wish there were more archery-types, and less magic-types. It's hard to justify using a Kobold Wyrmpriest in every fight... after the party kills the ninth or tenth necromancer in the temple, necromancy suddenly doesn't feel all that scary. That's clearly a pet peeve, though. Artillery are clealy very well-designed.
3. Skirmishers. These guys just mix well with everything. Sometimes they feel a little fiddly with all their shifting and immediate reactions and such, but for the most part, any encounter can be improved with a clever skirmisher or two in there to shake things up. Due to their mobility, skirmishers are especially nice because they can do stuff other than whack the PCs yet again. They can provide flanking for the brutes, dash off to activate the trap, run away to warn the leader. They're plot-tastic.
Minions I'm fond of, but don't use much, as my group lacks a controller (although maybe this a good reason to use them more... they might actually seem threatening!). If you need help on making minions actually scary, I find giving them a decent ranged attack can make them frightening well into high heroic tier. Your defender has to decide: can I really take seven crossbow bolts to the chest in order to charge them?Soldiers I avoid like the plague. Lurkers are hit-and-miss; they generally do terrifying amounts of damage in all-too-specific circumstances, so I feel like you really have to design the whole encounter around them if you want to use them.
Last edited by Kinneus; 21st April 2009 at 04:48 AM..
For instance, I had a battle take place on the deck of a ship in a storm -- because of the rain and heaving ship, every square was difficult terrain. This one environmental effect turned the entire battle into a grind, because no one could move. Instead of swashbuckling, they were wading in mud.
J,
I think you missed an opportunity here. Instead of making the heaving deck static difficult terrain you could have put the deck in the init order and had it heave on its turn.
Have everyone make Acrobatics or Athletics checks to see if they can control the "shift" that the heaving deck imparts. Suddenly everyone is moving, some under their own control, others not so much. Think of this as a mass shuffle <G>.
Give bonuses for players that think of ways to use their environment to their advantage (e.g. using a rope on the deck to swing and trip a group of enemies in the path).
Just my two cents...
__________________ Bryan Blumklotz
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I'll chip in with another "excellent post", Stalker0!
The one thing I'd add to your comment that "terrain should've been included in the D&D 4E Monster Manual" is that terrain is a controller. Your caution about over-using controllers applies equally to terrain. While judicious use of terrain and environmental effects can make a combat stand out, they can also have the exact opposite effect: they can make a fight grindy and can annoy players.
If you want to see rampant over-use of environmental effects to nix the characters and annoy the players, play through Pyramid of Shadows.
As far as submitting this to Dungeon/Dragon, as some have suggested...
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However, if anyone IS interested in submitting material to Dungeon/Dragon, it's pretty easy. Just read this page.
I must say, your post is well thought out, organized, and thorough. I see and agree with several of your points, however, I do disagree on a few points, and of course, this is mostly from My own experiences and may not reflect every other person's games.
1. I love your breakdown of roles, however, I think that every role should be utilized, and as often as possible. I find that group encounters that include many, if not all the different basic monster roles (excluding Elite and Solo) make for much more interesting encounters. Yes, soldiers can slow down some parts of a battle, but overall, if you have a balanced party, sending them vs balanced monster parties makes for more epic conflicts.
2. I almost always use monsters 2-5 levels higher than My party level. Obviously, when trying to do balanced encounters (L-1 to L+1) I use less of these than there are numbers of PCs, but generally fill out the numbers if need be with minions to compensate. I do think for the most part, you should never have encounters (excluding Solo/Elite, and minion rush) that have too few monsters compared to the party, or too many (Say, #ofPCs +/- 2 as a range)
3. I also use Solos of higher level than My party on many occassions with great effect. They find the challenge exciting, and I just about never get that grind feeling in any of My games. Sending My 1st level group against a Young White Dragon works well, one or two of the characters my have leveled before said encounter, but generally it's still a nice boss type event, and yes, I do give the Young White Dragon some underlings to help out.
Now, I do have to point out, I run rather larger groups than other people as well. I run generally a minimum of 6 PCs and have run as many as 15 on a given night on more than one occassion. I scale My encounters via both #'s of foes and XP budgetting, and also happen to run most encounters in under an hr, to right around an hour and a helf (really big encounters with 15 players and upwards of 17 opponents) so My experiences are by and large not going to be typical for everyone.
Still, like the general concensus is, an excellent, well thought out article and I commend your efforts and I'm sure they will be of use to the majority of DMs out there.
This is great advice for removing the "Grind" (slugging it out after the fun part of the fight is done) but is there any consensus on how to reduce the combat time (as in number of rounds) for the system in general?
We're only getting one or two fight done each session, which doesn't lead to much plot advancement. I saw someone mention reducing creature hp by 25% and increasing their damage by 33%. Is that a good place to start if we want shorter fights, but with the same challenge?
We're using a premade adventure, so a simple conversion formula like this will work out better than trying to redesign the encounters completely.
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I've dropped hp to 75% and upped monster damage by 1/2 per level. I'm not sure that's high enough though.
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This is great advice for removing the "Grind" (slugging it out after the fun part of the fight is done) but is there any consensus on how to reduce the combat time (as in number of rounds) for the system in general?
Speeding up stuff in 4e isn't particularly difficult, you just need to make sure that both you and your players are properly prepared.
For players: If everyone knows their character and has proper cards printed up with to hit and damage numbers, I consider the players properly prepared.
For DM: I print out all my encounters on separate paper before the session so I have no flipping in books to do during encounters. As long as I get that right, I consider myself properly prepared.
In addition, my group has gotten into the habit of language. When I roll an attack, I say "20 vs. AC." The response is "hit" or "miss, and then I'll say "8 necrotic damage" and allow them to apply resistances and vulnerabilities as appropriate. We also have markers for Bloodied and all the other major condition, so I don't really have to ask many questions about the status of the fight and neither do my players. You'd be amazed how much time is saved by playing efficiently. I've made it through four hard encounters in one three-hour session before.
I can't see how that is any faster than "OK, I rolled a 9. Let's see... my Strength mod is +9. Wait, does that already include half my level? Oh, yeah, it does. Umm... it's a +2 weapon, and the proficiency is +3. I'm flanking, so that's +2. Do I get another +2 because he's prone? No? Ok. Did I count the proficiency bonus yet? Yes? Ok. So, that's 22. What do you mean, it's 25? I just added it up!"
Also, nothing drives me quite as bonkers as someone looking up in the PH, at the table, on their turn, the power they are currently using. Exception: I'll let it pass for a level 1 PC, or a PC who has just gained a level and doesn't have the very newest power written out or on a card yet.
Maybe it's because I take so much joy in preparing my characters ahead of time, that I fail to recognize that some people out there might look at that level of preparation as a chore rather than a treat.
The individual turns are going fast enough. Our problem is that there are just SO MANY of them. The sheer number of rounds it takes to complete a fight is keeping us from progressing the story much, even given a 5 hour stint at the gaming table. My guess is that some combination of decreased enemy hit point would work - but it needs to be balanced by increased enemy output in order to keep things equally challenging. If others have been through the same thing, I'd like to benefit from their experience.
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The individual turns are going fast enough. Our problem is that there are just SO MANY of them.
How many rounds your group is rolling, most of time?
On my table, the feared level+4 fights likely take 9~11 rounds. But since this is a "boss fight", we understand that this should be long and excitant on descriptions. Sometimes less, because we go nova on the boss.
Our normal level or level+1 fights usually take 5~8 rounds, tops. We waste all encounters, and then maybe one to 3 rounds of at-wills to finish. Sometimes, we start with at-wills, so on final rounds at least one or two of us is still using encounters.
If your level and level+1 fights are taking more than 10 rounds to finish, maybe your DM is overdoing his work on "interesting terrain" and "well hidden placed artillery".
The individual turns are going fast enough. Our problem is that there are just SO MANY of them. The sheer number of rounds it takes to complete a fight is keeping us from progressing the story much, even given a 5 hour stint at the gaming table. My guess is that some combination of decreased enemy hit point would work - but it needs to be balanced by increased enemy output in order to keep things equally challenging. If others have been through the same thing, I'd like to benefit from their experience.
I appreciate that this can be a problem. I'd suggest that one thing you can do to make this better is to make sure you're doing focus-fire on the monsters.
Target one, take it down, then move on to the next. If every player is fighting a monster one-on-one, you'll find that combat is very, very slow.
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