Combat length and Adventure pacing

[MerricB]

I really like D&D 4E. I've been happily playing it since the day it came out, and I'll continue happily playing it until D&D 5E comes out (and possibly past them as well). I think that, in many respects, it's the best edition of D&D.

However, after having played it for the last 18 or so months, and having read the experiences of many other groups online, I think it's worth commenting on some of the problems I see with the core of the game.

And by that core, I mean the combat system.

D&D, in every edition, has at its heart a combat system. I believe that it's the best heroic fantasy combat system there is. The way that Armour Class, hit points and polyhedral dice interact may not be realistic, but it is fun, and when I play a game I look for fun. Apparently, so do the designers of D&D - especially if you look at the 4E DMG. So, D&D has a combat system and, in most games, combat is going to provide a fair core of the activity.

Games designers tend to want individual players to get a chance to do something fairly often. If you have to wait 20 minutes before you can do something, people tend to lose interest (unless listening to what else is happening is entertaining of itself. It can be). It could be accurately said of high-level D&D 3E that it took entirely too long to resolve one player's turn. In my final session of 3.5e, every player save one had a laptop which they used to roll their dice and track their modifiers and often ahead of time. Nathaniel spent all of everyone else's turns working out the results of his attack. Those last combats went by pretty fast... but required an exceptional and frankly unsatisfying solution. There was no hanging on the die roll of the other players - would they hit and save you or miss and doom you all? Nate would just reveal how much damage he'd done and we'd move on.

One of the great triumphs of 4e was to give players more options than just "I hit the monster", whilst keeping the individual turn lengths down. Why, then, are people complaining about how long combat goes?

Here's one of those little facts about the length of a turn that I'm pretty sure most of you know already: Part of it is the time taken to resolve the action. The other part is the time taken to choose the action to take. And it's that second part that 4e has a problem with.

The funny thing is that it might not actually take that long for a player to choose an action, but if it is the wrong action, the amount of time it takes to resolve combat increases just the same. As a simple example, if you're faced by three ogres, combat will end quickest if you concentrate on one ogre. Some groups don't do that, and so combat takes longer.

The other (hidden) part of this is in the character builds. Nate and Adam are two champion min-maxers (I say that in the nicest way). When they gave Josh some helpful advice on how to build his character, it suddenly changed from being "just ok" to being rather good. (I still can't say that it's the most useful character in the group, because Josh has Greg, Adam and Nate to contend with...)

Put those three elements together, and the cumulative effect are combats that can take greatly varying amounts of time. This is not, in itself, a problem. Well, it is, but it's something that you accept as a trade-off for having players doing more than saying "I swing my sword at the ogre" each turn. It's something you can live with, as a designer and a player.

Where things get interesting is when you start designing around how long combats ought to take.

It has now been some time since I regularly played AD&D, but I've got a feeling that an average combat would be somewhere in the realm of 20-30 minutes to resolve. Some would take more, some would take less. At low levels, all it might take was a single spell from a magic-user!

In 4e, it seems the average time for a combat, the time it was designed for a competent group to achieve, is about 1 hour. I have a couple of problems with that length in any case, but problems really comes for other groups who aren't as efficient as my group at getting past combats. Once a single combat takes 2 or more hours to resolve, you've used a fair whack of your gaming session. It'd be great if that variance could be reduced.

So, does 4E assume too much that the group will be effective at running/playing combat? My suspicion is that it does, and this affects people's enjoyment of the system.

Related topic: Pacing of Adventures

Is 1 hour a good time for an average combat to take?

The key part of running a good roleplaying session is getting the pacing right. D&D might have a combat system at its heart, but it isn't just about one combat after another. It's the context those combats come in that are so important: whether you're overcoming monsters on your way to save the princess, or exploring a old pyramid, or seeking to find the real reason the giants are now invading the kingdom. Combat is great fun, but it also is a great pause in the story you create in the session. Yes, occasionally something will happen in the combat that advances the story, but - in my experience - that's the exception, not the rule.

What I've discussed so far relates to the core of D&D 4e: the structure that make the game work. I'm now going to look at the game in play, using the campaign I've run with the published D&D modules for examples. Let's look at the compounded effect of long(ish) combat and combat-heavy adventure design:

There are a lot of combats in the Wizards adventures. The wonderful Rodney Thompson recently started a thread on EN World on their adventure design. At present, my group is getting towards the conclusion of the second Paragon adventure, Demon Queen's Enclave. The combats we've been facing have been difficult, consistently of a danger level above the average party level. (One hint for designers: It'd be nice to know what level you expect the party to be when they face an encounter in a multi-level adventure. We're mostly 16th level now, I think we should be 17th level, but I'm not sure when that should have happened.)

Tougher combats take longer. When *every* combat is a tougher combat (where are the easy ones, guys?) then you spend a lot of the session sitting there getting through tough combats. There are eight combats in this final section: the characters have breached Orcus's realm, and are now assaulting his final stronghold to deal with his champion. Where are the natural break points? I've got a feeling that you should get through most of it and be left with only the final encounter to go in a single session. It's taken us a lot longer than that - especially as we don't run 7 hour sessions... and that's presuming that all we did was combat!

But why is running this in a single session useful? Well, in my experience it is because D&D works best when the players are very clear on what their goal is. (Which is that context the encounter takes place in I mentioned before). When two ogres appear to bar the PC's way, the first thought in the players' minds shouldn't really be "oh, another combat", but instead, "They're blocking us from finding the princess. How do we get past them?"

If the interruption takes too long - and an hour is likely that, two hours is certainly that - by the end of the combat, the players have likely lost their original focus and then need to regain it. If you have two really long combat in the session, likely they've spent very little time thinking about what their actual goal is and the game has degenerated into a set of combats.

A long combat? Great for the finale - defeat the Giant King to save the princess. At the end of it they get their reward and it's all over. On the way there? Not so good.

Thinking about this just as a design consideration: after a combat, it helps if players are reminded of (a) their goal and (b) how overcoming the challenge has contributed to this. It's not necessary after every combat, but it helps. Of course, not every goal will be as clear-cut as "save the princess", but having consequences for a combat beyond "the monsters are dead" and perhaps "treasure, hooray!" helps elevate it in significance.

The other point about long combats is that they detract from the significance of other encounters and discoveries. Really, discoveries are something that the 4E adventures in the Heroic and Paragon tier haven't done that well. You could see nods towards it in Pyramid of Shadows - and it had a great backstory to go with it - but not enough of it was visible to the players, and there really wasn't enough meat for the DM and players to make it fantastic.

Adventure pacing is a tricky thing to pull off. Often, it'll feel too linear and railroaded. Sometimes, you have to leave it in the hands of the individual DM. However, when individual combats take so long, it's hard for even that DM to pull it off.

There's more to say on this topic, but I'm going to retire now to collect more of my thoughts.

Cheers!

 

[Nightson]

In an amusing coincidence, I happen to be reading an article on pacing in adventures in Dragon #301, and it's good advice so I'm going to summarize it.

1. Pacing means having high points (tension wise) and low points as you steadily build towards the climax. It does not mean continually rising action from the get go.

2. Break up combat encounters with non-combat encounters. In fact the article recommends never having a fight back to back.

3. Vary the non-combat encounters. The article mentions traps, NPC interaction, information, skill checks, visual descriptions, puzzles and riddles, the cut scene and the snack break. And we might as well throw a skill challenge in there for 4e.

 

[S'mon]

Years ago running PBEMs, where everything takes much longer, I realised that the best model for any 'expedition' adventure was the 3-encounter model: beginning, middle and end. For a dungeon that means typically:

Guardian on the Threshold - eg the Moria lake-lurker
Middle Encounter - eg Balin's Tomb & orcs
Climactic Encounter - eg the Balrog

I like the Dungeon Delves, which all fit this model. If they had a bit of exploration and roleplay in addition they'd be ideal for a single-session adventure. As-is they tend to take 3-3.5 hours of my 4.5-5 hour game sessions, so I usually have another unrelated encounter before or after.

An alternative is to build the session around a single huge 'battle' encounter, where eg the whole 'dungeon' reacts dynamically to the PCs in a coordinated fashion. This doesn't have the same risk of grind as the multi-encounter approach, but can be very dangerous for the PCs in 4e; last time I did this we lost 4/6 PCs.

 

[RangerWickett]

For me, an ideal game session would be 5 hours long, and would cover 1/2 or 1/3 of what I think of as an 'adventure.' It would start with catching up, then we'd present a goal, the group would roleplay and explore toward that goal, and there would be one combat of note. There might occasionally be a less important fight, but typically the other side will give up or flee when they're bloodied, because there's no point to keeping on fighting.

If I were to write an adventure for publication, if it's a short adventure, it would only have 1 significant combat encounter, and maybe a 2nd less important one. If I wanted a normal length adventure, maybe there'd be 3 significant combats. And if I was doing a part of an adventure path that was supposed to advance the group 3 levels, I'd have maybe 5.

From what I've seen of WotC adventure paths in 4e, though, they tend to have 10 or 20 combats per module, which is just ridiculous to me. Throwaway combat works in video games because you can get through it in a minute or two, but even devoting 15 minutes to a narratively unimportant battle would be a major waste, in my opinion.

I prefer to condense my combats. Have 1 a session, and make it matter -- to the plot, to the character's goals, and to the player's emotions.

Tonight, for instance, the PCs in my group are going to be fighting an ogre and his posse for control of a third of his tribe. The rest of the session, I suspect, will just be roleplay and some skill checks, so I'm making sure the combat has plenty of zing to it. If I had to prep 4 combats, I'd expect all of them would be kinda boring.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The major problem in 4e is the Idea that powers are a limited resource which players chose at character creation, not as a reaction to a present situation. Even items are chosen to support the build, not to overcome a situation.

You can adapt to the situation by timing your powers right, but usually you still use only your powers. In older editions, because your powers were rare, or you had none (fighter or thief) you had to use the terrain to get advantage, use your fellow PC´s as shields, used burning oil to bring down an enemy... often circumventing hp and ending the combat immediately by just one clever idea. Sometimes t involved a clever use of a power... e.g.: command: "jump" to someone walking on the ceiling with boots of spider climbing...

3.5 already changed "open ended" spells which were revarding cleverness such as he command spell by stating the exact uses. This was done, because a 1st level spell may not be that lethal when used in the right situation, which is a legit reason when there is no way to prevent someone to use such a spell even if you are faster. (no spell interruption and usually impossible to kill the mage in a single blow)

Why is it important for adventure pacing and combat length: When you are really immersed in the combat or know you can end it by roleplaying, there is no break at all.

Combat is just another form of roleplaying. But it is unbalanced and needs a good DM to react to the ideas of the players. He has to decide if it is a clever or stupid idea. He has to make up the effect by the players describing the power. In 4e you know the effect beforehand and so combat can easily become just a mechanical resoulution and it has nothing to do with roleplaying anymore.

The sad thing: 4e has all the tools needed for this kind of playstyle, but the feat and power system overshadows the solid game system so that players and the DM sometimes forget that they play an RPG.

Combat would be much faster paced and much nicer if the players decide their actions according to what makes sense in a situation for his PC, not what is best from a mechanical viewpoint. The DM on the contrary has tp make sure his monsters do the same.

With this playstyle in mind the time spent thinking about level appropriate challenges and level appropriate items can be better spent searching for story related monsters and items to make the story immersing and the combat a memorable encounter. And it will be faster paced, because mistakes are allowed!

 

[lkjopajdowma]

Combat is just another form of roleplaying. But it is unbalanced and needs a good DM to react to the ideas of the players. He has to decide if it is a clever or stupid idea. He has to make up the effect by the players describing the power. In 4e you know the effect beforehand and so combat can easily become just a mechanical resoulution and it has nothing to do with roleplaying anymore.

The sad thing: 4e has all the tools needed for this kind of playstyle, but the feat and power system overshadows the solid game system so that players and the DM sometimes forget that they play an RPG.

Combat would be much faster paced and much nicer if the players decide their actions according to what makes sense in a situation for his PC, not what is best from a mechanical viewpoint. The DM on the contrary has tp make sure his monsters do the same.

If I'm misinterpreting what you're saying here, I apologize, but it seems to me you're talking about something I've noticed as a player in 4e...I'm looking at my options in combat, looking at the surroundings, thinking of all these cool things I could try to do from a cinematic or heroic perspective that isn't using a power, then looking at my powers, and realizing that the powers are just a better option, mechanically and tactically, and risk-wise.

Now, this could be relieved by a really flexible DM, but if you don't have one of those, you've got two options in that situation: Try something cool and cinematic with a high chance of failure for little mechanical payoff (if the DM will even allow it), or take the safe route of using a power that maybe has at least a 50% chance of succeeding, and where failure really has no disadvantages other than the combat might take an extra round.

Right now my group is trying out Savage Worlds, and I really like a lot of what it does. I played 3.5 before 4e, and while I think 4e is a better game overall, especially the combat, SW is reminding me the one thing I missed about pre-4e combats--attempting cool stuff because the success was worth the risk of failure. In 4e the risk of failure isn't worth the reward for success when you can just fire off a power that would just do more damage to the enemy, have better/more effects, and where failure carries little risk.

The way 4e is set up with the power system seems to facilitate a more rigid combat system with less free-form choices. Not because you can't do something else, but because in the confines of the RAW, it's not a tactically sound decision to do so. It's a tactical game, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I'm not sure that's what I'm looking for exactly. After a stint with SW (which will hopefully go a bit longer, or trying a few other systems), I hope to go back to 4e with some ideas for shaking things up (I'm already thinking of giving APs more uses and being a bit more liberal with them, similar to SW's bennies).

...

As far as adventure pacing, I've been reading some of your threads recently, Merric, and I like the idea of gutting most of the non-plot-related combats from an adventure, and I think if I run 4e again it's something I'm going to do. Part of the reason my group made an abrupt switch to SW from 4e was the combat slog. We were halfway through Trollhaunt Warrens, and every session was just combat after combat, and we weren't even sure what the plot was anymore. It just wasn't working.

 

[Infiniti2000]

If I were to write an adventure for publication, if it's a short adventure, it would only have 1 significant combat encounter, and maybe a 2nd less important one. If I wanted a normal length adventure, maybe there'd be 3 significant combats. And if I was doing a part of an adventure path that was supposed to advance the group 3 levels, I'd have maybe 5.

That really doesn't make any sense to me. Are you also including non-combat encounters in this? You need 8-10 per level, so 24-30 over three levels. Are you gonna to write up 21-27 skill challenges? One thing's for sure, though, is that your plan definitely caters to the nova builds.

 

[Dausuul]

The way 4e is set up with the power system seems to facilitate a more rigid combat system with less free-form choices. Not because you can't do something else, but because in the confines of the RAW, it's not a tactically sound decision to do so. It's a tactical game, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I'm not sure that's what I'm looking for exactly. After a stint with SW (which will hopefully go a bit longer, or trying a few other systems), I hope to go back to 4e with some ideas for shaking things up (I'm already thinking of giving APs more uses and being a bit more liberal with them, similar to SW's bennies).

Speaking from a DM standpoint, after carefully designing a fancy set-piece battle, it can be hard to stomach when one of the PCs comes up with a clever idea that circumvents the whole thing. There's always a great temptation to nix the PC's idea somehow, so you can show off your fancy monsters and elaborate terrain setup.

I do try very hard to resist that temptation. If possible, I throw some sand in the gears instead. The PCs can proceed with their clever plan and have a good chance of success, but it doesn't all go smooth and easy; I try to make them sweat a little to earn their victory.

 

[S'mon]

Re use of terrain - I saw a good suggestion just now on the Sly Flourish blog: the GM should default to having use of terrain be a minor action, so a PC can eg kick over the flaming brazier *and* still use a power in one round.

 

[RangerWickett]

Skill challenges have not once interested me, so I doubt I would use those in an explicit sense. I would probably have situations that call for social interaction, or research, or exploration, and those would be worth XP. But I don't like how skill challenges work. I dunno, maybe I've just never seen one done well. They always feel flat and drama-less to me.

As for combat, I may have under-estimated by saying 5 for a 3-level adventure. But I do prefer using 2 or 3 encounters per level that are more challenging, rather than having 8 or 10 that are on-level.

You need 1000 xp to get to 2nd level, 5000 xp for a typical party. A typical 1st level encounter is 500 xp, but bah, those are boring. Let's have some fun, and have an encounter with multiple phases, folks coming from different directions, an elite leader, some minions, and some environmental hazards, totally 1000 xp.

So I'd probably structure a level-length adventure at 1st level:

Intro.
Initial combat to introduce the theme of foes (750 xp).
Non-combat encounter (500 xp quest reward).
Encounter that could be combat or could be avoided (500 xp).
Non-combat encounter (500 xp quest reward).
Encounter that could be combat or could be avoided (500 xp).
Climax combat (1000 xp combat).
Victory bonus (1250 xp quest reward).

Like for instance,

1. You're at a town having a festival, where they make magic beer.

2. Kobolds put a spell on the townsfolk and steal the beer. Most of the kobolds have already gotten away. You shake free quickly, follow signs to the town's brewery, and find a group of kobolds struggling to fill their wagons with the last kegs. They attack you, and try to get to their wagon outside.

Say four main 100 xp kobolds, ten 25 xp minions, and a 100 xp guard critter; once half of them are down or bloodied, they become more interested in getting away than killing you. Additional fun available because you might have a wagon chase, and because you're fighting in a warehouse with kegs you can knock over on top of people, and other fun toys.

3. Pursuing the rest of the kobolds who already got away, you get lured into a drunken dryad's grove, and she won't let you go unless you can outdrink her. Fighting's not a feasible option, because she and her treants would trounce you.

4. The kobolds realize you're following, and lay an ambush in a field full of wild turkeys. If you spot the ambush, you can avoid it, or negotiate, or stampede the turkeys over the kobolds.

5. The kobolds pass through goblin hills. The goblins aren't looking for a fight, so you can negotiate with them to get directions to the kobolds' base.

6. If you're really persuasive, you can get a goblin guide who'll show you the way, and warn you about the traps and hazards of the mountains. Otherwise, you run afoul of kobold traps and attract the attention of some nasty monsters. If the fight occurs, it's a trio of big lumbering nasty monsters, which you can possibly outrun by navigating hazardous terrain.

7. The final showdown. The kobolds are trying to steal the recipe of the magic beer. They have a brewery of their own, where dozens of kobolds work (many of them noncombatants), using oversized machinery. The leader of the kobolds is leading them in drinking songs, and if you can chase him down and knock him out, the rest of his guys scatter. But he's got bodyguards, and all manner of fancy tricks.

So 250 xp elite leader, ten 25 xp minions, four 100 xp kobolds, and 100 xp worth of minor traps.