D&D 4E The grindyness of 4e combat: anyone tried a solo monster yet?

I've been running some playtest games using OpenRPG, so I have logs of the fights. With 8 characters and the encounters scaled to match, I've run all of Kobold Hall, the Graveyard scene from KotS, and the first two encounters from Rescue at Rivenroar. None of the fights took longer than 9 rounds (Kobold Hall room 1 that spilled over immediately into Room 2). The White Dragon in the Hall (reinforced by 5 minions, a 2nd level artillery, and 2 1st level skirmishers) took 6 rounds. It's slightly more of a grind than some of others, but not excessively so.

I've also got 7 PCs, and we also get about 3 fights into a 4-hour slot. We do a fair amount of trickery to get things moving fast--markers for conditions, a player assigned to get init scores while I prep the battlemat, cards for each monster, etc. These definitely help.

And even against the white dragon in Kobold Keep, I had the PCs moving around some, and daily and encounter powers were spaced out (since sometimes you can't get full use of a power given your position). It went pretty well.

I've got a big fight or two coming up, and I'm planning to use terrain and skill checks to make them interesting.

Daniel

Runestar said:

The white dragon in the DMG adventure. Basically, all PCs blew their daily and encounter powers in the 1st round, then spent the remaining 14 rounds using their at-wills.

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Firing off everything in the first round could actually be part of the problem. You need to set up to maximize bonuses (Combat Advantage, buffs, etc.) before you unload with your big Dailies, or else they're much more likely to simply fizzle, and that can easily add two or three extra turns onto the encounter...

I specifically didn't mention my party make-up for a couple of reasons. First, because we're still trying out different class combos, and second, I didn't want to offer bait for the "you need more strikers" line. That has become a bit of a cop-out in this forum. Someone says monsters hit too much or too hard, someone else says get more defenders. Someone says encounters with lots of opponenents is a nightmare to run, someone else says that's what controllers are for. Someone says heroes don't have enough HP, someone else touts the criticality of stocking up on leaders. The response has become the kneejerk easy answer.

In actuality, if you have more of A, you have less of B, C, and D, and suffer in that area. Zero sum game, folks. Currently, I got three players, and there are four roles. This advice is not the solution to the grinding issue.

Now, I see some folks have a big mob of players. I suppose I can't argue that overwhelming the solo monsters with sheer numbers speeds things up, but that doesn't really help me either. Three's what I got.

So, now the burden is on me to figure out exactly what information would be helpful. I could ask for numbers, but Mengu threw out a bunch of numbers and none of it was very compelling, mostly because DPR has to be adjusted by hit/miss ratios, which represent a significant variable.

I guess I'd like to know what happens during a fight with 600 hit points that makes a big dent. You don't have the barbarian critting and doing 100+ points of damage, you don't have harm tearing a big chunk out of the critter. What do you have that isn't just some 3{w} attack that amounts to maybe 20-30 points of damage?

Felon said:

That sounds more like presumption than experience talking. Elites take longer to kill than two monsters, and likewise a solo will likely take far longer to kill than five monsters.

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I've found this to be the opposite. Elites and Solos have taken slightly less time to kill than their multiple counterparts, primarily because there's less need for movement and positioning to continue engaging them. While you have to move melee characters around to deal with 5 monsters, when there's only one, it's easier to engage and stay on it.

I built a couple of custom solos for games I've been running. They played perfectly and my players reallly enjoyed and remembered both encounters.

Both fights went to double digit rounds (11 and 13), both fights sent multiple PCs to unconsciousness, and both times my players said that they really had a great time. They used just about every resource they had (4 man party, with solos 1 or 2 levels higher) but scraped by. I got some of the most enthusiastic and joyful combat feedback I've ever gotten in all the games I've run.
Party, this was due to the epic danger of the encounter, partly this was due to terrain that they could make be a meaningful part of the encounter. Mostly this was due to a fight so long and tough that everyone had a chance to really shine and show off all their spiffy tricks. It didn't matter that I dropped the wizard in the first round, or that the rogue fell in the next to last round, or that the warlord wend down sometime in the middle; they worked as a team to get everyone back into the fight and there was much success and shared victory.

As an aside, I'm running three players but one of my players (who GMs other games) is running two PCs. This counters the serious problems I ran into with designing encounters for three PCs.

We've fought a couple of solos, and lots of elites. None turned into grinds. We... we rock the single enemies pretty fast.

Felon said:

I guess I'd like to know what happens during a fight with 600 hit points that makes a big dent. You don't have the barbarian critting and doing 100+ points of damage, you don't have harm tearing a big chunk out of the critter. What do you have that isn't just some 3{w} attack that amounts to maybe 20-30 points of damage?

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I can't speak for the 600-hit point monsters as my PCs just dinged level 3 last night, but I can say that we have six players - two strikers (rogue/warlock), two defenders (both fighter), and two leaders (cleric/warlord). Last night they got lost in the woods and I threw two Cave Bears (level 6 Elite Brute, 170 HP) at them. That's just under a level 4 encounter for rested PCs who were level 2 at the time and had lost a few healing surges from being lost.

It was over in 6 or 7 rounds, but was basically over in 4 when they toppled the first bear and had the other isolated away munching on the fighter. Where did the damage come from? Exactly where it should - the Warlock and Rogue with their curse bonus and sneak attacks. The Fighters did their fair share too, and so would have our cleric had he not been rolling very poorly.

They immediately went on and faced another 1000XP encounter with 3 Human Bandits and 4 Human Guards. That was also over in 6-7 rounds. And just like before, the damage came from the strikers and their bonuses mostly. Once the Warlock rolled a non-natural crit - 6 on a d6 and 8 on his d8.

You said you didn't want to talk group makeup, but I think you have to consider that. If you have no strikers you're going to have problems dealing damage and you have to work that into your DMing.

Anthony Jackson said:

My experience is that solo fights aren't very interesting, but are quick enough.

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I think tbh, a Lot of GMs, including myself, find it very hard to make solo fights interesting.

Its one of the reasons I really like that 4e has devoted a lot of time to making sure combats with a lot of opponents work.

baberg said:

It was over in 6 or 7 rounds, but was basically over in 4 when they toppled the first bear and had the other isolated away munching on the fighter. Where did the damage come from? Exactly where it should - the Warlock and Rogue with their curse bonus and sneak attacks.

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Baberg, at 3rd the curse bonus is an extra 1d6, so that's hardly a massive boost. The sneak attack is another 1d6, maybe a little more based on feat choices. It's not a huge damage differential.