Sudden Death Combat

Two complaints I've been getting lately is that combats are running long and are not brutal enough. I have an idea for how to address both issues.

At the beginning of any combat round where it is clear the PCs will probably win a fight (generally when about half the monsters are down), the combat enters Sudden Death for the rest of the encounter. During Sudden Death, the following rules apply.

1) Any damage that is not tied to an attack roll is doubled: auras, sustained effects, ongoing damage, etc.

2) Any normal hit counts as a critical hit.

3) Any critical hit automatically kills a normal monster, and does double critical damage to a PC, elite monster or solo monster.

4) The penalty for making attacks that do not include the person who marked you is doubled (to -4), to prevent monsters from dog-piling on characters with lower defenses.

5) A PC does not die automatically if driven below to negative his bloodied hit point value. Instead, he is dying, and counts has having failed two death saves already. A PC reduced to negative his full hit point value automatically dies.

How does this sound? I am not aiming to speed up the entire combat. I am just trying to end things quickly when it is clear one side will win, but to still keep the last few rounds of combat exciting.

That seems like a complicated way to say, "Since the players outnumber the opponents 2:1, the opponents all..."

1) die
2) surrender
3) run away

....depending on the situation. Combat ends very, very quickly in those three situations. Why make rules for something that you can hand-wave a solution to?

Just up the monsters damage from the beginning. Most monsters in the MM are weak for their level damage. I have run them straight out of the MM and I have run them with increasing their damage. With increased damage, they become 'more dealy' and a good threat. Easy Easy.

PeelSeel2 said:

Just up the monsters damage from the beginning. Most monsters in the MM are weak for their level damage. I have run them straight out of the MM and I have run them with increasing their damage. With increased damage, they become 'more dealy' and a good threat. Easy Easy.

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Well, the N+3 (or even N+1/2 depending on player skill) encounters are already quite deadly if the DM has any tactical ability and creates decent encounters. Level equal encounters are not SUPPOSED to be super difficult. They can be challenging at times depending on luck and other factors, but on average a 5th level party should handle a 5th level encounter without a hard necessity to expend dailies.

Your solution will certainly shift the difficulty level of a lot of encounters up the scale, but that has 2 main effects. 1 it decreases character advancement rate because XP doesn't change but the PCs can no longer take on the N+3 encounters that give them the bulk of their experience. Secondly it hoses characters of levels 1 because the weakest encounter they can now face is not just medium difficulty, it is effectively quite hard, so expect a lot MORE TPK at 1-3rd levels.

Of course it will speed up encounters in the sense that the PCs will be reduced quickly in hit points. That will mean a TPK will take less time, but for the PCs to win they will still have to deal the same damage as ever, so victory will only be sped up by the proportion that you have to make most encounters lower level than before.

The best alternative I've found is just good encounter design. Avoid using a lot of N+ level soldiers in encounters. In general use more lower level monsters as opposed to fewer higher level ones. It may make some encounters easier for some parties, but that is true anyway and you can always add in a monster or two.

Thus instead of making an N+3 encounter that uses 5 N+3 level monsters, make it instead use 7 or 10 N level monsters, or something in between. This also reduces the need to throw lots of minions into encounters just to provide the illusion that the monsters have a lot of numbers.

Wraith Form said:

That seems like a complicated way to say, "Since the players outnumber the opponents 2:1, the opponents all..."

1) die
2) surrender
3) run away

....depending on the situation. Combat ends very, very quickly in those three situations. Why make rules for something that you can hand-wave a solution to?

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I am making up rules because I don't want to hand-wave the end of every combat. That feels anti-climactic to me.

Those last 2 or 3 rounds do have an effect on PC resources. They generally lose a few healing surges worth of extra hit points. On the other hand, those last 2 or 3 combat rounds generally involve 15-20 minutes of fairly boring play. I want to spice up the combat end-game by making it more swingy.

PeelSeel2 said:

Just up the monsters damage from the beginning. Most monsters in the MM are weak for their level damage. I have run them straight out of the MM and I have run them with increasing their damage. With increased damage, they become 'more dealy' and a good threat. Easy Easy.

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I am satisfied with the beginning of combat, so I don't feel the need to up damage for the whole battle. It is the end game that I am having issues with.

AbdulAlhazred said:

The best alternative I've found is just good encounter design. Avoid using a lot of N+ level soldiers in encounters. In general use more lower level monsters as opposed to fewer higher level ones. It may make some encounters easier for some parties, but that is true anyway and you can always add in a monster or two.

Thus instead of making an N+3 encounter that uses 5 N+3 level monsters, make it instead use 7 or 10 N level monsters, or something in between. This also reduces the need to throw lots of minions into encounters just to provide the illusion that the monsters have a lot of numbers.

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This is, in fact, how I design most encounters. My PCs are generally facing N+2 and N+3 encounters (they are good enough that they blow through anything weaker). My N+3 encounters usually outnumber the PCs, and are made up of N+0 to N+2 level monsters.

My players are very good at divide-and-conquer, and concentrate their attacks to remove individual opponents. So, in a typical encounter with 8 monsters, after 3-4 rounds the PCs have eliminated half of them with no losses on the PC side, and it is clear they are going to win. But the remaining 4 monsters are mostly unhurt, and it usually takes another 15-20 minutes to finish killing them off.

My group now gets bored at the end of most combats, because it is clear there is little risk of losing anyone but it still takes a while to play out. That's why I put together these rules.

It's actually pretty common for enemies to give up when the situation looks hopeless. Thats not necessarily hand-waving...its just reflecting reality.

Also, most hunting animals won't attack something and keep attacking until they die. If the situation turns bad they will attempt to escape.

DS

Sabathius42 said:

It's actually pretty common for enemies to give up when the situation looks hopeless. Thats not necessarily hand-waving...its just reflecting reality.

Also, most hunting animals won't attack something and keep attacking until they die. If the situation turns bad they will attempt to escape.

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I do have the enemies run when it is appropriate, but my PCs are frequently fighting genuinely evil fanatics, undead and demons that care nothing for their own lives. A lot of the time, it doesn't make sense for the enemies to run.

Also, I have a couple players that refuse to let enemies escape from the battlefield. When the badguys start to run, they chase them down and kill them anyway.

I think you need to start using more tactical advantages in combat towards the end. This could be as simple as monster reinforcements or having creatures with bonus damage once they get bloodied.

Another approach to pose more of a challenge is to ambush your party with a harder encounter early on, such as zombie dogs who knock prone and once that happens trigger the ghouls who may have been hiding on the ceiling to drop down and gain combat advantage for some quick big hits. If you pose more of a challenge in the beginning your players may find that the end of combat is not boring, but rather a welcomed sigh of relief.


However, your party may have a special stylistic play and function well in a different way so its hard to judge from afar.



Speaking about your ruling I find that this would lead to a big disadvantage to the players in that these monsters are only throw away villains who are almost supposed to die while your players are now at a much bigger risk of dying and causing a party wipe. If you plan to use this to challenge them then it may work, but I could foresee if the players all getting killed off, or they simple nova during the sudden death round and finish off enemies that much quicker.

Paul Strack said:

I do have the enemies run when it is appropriate, but my PCs are frequently fighting genuinely evil fanatics, undead and demons that care nothing for their own lives. A lot of the time, it doesn't make sense for the enemies to run.

Also, I have a couple players that refuse to let enemies escape from the battlefield. When the badguys start to run, they chase them down and kill them anyway.

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Well, I will grant you fanatics and unintelligent undead. Demons and intelligent undead wouldn't necessarily have a problem with escaping if it let them live to fight another day.

If you gave the players a promise that they get full XP and no ill side effects for escaped unimportant bad guys then perhaps they would let them go. I know in our games we hunt down escaping bad guys as much as possible because the GM won't give us XP if we didn't actually kill them (which I don't agree with) and so that they don't go alert someone more important. If something along the lines of "He isn't going to last 10 minutes in the wild as he stumbles out the door" then we wouldn't do so.

DS

Sabathius42 said:

If you gave the players a promise that they get full XP and no ill side effects for escaped unimportant bad guys then perhaps they would let them go. I know in our games we hunt down escaping bad guys as much as possible because the GM won't give us XP if we didn't actually kill them (which I don't agree with) and so that they don't go alert someone more important. If something along the lines of "He isn't going to last 10 minutes in the wild as he stumbles out the door" then we wouldn't do so.

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I advance the party at a fixed rate (1 level per complete adventure), so the number of monster killed has no bearing on their rate of advancement. The player in question simply can't stand to let anything that has ever attacked him live to tell the tale