Stalker0's Guide to Anti-Grind

Radiating Gnome · Apr 20, 2009

Excellent article -- I've been thinking along some of the same lines, but of course you've said it better.

I think an important part of the sensation of grind is a lack of mobility. It feels like grinding when the combatants are just standing toe to toe and trading blows.

So, I would suggest a stronger emphasis on the non-monster elements of a combat to help reduce the sensation of grind in combat. It has been my experience that interesting, dangerous, and tactically usable terrain goes a long way to help make combat interesting. If there is an area of high ground, a few holes you can drop enemies into, magic circles or other environmental effects that add combat potency -- those all help give the players an additional thing to concentrate on other that trading blows. You've mentioned it, of course, but it has been my experience that the worst encounters I've written either had nothing at all to make the battlefield interesting, or had terrain and environmental effects designed to eliminate the PCs ability to maneuver.

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

Parlan · Apr 20, 2009

Great post, thanks!

Mottokrosh · Apr 20, 2009

mach1.9pants said:
am going to try minions are 2 hit kills tonight (1 to bloodied then dead)

I actually just did this in my game last week. There was an encounter that needed lots of enemies that would swarm the PCs. Since there were so many monsters, the PCs pretty much assumed they were minions and weren't very scared of them. Until they didn't go down with one hit, that was! Suddenly they changed their mind and ran!

I call them Elite Minions. Two hits to kill unless a single attack does more than X damage (in this case I put X at 25 points of damage, for Level 10 Elite Minions).

Again, it's not something I plan on using very often, but it really fit the encounter.

Gort · Apr 20, 2009

Maybe two hits to kill unless they get criticalled (in which case they instantly die) would be a good rule also.

orangefruitbat · Apr 20, 2009

In my game, if you beat a minion's AC by 4+, it's killed. If you beat it by 1-3, it's bloodied. Two hits kills any minion.

Gort said:
Maybe two hits to kill unless they get criticalled (in which case they instantly die) would be a good rule also.

Stalker0 · Apr 20, 2009

Quickleaf said:
Great article, thanks Stalker! Could I put this together into a nice looking pdf for you? I think with a little editing you should submit this to Dragon!

A couple questions...

Are you suggesting doing away with encounters of higher level than the PCs entirely? For example, the "average adventure" according to the DMG is made up of 8 encounters (L-1, L, L, L, L+1, L+1, L+1, L+3). How would you suggest increasing an encounter's difficulty, more terrain or something else?

I have no problems with pdfs for my work, feel free!

In general, I do not recommend encounters more than 1 level than the party based on monsters alone (I've done 2 at the outside for big fights), and the vast majority of mine are right at the party's level. However, I will often use terrain and other factors to bump up the challenge. With terrain, once the monsters are defeated, normally the fight is over. You get added effects with no hitpoints to grind through.

Now that doesn't mean I never use high level monsters vs my players, but I only do it one monster at a time and I factor in that it will be tough for my party to beat. For example, one time I threw my 10th level party against a 14th level kuo-tua as a test (that's high level and a solider, two sins against my guide!).

However, to compensate for the big challenge, I gave him some 8th level sahuagin priests as slaves. The kuo-tua was a tough cookie, but the second they beat him the sahuagin ran (their slaves after all, no reason to defend a dead master). So for the party's perspective, the fight was 5 on 1, with some huge bonus damage from the slaves.

That fight actually ended pretty quickly, but the party felt epic and great at defeating such a monster, with no experience of grind. But if I had put 2 of them in their, it would have likely been a different story as the party ran out of resources very quickly beating the first one.

Its the same with elites, I would never recommend a high level elite or solo against the party, the magnification of more defenses and lots more hitpoints just ramps up the grind meter.

Stalker0 · Apr 20, 2009

Monkey King said:
Great article, thanks! Have you considered writing for a magazine?

I have started to get the itch for it, anyone have a good idea on how to break the seal on getting in to the biz?

Piratecat · Apr 20, 2009

Radiating Gnome said:
This one environmental effect turned the entire battle into a grind, because no one could move. Instead of swashbuckling, they were wading in mud.

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.

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.