The One Hour D&D Game

Crazy Jerome · Mar 19, 2012

I'd be pretty stoked with a one hour baseline. That means when I run my large groups, I will be able to pull the same material in under two hours, except on my very worst days.

I do hope that the means to accomplish the one hour baseline are not too tied to number of players. That is, you can make some speed improvements with simplifications of how you "move around the table" from player to player. After awhile, though, getting more improvement is like trying to get blood from a turnip--and such solutions tend to mulitple time spent by the number of players almost exactly.

Other speed improvements are anything in the system that lets players act somewhat in parallel. Then your only absolute bottleneck is player communication with the DM. I used a side by side initiative variant in 4E last week. We had 4 fights that averaged 20 minutes each, and only one of those fights was easy. It would have been 15 minutes each, but swarms against not much area or close attacks can take awhile.

Zaukrie · Mar 19, 2012

Best news on 5e so far.

Odhanan · Mar 19, 2012

*reads column*

Totally, yes. I really hope they can make this happen.

dkyle · Mar 19, 2012

KesselZero said:
I think what Mearls is talking about is a system where you can choose to wage a war of attrition against your PCs, where healing and big powers aren't as easy to come by, so those ten 100-XP encounters would actually use up PC resources to approximately the same extent that one 1,000-XP encounter would. This also means that traps would return to being more meaningful scattered throughout a dungeon as opposed to parts of a set-piece encounter. I strongly support the design ideology that Mearls lays out in the article, and I really hope that 5e follows this in its basic game.

If we assume a simple system where there's a set Adventure XP pool, and monsters have a set XP, and that's it (which is what I think Mike was going for), ignore unquantifiable things like ambush setups and terrain advantage, and assume the game looks anything like any edition of D&D, I don't see how 10 100XP encounters could be anywhere close to similarly as challenging (or resource consumptive) as 1 1000XP encounter. Facing 10 times as many monsters all at once is just inherently massively more difficult than facing them one at a time. It's not due to Encounter powers. A 4E "Encounter" could be built as 10 waves of 100XP, and it would still be trivial compared to the 1000XP all at once Encounter. DMG2 advises as such, that a Wave-structured encounter should have more total XP to be challenging.

I feel like this is self-evident, but I'll give an example. Suppose we expect that the party can kill one monster per round (and assume a simple per-side initiative). Assume 10 identical monsters, each dealing D damage per round.

In the 10 separate monsters case, we can expect 5*D damage dealt to the party. Half those encounters, the party goes first, and kills the monster without taking damage. Other half, the monster gets in 1*D of damage.

In the one big combat case, we can expect 9.5*D the first round (50% chance of killing one monster first, so .5*D, rest get in 9*D), 8.5*D the second, and so on. This comes out to 44.5*D damage. Almost 9 times as much expected damage as the 10 encounters case. Or 90 times more than a one lone-monster encounter.

Now, obviously, this is an idealized scenario. There might be AoEs available to kill more at once, and party damage absorption isn't the only resource that might be drained. But it illustrates the issue. Dealing with 10 monsters at once simply isn't as resource intensive as dealing with them individually, unless the game deviates radically from traditional D&D (i.e., all PC attacks being AoE, covering all enemies at all times, and/or all PC attacks being a finite resource, while healing is infinite).

This isn't a 4E issue. Take any edition of D&D, and the players would be fools to attack 10 monsters at once, instead of picking them off one at a time.

I'm A Banana · Mar 19, 2012

dkyle said:
This isn't a 4E issue. Take any edition of D&D, and the players would be fools to attack 10 monsters at once, instead of picking them off one at a time.

Welcome to the world of Combat-As-War!

If you're smart enough to isolate individual monsters and take them out, you might very well deserve to get the game's rewards by spending less.

If you have smart villains, they have ways to avoid getting isolated. If you have dumb villains, they don't. This reflects reality.

And if your DM likes Combat-As-Sport instead, they can set up things so that combats only mostly happen against appropriate quantities of monsters.

KidSnide · Mar 19, 2012

dkyle said:
This isn't a 4E issue. Take any edition of D&D, and the players would be fools to attack 10 monsters at once, instead of picking them off one at a time.

Your conflating two issues. As you say, in every edition of D&D, it's better to face 10 monsters one at a time instead of all at once. That's just because the PCs can concentrate file more effectively with individual monsters without giving the others monsters extra time to attack the PCs.

In 4e, you get encounter powers, healing surges and action points that take this "easier in small groups" and make the tendency even greater. If the encounters are broken up, the PCs not only get the benefit of concentrating fire, but they also get free powers, more efficient healing and extra actions.

That kind of stuff (particularly the more efficient healing) makes a big difference in comparison to a game where the healing resources are limited to cleric spells and a limited supply of potions. It makes small encounters and traps more meaningful, which allows the adventure to focus more on the exploration aspect of the game and less on large set-piece combats.

-KS

Mercurius · Mar 19, 2012

Man, this sounds good. I'd be happy to get a complete adventure in during one 3-4 hour session...one hour sounds greedy to me and, as Henry said, is pretty unrealistic if you're hanging out with friends.

Should it be possible? Yes. Should it be the default? No. I think an adventure in a 3-4 hour session should be the goal, and by "adventure" I mean character creation and a simple quest to a location, not an in-depth Adventure Path scenario.

I played in my 4E game a couple nights ago and the entire three hours of actual play time was taken up by a single encounter. Yes, a single encounter. OK, there was a bit on the front that wasn't fighting, but it literally was two and a half hours of combat.

Don't get me wrong: 4E combat is fun, but it just takes too damn long, and the main culprits are too many HP, too many weird conditions to keep track of, the time it takes to pick out powers, and the time it takes to figure out every possible modifier. For instance, I used the 15th level ranger daily power Blade Cascade, hit my opponent five times, who was my Hunter's Quarry, plus I had Prime Punisher, plus I got a bonus for some attacks being after the creature was bloodied...and it could have been much worse; good thing none were crits!

My personal preference would be to have a "blitz" option for combat where a minor fight can be over in 5-10 minutes, and then a "tactical" option if you want greater detail and a two hour finale...and all in the same campaign, even adventure.

dkyle said:
My main concern is that Core will be basically an OSR game. And be rife with old-school game balance problems. Which is OK for that style of game, but it makes it difficult to take that, and add tactics modules, and somehow arrive at a well balanced game. And without balance, all that fancy tactics is for naught.

I hear you but don't think you need to worry about it. I don't think they're going for OSR mechanics but OSR feel.

dkyle · Mar 19, 2012

Kamikaze Midget said:
Welcome to the world of Combat-As-War! If you're smart enough to isolate individual monsters and take them out, you might very well deserve to get the game's rewards by spending less. If you have smart villains, they have ways to avoid getting isolated. If you have dumb villains, they don't. This reflects reality.

I should be clear that I meant "issue" in the sense of "problematic for an Adventure XP pool system", not issue as in "a problem with the game design". 10 individual-monster encounters absolutely should be easier than all those monsters put together, and they always have been. But if the adventure/encounter building guidelines don't recognize that, then I don't see much point to them.

My argument is whether the Adventure XP pool is a useful tool for helping the DM figure out reasonable challenges for the party. There are essentially two cases:

1) The DM cares about setting up "reasonable challenges". I don't think the XP pool helps in any meaningful way, if both "big combat" and "room-by-room" use the same pool, with the same XP costs for monsters. If one is a "reasonable challenge" according to the XP pool rules, then the other would be either incredibly easy, or incredibly difficult, with the same XP pool.

2) The DM doesn't care about setting up "reasonable challenges", and just wants to play out "what would happen". In which case, an XP pool mechanic is useless. It's besides the point.

So, in both cases, the Adventure XP pool doesn't do anything useful. It would need major modification, and I believe in a way that recognizes encounters, to make sense.

dkyle · Mar 19, 2012

KidSnide said:
Your conflating two issues. As you say, in every edition of D&D, it's better to face 10 monsters one at a time instead of all at once. That's just because the PCs can concentrate file more effectively with individual monsters without giving the others monsters extra time to attack the PCs.

I'm not conflating them. I recognize that they are two separate issues. My point is that even without 4E's encounter powers, 10 single-monster encounters compared to one 10-monster encounter is a huge difference, and one that a simple Adventure XP pool system would not recognize. I don't deny that Encounter-powers compound the difference, but they are not even close to solely responsible for it.

You're post suggested that my issue with Adventure XP pools was grounded entirely (or at least almost entirely) in 4E. I don't think it is. The same issue comes up with wave-based encounters in 4E, and in every past edition of D&D. It would be folly for them to ignore it.

Sunseeker · Mar 19, 2012

I'm fine with quick games even though I don't really play them, I am concerned however that Wizards is able to make the distinction between "quick and easy" and "no real choices". Sure, it's easy to make a level 1 wizard that gets 5 spells and 1 feat when there are only 5 spells and 1 feat.