D&D 4E Changing the Combat Parameters of 4th Edition

pemerton said:

In practice, I haven't necessarily found this to be an issue.

It depends a bit on the at-wills: in my game the Sorcerer's default attack is an at-will Blazing Starfall that is a burst 2 which has +40-something adds, and so is (damage wise) not very different from the same character's encounter powers; and the paladin is built around Enfeebling Strike as the default attack.

In my experience, it is the terrain element of framing that is much more significant than whether the PCs use at-wills, encounter powers, terrain/improve attacks, etc. That doesn't offer any sort of general guideline, of course - but it's one bit of anecdotal information.

Click to expand...

Yeah, my feeling is wave encounters can often go faster. If the party has one or two meaningful targets at a time to focus on, they tend to die FAST! Its unlikely that when your bow ranger AND your rogue start slagging a standard that it is even getting in a shot unless it got a good initiative roll. The cavalier, the wizard, and the fighter aren't likely to leave a 2nd one standing either.

Obviously, if you're cranking up the monster level to make up for the less demanding encounter format, then each wave may well take 2 rounds (and many will anyway), but its not guaranteed. Certainly the tactical considerations are simpler, less off-turn actions are likely, etc. I'd say encountering half an encounter as a wave is going to be 2-3x faster in table time to resolve.

Anyway, this is all interesting in an analytical sense, as I really have not done this sort of analysis on my own work. Its always hard to interpret in terms of actual play, but it definitely establishes some baselines at least. From what I understand they did a lot of this kind of thing in 4e development, and it does clearly show!

So what happens if we apply these new learnings? Below I have introduced lesser monsters than Level 1 - i.e. 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 0 Level.
I have also made sure that the players always have their full encounter powers available when they go into the battle, but I have kept the 1, 2, or 3 encounters before a Short Rest (for healing) format. The results are the following

SINGLE Encounter


DOUBLE Encounter


TRIPLE Encounter


Now we start to achieve the effect we were after:
Single: [3, 5, 6, 5]
Double: [2, 3, 4, 5] or [-1, -2, -2, 0]
Triple: [1, 2, 4, 4] or [-2, -3, -2, -1]

CONCLUSION: It was first when we seperated the ability of regaining Encounter Powers (always having it available after a 5 min break) from the ability to Heal (during a longer Short Rest) that we can start emulate the 5th Edition small skirmishes. We also had to introduce lower level monsters than Level 1, in order to make it work across all levels. At Epic levels it looks hard to achieve the 2 rounds combat, just due to the fact that the monster have so many HP at that level.

LOWER LEVEL MONSTERS?

For those curious of my definition of a "lower level" monster, here are my assumptions:

Myrhdraak said:

LOWER LEVEL MONSTERS?

For those curious of my definition of a "lower level" monster, here are my assumptions:

View attachment 80906

Click to expand...

I expect you don't REALLY need this. I mean just using less numbers of level 1 monsters in 4e should mostly produce the needed results. You can, for instance, use 1 level 1 monster, which will probably produce results similar to a level 1/4 monster by your extrapolation (I'm guessing here, but frankly it won't be much different than a minion). Likewise you could use minions, which should equate to something like your level 0 monster (any hit will almost surely be a kill, and they do roughly half the stock damage of a standard monster). Given the non-linear nature of change in effective challenge level, I'd say something like 4 minions or one standard would represent the weakest possible encounter, though you can present 'weaker' ones using 1-3 minions. The most likely scenarios for this would be things like a gate guard or a couple of lookouts that the party wants to neutralize quietly. It might even just be better to reduce this kind of thing to one or two checks, maybe a complexity one SC, which is technically worth 1 level 1 standard monster for XP purposes (and if you think about it, you'd need 4 hits to kill 4 minions, which is also the number of successes such an SC requires, making it pretty comparable). You could simply decree this SC to be a 'part' of the larger encounter, XP and encounter building-wise. It certainly fits within the spirit of 4e's encounter structure.

AbdulAlhazred said:

I expect you don't REALLY need this. I mean just using less numbers of level 1 monsters in 4e should mostly produce the needed results. You can, for instance, use 1 level 1 monster, which will probably produce results similar to a level 1/4 monster by your extrapolation (I'm guessing here, but frankly it won't be much different than a minion). Likewise you could use minions, which should equate to something like your level 0 monster (any hit will almost surely be a kill, and they do roughly half the stock damage of a standard monster). Given the non-linear nature of change in effective challenge level, I'd say something like 4 minions or one standard would represent the weakest possible encounter, though you can present 'weaker' ones using 1-3 minions. The most likely scenarios for this would be things like a gate guard or a couple of lookouts that the party wants to neutralize quietly. It might even just be better to reduce this kind of thing to one or two checks, maybe a complexity one SC, which is technically worth 1 level 1 standard monster for XP purposes (and if you think about it, you'd need 4 hits to kill 4 minions, which is also the number of successes such an SC requires, making it pretty comparable). You could simply decree this SC to be a 'part' of the larger encounter, XP and encounter building-wise. It certainly fits within the spirit of 4e's encounter structure.

Click to expand...

I agree, you can probably run various combinations to get a similar encounter level. However, for simulation it is easier to do this as it provides clearly defined steps following the standard level progression in 4th Edition. If somebody want to create an Xvart of Level 1/8, let them do it. I only provide the tool and the option. Everybody run his or her game.
It will be interesting to see how the XP curve for these lower level monster look like. They might offer some more granularity than the standard minion (but question is if it ever will be needed. First level combat works quite well as is. The problem is usually at higher level where it start to stall).

As we now have concluded that we want Encounter Power recovery to be tied to a 5 minute break, how should we handle HP recovery and the Short Rest? My previous thinking was to tie these together, but now I am more reluctant. Better they are treated as different mechnisms. I like the 5th Edition take on making it one hour long, rather than 5 minutes. But we need to decide what we want to keep from 4th Edition design
- Number of Healing Surges
- Value of Healing Surge
- Recovery of Healing Surges and Hit Points during Short Rest and Extended Rest.

S'mon was into cutting the Number of Healing Surges to half or even one third. Anybody who have tried any of these methods in their campaigns or have any other suggestions?

S'mon said:

I've been thinking that the main reason attrition doesn't work in 4e is the huge number of healing surges, every PC has around 3-4 times their base hp in healing per day.

Click to expand...

Attrition did work in 4e, it just wasn't the only thing that worked. But, if you want to generally have shorter, higher-octane days, cutting surges but not dailies could help get you there.

Myrhdraak said:

The other approach is to make Healing Surges into something that can be used for other things than just healing (Vitality Points as AbdulAlhazred have called them previously).

Click to expand...

It sounds like a compelling idea. Powers or whatever that cost surges would feel genuinely exhausting, for instance.

My preference is the later as we then get into what D&D is really all about (as a game system) - resource management. Healing Surges become a finite resource that can be used for healing, but also other things. You as a player will have to weight the risk of combat vs. utility use of them.

Click to expand...

Of course, we already know how that would go. Healing Surges broke hp-recovery resources out from spell resources so you had two separate resources to manage on the same time scale: daily powers and healing. If you blow through dailies in a nova you might be tempted to rest early, but you don't "have to" because you still have surges enough to be fresh as a daisy after each fight, and you still have encounter powers to punch hard when you need to. If you put higher-impact offense back in the same pool as hp-recovery, you're back to novas draining the party of resilience as well as peak power, and "needing to" rest after a short 'day.'
FWIW.

Myrhdraak said:

As we now have concluded that we want Encounter Power recovery to be tied to a 5 minute break, how should we handle HP recovery and the Short Rest? My previous thinking was to tie these together, but now I am more reluctant. Better they are treated as different mechnisms. I like the 5th Edition take on making it one hour long, rather than 5 minutes. But we need to decide what we want to keep from 4th Edition design
- Number of Healing Surges
- Value of Healing Surge
- Recovery of Healing Surges and Hit Points during Short Rest and Extended Rest.

S'mon was into cutting the Number of Healing Surges to half or even one third. Anybody who have tried any of these methods in their campaigns or have any other suggestions?

Click to expand...

Well, given that you have SOME sort of 'short rest' that is 5 minutes long, inevitably players are going to want to expend healing powers during them, and there's little in the way of logic to counter that with. Now, those are encounter resources, so it doesn't likely present a PROBLEM per-se, anymore than it did in 4e proper. You can of course ban the raw non-magically-induced use of surges, but that was actually a pretty uncommon practice anyway (given that healing bonuses from most leaders can almost double, or even more than double for some PCs, their HS value, its VERY worth it not to blow surges without some sort of bonus, to the point where it was SOP to just hang onto the surges in many cases). This also brings up 4e's 'double rest' thing, though again you won't care about that, and it was anyway really created by a peculiarity of the wording of rests in 4e.

I think Tony is at least correct for SOME formulations of altered resource mechanics in a 4e-like system. Its tempting for the players to just 'nova' every encounter and deal with the consequences later, which feels a lot like pre-4e edition resource rules. However, its a matter of degree. For instance, using the HoML formulation as an example, allow only 1 recharge of an encounter power per encounter. That makes it more of a carefully measured sort of capability that HELPs with keeping the encounter 'fresh' and adds a character option, BUT doesn't let you tap all your resources.

My idea of having Vitality powers vs Daily powers kind of works the same way. For one thing I conceived of them as a bit more exciting than the 4e dailies (though some of those certain are a bit crazy and would work fine in HoML). A HoML daily is more like "OK, that really put a bow-tie on things" vs just maybe doing 2x more damage than an at-will and a significant effect. Daily effects in HoML tend to last the whole encounter and have a significant reshaping effect on the fight. OTOH you don't get quite as generous a supply of them. I also think that perhaps the 4e Spellbook mechanic should be a little more generalized, so you can swap out powers with a little planning. HoML characters power choices work a bit different than 4e ones do so this is a bit more natural than in 4e.

Myrhdraak said:

As we now have concluded that we want Encounter Power recovery to be tied to a 5 minute break, how should we handle HP recovery and the Short Rest? My previous thinking was to tie these together, but now I am more reluctant. Better they are treated as different mechnisms. I like the 5th Edition take on making it one hour long, rather than 5 minutes. But we need to decide what we want to keep from 4th Edition design
- Number of Healing Surges
- Value of Healing Surge
- Recovery of Healing Surges and Hit Points during Short Rest and Extended Rest.

S'mon was into cutting the Number of Healing Surges to half or even one third. Anybody who have tried any of these methods in their campaigns or have any other suggestions?

Click to expand...

I left spells and prayers tied to a five minute rest*, and you could spend as many healing surges as you'd like during that time, but you'd need to spend a full day of nothing but rest to regain a healing surge.

Then I did some other things:

NPCs get tougher over time
XP isn't tied to killing monsters
Gaining levels takes a long time
Tied GP to time via "Get a Job"

I haven't played a PC in my game much, but it's a bitch to decide when to rest and when to head back out there.

* Exploits are different.

LostSoul said:

I left spells and prayers tied to a five minute rest*, and you could spend as many healing surges as you'd like during that time, but you'd need to spend a full day of nothing but rest to regain a healing surge.

Then I did some other things:

NPCs get tougher over time
XP isn't tied to killing monsters
Gaining levels takes a long time
Tied GP to time via "Get a Job"

I haven't played a PC in my game much, but it's a bitch to decide when to rest and when to head back out there.

* Exploits are different.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I got rid of XP totally, though in my system gaining levels is tied to boon acquisition, so in principle a character can advance at any rate the GM wishes to support. GP and such are now 'minor boons' and not explicitly regulated by the game mechanics. A 'job' would be in effect an encounter, or possible a whole adventure, and would probably net you some 'loot'.

So, when you say 'NPCs get tougher with time' I'm assuming you mean in an overall strategic sense (IE they tend to 'level up' like PCs do) and not in tactical terms (IE during an encounter). I always felt this was a pretty simple process with 4e too, since upping a monster's level is as simple as changing a few numbers. Obviously LARGE changes in NPC level probably also include more substantive alterations, but given the infinite variety of NPCs I wouldn't try to put any mechanics on that. 4e (and HoML) allow of course for upping the TYPE of the monster, standard -> elite -> solo (terminology varies). This is a bit different process, but certainly could be used to manage a change in overall story importance of a specific NPC/creature.