"Looks like we're going to win this battle . . . in about 90 minutes from now."

[SmilingPiePlate]

At this point, it should be obvious to the bad guys as well... And the DM should have them doing their level best to escape a losing situation, so that they can set up another, better ambush later.

This.

It adds verisimilitude if sentient, free-willed bad guys try to bug out when it becomes clear to them that they're going to lose.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

OTOH, if they've been marked by a fighter...or worse, Divine Challenged by a Paladin, those ongoing effects might drive them to continue fighting.

AFAIK, the negative effects of being thus marked don't end when the combat does, and are theoretically everlasting.

Consider, Divine Challenge does damage that has no cutoff other than being marked by someone else, your death or the decision, defeat or death of the marking Paladin. Surrender might be an option, but why retreat?

 

[Pbartender]

AFAIK, the negative effects of being thus marked don't end when the combat does, and are theoretically everlasting.

That was a problem during playtesting... It's not anymore.

To wit:

"On your turn, you must engage the target you challenged or challenge a different target. To engage the target, you must either attack it or end your turn adjacent to it. If none of these events occur by the end of your turn, the marked condition ends and you can’t use divine challenge on your next turn."

If the bad guys run far enough away so that the paladin can't hit them with a ranged attack, the divine challenge will wear off.

 

[Rhianni32]

If a party is out of non at-will powers, AND the monsters are out of non at-will powers, AND the monsters for whatever reason dont want to run away, AND the players dont ask them to surrender, AND the terrain and enviornment offers no options, AND the monsters have the majority of their hit points then yes it will be a long figh. I dont think thats a broken system or something that necessarily needs to get changed.

Now having said that though...
I do agree with Harr that asking for specifics isnt going to change your base point because you do have a valid one. I've only GMed 1 session and can see the potential for your situtation. I guess the trick is not to put the party in the above situtation. I cant offer up any tested ideas but draw upon past edition GM experiance. In picking what the players will fight i try to quickly run the numbers. What % chance do the players have to win? How long will it take? Can the monsters kill the players in 1 hit?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Guys... if the OP is saying that his fights drag, it's because his fights drag. What do you think you're accomplishing by refuting that... that you're going to convince him through text that his fights actually don't drag, that he's just wrong about that? Seriously... the guy's coming coming in with a specific problem, and asking for people to suggest solutions. Either suggest one or don't, but don't try to convince him that he doesn't have the problem in the first place, that's just silly.

Sadly, this is something that's extremely common on these boards, and yeah, it is pretty spectacularly pointless behaviour (essentially a kind of e-peen-ish behaviour, in this case).

Thanks for the link, because in the few sessions of 4E I've run, I've seen this problem with some encounters too. It doesn't occur much when you have very tough boss-type monsters, I note, but it's definately a problem with more typical encounters.

I think the "Ur DM iznt challnging u!" stuff is pretty stupid, frankly. This happens sometimes even with encounters that are completely the correct level and being played by the tactics the MM suggest. According to the DMG, not every encounter is meant to be super-lethal "edge of your seat" "Omg!"-type stuff, but every encounter should resolve in a reasonable period of time.

Pbartender is half-right. Just making the monsters run and ambush the party later is cheap, frankly. Unless you're going to give them full XP for defeating the same monster twice, which I guess is reasonable. Unless you're going to do that, if the monsters run, they shouldn't come back. On the other hand, I do agree that having the monsters flee a losing encounter is a good way to solve this problem in some cases.

 

[Andor]

If it's obvious to the NPCs that they are going to lose.... Have them surrender! Or try to withdraw, or take a hostage. No one says they have to just stand there and be whittled down.

Heck take a look at the intimidate skill, if you have bloodied the opposition just Tell them to surrender.

No need to fight it out in boredom.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Well, that's a tough thing to answer. The players are supposed to win. So from a certain perspective, most fights are foregone conclusions before they even start.

This is an absolutely critical point that cannot be overemphasized.

Barring outrageously bad luck for the PCs (good luck for the monsters), the PCs should win every fight of equal, or close to equal, level.

Each player's or group's tolerance for this "foregone conclusion" effect will vary.

I can imagine a person saying, "What's the point of D&D at all? The PCs always win." -- for him, the whole game is a foregone conclusion that he doesn't want to play -- and that's fine. Not everyone likes the same thing.

At the other extreme, I can imagine a person saying, "I know that the PCs are going to win, and I don't even want them to be challenged, I just want to have fun beating down the monsters as a cathartic release." -- for him, he enjoys and embraces the foregone conclusion effect -- and that's also fine.

At risk of getting flamed: this really is like the difficulty setting on a computer game. Some people like to play with the difficulty ramped all the way up, so that their "PC" dies easily. Other people like to play with the difficultly turned all the way down, so that only a total fluke or deliberate recklessness causes their PC to die. Neither of these ways to play is right or wrong. But different people will find them fun or not fun, depending upon their preferences.

Now, in the example at hand, if the groups of players + DM agrees that, once a fight has reached a foregone conclusion, they want to fast-forward past what they consider the boring part -- that's fine. I encourage them to do that. D&D is a game, and games are supposed to be fun. Skip the parts that your group finds boring! (The DMG makes this point; I'm just echoing it.)

I don't think 4e is somehow fatally flawed because of the foregone conclusion effect. That aspect of the game simply is, and each group should figure out how they want to address it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don't think 4e is somehow fatally flawed because of the foregone conclusion effect. That aspect of the game simply is, and each group should figure out how they want to address it.

Josh, that's a nice post and quite right, but at 90 degrees from the OP. He's not saying it's a fatal flaw. He just wants his combats to resolve themselves a bit faster once it's clear which way they're going.

 

[Chocobo]

I've seen this problem a lot also. I've run a 2 player game, a 3 player game, and now a 1 player game. I thought that it was due to having a small party and that because of that:
1. There wasn't enough tactical variation to make the fights interesting once encounter/daily powers are blown
2. In a 2 vs 2 fight, once anyone drops the fight is essentially decided.

What I'm doing about that is first of all, I've started using a type of monster in between minion and regular monsters. I take a regular monster and then give it half hp, -1 to all rolls and defenses, and no recharge. I rate them at half xp - I don't know if this is completely balanced or what, but it makes the fights more interesting. I can use more monsters and still do some tactics even after one or two drop. Of course, I use minions too, but they seem to get wiped out very easily unless they get the drop on the party.

The other thing that I'm doing is making liberal use of the stunting rules. Anything creative usually gets good effects and good damage (maybe a hard roll though, depending on the circumstances). I let the players know about this policy, and I drop hints about various scenery that could be made use of: "the undergrowth is dry and could catch fire easily", "As you walk along you kick up little clouds of dust", etc.

I also have NPCs surrender or try to run away when it is obvious they aren't going to win. I've always DMed that way, though, so it that isn't anything that I had to change with 4e. But there are some cases where that isn't really applicable, and you still don't want the fights to drag on.

 

[Cadfan]

Josh, that's a nice post and quite right, but at 90 degrees from the OP. He's not saying it's a fatal flaw. He just wants his combats to resolve themselves a bit faster once it's clear which way they're going.

Right. People are just tracing the reasoning further. If the problem is combats taking too long to resolve once their conclusion is inevitable, then the fact that PC victory is the likely (nearly inevitable) outcome of all combats is a relevant fact. It suggests that rather than looking at the matter as if it were a question of some sort of turning point being reached after which the fight loses its dangerousness, one should look at it as a matter of how a DM might create the illusion of danger in a combat that, technically, is heavily in favor of the PCs.