4e One-trick ponies: Why is it the DM's fault about combat grind?

[Truename]

To go a little more with the math. (note this is not scientific)
Assume that there are two fighters, a cleric, a rogue, and a wizard. If 5 party members over make an attack (every round) for 5 rounds, that is 25 attacks (with a 50% hit chance), they hit 12.5 times and do average damage.

Level 1-
Fighter (2 handed) 1d10+4 9.5
Fighter (sword and shield) 1d8+4 8.5
Cleric 1d8+4 8.5
Rogue 1d6+4 7.5 (+7 for sneak attack)
Wizard 2d4+4 9

I think you're gonna need to be more scientific.

- Most two-handed military melee weapons are 1d12 or 2d6. The ones that aren't are either +3 proficiency, reach, or high crit.
- One-handed military melee weapons are 1d10, or they're high crit, brutal, off-hand, +3 prof, or something else interesting.

And your to-hit chance seems low, and you've neglected the effect of feats (including superior weapons), status effects count for something, and, and, and...

...ummm... sorry. Geeking out. I have a spreadsheet with all of the game's weapons in it, and I've been trying to figure out how they're balanced against each other and the character classes. I'll go away now...

(But, since I'm here--yes, the math says that improved to-hit improves average damage. If you think otherwise, you're being silly. But there's nothing saying you'll see that improvement in this combat.)

 

[Beginning of the End]

I don't like averages and percentages, because dice run the gambit of rolls.

Statements like that make my head hurt.

And this business of "+2 to attack is money in the bank" is what lead to Sure strike/Careful Shot and Mearls saying "we put priority in accuracy". It's also what leads to a desperate scramble to have the highest x bonus possible, milking every single +1 for a 5% increase at the cost of everything else, or making a spreadsheet for Power Attack so you can optimize what number when.

But with that being said, I think you do have a point. Grind is not, strictly speaking, about the number of rounds a given combat lasts.

For example, a couple sessions ago in our 3E game we had a combat last for 50+ rounds. It took four hours to resolve it. But it wasn't a grind: It was a well-paced, exciting encounter that stretched through a half dozen buildings and involved dozens of opponents with a variety of charges, retreats, ambushes, reinforcements, and the like.

A few months ago, on the other hand, our DM abruptly cut a 3 round combat short because the party wizard had caught all the goblins in a web spell on the first round of combat. It would have probably taken us another 5 rounds of rolling dice to actually finish them off -- but we were already bored with it.

So I think it's safe to say that the length of combat has, at most, a tangential relationship to grind. Grind happens when you run out interesting options and variation in the encounter.

I touched on one of the factors in my earlier post (what is, IMO, WotC's wrong-headed approach to designing creatures), but I think you touch on another one here: Yes, the math shows that accuracy boosts are effective at raising average damage output. But accuracy boosts are boring. So they might shorten combat, but they don't make it noticeably more interesting.

So if Mearls is right and they did "put a priority on accuracy", it may just be another example of the 4th Edition design team trying to solve a problem... and instead making it worse.

Give me six hours in a car with interesting people vs. thirty minutes in a car with annoying people.

I don't really have a bone in this fight. However, if this is really the problem, why aren't the monsters giving up and running away? Isn't it time for a 'morale check'? Shouldn't smart monsters cut their loses and run?

That's not a bad idea. I was going to suggest halving their hit points, but introducing some morale checks would have a comparable -- but more interesting -- effect.

 

[Nightson]

Just ask any WoW player whether hit percentage makes a difference in the damage you do.

 

[Sadrik]

To go a little more with the math. (note this is not scientific)
Assume that there are two fighters, a cleric, a rogue, and a wizard. If 5 party members over make an attack (every round) for 5 rounds, that is 25 attacks (with a 50% hit chance), they hit 12.5 times and do average damage.

Level 1-
Fighter (2 handed) 1d10+4 9.5
Fighter (sword and shield) 1d8+4 8.5
Cleric 1d8+4 8.5
Rogue 1d6+4 7.5 (+7 for sneak attack)
Wizard 2d4+4 9

9.5 + 8.5 +8.5 + 7.5(+7 sneak attack) + 9 +10(average damage for group) +10(average damage for group) = 70 damage

5 level 1 goblins have 29*5=145

This combat will easily take at least 10 rounds and likely more considering maneuvering and hindering conditions. If each player takes an average of 1 minute and the DM takes an average of 3 minutes, one cycle around the table would take 8 minutes. 10 rounds times 8 is 80 minutes, that is an hour and 20 minutes for 5 goblins. You could probably shave time off of this but it is just an estimate. And these are average times, yes you can have a 30 second round but you could also easily have a 1.5 minute round too.

Dropping dailies and encounter powers during this combat would do an extra die or two of damage per player but half of them would miss. So, my guess would be: if dailies and encounters were used, it might increase damage by 20 *maybe* and that is a big maybe. Altogether that might make it take 7 or 8 rounds to kill the 5 goblins while dropping the daily and encounter powers.

Level 11-
Many more variables here but I would suspect that it is similar to first level, the only difference is you have more encounter and daily powers to drop. This means that you can more reliable increase damage. Githzerai soldier have 108*5HP, 540 damage in five rounds (12.5 attacks) seems like a lot of damage. In fact it seems that the amount of HP out scales damage capabilities.

Level 21-
This probably continues a trend of critters outpacing HP to damage.

I think you're gonna need to be more scientific.

- Most two-handed military melee weapons are 1d12 or 2d6. The ones that aren't are either +3 proficiency, reach, or high crit.
- One-handed military melee weapons are 1d10, or they're high crit, brutal, off-hand, +3 prof, or something else interesting.

And your to-hit chance seems low, and you've neglected the effect of feats (including superior weapons), status effects count for something, and, and, and...

...ummm... sorry. Geeking out. I have a spreadsheet with all of the game's weapons in it, and I've been trying to figure out how they're balanced against each other and the character classes. I'll go away now...

(But, since I'm here--yes, the math says that improved to-hit improves average damage. If you think otherwise, you're being silly. But there's nothing saying you'll see that improvement in this combat.)

I think you are missing the point, increasing the average damage by 1 point on two weapons is only going to give you 1 more point of damage (50% to hit assumption). Remember I am ignoring those rounds when you are not able to make an attack because of maneuvering and status effects etc, combat could easily take more rounds.

The point of this is to figure out a round about way of determining how many rounds it would take a party to kill just 5 level 1 goblins. Increasing average party damage by 1 or 2 points per rotation around the table is not going to change that much.

 

[Nymrohd]

Hit is fun. Everyone has limited resources and missing with them, especially if it happens often, is bad. Moreover, unless you roll big dice for damage (or a lot of dice), damage normalizes faster than accuracy in an encounter, especially at low levels.

 

[Truename]

The point of this is to figure out a round about way of determining how many rounds it would take a party to kill just 5 level 1 goblins. Increasing average party damage by 1 or 2 points per rotation around the table is not going to change that much.

Yes. Your model says it takes 10 rounds to kill 5 level 1 goblins. Since it doesn't take 10 rounds (play it and see), there's something wrong with your model.

The things that are obviously wrong are:
- weapons at the low end of the damage scale
- underestimating to-hit chance
- no encounter powers
- no area attacks
- no feats
- no status effects
- no combat advantage

And these mistakes compound as you get into higher tiers, where PCs have more encounter powers, more area attacks, more feats, and magic items.

 

[Jack99]

Yes. Your model says it takes 10 rounds to kill 5 level 1 goblins. Since it doesn't take 10 rounds (play it and see), there's something wrong with your model.

The things that are obviously wrong are:
- weapons at the low end of the damage scale
- underestimating to-hit chance
- no encounter powers
- no area attacks
- no feats
- no status effects
- no combat advantage

And these mistakes compound as you get into higher tiers, where PCs have more encounter powers, more area attacks, more feats, and magic items.

Not to mention that it seems that he went by the basic attack of characters, despite at-wills alone do more damage for all classes.

 

[Sadrik]

The things that are obviously wrong are:
- weapons at the low end of the damage scale
- underestimating to-hit chance
- no encounter powers
- no area attacks
- no feats
- no status effects
- no combat advantage

Weapons: increasing by a point or two does not do much to the overall number of rounds spent.
To-hit chance: I went with 50% because that is the systems assumption
Encounter powers: they do increase damage by a die usually and 50% miss chance means that it essentially increases by a 1/4.
Area attacks: this could make a difference but it is very difficult to arbitrate in a model like this. For the wizard I went with MM instead of FB, it deals more damage to a single target instead.
Feats: +1 damage, sure, it shouldn't increase the number of rounds.
Status effects: they go both ways so I ignored them.
Combat advantage: goes both ways so I ignored.

 

[ThirdWizard]

The things that are obviously wrong are:
- weapons at the low end of the damage scale
- underestimating to-hit chance
- no encounter powers
- no area attacks
- no feats
- no status effects
- no combat advantage

- criticals
- action points

Remember, this isn't an encounter of attrition. 5 PCs vs. 5 goblins is pretty much a no-brainer in the PCs' favor. The PCs will also use their ecounter/daily abilities when they have a better chance to hit with them. Take an average fighter, for instance:

Attack: +7 (+4 ability, +3 proficiency, +1 fighter) 1d12+4 damage

When he uses his Brute Strike (3[W]+Str) exploit, he's not going to have a +7 to hit. He's going to make sure he has combat advantage (+2) for a total of +9 to hit. Plus, if there's a tactical warlord in the party, that's another +1 to +2 on top of that. If he's human, use an action point to make sure it works, and you've got another +3 for a +12 total! Saying that the dailies and encounters have the same base 50% chance to hit (which I doubt is true for the fighter anyway) is plain wrong.

 

[Nymrohd]

Indeed my players almost never use a daily unless they have stacked some chance to hit or defense penalties; that is, as long as it is not a reliable one.

Anyway actually calculating the damage potential of a 5 PC group is not something you can do with napkin math. In fact it is probably so complex to simulate, it is not worth the trouble (and is better done with empirical data). There are so many synergies, and 4E is all about them.