podcast: 4th edition combat too long

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4pod/20080618e23

Just watched the latest dnd podcast...

wow, 4th edition combats seem to go on forever with no end in sight....i think they gave monsters too many hp in this edition! Seems like u need Boxing style scoring after 6-10 rounds, and just let it END...!

Not to mention the guy running it might as well be describing a 10x10 room with an orc in it.

In actual play, there are more combat rounds than a 3.5 encounter, but the overall combat plays out in the same amount of real time, as each round plays faster. This isn't really shown off well by a audio clip of a first time game, but combat speeds up fine.

4th edition podcast too long. blargney not downloading 200+ mb of video - blargney waiting for coles notesyoutube to come out.

Keep in mind that like... the entire party was rolling like CRAP

I've found that after a few practice sessions and every gets to know their toon and the rules better combat goes quite nicely. Unless terrain or other issues are there to cause issues.

Are you kidding? Like, 5 rounds of combat in roughly half an hour, when the entire party is rolling like crap, and fighting like 4 monsters? You'd be lucky to get through 1 or 2 rounds of combat like that in 3.5 in the same period of time. And it likely would have been a lot more boring.

I mean, most of those people weren't even familiar with their characters, having been asked to draw them up solely for that encounter. All things considered, it looked like it was going at a decent clip.

Drakhar said:

Keep in mind that like... the entire party was rolling like CRAP

Click to expand...

Really? I couldn't tell. The DM was the only one with a decent mic in the group, and I couldn't understand half of what the others said. On top of that, the DM was very boring, offering no descriptions and just giving bare-bones mechanical notes. Also, the one hot girl they could find around the office and therefore dragged into the game looked very, very bored.

Really, the whole thing was like watching paint dry. Dice rolls, 'you hit or you miss' descriptors... it was awful. Just awful. No roleplaying. Not even the barest shred of descriptions for these actions. Just "X uses Y power. It hits/misses. You take Z damage(or not)".

About halfway through the podcast, I turned it off, deleted the file, and painted my wall just so I could watch it dry.

It certainly didn't look worse than 3.X combat. The drift I am getting thus far is that Wizards moved the Sweet Spot to levels 1-10, and in this Paragon-tier fight we saw some of the decay. What annoyed me was that the final result of this combat was all the monsters getting to half HP and the PCs having to then flee. According to the 4E DMG, a party with a full day's resources should be able to take on a challenge 4-6 levels higher, and this one was only 2 levels higher. Of course, one of the PCs was stunned for the entire fight. And people have pointed out the hit point creep outpacing the damage creep. Fights balloon up to about twice as long by Epic tier as they are in the first few levels.

Well I totally disagree with what most people are saying about the podcast and its implications of 4E combat.

I was totally into the whole thing and I was pretty disappointed when I saw that the fight wasn't going to be completed (the PCs ran away).

I thought the combat was really cool with a lot of interesting powers. Unfortunately, all the players were rolling exteremly poorly . . . the fighter rolled 1s on three consecutive turns! Here some highlights I remember:

· The rogue charged in to the mind flayer, then used his action point to stun it and knock it prone. On its turn, the mind flayer made its save, then stood back up on its turn after that. The rogue tried to stun it again, but the mind flayer interposed a rakshasa to take the attack instead, then grabbed the rogue with its tentacles and began eating his brain.

· At one point the wizard/warlord used a power to let everyone use a healing surge and make a save, and the rogue made his save, so he wasn't stunned anymore (just grabbed). I thought that was a pretty cool use for it, since the wizard/warlord player stated in the interview before the game that he looked forward to using that power to good effect.

· The paladin (the hot girl as ZetaStriker said, Sarah Girard) used a power on the minotaur that whenever the minotaur attacked her, she could immediately attack it back for the rest of the encounter. She even provoked an opportunity attack against it once just so she could get the extra attack! Unfortunately, I think she missed every time with her bonus attacks from that power Also, I don't think she was bored at all, but probably nervous/awkward. I saw her on a GRZ episode and she didn't seem totally comfortable there either.

· The wizard/warlord tried to save the rogue on another occasion with otiluke's resilient sphere, which would have been awesome (trapping the mind flayer in a bubble and releasing the grab), but he missed (just like everyone else at the table who wasn't a monster).

· The wizard/warlord also used an icy hand to grab the mind flayer, but I don't really remember what happened with that. I know he missed the first time, but sustained it to try again.

All in all, I thought all the powers were pretty cool. I really would have liked to see it play out all the way, no matter who ended up dead I didn't really catch much of what the warlock did, but I know she used some tentacles a lot, and had all the enemies cursed after a few rounds. I don't remember anything the fighter did because he missed almost every time, but oh well.

As for roleplaying? This was a one-shot combat just for the podcast . . . there was nothing to roleplay. If you want to hear roleplaying, go listen to the rolemonkeys podcast (I do!) And I definitely disagree with the comment that the DM didn't describe the events colorfully enough. I even started thinking he was a little silly with all the in-character comments and voices he was doing for the monsters . . . even trying to make his hands go backward to represent the rakshasas.

Anyway . . . that's all.

~ fissionessence