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

[Emirikol]

Like many of you, our group is still having trouble with combat grind. Although the players take a little less time per round than in 3E, the combats are taking a lot longer in terms of rounds. Also, the combats are pretty much decided about an hour into a 2 hour large combat so the remainder of the rounds is just "grinding it out."

At first, I thought this was simply due to higher hit points and lower damage amounts, however I'm starting to lean towards a flaw in the system itself: 4e is inherently a one-trick pony system. It encourages the striker, defender, etc. roles maybe a little too much.

So, I've been told to suck it up as a DM and ONLY throw encounters at the PC's that coddle this system-encouraged, one-trick behavior. "Minions, lots of minions" has been the answer to everything. I dunno about the rest of you, but as a DM, I find these blame-the-DM for the foreverness of non-coddled encounter comments kind of offensive.

If I'm running a scenario, is it the DM's fault if the combats grind on and on and on and on because of the players fell for being pigeonholed into a smaller-than-life role for their 4e character.

Wouldn't just a little diversity of skills help this out or is it just "something about the 4e system?"

Is having to "just end the combat early" maybe just a crappy way of saying that we need a houserule to bandage a 4e bug?

I'm not saying this stuff to pick a fight, because like most, I'm stuck with 4e. It's what my players want to play..but I've just got a couple annoying 4e bugs that I'd like to squash without having to resort to just throwing tons of Mortal Combat minions at the PC's.

[edit: does encouraging PC multiclassing help?]

Please advise,

Jh

..

 

[Scribble]

In what manner would "diversity of skills" help what you're experiening?

I'm not sure I understand.

 

[Cadfan]

I've been running almost exclusively published modules. Haven't noticed a grind on the majority of combats. Occasionally I'll get a grindy one, but they're rare.

The biggest preventative of grinds, in my opinion, is wise use of dailies. A lot of fights can be defined in the players minds by the well timed use of a daily power.

Wrath of the Gods, for example, basically ends any chance of a grind occurring in the encounter in which it is used. Same with Rain of Steel. Or Wall of Fire. Or Flaming Sphere. Or Consecrated Ground. Or even Fireball, honestly. Bigby's Icy Grasp, but a little less so since it only picks on one guy at a time.

We've got more encounter defining daily powers than we have encounters per day. So... grinds mostly don't happen for our level 9 group.

The two recent encounters we had that were grinds were (in spoilers because they're part of Pyramid of Shadows)

Spoiler

1. The first fight against the head-taking giant. He's got a high armor class. Really high. And there's a pit in the middle of the room that you can easily be tossed into. Our paladin basically couldn't climb out of the pit, due to heavy armor, being charisma focused and not (at that point in her career) having trained in athletics.

2. The fight against the werewolf. This was a grind because it became obvious early in the fight that he wasn't a threat, but he did have a lot of hit points. We didn't bother using anything fancy on him, because we knew he couldn't hurt us very much, and we didn't want to waste anything daily. But with all of his hit points, it still took us a long time to defeat him.

As far as minions are concerned, about 90% of what you hear about them is total crap. But, there is a glimmer of truth- one of the things that makes long fights feel like grinds is a lack of "rewards" in the middle of them. If you fight five enemies, each time one drops the players get a feeling of accomplishment. If you fight one enemy, same thing, but it only happens once and it only happens at the end of the fight. That's why I try to error on the side of too many weak opponents rather than too few strong ones. Not that this means I use minions all the time- I don't. I just try to ensure that the players feel a sense of reward more than once per battle. Usually that means multiple weaker enemies (not always minions), but sometimes it means plot elements.

 

[Obryn]

Like many of you, our group is still having trouble with combat grind. Although the players take a little less time per round than in 3E, the combats are taking a lot longer in terms of rounds. Also, the combats are pretty much decided about an hour into a 2 hour large combat so the remainder of the rounds is just "grinding it out."....

I've wavered a little bit on this issue. I had a few very grindy, boring encounters - and plenty which stay exciting all the way to the last blow. I don't think it's all about minions, but those help momentum a bit. I don't think it's playing to the PCs' strengths or weaknesses. In my experience, the #1 contributing factor to grind is player attentiveness & involvement.

If a player understands the rules, has a vague sense of the scenario, and a good knowledge of what their character can do (at least in a basic sense) - and they take the time to plan a little before their turn - it goes very fast.

(FWIW - this goes for DMs as well, only double. Or maybe triple. Simply looking through the stats and figuring out a creature's "trick" is very helpful. I know I waste a lot of time looking up various defenses and bonuses when I am not at all prepared.)

Anyway, I lost 1 player who indecisive and wasn't knowledgable about the rules, and gained 2 who are attentive and interested. The end result is a much faster combat, even scaled up for the additional party member.

I don't know what you mean about skills - I'm not sure I understand how those would help in this situation. As for multiclassing, I have found it to be an excellent way to spend a feat, but I don't think it helps or discourages grind.

-O

 

[Truename]

So, I've been told to suck it up as a DM and ONLY throw encounters at the PC's that coddle this system-encouraged, one-trick behavior. "Minions, lots of minions" has been the answer to everything. I dunno about the rest of you, but as a DM, I find these blame-the-DM for the foreverness of non-coddled encounter comments kind of offensive.

Does it matter who's to blame? It's not working for you, you're the DM, change it.

As for troubleshooting... I'm a relatively new DM running a standard array of characters through pre-published adventures (H1 & SoW2) and I've had very little problem with grind. Actually, I'm finding combat to be FAR more exciting and engaging than it was back when I last played 15-20 years ago. So if you're having trouble, I suspect it's something about your party or encounter composition.

Here's what I'm currently doing to make combats exciting (remember, I'm using pre-designed encounters):
- I'm emphasizing any and all terrain in the encounters, and playing it up when I can. My players love to utilize terrain.
- I'm very generous in my p.42 rulings for stunts. I think stunts add a lot and I want my players to use them.
- I pay strict attention to light radius (and how the stealth rules interact with this). Starting an encounter without knowing its whole scope and having attacks come out of the dark is cool.
- I encourage my players to describe their actions rather than naming powers.
- The last monster standing dies on the next hit, unless he's still a real threat. No need to drag out a foregone conclusion.
- I use Kamikaze Midget's "narrative combat arc" ideas. Combats generally start slow with a bit of positioning and posturing, then build, then climax with monsters using their most powerful/interesting powers after the combat's going against them. This change in pacing has worked very well and avoids the problem of everything interesting happening in the first few rounds.
- I have the monsters talk to each other, shout tactics, ask for help, and generally come to life verbally/descriptively. It works well with the "narrative arc" ideas, because I can have them shout that they're being overwhelmed, bring in the reinforcements, stop holding back, "I'm not left-handed" and so on.

And of course, there's all the great encounter design ideas in this thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4t...on-aka-only-you-can-prevent-grindspace-2.html

Good luck!

 

[fba827]

I would only call it "the DMs fault" in the way that the DM should try and keep the current scenario active and interesting as best he can with what is possible at the given moment. To me, a battle should be short or, if long, then be interesting and interactive. And if your battles are always going on that long and you don't see any another way to make it more interesting for the group, then it's just pointless beyond a certain point.

But if player A chooses to always use a certain at-will repeatedly and ignore all other powers and/or tactical options/etc then it's not anywhere near being the DM's fault.

I wouldn't say throwing in lots of minions is the answer - frankly, if you have a bunch of strikers, this solution would be unsatisfying to them.

I like to think variety is key. Maybe you do have an encounter with lots of minions. But then you should have some with few or none. If you have the time to actually plan it all out, then you can tailor the enemy mix based on the PC mix -- what are the PCs like?
You can play on their strengths (i.e. lots of strikers than have high hp targes, lots of controllers then have lots of minion enemies. Or you can play on thier weaknesses just to ellict more fear and change of tactics (i.e. if you have lots of squishies, then have lots of lurkers)

Encouraging PC multiclassing doesn't really change much in terms of grind vs. no grind. If a player always resorts to one or two powers that's all he'll continue to do.

But if nothing else, maybe one of these options ... (without telling the players)
* go ahead and reduce enemy hp. Say -20% (or -25%) hp to any nonminion if you're good at mental math on the fly.
* go ahead and reduce enemy hp by a static amount. Say -10hp for heroic level monsters, -20hp for paragon monsters, and -30hp for epic monsters. This is still some mental math but less so than doing it based on a percentage.
* All enemy defenses are 1 less than stated. This is easy mental math and easy to keep track of.
* When bloodied, all enemies have their defenses lowered by 1 (or by 2). Easy mental math though it has a trigger that you need to keep track of (being bloodied).

 

[Obryn]

As far as minions are concerned, about 90% of what you hear about them is total crap. But, there is a glimmer of truth- one of the things that makes long fights feel like grinds is a lack of "rewards" in the middle of them. If you fight five enemies, each time one drops the players get a feeling of accomplishment. If you fight one enemy, same thing, but it only happens once and it only happens at the end of the fight. That's why I try to error on the side of too many weak opponents rather than too few strong ones. Not that this means I use minions all the time- I don't. I just try to ensure that the players feel a sense of reward more than once per battle. Usually that means multiple weaker enemies (not always minions), but sometimes it means plot elements.

Yep, I agree 100%. Minions are the grease on the wheels of combat. They are satisfying for both me and my players. I don't use them every combat, but I like 'em. They're fun, and it's satisfying to even take a single one out.

I'll note that I think minions are way overvalued, XP-wise. I have started cutting their XP values by 25%-50%, and as a result I have increased their numbers by 50%-100%. After this, they feel just about balanced for their XP value, they are a bigger threat, and they crunch more satisfyingly, now.

-O

 

[Sadrik]

Two options:
Give all attacks +2 to hit (PCs and NPCs)
Increase all damage by 1d6 (or +3) per tier (again PCs and NPCs)

Both increase damage output one by hitting more and the other by simply increasing damage. It might be good to do both! Speeds up combat for sure and makes the DMs monsters more dangerous.

 

[Dausuul]

I'm not altogether sure what you're getting at here. What sorts of tricks should the PCs have that would speed up combat? The single most effective way the PCs can make combats go faster is to make a party consisting of nothing but rogues and archer rangers, and kill everything with volleys of arrows and lots of stabbity. Very one-trick-pony, also ends combats very fast, since neither the PCs nor the monsters can survive for long.

As in any edition, specializing makes you more efficient at what you specialize in. And 4E is very specialist-friendly. You don't have to worry about the party rogue getting denied sneak attack damage any more. Diversifying will make combat go slower, not faster.

Is having to "just end the combat early" maybe just a crappy way of saying that we need a houserule to bandage a 4e bug?

*shrug* Sure. The system should not produce combats that have to be ended early.

 

[Nymrohd]

Well I'll agree with all of the above and also add:

Make sure you pick monsters that interact well. Quite a lot of the grind may come from monsters who encourage stale tactics making the encounter boring on both ends.

Stunts are not just for players. A great way to encourage players to think outside of the box is for your NPCs to do just the same. Also consider: Destructible Terrain

Are your players hogging their Dailies hoping to blow them all on the endboss? My group does very long runs so I came up with this houserule: When you reach a milestone, recharge any one expended daily attack power. It doesn't seem to affect game balance, and it encourage players to keep going till they are running out of healing surges.