We have a couple of guys in the group who are dependably slow. We have taken to assisting them in their decision-making process...
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8 minutes/turn - is that very slow? slow? average?
- Thread starter Quickleaf
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We have a couple of guys in the group who are dependably slow. We have taken to assisting them in their decision-making process...
Hussar
Legend
To be honest, I never thought that status effect tracking in 3e was the major source of slowdown anyway. It could be, but, like you say DannyA, it's not like it featured in every encounter. At high levels, maybe, but, in single digit levels? Not so much.
No, what slowed things down in 3e, IME, was all the damn actions that a given player could take. I liked playing casters that used summoning, so, I know how complicated that can get, very quickly. Add in a pet or two and you get one player who is taking five or six completely different actions in a given round.
That and the less commonly used rules - grappling being a poster child here. That could grind combat to a crawl very quickly.
But, really, most of the time seems to get sunk into user error. I've actually seen a player take ten minutes to take his turn with a 4th level dwarven fighter in 3e.
Gack! I mean, you cannot get any simpler than that and it was still taking almost ten minutes for this guy to take his turn.
If you can train your players to be a bit more efficient, I find that the system isn't usually the big culprit.
No, what slowed things down in 3e, IME, was all the damn actions that a given player could take. I liked playing casters that used summoning, so, I know how complicated that can get, very quickly. Add in a pet or two and you get one player who is taking five or six completely different actions in a given round.
That and the less commonly used rules - grappling being a poster child here. That could grind combat to a crawl very quickly.
But, really, most of the time seems to get sunk into user error. I've actually seen a player take ten minutes to take his turn with a 4th level dwarven fighter in 3e.
Gack! I mean, you cannot get any simpler than that and it was still taking almost ten minutes for this guy to take his turn.If you can train your players to be a bit more efficient, I find that the system isn't usually the big culprit.
The typical slowdown culprits I saw in 3.XEd both stemmed from spellcasting:
1) casters who had summoned/controlled "a fighting force of unparalleled magnitude", so his turn consisted of deciding and taking actions for a half dozen+ units on the field. In addition, they might not have chosen what to summon ahead of time, so they had to look things up.*
2) casters polymorphing into other critters, again, usually without deciding ahead of time what shape to take.*
But with only a few spellcasters per party, that usually meant the situation was fairly well contained, and other players could go through their turns pretty quickly. With 4Ed, OTOH, the entire party and all of their foes can potentially do stuff that everybody has to track in some way.
* whenever I ran a caster with such issues, I always had a list of critters to choose from, already statted out and ready to use.
1) casters who had summoned/controlled "a fighting force of unparalleled magnitude", so his turn consisted of deciding and taking actions for a half dozen+ units on the field. In addition, they might not have chosen what to summon ahead of time, so they had to look things up.*
2) casters polymorphing into other critters, again, usually without deciding ahead of time what shape to take.*
But with only a few spellcasters per party, that usually meant the situation was fairly well contained, and other players could go through their turns pretty quickly. With 4Ed, OTOH, the entire party and all of their foes can potentially do stuff that everybody has to track in some way.
* whenever I ran a caster with such issues, I always had a list of critters to choose from, already statted out and ready to use.
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Hussar
Legend
Oo, yeah, forgot about the polymorphing thing. Yeah, that can screech a game to a halt. Totally appreciate any player that takes the time to figure out before hand a few stock shapes and what the new stats will be be. 
Maybe my 4e issues aren't as pronounced because I play on Maptools. The framework we use tracks 90% of the status effects we need to worry about. Drop a quick note on the battle map and you're good to go. To be fair, I have seen a bad guy with 9 status effects on him after the first round. It's pretty funny because the framework we use places each status effect in one of 9 grid points on top of the mini. So, basically, the entire mini is nothing but status effects.
But, that's also not all that common either. Without the computer tracking this stuff though, I could see how that could get really hard to track.
Do you use status cards or something similar? That might help a lot. Just chits with status effects that you can place under the mini. Maybe a status track sheet on the side marking down everything and tracking it. That wouldn't be hard to make.
Maybe my 4e issues aren't as pronounced because I play on Maptools. The framework we use tracks 90% of the status effects we need to worry about. Drop a quick note on the battle map and you're good to go. To be fair, I have seen a bad guy with 9 status effects on him after the first round. It's pretty funny because the framework we use places each status effect in one of 9 grid points on top of the mini. So, basically, the entire mini is nothing but status effects.
But, that's also not all that common either. Without the computer tracking this stuff though, I could see how that could get really hard to track.
Do you use status cards or something similar? That might help a lot. Just chits with status effects that you can place under the mini. Maybe a status track sheet on the side marking down everything and tracking it. That wouldn't be hard to make.
Personally, all my stuff is on my iPad, and my PCs granted effects tend to be very targeted. I don't know what other players do, but I can't say I've seen any props or aids like that at the table.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Eh, I think it is quite feasible for 3.5 non-casters to be handing out a fair number of different conditions and such. Its not typical that they have the number of options that a 4e fighter has, but then we come to the nut of the whole thing. The 3e fighter was kinda not really playing in the same league with casters. Once you say "well, its OK for you Mr Fighter to be playing that game too" then you kinda gotta give them enough toys to really play it.
I'm not fully satisfied with the results mind you, 4e gaveth in term of simplifying the way conditions and effects worked and the rules they used, and then tooketh away double by handing out a million of them like candy. So, maybe the answer is to more put casters in the same game as fighters in that respect, and then yank EVERYONE back a couple notches. Maybe you simply CANNOT have multiple effects in existence at a time as a wizard. Maybe its a bit more nuanced than that too, but fundamentally it could be in that vein. Instantaneous effects then become more the order of the day for the casters, and then its not such a big deal if Mr Beatstick only has "stunning blow" and "Make it Bleed a Lot".
Hussar
Legend
One thing to not forget as well, is how these status changes are handled.
Something that is +X this or -Y that can be fiddly, but, with a bit of prep (like using status cards/chits) can be pretty easy to track.
Cast Enlarge or Polymorph and things get a whole lot trickier because so many different things trickle down.
Something that is +X this or -Y that can be fiddly, but, with a bit of prep (like using status cards/chits) can be pretty easy to track.
Cast Enlarge or Polymorph and things get a whole lot trickier because so many different things trickle down.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Well, that was a HUGE way in which 4e gaveth, you didn't ever have to recalculate anything. DDN really really needs to pay attention to that kind of thing. If it does, then it will have a ton of complexity headroom to play with AND it can be a fast game.
In pre-6th HERO, there were cerain powers that boosted stats. And some stats had other stats (figured characteristics) calculated from their value in a cascade. Change Con, for instance, and PD, End, and Stun would all change as well. Just like in D&D, that could lead to doing some nontrivial recalculations.
H6 killed some of that by doing away with abilities depending on abilities. And in all editions of the game prior, you could buy powers in such a way as not to affect figured characteristics.
In D&D, powers that might otherwise affect many attributes on a sheet could be defined in such a way as not to do so. Done properly, it might not feel like a major nerfing.
H6 killed some of that by doing away with abilities depending on abilities. And in all editions of the game prior, you could buy powers in such a way as not to affect figured characteristics.
In D&D, powers that might otherwise affect many attributes on a sheet could be defined in such a way as not to do so. Done properly, it might not feel like a major nerfing.
Quickleaf
Legend
Yes I have a player who uses MapTools when he DMs and he swears by it.Oo, yeah, forgot about the polymorphing thing. Yeah, that can screech a game to a halt. Totally appreciate any player that takes the time to figure out before hand a few stock shapes and what the new stats will be be.
Maybe my 4e issues aren't as pronounced because I play on Maptools. The framework we use tracks 90% of the status effects we need to worry about. Drop a quick note on the battle map and you're good to go. To be fair, I have seen a bad guy with 9 status effects on him after the first round. It's pretty funny because the framework we use places each status effect in one of 9 grid points on top of the mini. So, basically, the entire mini is nothing but status effects.
But, that's also not all that common either. Without the computer tracking this stuff though, I could see how that could get really hard to track.
Do you use status cards or something similar? That might help a lot. Just chits with status effects that you can place under the mini. Maybe a status track sheet on the side marking down everything and tracking it. That wouldn't be hard to make.
We casually use status cards (well, mostly for me as the DM, not for the players), but not consistently. A player has the Alea Tools colored markers so we are going to try using those more consistently than we already do.
I enjoy many parts of 4e but the mandatory condition/power tracking is not one of them.
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