D&D General Ending the Slog

[Asisreo]

It is the easy or medium difficulty encounter Conundrum. A 10th level party encounters a 18 pack of Ghouls. 12 of the Ghouls fail their saving throws to a PC cast Hypnotic Pattern spell.
The remaining 6 un-charmed ghouls fall quickly.

Meaningful combat is effectively over.
No matter how fast your group is, rolling dice is going to take longer then a Hand Wave; to arrive at essentially the same state and place.

Few problems with this example.

1. Hypnotic Pattern isn't an every-enemy attack, it hits everyone in a 30ft cube. But why are they all within close to 30ft of each other? (The farthest is actually roughly 42ft). Are they all having a dance party? Was there an undead ball? It doesn't make much sense for them to be scrunched up before the party arrived unless there's a very particular reason.

2. The average amount of ghouls that would even be within this area is only 6, which means 10 of them are left over.

3. The hypnotized ghouls aren't dead, they can come back maybe up to a few turns later. As a 10th-level PC, you have a DC 17 which means in any given sample, you can expect 20% of effected ghouls to pass any given turn. Ghouls also paralyze over Con. It's an easy save but if a large number hits you, you might fail eventually which makes it worse since the hypnotized ghouls are now no longer hypnotized since you failed the save.

 

[Todd Roybark]

Why did you choose to put this encounter in front of this party? What was it's point?

Foreshadowing. The characters were in a war torn land and nearing an occupied logging town.
The party stumbled upon an acolyte of Ares raising the undead, and plundering the "resources" of the town. His master a Yakfolk Warpriest and his adventuring band are in town

The encounter is intended to convey some information, and be a possibility for other forces in the area being alerted if the party goes in "loud".

Since the encounter is not designed to strain the resources of the party down to the last drop, once the purpose of the encounter is fulfilled, the remaining Q.E.D can just be summarily dispensed with.

It is not just a rarefied few that design encounters with a purpose in mind,

 

[Lanefan]

Because fumbles, magic surges, criticals, etc. can have significant and sometimes long-lasting impacts I'm fairly adamant on playing every combat out to its conclusion even if it's become a slog. I've maybe handwaved three combats in my life, in all cases where a vastly-superior party met a small number of completely trivial foes who didn't know what they were up against e.g. three mindless basic skeletons attacking a group of 10th-level PCs.

Oddly enough, the longest combat I've ever run in terms of how many rounds it lasted was when a single PC was fighting its own clone. Said PC had stupendous AC (as, thus, did the clone) and a reasonable amount of hit points. Each needed a natural 19 to hit the other. 38 rounds later, the clone barely lost. Was this a slog? Yes. Would I ever handwave it? Not on your life.

I've more than once had single combats take over two complete sessions to play out. One I remember well was a big party attacking a well-defended underground fortress and slowly wading through the defenders in a long continuous rolling battle that in the end neither side won: the key defenders took some PCs captive and fled, at about the same time the now-very-small remaining party was forced to retreat due to attrition. I don't think anyone involved would say it was a slog, however.

For those who say "Why present these combats?", you obviously don't have players who will go out of their way to find or initiate unnecessary combats on their own.

 

[Shiroiken]

I think this can be edition and level dependent. I remember 4E being a slog regularly, but AD&D rarely was. Lower levels seldom slog due to the nearness of death, while higher levels slog infrequently due to player capabilities, but the mid-levels can slog if the players don't want to spend their daily abilities (due to the reasonable concern of later fights). If the PCs are clearly going to win, I might simply apply some damage based on the situation (maybe 1-2 hits worth) then call it. If there's no clear winner my players usually don't consider it a slog, so there's no reason not to continue as normal (although I might have intelligent NPCs call for a truce if it makes sense).

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Oddly enough, the longest combat I've ever run in terms of how many rounds it lasted was when a single PC was fighting its own clone. Said PC had stupendous AC (as, thus, did the clone) and a reasonable amount of hit points. Each needed a natural 19 to hit the other. 38 rounds later, the clone barely lost. Was this a slog? Yes. Would I ever handwave it? Not on your life.

Here we have a perfect example of differing play-styles between groups and individuals.

If, after about three rounds, I realized my GM were going to want me to play out a combat where my foe and myself have to roll 19+ to hit each other, we have a boatload of HP, and presumably various healing potions I would rather give up and start rolling up a new character.

 

[Quartz]

If, after about three rounds, I realized my GM were going to want me to play out a combat where my foe and myself have to roll 19+ to hit each other,

I would seek to change the fight. Where are my allies? Where is the rest of the party?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Have them surrender. Have them try to flee. Have more enemies show up. Have the last couple bad guys fall off a cliff. Literally anything else. Never just "call it" that's the most lame way to end a combat ever.

I disagree. The lamest way to end a combat is to drag it out to the very end, especially when everyone is bored of it, and the last enemy or two are largely harmless. Double lame points if they're ineffectually fleeing - it's fine to have enemies flee, but there's not much worse than an enemy which is no faster than than the PCs (or even slower), but has a high AC/saves, and is retreating as the PCs slowly take it down.

If you describe things properly, calling it can work. But you do need good judgement as to when to call it.

If, after about three rounds, I realized my GM were going to want me to play out a combat where my foe and myself have to roll 19+ to hit each other, we have a boatload of HP, and presumably various healing potions I would rather give up and start rolling up a new character.

Quite. I haven't seen a situation like that play out in seriousness since I was a teenager, because good god that's dull.

I would seek to change the fight. Where are my allies? Where is the rest of the party?

I can't speak for Sabathius, but literally every time I've seen a situation like the above play out, it's specifically because there is no good way to "change the fight". You think that's not literally the first thing virtually every player does? I mean, obviously it is. Players don't typically want some dull/honorable duel to the death, they want to win.

But I've seen this scenario a few times when I was a teenager, and it was always down to the DM wanting it to happen, and doing something like locking the PC and enemy in a room, and using fiat or elaborate rail-roading to prevent the rest of the PCs being involved.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

... For me, the big switch was when I changed how I designed and presented combat. If the goal of a combat is only or mostly to reduce the hitpoints of all foes, then you end up with a slog. If, instead, combat is part of the larger challenge -- an obstacle, if you will -- then you can build combats that are much more dynamic and don't end in slogs. Of course, I think that encounter design also has a part in this -- if you're putting in monsters that are big bags of hp without much interesting, and then don't add the interesting to the encounter design though terrain, situation, time, or combat goals, then you'll end up with a slog. Encounters aren't guaranteed to work out just because the CR calculations work, or you find them in an adventure.

Can you give an example?

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Can you give an example?

In the RPG Torg it is fairly common encounter design to combine combat with some sort of skill-check related ultimate goal.

For example....the players enter the room with the evil mastermind and his minions just as they hit the self destruct button and begin to fire up the escape copter. Knowing that they will be blown to bits if they don't shut down the self destruct sequence, the players will need to start working on shutting that down. At the same time the minions are attacking the players in combat so some of the party has to protect the person disabling the self-destruct by engaging and taking out the minions. Optionally if they have enough resources or a good enough plan they can even dispatch another party member to pursue the evil mastermind up to the roof to try to prevent him from hopping on the escape copter.

In this example there is not a combat of 4 PCs vs. 16 henchmen and 1 mastermind to the death. There are multiple interacting moving parts that all contribute to a dynamic and exciting battle with the disabling of the self destruct the PRIMARY goal, and capture of the mastermind the SECONDARY goal. The killing (or not) of the henchmen is inconsequential to the scene.

 

[iserith]

Can you give an example?

Many of the short-form scenarios I've posted over the years fits the bill.