D&D 4E How to speed up combat?

[Aldarc]

I don't think I would say centered. It supports 30 levels the same way that other editions support play to level 20, which is to say that there is content there but it's not polished or well tested even in 5e. As far as adventures, I only remember the three E adventures covering play above about level 22. However, the HPE adventures were overall pretty bad. WotC never really put the effort into creating good published adventures for 4e. The 3rd party adventures I saw were focused at levels 1-20, and mostly 5-15.

However, I think the style of game that 4e was made it easy to take adventures from any edition and just update the encounters as you were going through it.

I do agree the game was overall worsened by expanding to 30 levels because it meant the game had to spend time creating content for those levels when a narrower scope with more focused content would probably have been better overall. I'd have much rather there been good adventures published, but adventures don't sell like crunch books do, and WotC was trying to grow the market for D&D with 4e and that meant player books. I think they were also trying to always give the PCs new things to keep them invested or whatever, instead of relying on the DM to do that.

Though there would have been a mutinous riot in the fanbase, they could have potentially designed the game for 15 levels: 1-5 Heroic; 6-10 Paragon; and 11-15 Epic. And instead of releasing dispersing races, classes, and such between PHB 1-3, they could have designed PHB 1 to focus on levels 1-5; PHB 2 on levels 6-10; and PHB 3 on levels 11-15.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Though there would have been a mutinous riot in the fanbase, they could have potentially designed the game for 15 levels: 1-5 Heroic; 6-10 Paragon; and 11-15 Epic. And instead of releasing dispersing races, classes, and such between PHB 1-3, they could have designed PHB 1 to focus on levels 1-5; PHB 2 on levels 6-10; and PHB 3 on levels 11-15.

I'm not sure why the level range needs to be coupled to that kind of focus. Of course we know that, to a degree, DMG1 is oriented towards Heroic, and DMG2 definitely has a bit more focus on Paragon. WotC never really outright stated that this was the case, or that DMG3 would be 'epic' in focus, but presumably it would have talked about epic 'stuff' a bit, and contained some epic location information (like DMG2 did for the mostly Paragon Sigil).

They definitely did NOT do this with PHBs. I honestly feel that this would have been a mistake. It would have made the core 3 books released in 2008 not really a complete game. That was not going to fly, as you point out. I think all the tiers are integral to the game. Had they cut the game to 15 levels though, it would have cut back drastically on the page count for powers, and maybe feats as well, which certainly would have saved a good chunk of pages to allow for more classes/races and perhaps a bit more variety in things like EDs, which were pretty limited in the core rules.

 

[overgeeked]

Going back through the thread and picking up bits I wanted to touch on again or that I failed to touch on the first go around...

Combat is front and center in 4e. Combat is the Cadillac on the showroom turntable. If you're playing 4e over any other edition of the game, it's going to be because you like the combat rules. Simply put, there isn't anything else truly compelling about 4e.

I disagree. I think basically everything about 4E is compelling except the combat. Not in the abstract but more in how it actually played at the table. Combat in 4E was almost always a boring slog. Likely due to running it as standard D&D instead of the high-octane, non-stop, go-go-go game is was apparently meant to be.

You should never, ever be thinking, "Eh, I should run fewer combat encounters," in a game about running combat encounters.

There's more to D&D than combat. Even in 4E.

These make for great set pieces, but 4E struggles outside of epic set pieces.

Re: combat, yes. Re: non-combat encounters, no.

I agree with this. 4E lends itself to really fun and dynamic battlefields. I also tend to think that, like most miniatures wargames (because, IMO 4E is a tabletop miniatures wargame)

The combat certainly is, and combat certainly is the centerpiece of 4E, no argument there. But it is still a roleplaying game. There's a lot more there than just combat.

If you look at how other games, like PbtA flavors handle this you can see some more rigorous principles and techniques being explicated. I would advise emulating the spirit of something like Dungeon World in terms of constantly moving things forward, create momentum and tension, etc. 4e is much better at handling these techniques than 5e is, for example.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that last bit. You're saying 4E is better at moving things forward, creating momentum and tension than 5E? Could you unpack that?

 

[overgeeked]

Going back through the thread and picking up bits I wanted to touch on again or that I failed to touch on the first go around...

And as much as I enjoy the tabletop miniatures and crunch aspects I think everyone can appreciate they definitely will bog down a game if you insist on running back-to-back combats that aren't in-themselves progressing the game's narrative.

I think this is/was the big hang up with 4E. Too many people tried doing dungeon crawls instead of action set pieces. So something that's normally fun like combat just becomes a tedious slog.

Building on this idea 4E definitely has a pretty good way of handling failure in a more abstracted combat -- You can have them expend powers. The other common resources that you can key off of are things like hero points and healing surges. In a certain sense the use of healing surges is expected. The assumption of the system is having X number of encounters per Long Rest, so if you're eliding over tactical combats to keep the pace of the game up then it seems reasonable to use healing surges as a resource to represent stress.

Absolutely. Anything on the sheet is a fair target. And anything on the sheet has the potential to solve a problem, not just combat powers.

If you're not interested in combat as part of your play I'm not sure why you're using 4e. What is it bringing to the table? Without knowing what you're looking for, it's hard to give helpful advice.

I'm not interested in endless slogs of combat. Even when we finally cottoned to how 4E should be run (big set pieces instead of constant dungeon crawls) the process of combat took too long for our tastes. Even the most fun encounter on paper that's well designed and complex in an interesting way become dull and lifeless after two (or more) solid hours of combat.

As I said elsewhere:

"I fell in love with literally everything they did with this edition...except how it actually played at the table. I loved the lore changes, the points-of-light setting, big magic rituals for everyone, residuum, solving linear fighter vs quadratic wizard, roles, power sources, powers, layout, design, monster variety, monster stat blocks, monster roles, MM3 on a business card, the DMGs were amazing...I loved literally everything they did with this edition...except for how it actually played. We played from the start to the finish with this one but could never get a simple combat to be anything less than a multiple hour slog. We tried everything and nothing ever worked. If only they revised the combat rules for speed of play."

I experimented with morale. It is swingy is the one hitch. A single low check result and the encounter melts away without much threat. OTOH if you increase the average danger level of the encounters to make up for some 'wimping out' like this, then the risk exists that the PCs will just get curb stomped due to high morale check results. Either way is not ideal. I finally just concluded that making morale more explicitly a factor in the monster's hit point totals was probably the best idea.

While I like the idea of having morale be part of the monster's hp and them running away when they hit zero instead of dying...I also like the idea of some monsters staying longer than others of the same type, the swinginess of the actual morale check. Some monsters stay and fight while others flee.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I disagree. I think basically everything about 4E is compelling except the combat. Not in the abstract but more in how it actually played at the table. Combat in 4E was almost always a boring slog. Likely due to running it as standard D&D instead of the high-octane, non-stop, go-go-go game is was apparently meant to be.

Can you explain that in some way, because in my opinion the only thing unique about 4e in terms of gameplay at the table was the combat.

If the answer is skill challenges, that is unconvincing. I think they're a narrow mechanic that was vastly oversold.

If you're going to say the lore, then my response is going to be that lore isn't relevant to the gameplay at the table. Sure, I like the 4e lore like feywild/shadowfell and points of light. However, lore doesn't really affect how the game is actually played at the table.

There's more to D&D than combat. Even in 4E.

Yes, just like there's more to Zelda than clearing rooms. However, when you're in a dungeon, the game is about clearing rooms.

Similarly, when you're in a dungeon, D&D is about combat encounters. This is because there's rarely anyone to talk to and because the exploration system in mechanical terms largely boils down to, "I try to do something." "Okay, roll a skill check." "I got a 17." "Okay you do the something," in every edition of the game.

 

[pemerton]

I think basically everything about 4E is compelling except the combat. Not in the abstract but more in how it actually played at the table. Combat in 4E was almost always a boring slog. Likely due to running it as standard D&D instead of the high-octane, non-stop, go-go-go game is was apparently meant to be.

As I said elsewhere:

"I fell in love with literally everything they did with this edition...except how it actually played at the table. I loved the lore changes, the points-of-light setting, big magic rituals for everyone, residuum, solving linear fighter vs quadratic wizard, roles, power sources, powers, layout, design, monster variety, monster stat blocks, monster roles, MM3 on a business card, the DMGs were amazing...I loved literally everything they did with this edition...except for how it actually played. We played from the start to the finish with this one but could never get a simple combat to be anything less than a multiple hour slog. We tried everything and nothing ever worked. If only they revised the combat rules for speed of play."

If I strip the combat out of 4e D&D PC build, that mostly leaves (some) utility powers, skill bonuses and rituals.

I would consider turning encounter powers into something else - maybe a +2 to a check, or a reroll ability - and likewise daily powers - maybe double effect on a successful roll, ordinary effect on a miss. Then I would look at resolving combat via checks vs DCs or maybe opposed checks, rather than using the published system. A system like HeroQuest revised will give more ideas on how to do this. Or just look at the varieties of skill challenges set out in the DMG2.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Going back through the thread and picking up bits I wanted to touch on again or that I failed to touch on the first go around...

I disagree. I think basically everything about 4E is compelling except the combat. Not in the abstract but more in how it actually played at the table. Combat in 4E was almost always a boring slog. Likely due to running it as standard D&D instead of the high-octane, non-stop, go-go-go game is was apparently meant to be.

There's more to D&D than combat. Even in 4E.

Re: combat, yes. Re: non-combat encounters, no.

The combat certainly is, and combat certainly is the centerpiece of 4E, no argument there. But it is still a roleplaying game. There's a lot more there than just combat.

I, for one, am not that impressed with 5e combat. The monsters seem boring and staid to a large extent. There is this weird limbo of rules where clearly a grid is needed to really adjudicate things properly, but the game pretends it doesn't exist. Nobody quite knows what they can and cannot do. Oddly it seems like a lot of the response of designers of 'stuff' in 5e is to just make things auto-success. My Tabaxi fighter can simply climb basically anything, no rolls required. Kind of obviates any questions of what is difficult or easy, etc. That's OK, but it makes a lot of design space difficult.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that last bit. You're saying 4E is better at moving things forward, creating momentum and tension than 5E? Could you unpack that?

4e is much more friendly to techniques which do that, yes. It assumes the GM moves things forward, provides a scene-framing technique in SCs, has many many keywords which can easily tell you what resources might be useful in a given situation and how they might interact, fictionally, etc. The large array of character resources/options tells you a lot about what each character IS, and what sorts of things probably motivate them, concern them, and which they are likely to be able to do. So, yes, it is much closer to 'story game', 'low myth', player focused RPGing than 5e. Obviously you could try to do the same things with 5e, you will just have to provide some of the missing pieces.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Going back through the thread and picking up bits I wanted to touch on again or that I failed to touch on the first go around...

I think this is/was the big hang up with 4E. Too many people tried doing dungeon crawls instead of action set pieces. So something that's normally fun like combat just becomes a tedious slog.

Absolutely. Anything on the sheet is a fair target. And anything on the sheet has the potential to solve a problem, not just combat powers.

I'm not interested in endless slogs of combat. Even when we finally cottoned to how 4E should be run (big set pieces instead of constant dungeon crawls) the process of combat took too long for our tastes. Even the most fun encounter on paper that's well designed and complex in an interesting way become dull and lifeless after two (or more) solid hours of combat.

My response to that is that a combat which lasts two hours and is ONLY about fighting, and more fighting, is not really what I'm talking about. This was the danger of a lot of the 'big solo' model of encounter design. I question the use of solos in most cases. Of course there are plenty of other encounter designs that aren't great either. If you stick to the 'this is an action adventure scene' and make sure there is a solid 'encounter plot' with goals and characters, etc. then you shouldn't really be bored. The whole thing will include lots of fun RP, characterization, planning, etc.

As I said elsewhere:

"I fell in love with literally everything they did with this edition...except how it actually played at the table. I loved the lore changes, the points-of-light setting, big magic rituals for everyone, residuum, solving linear fighter vs quadratic wizard, roles, power sources, powers, layout, design, monster variety, monster stat blocks, monster roles, MM3 on a business card, the DMGs were amazing...I loved literally everything they did with this edition...except for how it actually played. We played from the start to the finish with this one but could never get a simple combat to be anything less than a multiple hour slog. We tried everything and nothing ever worked. If only they revised the combat rules for speed of play."

While I like the idea of having morale be part of the monster's hp and them running away when they hit zero instead of dying...I also like the idea of some monsters staying longer than others of the same type, the swinginess of the actual morale check. Some monsters stay and fight while others flee.

There's still plenty of variation when you take to-hit (remember, always gotta hit in 4e) and variations in damage rolls. I didn't, personally, find it necessary to have these much larger swings that arise when a single check can 'kill' a monster. If you think about it, this is a pretty big swing. Just obliterating one of the 5 standards in a stock encounter is enough to pretty much guarantee it will be an easy encounter. The PCs will focus on the most dangerous thing still standing etc.

The odd thing is, I always hear about "all combats are multi-hour slogs" but IME A) every other version of D&D has long combats. Maybe not always as long as the longest 4e combats, but AD&D (which is my main edition that I have mostly played) combats can be stupid long, even at low levels. Everyone needs a 17 to hit anything and you can grind through round after round of nothing at all happening. Not only that but EVERY substantial monster has 3+ attacks, which means plenty of rolling. Plus you have morale, and maybe obedience too (for allies). Depending on exactly how you interpret the rules on melee there's also a whole bunch of randomly determining who attacks who, and once you engage movement is impossible. I found it pretty often to be QUITE dull. Often you could cut it short by expending expensive resources, but clearly that is usually sub-optimal. B) 4e combats are just not necessarily, or even normally, some kind of slow slog. Exciting stuff is always happening, and when you DO make it interesting, the fights don't really bog down, everyone stays engaged!

So, in the first campaign I ran, levels 1-5 we sometimes ran into this 'slog' encounter. If you have some overleveled elite, especially one with good defenses like a soldier, then all of a sudden everything went into snail mode, assuming nothing else was going on. So this is why I invented the rule 'there is always something else going on' ALWAYS. Also don't use level +2 elite soldiers, just don't. Granted, this all does put a bit of 'know the game' on the DM. I don't think 4e is anything like a perfect game, but I don't think that burden is higher than for 1e, 2e, or 3.x.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Can you explain that in some way, because in my opinion the only thing unique about 4e in terms of gameplay at the table was the combat.

If the answer is skill challenges, that is unconvincing. I think they're a narrow mechanic that was vastly oversold.

If you're going to say the lore, then my response is going to be that lore isn't relevant to the gameplay at the table. Sure, I like the 4e lore like feywild/shadowfell and points of light. However, lore doesn't really affect how the game is actually played at the table.

I think you didn't explore it much then. I mean, 4e has a really potent mix. First you have tons of characterization inherent in the fact that you have a role, a power source, a class, a race, a theme (maybe), and background(s) (again this is optional admittedly). Then you have at least 1 feat and several powers, probably a build choice, etc. All this stuff is equipped with keywords. You could also have boons, training, etc. (oh, you also have skill choices). This is a LOT of stuff that is keyed to give you hooks for how to use it in play, and then you have HS, AP, possibly some other 'consumable' resources (well, definitely hit points). That is a lot to work with in RP terms. Stuff like Rituals and Practices adds even more.

DMG1 clearly was written by a person who may have helped DESIGN the SC rules, but was clearly not, yet at least, proficient in what they would be good for. So we got poorly articulated play advice and klunky process directions.

Yes, just like there's more to Zelda than clearing rooms. However, when you're in a dungeon, the game is about clearing rooms.

Similarly, when you're in a dungeon, D&D is about combat encounters. This is because there's rarely anyone to talk to and because the exploration system in mechanical terms largely boils down to, "I try to do something." "Okay, roll a skill check." "I got a 17." "Okay you do the something," in every edition of the game.

And, again, if you are building a "maze full of rooms to be cleared one at a time." sort of dungeon ala 'Caves of Chaos' (or sadly KotS) then you're really just not applying 4e in a very constructive way. Also, I don't agree about the check system. Again, this is not always consistently articulated well in 4e, and too often people just assume they should play the way they (mis)learned doing it in 1e/2e/3.x. Checks should always be fail forward sorts of things, or at least 'fail in interesting ways', and surely not just "Oh, nothing happened, try something different" Same if you are in an SC or just free exploration.

 

[overgeeked]

but AD&D (which is my main edition that I have mostly played) combats can be stupid long, even at low levels. Everyone needs a 17 to hit anything and you can grind through round after round of nothing at all happening. Not only that but EVERY substantial monster has 3+ attacks, which means plenty of rolling. Plus you have morale, and maybe obedience too (for allies). Depending on exactly how you interpret the rules on melee there's also a whole bunch of randomly determining who attacks who, and once you engage movement is impossible. I found it pretty often to be QUITE dull. Often you could cut it short by expending expensive resources, but clearly that is usually sub-optimal.

I get there’s a point at which you can’t generalize and have to slip into hyperbole, but come on. At 1st level every class except thieves, assassins, m-u, and illusionist in AD&D hits AC3 on a 17+/d20. Those four hit AC4 on a 17+/d20. The variety of ACs is wild. Most low hit dice monsters have an AC around 5. So claiming everyone always needs a 17 to-hit anything is beyond hyperbole.

I played AD&D between once a week and once a month from 1984 through 2008. In that whole time we had maybe 3-4 combats last longer than an 60-90 minutes. And those were the epic finales of campaigns. At our fastest near the end of 4E our shortest combat was 2 1/2-3 hours. And it was a dill slog.

The list of “substantial” monsters who have less than 3 attacks/round is long. It includes giants, golems, and liches amongst many others.

The rules for breaking off from melee are on page 70 of the DMG.

D&D isn’t about doing what’s optimal, it’s about having fun exploring a fantasy milieu.

4e combats are just not necessarily, or even normally, some kind of slow slog. Exciting stuff is always happening, and when you DO make it interesting, the fights don't really bog down, everyone stays engaged!

At this point I honestly need you to give me a specific, concrete example of what you think best practices are for running 4E because your experience and mine are so diametrically opposed that even if we are talking about the same game we don’t share a common frame of reference.