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I keep bottle-necking the heroes (advice)
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7578650" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Soldiers are pretty infamous in 4e for producing grindy fights. </p><p></p><p>I'm anything but a 4e expert, but speaking from my perspective, I hate resolving encounter design issues with metagaming. That is to say, you could probably resolve this in a number of ways, none of which are going to be very satisfying conceptually:</p><p></p><p>a) You could avoid using foes that have high defenses, like soldiers, and thereby speed up the fight.</p><p>b) You could have first waves composed of minions, which would collapse quickly and therefore allow the party space to get into the room before engaging the main force.</p><p>c) You could use kid gloves on the party by having the opposition behave in ways that weren't tactically optimal, such as delaying or spreading out.</p><p>d) You could metagame by handwaving the party getting into the room, and then actually applying the rules only when in your opinion the fictional positioning was optimal for fun. This is called calling the bang, but note also that this is a railroading technique and overuse of railroading techniques like handwaves will often cause table disagreements.</p><p></p><p>Personally, I'm not fond of any of that, and quite frankly what I'd do in this situation most likely was fudge my roll. If it wasn't interesting for the soldiers to win the initiative, I'd roll initiative behind the screen and report the initiative I found tactically interesting. That's another railroading technique, but it's much less likely to get caught and therefore better maintains the illusion.</p><p></p><p>As an aside, I find it really interesting how the mentality of the game has evolved over time. Back when I first started playing in 1e, we deliberately would try to bottleneck ourselves in a narrow corridor or at a doorway or chokepoint in order to maximize the parties advantage of high AC's on the frontline fighters and minimize the monsters advantage of numbers. </p><p></p><p>I'm not sure exactly what the circumstances of this fight are, but one possibility that might have worked is subtly changing the strategy of the opposition. Instead of trying to bottleneck the players in the hallway, what would have happened if the opposition tried to bottleneck the players just inside the 'door'. That is to say, what if they surrounded an open space just inside the 'large, open, dynamic encounter area', and essentially dared the players to step into the room? If they did this, maximizing the advantage of their numbers against a fraction of the party, then you don't have to encourage the party to do maneuvers like Bull Rush to push into the room, or acrobatics to break through the trap, it will be to the natural advantage of the party to break through this cordon and thereby not be in a situation where a small portion of the party is being attack on three sides by the entire opposition.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7578650, member: 4937"] Soldiers are pretty infamous in 4e for producing grindy fights. I'm anything but a 4e expert, but speaking from my perspective, I hate resolving encounter design issues with metagaming. That is to say, you could probably resolve this in a number of ways, none of which are going to be very satisfying conceptually: a) You could avoid using foes that have high defenses, like soldiers, and thereby speed up the fight. b) You could have first waves composed of minions, which would collapse quickly and therefore allow the party space to get into the room before engaging the main force. c) You could use kid gloves on the party by having the opposition behave in ways that weren't tactically optimal, such as delaying or spreading out. d) You could metagame by handwaving the party getting into the room, and then actually applying the rules only when in your opinion the fictional positioning was optimal for fun. This is called calling the bang, but note also that this is a railroading technique and overuse of railroading techniques like handwaves will often cause table disagreements. Personally, I'm not fond of any of that, and quite frankly what I'd do in this situation most likely was fudge my roll. If it wasn't interesting for the soldiers to win the initiative, I'd roll initiative behind the screen and report the initiative I found tactically interesting. That's another railroading technique, but it's much less likely to get caught and therefore better maintains the illusion. As an aside, I find it really interesting how the mentality of the game has evolved over time. Back when I first started playing in 1e, we deliberately would try to bottleneck ourselves in a narrow corridor or at a doorway or chokepoint in order to maximize the parties advantage of high AC's on the frontline fighters and minimize the monsters advantage of numbers. I'm not sure exactly what the circumstances of this fight are, but one possibility that might have worked is subtly changing the strategy of the opposition. Instead of trying to bottleneck the players in the hallway, what would have happened if the opposition tried to bottleneck the players just inside the 'door'. That is to say, what if they surrounded an open space just inside the 'large, open, dynamic encounter area', and essentially dared the players to step into the room? If they did this, maximizing the advantage of their numbers against a fraction of the party, then you don't have to encourage the party to do maneuvers like Bull Rush to push into the room, or acrobatics to break through the trap, it will be to the natural advantage of the party to break through this cordon and thereby not be in a situation where a small portion of the party is being attack on three sides by the entire opposition. [/QUOTE]
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