Keeping track of combat length (for posterity)

[Wik]

Added Session 2 to first post: ~2 hours total
We are currently exploring a huge wine cave that's infested with drow aberrations. In tonight's session we cleared a tunnel with 4 vaults.

Encounter 1) 5 minutes, 140 XP, 0 crits, 0 action points. 0.6 rounds vs 1 brute/trap/thing
In vault #4 we spotted a control panel at the base of a statue. The halfling rogue successfully activated the panel, which immediately resulted in the statue activating and attacking us. It was dead after the two rogues and the fighter hit it.

Encounter 2) 40 minutes, 1160 XP, 3 crits, 1 daily (totally wasted), 3 action points. 1 round vs 4 brute swarms & 1 elite lurker
Vault #2 was filled with all sorts of flying insects and even some stirges. As soon as we stepped into the chamber, the stirges coalesced into 4 separate swarms and started to nosh on the two defenders. Then a powerful and rapid undead drow monstrosity tore through the defenders' line, shredding them with its claws. (At this point we took enough damage to realize that we needed to take them seriously.)

The bard blasted a path through the mass of enemies, and positioned the fighter squarely in the large space between them all. He also gave the entire party a whopping +5 to attack and damage. My fighter opened with a Come and Get It to clump everything together nicely. (I also used a Rain of Steel that turned out to be completely wasted...) After that it was pretty much a perfect storm of coordinated close blast and burst powers that killed everything dead with the very last action of the first round.

The monsters had a combined total of 720 hit points.

The XP for the second fight was actually closer to 4200 XP. I think that was a typo. In game mechanic terms, it was four 12th level Stirge Swarms + 1 Dhampyr Vampire. And the party focused fire using a pretty good plan (The paladin used a power that forces all monsters to attack him, while the minotaur put himself in the middle of the swarm to trigger OAs when they moved to attack the fighter).

The encounter was pretty amazing to watch, although the poor rogues felt very unstriker-y, watching the two defenders and bard doing the lion's share of the damage.

 

[blargney the second]

The encounter was pretty amazing to watch, although the poor rogues felt very unstriker-y, watching the two defenders and bard doing the lion's share of the damage.

Swarms are weird gotcha monsters. Either you're going to suck horribly fighting them or you're going to rock them hard.

 

[amysrevenge]

If the ratio starts slipping I'll start singing some Anne Murray.

No, Gordon Lightfoot.

 

[RangerWickett]

Last Friday I had a game, down to three players (one guy had to help his girlfriend when her car got towed; the other had inhaled pesticide fumes and was too sick to game), so I scaled down a 5-on-5 duel to 3-on-3, and handwaved the other PCs handling their foes. It was supposed to be a very difficult fight because they'd bitten off more than they could chew and challenged the leader of a band of ogre warriors.

Party: Three level 6 PCs (striker, two controllers)
Opponents: Elite Brute 8, Skirmisher 8, Skirmisher 13 (custom ogre grappler, ogre skirmisher, and vrock)

Combat lasted 2 hours, and consisted of . . . hmm, how many rounds?

[sblock]1. Charge in, grab. Ogre in pit.
2. Wraith attacks. Vrock reaches pillar.
3. Second volley of lava misses. Ogre out of pit.
4. Bloodied vrock. Failed screech.
5. Retreating vrock, petrified vrock.
6. Monk grabbed. Shardstorm summoned.
7. Drag toward maelstrom.
8. Drag toward maelstrom. Skirmisher goes after elementalist.
9. Monk escapes, takes down skirmisher. Wraith replaced by skeleton.
10. Toss skeleton 1.
11. Toss skeleton 2. Toss it back, explode, summon legion devil.
12. Legion devil 2. Blind. Takedown.[/sblock]

So 12 rounds in 2 hours. Mind you, many of the early rounds the elite brute was locked down by a daze effect. Still, I don't remember it feeling particularly slow. I was just a little disappointed by how annoying dual controllers can be when there aren't many enemies in a fight.

 

[blargney the second]

Session 3 consisted of one big-ass, difficult fight with a bit of plot stuff.

Encounter 1) 120 minutes, 1200 XP, 3 crits, 3 dailies, 3 action points. 7 rounds vs 6 minions, 2 controllers, 3 skirmishers, 2 elite skirmishers.

That's all approximation - there might have been more, and I'm guessing hugely on the monster roles. (EDIT: turns out I was totally wrong - see Wik's next post.)

Luck was not with us *at all* tonight. I needed a 6 to hit most monsters, and missed 8 times out of 10. The other PCs were about as unlucky as well. Our other big problem was the dudes spamming daze targeting reflex. (This was then abused by several other bad guys with sneak attack and multiple attacks.) Those two factors added up to a looooong and tough fight.

 

[Wik]

Again - that 1200 XP is per PC, not overall.

Funny thing is, you got most of the roles wrong, there! It was actually 3 soldiers, 6 minions, 2 artillery (but yeah, they felt like controllers), 1 elite skirmisher, and 1 elite lurker. And the group really didn't get to feel the sting of the elite lurker at all - they pretty effectively took him down.

But yeah, those daze attacks were pretty brutal. I don't know about the players, but the encounter seemed like a decent length from my point of view. Best moment of the fight was when the drow rogue missed her attack and applied her sneak in the attack, and the other rogue landed a hit on the same monster - dealing something like 6d8+X damage in one fell swoop.

I really want to see a crit on that attack, one of these days.

 

[blargney the second]

The soldiers were the ones with the basic melee double attack and sneak attack, right? I thought skirmisher or brute for sure.

 

[Wik]

Yeah, the soldiers had a double attack, and dealt extra damage with combat advantage. They were modified slightly by yours truly, which is probably why they seemed a bit odd for soldiers.

 

[evilbob]

I'm sorry, I know this has probably been addressed in other places, but please, I have to ask: how?

How in the world are you finishing combats with 5 PCs in under 1.5 hours? We never have. Ever. 9 levels of play: maybe happened once. Most combats take 2-4 hrs. Some are longer. Solos can be multi-session.

We use markers for conditions, have people roll attack/damage together, everything is calculated beforehand, etc. etc., all the tricks I can find online. I have to be missing something. We never have a 5 minute round. 30 mins is probably more accurate, with closer to 10 mins when most enemies are dead. How do you do it?

 

[blargney the second]

For starters, we have three PCs that are heavily focused on dishing out gonzo amounts of damage (2h fighter + two rogues), and the paladin and bard are certainly no slouches either.

We have some basic strategies that we've developed. I'll frequently start off a fight by using Come and Get It to force a pile of enemies into fireball formation, which makes it easy for my party mates to use their own area attacks. It's also typically quite easy for the rogues to flank with me at that point. If they can't get CA for some reason, they'll ready an action to stab when a buddy steps into a flank.

Around the table, we're all pretty organized. The players have their attack and damage modifiers pre-calculated on their sheets, and we usually try to know what we're going to do on our turn before we go. If one of us has a good idea, we'll ask someone else to delay and get ready to use some ability. We typically go along with those ideas because it's fun.

Wik is a well-organized DM. He customizes his monsters and prints them out before each game so they're ready to go. He often draws up the maps ahead of time. When it's his turn in initiative, he knows what power each creature will use and resolves it quickly. When we ask to do something wacky, he doesn't futz around looking things up. He either knows the answers, or passes it off to a player to look it up while he keeps the action rolling.


It's like chemistry: figure out what's slowing down your reaction and find a way to speed it up!
-blarg