"Looks like we're going to win this battle . . . in about 90 minutes from now."

[Rechan]

They didn't. Forrester is misremembering.

By chance, are you Forrester's DM? Or a player at his table?

I'd be curious about your observations too.

 

[jeffwik]

By chance, are you Forrester's DM? Or a player at his table?

I'd be curious about your observations too.

I played the warlord/wizard multiclass who put up the wall of fire in this particular scenario. It was also me who suggested cutting everyone's hit points in half across the board. I had that idea when the paladin was engulfed by the shambling mound, and we realized that given how many hit points the paladin had and how little damage the mound was doing, getting engulfed wasn't such a raw deal for him; engulfed or not, he could kill the mound well before dropping himself, either way.

The wall of fire was directly between the PCs and a group of shambling mounds, which were flanked on either side by the vine horror artillery. After the mounds were caught in the ice storm, the wall of fire blocked them from directly leaving the area of the storm to attack the PCs, halting their assault. The vine horrors, however, were not positioned such that the wall of fire was between them and the PCs. I suppose they could have moved into that position, but they'd have been moving into the persistent effect of the ice storm, and once the wall of fire was used to disadvantage the PCs it would have been ended. In fact that is just what happened, when the vine horrors circled around behind the PCs (taking advantage of the difficult terrain and their swampwalk ability, IIRC) to push a couple of characters into the wall of fire with their lash of fear power.

But this has zero to do with Forrester's point about the combat effectively being resolved within 3-4 rounds, inasmuch as it's clear whether the PCs will win or lose, but there still being another 5-6 rounds to actually play out to completion. It may be an artifact of the full-transparency way we were playing (playtesting, really), but it's something we saw in three of the five encounters we've played out.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

That was a problem during playtesting... It's not anymore.

To wit:

"On your turn, you must engage the target you challenged or challenge a different target. To engage the target, you must either attack it or end your turn adjacent to it. If none of these events occur by the end of your turn, the marked condition ends and you can’t use divine challenge on your next turn."

If the bad guys run far enough away so that the paladin can't hit them with a ranged attack, the divine challenge will wear off.

Even if it wouldn't wear of due to that, as long as the enemy is just running away, nothing bad happens to him.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

You really don't get it, do you? This isn't a conversation about DM tactics.

I think I get it, altho I was not present. And I disagree, the DM tactics do come into play.

But.. as I see it:

Your group had a tactical advantage from terrain and placement, used two nasty daily powers to futher control the battlefield, and worked as a team... and found that the CR equivilent combat was not the challenge you expected it to be.

Glancing at the MM, I can see some DM tactical options with the critters involved that might have impacted your opinion of that combat. That combination looks like it could be very nasty.... especially if the location was a nice swamp

However.. your post was more about the grinding nature of 4e combat when faced with encounters full of monsters that lack a recharge/bloodied/death throe mechanic in restricted terrain.
My question for you... is this really new to 4e or is it encounter design?

 

[LostSoul]

Maybe changing victory conditions from a binary win/loss would help?

You go into combat to win, yeah, but you also have another goal. Save the princess, get the pie, close the portal.

Awesome. Okay, so you are trying to get your goal, and the monsters are trying to stop you - or achieve some goal of their own. Summon the monster into the princess, eat the pie, open the portal.

As the combat proceeds, each side moves closer to its goal. You try to reach the princess on the altar while the demon-worshipper works a ritual. As the rounds tick by, she becomes less and less human. The pie gets eaten. The portal slowly opens.

When one side is dead, then you know that you've won, but how much have you lost?

Now I'm not saying that your combats are binary win/loss conditions - I have no idea. Or if this would solve your problem. I'm just thinking out loud here.

 

[Festivus]

I can tell you one experience I had where the players thought they had been beaten to a TPK but fought back to win it, and another where the party thought they had things well in hand only to be forced to flee. From the sounds of it, if it was a mop up of minions I would have had them flee the battle (if it was really obvious and nothing had anything waiting in the wings).

Yeah, perhaps 4E is a bit swingy... but I think it swings both ways.

 

[Plane Sailing]

(One idea that a friend of mine had was to allow each creature with an encounter-power the ability to recharge that power on a '6'. I like this - a lot.)

This is basically my plan too - otherwise I agree, it is entirely possible for combats to turn into a bit of a pointless grind.

We even found this with the 1st level PCs against the black dragon, because the party quickly used up their encounter and daily powers and were stuck with at-will, at-will, at-will for the next 15 rounds of combat

Overall I like the principle of melees taking more than 2-5 rounds (which was what it always seemed to reduce to in my 3e games after about 8th level), but I'd like it to happen without ending up as a grind against hp with the at-wills (on both the PCs and the monsters part)

Cheers

The other option is that monsters hold back using their encounter powers early . . . I'm not sure that tactically that necessarily makes sense. It's obviously situation-specific, but I don't even have a feel for even roughly what percentage of situations it would be a good idea.

FWIW the DMG suggests that monsters use their encounter powers early in order to make sure they get to use them

 

[Raven Crowking]

Forrester: You're spot-on with your observations.

I've DM'd around 15 5-6 hour sessions for my group so far and I can tell you from pure play experience that if you as a DM get off the ball even a little bit, the situation you describe is extremely common, ie the "combat that should have been over half an hour ago but looks like it will go on a half hour more".

Concur.

Wait until the shiny newness wears off, or 5e is announced, and suddenly this will be an "obvious" problem that "everyone" knew about.

It is also a problem that was predicted to arise, given the nature of changes foreshadowed by WotC. The solutions suggested here are the predicted solutions, which give rise to other problems.

Lessening the attrition element of earlier editions means that there is a smaller range of encounter power that is both "challenging" and not immediately deadly. Re-engineering 4e to include daily attrition, though, means that non-deadly encounters can still be significant overall. If 4e was OGL instead of GSL, I feel certain that a re-engineered game would be on the market within a year's time, and that it would play considerably better than 4e now does.

(My opinion, of course.)

IMHO, the designers did some really nice work, but they didn't understand the roots of all the complex problems from 3e that they wished to resolve, and thus merely "layered" some of those problems into the rules in such a way as they don't become immediately obvious. As rules mastery increases, and as the "Oooh! New! Shiny!" factor dies down, I expect that you will be hearing many more people making the same observations.


RC


EDIT: Re Lost Soul's comments about binary win/lose: In earlier editions, the attrition model was a built-in check against binary win/lose battle conditions. So long as attrition was possible, even a relatively simple battle could have important consequences later. Thus, each round of a battle, even if you were certain that you were going to win could be important, thereby sustaining tension.

 

[Boarstorm]

So long as attrition was possible, even a relatively simple battle could have important consequences later. Thus, each round of a battle, even if you were certain that you were going to win could be important, thereby sustaining tension.

How is that any different? Just substitute healing surges for hit points and it's the exact same thing.

 

[Raven Crowking]

How is that any different? Just substitute healing surges for hit points and it's the exact same thing.

The described problem started during the 3e era (IMHO), because the number inflation made lower-CR monsters laughable in the face of higher level characters. Where in G1, for example, Gygax had no problem including a wide range of monsters into his adventure, a 3e adventure of the same level could not have used baseline orcs in the same way to the same effect.

It didn't help when WotC ran an online article about how that wandering monsters were "unfun". No form of attrition is important if you can use all your interesting powers, then "recharge" them before you have to use them again. Wandering monsters were a form of check against "all out/recharge" play. It wasn't smart to go all out, because you never knew exactly what you'd have to face before recharging.

It is also true that slow attrition allows for more action than fast attrition. In 1e, a 4th level fighter might be within his 35 hp (supplimented by limited party healing) over a large span of encounters, but he would feel the loss of each hit point. How many healing surges does that same fighter have in 4e? The fewer, the more likely he is to want to regain them after each use. The more he can do so, the less likely he is to worry about spending them, and the less attrition experience (and hence tension derived thereby) within the game.

Indeed, it was complaints about this tension that led directly to the number inflation of 3e. WotC listened to what gamers thought they wanted; the designers didn't given enough thought to why things were the way they were in previous editions before tinkering with them. 3e requires a lot of houserules, IMHO, to fix its problems. 4e just requires more, and I've already done the work for 3e.

The easiest fixes in 4e are probably:

(1) Use wandering monsters to ensure that your party does not assume that it can rest, and

(2) Include a wandering monster roll at/near the end of each encounter (the noise attracts the monster). If a new creature is indicated, consider it part of the ongoing encounter (i.e., per-encounter abilities do not recharge).

These factors will make it less likely that players use all of their cool abilities first, and will make them have to consider whether or not it is worth using certain abilities in any given encounter.

A harder to implement, but far more satisfying, fix would require bringing down number inflation for both PCs and monsters, so that each sword swing is more lethal.

(BTW, for 3e folks who like the idea of minion monsters, but don't like the 4e take on them, simply pull out your 1e MM, convert AC and add attack bonus of +1 per full Hit Die, or +0 for monsters of less than 1 HD. There are a few monster abilities you might have to adjust to use properly; simply use the text from your 3e/3.5e MM instead. Viola! Instant minion monsters for 3e.)


RC