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

[Edena_of_Neith]

(off-topic)

Hey there, Forrester. Long time no see! : )
I am busy dissing elves on another thread. Down with the elves! Kill the pointy-ears!

 

[Rechan]

Unless you want to continue talking in hypotheticals, and quibbling over slight differences, can you give us some hard, fast examples of:

What you fought,
What your party's level and makeup are, and
What died first and what you had to just stand around hacking?

 

[Forrester]

Unless you want to continue talking in hypotheticals, and quibbling over slight differences, can you give us some hard, fast examples of:

What you fought,
What your party's level and makeup are, and
What died first and what you had to just stand around hacking?

Frankly, I'd prefer to talk in hypotheticals, as I think it's relatively safe given the consistent fact of monsters with lots o' hit points and low damage-dealing.

I think the situation is roughly analogous to the following:

Let's say that we have a dice-roll-off -- I roll a d6 and you roll a d8. A '4' counts as a 'hit' for either of us.

Scenario #1: I have to 'hit' you 3 times before you 'hit' me 4 times.
Scenario #2: I have to 'hit' you 9 times beore you 'hit' me 12 times.

I think I'm at a general advantage in this contest -- I'm going to win this little battle the majority of the time. But the number of times I win Scenario #2 is going to be a *much* greater percentage than I win Scenario #1.

-------
However, because you're curious, the battle was an 11th level party (goblin rogue, dragonborn paladin, human warlord, human wizard, and a warlock, I think) against three shambling mounds, four vine horror spellfiends, and a Briar Witch Dryad. The Dryad & company ended up attacking all from the same direction -- an early Wall of Fire and Ice Storm successfully immobilized/slowed a couple of Mounds, allowing the very cheaty goblin rogue + his help to take out a good chunk of mound hit points. The monsters were absolutely a threat -- the paladin was bloodied and swallowed into a mound (best character for that to happen to by far, luckily) and the warlord and rogue were also bloodied along the way, but even so, after a point it never felt *dangerous* -- really, after the Wall of Fire went up and the two mounds hit by the Ice Storm were immobilized/slowed. After all, even on a successfuly hit, the worst that can happen is that a monster takes away 15% of your starting hp.

BTW, the brutes went down first, followed by the vine horrors; the dryad tried to get away, but just for closure's sake Wizzy the Wizard did a little Arcane Gate action and we caught up with her. I think a lot of this is moot, though.

 

[Boarstorm]

I think the more interesting question is not what you were fighting, but what character you were playing in this scenario.

The ranger in my group tends to get herself a good 20 squares away from the action and snipe from safety. To her, battles DO tend to drag on (except when things finally manage to get in range to counterattack, of course). For the defender on the other hand, he thanks Lady Luck every round he remains on his feet and finds combat to be much more... intense.

 

[Benimoto]

I'm saying that if it so happened that the combat got down to, say, just the Earth Titan and one of his buddies against a still-pretty-healthy 16th level party, it seems odd that the battle will take at least another 6-8 rounds (because damn that Titan has a lot of hit points) but no party member would really be in any danger whatsoever.

Of course these must be two Earth Titans on a terrain-free map, just standing still and repeatedly attacking the defender in the party right? Because otherwise, a lot can happen to make the battle interesting. Two Earth Titans, making 4 attacks, do something like 51 damage if they hit with 3 out of 4 attacks, which is uncomfortably close to half the hit points your average striker at that level has.

Plus, as long as you're just running hypothetical numbers, I think you're doing yourself a disservice by just looking at the brutes. You may see them as the heavy hitters because they do a lot of damage with their attacks, but as you've already noticed they miss a lot. As per the advice in the DMG, brutes are designed to be boring/simple in combat.

But again, if you don't want boring slugfests, don't design boring slugfests as encounters. Include a variety of monster roles, put terrain in that will shape the battle, and occasionally have reinforcements or other surprise twists change the way things are going.

 

[jasin]

But again, if you don't want boring slugfests, don't design boring slugfests as encounters. Include a variety of monster roles, put terrain in that will shape the battle, and occasionally have reinforcements or other surprise twists change the way things are going.

I had hoped that interesting encounters would be simpler to design in 4E than 3E, not more complex.

 

[Cadfan]

To a certain extent, this is inevitable. D&D is a game of attrition. The players have 5 d00ds amongst them, and the DM has perhaps 5 d00ds as well. They fight. Eventually, if things go right, the players still have 5 d00ds and the DM has 3. The DM is likely to lose now as his d00ds get outnumbered. But you still have to go through the trouble of actually killing his d00ds.

There are three possible solutions.

1. Swingy combats where killing d00ds takes only a moment. Unfortunately, unless you do this by using really weak monsters that the PCs can push over, this means that the PCs will suffer the same potential to have all their d00ds get killed.

2. Monster tactics. Once it is clear that the DM is going to lose all his d00ds, they surrender, run away, or otherwise vacate the area.

3. Deal with it. Its not THAT long. And once the PCs have killed a few d00ds, they can take the rest down faster by ganging up on them.

The only way to make fights ACTUALLY suspenseful for lengthy periods of time is to put the PCs up against tougher opponents, and accept that some of the PCs will die.

So... those are your choices. Swingy combat where PCs die and the fight ends in a round or two, DM fixes it with monster tactics, or just ignore it and kill the monster. From a game design perspective, there really aren't any other options.

 

[SSquirrel]

On my way to bed so I'll try and comment more in teh morning, just wanted to put a quick "Hi!" in from a fellow ISCABBSer

 

[Incenjucar]

I had hoped that interesting encounters would be simpler to design in 4E than 3E, not more complex.

3E was a long string of solo encounters in many cases.

 

[Korgoth]

So... those are your choices. Swingy combat where PCs die and the fight ends in a round or two, DM fixes it with monster tactics, or just ignore it and kill the monster. From a game design perspective, there really aren't any other options.

Really? What about the option of having all the numbers be smaller? That's neither particularly swingy nor does it take an hour and a half for "mop up".