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

[Vocenoctum]

This.

It adds verisimilitude if sentient, free-willed bad guys try to bug out when it becomes clear to them that they're going to lose.

I had a couple encounters when I DM'd where the villain's position had obviously become untenable and he fled. (In one case, the guy actually still died from a lingering effect, but he sunk to the bottom of the lake and the players thought he'd escaped...)

The players hated it, most expressing the idea that they had "failed" the encounter because there were no corpses at their feet. (This aside from any loot issues.)

 

[SteveC]

Well, that's a tough thing to answer. The players are supposed to win. So from a certain perspective, most fights are foregone conclusions before they even start.

I think this is a very good point, and one that shouldn't be missed. What we're looking for is a sort of rollercoaster experience, where even though you may not be in any real danger, you get the adrenaline rush from the illusion of what's happening. At least that's how I take most encounters that aren't the climactic battle against the BBEG.

So how to keep the tension going? I think a lot of it comes from the fact that most of the interesting powers (and by that I mean encounter/daily) are used by players very early in a battle. When you're talking about round 10-15+ of a battle, you're usually seeing at-wills being used. After a while, that gets old, from both sides of the screen. You can't really do anything major to affect the combat in the way you did in the early part of the battle.

So how to address that? When I run my second campaign, I'm thinking of resetting some powers after a certain point in the combat, giving everyone a sort of power "second wind." I'm also thinking about adjusting how powers react to bloodied creatures later in the battle, perhaps increasing damage or other effects.

For now, this is all just hypothetical, because I'm going to run the game until at least level 10 by the RAW just to see if things change. Maybe I'm making too much out of the current situation (I know, horrors, I might be wrong!)

--Steve

 

[Forrester]

And as it has been pointed out earlier, the flaw was in the DM's tactics: Vine Horror spellthingajiggers could have used their blind+ongoing attack against PCs because they have blindsight and the wall of fire did not block LOE. In fact, the Vine Horrors, standing behind the WoF, have a great defensive position against the rest of the party.

You really don't get it, do you? This isn't a conversation about DM tactics. But for what it's worth, the Vine Horrors WERE firing over the Wall of Fire; at -5 to hit, and being 7th level creatures, they weren't hitting more than 15% or so of the time.

 

[Joshua Randall]

So how to keep the tension going? I think a lot of it comes from the fact that most of the interesting powers (and by that I mean encounter/daily) are used by players very early in a battle. When you're talking about round 10-15+ of a battle, you're usually seeing at-wills being used.

I think we are in danger of assuming that our personal experiences are universally true.

In the sessions of 4e that I have DM'd, the players hoarded their Encounter and Daily Powers like gold! It would often be 5 rounds into a fight before anyone would use an Encounter Power... and even then most of the players would only use them grudgingly.

So, different play styles will have different effects. Some players like to shoot their wad at the beginning; some like to hold back; some might get together as a group and try to dole out Encounter/Daily powers once per round for the entire fight; etc.

 

[Cadfan]

When I run my second campaign, I'm thinking of resetting some powers after a certain point in the combat, giving everyone a sort of power "second wind." I'm also thinking about adjusting how powers react to bloodied creatures later in the battle, perhaps increasing damage or other effects.

If it works for you, great. But how high of a level are the characters in your current campaign? I ask because at level 1, you have one (possibly two depending on race) per encounter ability. At level 11, you have four, plus whatever you get from utility powers, and whatever you got from your race, and whatever you get from gear. So it shouldn't be as much of an issue as you go up in level.

 

[Korgoth]

When I invoked smaller numbers, I was thinking of OD&D. In OD&D, hit points are all d6 and weapons and virtually all monsters do 1d6 (some allow 2-H weapons to do 1d6+1; some monsters like ogres hit especially hard and do 1d6+2).

So a 4th level Fighting Man or a 4 HD monster has about 14 hp (maybe the FM has more due to a high CON). At 1d6 per hit, such a combatant can figure on absorbing 4 hits... on hit 3 or so he needs to start getting worried. Almost nothing can take you down in one shot, so there's time during melee to fall back and try something else, but a combat won't last multiple hours in real time. I'd be surprised if it lasted more than 15 minutes!

 

[Forrester]

I think this is a very good point, and one that shouldn't be missed. What we're looking for is a sort of rollercoaster experience, where even though you may not be in any real danger, you get the adrenaline rush from the illusion of what's happening. At least that's how I take most encounters that aren't the climactic battle against the BBEG.

So how to keep the tension going? I think a lot of it comes from the fact that most of the interesting powers (and by that I mean encounter/daily) are used by players very early in a battle.
--Steve

I think this is almost, but not quite correct. The problem isn't so much that the characters use most of their interesting powers early (as pointed out, at higher levels they have a lot of them), but that the monsters usually use them early. A big bad blows the uber-encounter power early on, after that he's often got nothing but at-wills for the next 10-11 rounds. As I suggested earlier, having monster encounter abilities recharge on a '6' would take care of this to some degree, add a bit of rollercoaster back to the combat.

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.

 

[Agamon]

If it's obvious to the NPCs that they are going to lose.... Have them surrender! Or try to withdraw, or take a hostage. No one says they have to just stand there and be whittled down.

Heck take a look at the intimidate skill, if you have bloodied the opposition just Tell them to surrender.

No need to fight it out in boredom.

Agreed. Intelligent, non-fanatic foes will not fight to the death when it's not looking good. Shortens the battle and makes sense to boot.

 

[Rechan]

You really don't get it, do you? This isn't a conversation about DM tactics. But for what it's worth, the Vine Horrors WERE firing over the Wall of Fire; at -5 to hit, and being 7th level creatures, they weren't hitting more than 15% or so of the time.

Since they had blindsight, they shoudln't have had the -5.

 

[jeffwik]

Since they had blindsight, they shoudln't have had the -5.

They didn't. Forrester is misremembering.