The 30 Minute Skirmish

[Quickleaf]

The single biggest time sink is the battle grid. For skirmishes I wouldn't pull out the miniatures or map, just narrate it and let the DM be the final arbiter of what's within range and so forth.

The question is what is at stake with a skirmish?

Since a skirmish is an easier encounter, if the goal were just to drop the monsters to 0 HP the PCs are obviously going to win. Why bother rolling dice? To penalize the PCs some healing surges?

So the primary objective of a skirmish is not to slay monsters. Sure, it's going to happen, but the PCs have bigger concerns. It might be some form of time limit (stop the guards before they light the beacon), it might be a condition which triggers a different encounter (if enough blood is spilled everything is teleported to the Abyss), or it might be a radically different tactic (protect the slaves or avoid a certain terrain at all costs).

What makes the skirmish encounter interesting and challenging is not the monsters but the situation.

It's the situation that's at stake.

Succeed at stopping those guards in time and you can waltz into enemy territory undetected. Fail at stopping those guards and not only are wyvern riders going to be looking for you, but a hard full-scale battle might break out.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

At which point why not use the skill challenge option? I have successfully used a modified Obsideon system to cover a series of harrassing combat skirmishes... a lot less time and quite fun.

I call the rules "Lethal Obsideon" and would link here if I wasn't posting from my phone

Thread is here!

Sent from my SPH-M900 using Tapatalk

 

[LostSoul]

What makes the skirmish encounter interesting and challenging is not the monsters but the situation.

It's the situation that's at stake.

While that's true, you need to engage with the game's currency or else a skirmish system will be a tacked-on sub-system that doesn't work with the rest of the game.

Healing Surges are one of the most important parts of the game, so that's an obvious choice. What are some others?

Actions - resolve a skirmish and gain/lose extra actions in the next encounter?
Powers - win a skirmish and gain terrain powers for the next encounter? Lose a skirmish and inflict traps and hazards?
Attack modifiers - gain bonuses/penalties to some attack rolls?
Skills - gain bonuses/penalties to various skill checks, like stealth?
Gold - collect/lose some loot, gain/lose the ability to buy more magic items?
Time - force an extended rest? Get there in short order
XP - remove or add creatures to the next encounter? (that don't give you XP?)

 

[UHF]

I think that just running a fight 2 levels lower would be sufficient to really speed up combat a lot.

Also, I disagree about limiting players to At-wills. Many encounter powers will speed up those fights. Cleric - Bane really drops critters in front of a striker party.

What I would suggest is that you get a better understanding of what the purpose of the fight is. Is it to use party healing surges? Is it to make them feel 'Zowie That was fun!' Is it a component of adding more old school exploration?

I feel that what is really missing from 4e is a sense of exploration. When you did an old dungeon way back when, you went through room after room with useless encounter, or exploration and clue hunting. Then you had a fun fight here or there. This worked in that the players didn't usually fully heal between fights.

 

[Pistonrage]

The best way to have quick fights, is to not try and push the PC's to their limits, use an at level or lower encounter group with relatively simple monsters(re-skinning where needed)

 

[UHF]

The best way to have quick fights, is to not try and push the PC's to their limits, use an at level or lower encounter group with relatively simple monsters(re-skinning where needed)

Dude... That's Mike Shea you're talking to. He's beyond what you're saying.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I'm not quite sure what the goal here is.

The idea is to make a type of combat that is faster, while retaining the same level of impact on the game.

The real question is this: if you can come up with a system to do this, why would you ever not use it?

Personally I think the best way to do quick but impactful battles is to have a natural limiter on how many rounds the combat will run.

 

[Daern]

I like this skirmish concept. I also agree with that you want to encourage resource use, just eliminate tactical fiddling. I see this as being useful for obvious throw away fights like thugs, town guards and bar fights once the characters have leveled out of such things.
I like the 1, 2, 3 hit minion idea. I could see the parameters of a quick skirmish being gridless, round robin initiative, and no damage rolls. At-wills do 1 hit, Encounters do 2, and Dailys 3. (Crits double the hit of course) Lacking the grid and the preponderance of damage mods means less tactical negotiating.
I always offer 10xp/level for an under 60 second turn.
I also like the idea of using surges to increase damage.

 

[Daern]

Another idea would be to consider for massive mob fights like the ones in bars and against entire tribes of goblins as Fight Challenges.
It could be a Complexity 5 challenge where every three dead minions equals a success. Failure would of course be when the heroes have been hurt quite enough. This would open up creative skill use to try to end the fight rather than kill everything. Intimidate and Bluff are obvious, Stealth to get away or wait it out, Acrobatics to get to the boss man, Streetwise for dirty tactics, Athletics to battle through the crowd. Sounds good!
Perhaps even a rule that allow a Skill Check as a minor action at the cost of a Healing Surge...

 

[Rel]

With due respect for the goal in mind here, I prefer not to add more subsystems to a game if possible. Instead I prefer a more "global" solution. The house rule I adopted from somebody here at ENWorld (I wish I could recall who it was) was to reduce monster hit points to 60% but increase monster damage by 1/2 level +3.

As a result all fights went faster. "Skirmish" level fights lasting 30 minutes happened frequently by virtue of me simply using fewer monsters than a full blown major encounter. No other rules had to change.

And I found that the players were still eager to spend resources to put the bad guys down as quickly as possible because that increased monster damage HURTS. It kept the healer busy, used up a few Healing Surges to add some tension to the major encounters and generally made things more exciting all the way around.

I'll warn you that it does make the game more "swingy". If the monster dice get hot and the PC dice get cold then it can get ugly. But that's part of gaming that I enjoy so not a problem as far as I'm concerned.