Tips for expediting 4e Encounters?

[Ktulu]

A couple things I have found to be important.

• Power Cards with Attack/Damage listed on them - This speeds up combat more than just about anything. We had one player holding out on updating his cards; it took him 2-3 times longer to figure out attack and damage per turn.
• Why are the badguys fighting? - An important question, because most things don't fight to the death. Animals would most often retreat when bloodied (unless they have some sort of ragey thing or a reason to fight, like young.). Dumb undead fight to the death, but intelligent undead should be ALL about self preservation. Have them escape. Theyd didn't go through all sorts of immortality inducing rituals just to die from some dumb heroes.
• Oh Crap, the boss is down - If your soldiers are only paid to fight alongside, or only follow you through fear, why wouldn't they run when you drop. I consider a good rule, an enemy of 3 or more levels higher is dropped in a fight, all bloodied allies run, unless they have an important tie to the enemy. I.e. a bunch of brigands run when the leader falls. However, the knights will stay and fight as long as their king is wounded.
• Not all fights are to the death - The enemy wants to capture, the heroes want questions, or maybe the entire fight is only necessary to drive off the raiders, etc... Not every fight needs to be pitched to the death.

Those are the things I look at when I design an encounter. Only when I'm not actively considering these things do my combats run too long.

 

[Sadrik]

If every fight ends in surrender how do the PCs deal with all of the POWs?

It could be the players are then dealing with how long the aftermath of a battle takes. The players have to figure out what to do with them, and how they decide to resolve the situation could take longer than just finishing the fight.

It seems that this is not the way D&D was meant to play - kill the monster and take their stuff and all that.

 

[Ktulu]

Oh, not every fight ends in surrender, but not every person needs to be caught and gutted.

If a group of heroes beat the ever-loving snot out of some bandits and they scream for parlay, the fighter can step forward with a mean look saying, "If I ever catch word of you men in this area again, I may not be so forgiving", letting them run off. This, of course, also allows for the future revenge guy, or the eventual lackey.

If you kill everything, well, that's just a pile'o'bodies.

Believe me; if you take the time to give the enemies some realistic goals of self-preservation, sacrifice, and honor/lack there-of, your players will love you for it.

 

[malraux]

Oh, not every fight ends in surrender, but not every person needs to be caught and gutted.

If a group of heroes beat the ever-loving snot out of some bandits and they scream for parlay, the fighter can step forward with a mean look saying, "If I ever catch word of you men in this area again, I may not be so forgiving", letting them run off. This, of course, also allows for the future revenge guy, or the eventual lackey.

If you kill everything, well, that's just a pile'o'bodies.

Believe me; if you take the time to give the enemies some realistic goals of self-preservation, sacrifice, and honor/lack there-of, your players will love you for it.

I also pretty regularly have creatures run away at the end of combat. Once the fight turns to 5 on 1, that 1 has a good incentive to take off or surrender. I also tend to drop stuff to the state of needs 1, 2 or 3 hits to finish off at then end of combat. There's a bit of finesse to it, but I think it really helps move things along once the conclusion is in sight.

 

[Korgoth]

Cowbell Minons, you need more of it.

Since a non-minion is basically Hector or Ajax, don't use more than one or two per group of foes.

Caveat: I've never run 4E and probably won't, but having played it... a lack of minions makes it horrible (IMO).

 

[Foundry of Decay]

If needed, and if you are fighting things that can't or won't surrender (Undead, certain demons, certain mindless beasts), you can always set a certain 'goal' in a battle that if met will quarter the hp of the remaining critters you are fighting.

Say you are fighting undead, and the group kills off most of them, leaving only a couple to clean up. They suddenly become minions (who still get to roll for damage) and on the next hit have their skulls knocked off.

This does two things: It ends an encounter that is a clear win for the pc's, and and its a little more dynamic in storytelling.

 

[Ktulu]

Cowbell Minons, you need more of it.

Since a non-minion is basically Hector or Ajax, don't use more than one or two per group of foes.

Caveat: I've never run 4E and probably won't, but having played it... a lack of minions makes it horrible (IMO).

While a good suggestion, I might add some to that.

Minions are great..when used sparingly. If every non-named enemy is a minion, D&D just becomes whack-a-minion.

Minions should be used as the shock-troops that are sent headlong into battle. The advance guard, the slave raiders.

When I put them in an encounter, I usually use about 4-8 of them. Too many, and the battlefield gets clogged up. Too few and there really isn't a point in using them.



Also, and this is really important, but something I'm only getting used to:

Don't make every enemy equal in level to the party. That's a lot of HP. Lower level enemies mixed with a higher level "boss" usually equates far better than a group of equal level.

 

[Foundry of Decay]

double post.

 

[Rechan]

The general design philosophy is that a combat in 4e should be no longer than a combat in 3e in real-time. In both cases you have a fight that lasts 40 minutes, in 3e that was 2 rounds, in 4e that's 6 rounds.

That's not happening here, so, hm. Here's a suggestion:

Exploiting PCs. If you have a monster that is marked by a defender, have a PC intentionally incur an OA from that monster. The monster attacks the PC, and the defender punishes the monster. That punishment is going to cause more damage, speeding things up.

The same can be true for DMs: the monsters should cause OAs, and not attack the defender, allowing for both more interesting play, and more damage coming at the monster, killing it faster.

 

[frankthedm]

Minons, you need more of it.

Since a non-minion is basically Hector or

Ajax, don't use more than one or two per group of foes.

Caveat: I've never run 4E and probably won't, but having played it... a lack of minions makes it horrible (IMO).

On the surface this is what i think is a good idea as well. Lots of minions to mow through is something I relish and helps reduce book keeping..UNFORTUNATELY, there seems to be some design dissonance on how credible a threat minions are supposed to be. At first it seemed 4 minions are supposed to be equal to about 1 normal foe. Low Damage, but their attacks add up and PCs rarely had Damage resistance. No hit points, but most of the time the PC still had to overcome their Defenses since they did not take damage on a miss. BUT now there seems to be more powers that autohit and autodamage, like the druid’s at will Fire Seeds, making minions a push over. And I don’t know the full details but I hear some combat class now has a way to get Damage resistance or heal from being hit, making minions even more of a joke.