Would this solve the "grind" issue?

[jbear]

Grind is in the mind.

...

Anyway you might already know this basic stuff. But I would suggest just running the game to start with and seeing how it goes. If combat seems to take too long try and address the particular problem then.

Agreed. I have had one fight that I felt dragged on endlessly, without excitement or emotion. Ever. It involved 3 hobgoblin soldiers using phalanx soldier and protecting their 2 archers and controller from the pcs. It also combined some abysmal tactics on the part of the pcs (2nd 4e session EVER) and rolling absolute suck (both sides). Eventually the 3 surviving hobgoblins fled... out of boredom!

Other long fights have been absolutely enthralling. My players love a healthy combination of RP and tactical combat. So when the battlemat is rolled out my players are rubbing their grubby little hands eagerly itching to unleash the dice.

I'd say use of soldiers needs to be taken into account. Also as far as contollers go, spreading the action denial effects, whether tactically optimal or not, is a wise move. Then again, its up to the PCs to use their wits to put a swift end to a controller before he begins denying anyone anything, and therein lies the fun. Surely one is not expected to simply offer them light, squishy, 2 dimensional targets all the time.

Accuracy is another issue to take into consideration. Monsters will go down faster if the pcs are actually hitting them consistently. I don't know how combat orientated you and your players are, or the extent you like to optimise your pcs, but more effecient pcs will end battles faster. I want my players to be able to take more flavourful feat options, so I awarded all the pcs Versatile Expertise as a boon when the completed their first major adventure at lvl 3. I also give them 7 extra points to distribute at character creation which means they can have an 18 and a 16 before racial modifiers. So they are very accurate.

Personally I find 4e very easy to tweak to suit my personal tastes. Take it as a solid starting point and adjust it to suit as you encounter elements that you find out of sinc with your style. I think it is difficult to solve a perceived possible problem before you have even run into it.

 

[Scribble]

I agree with what some others have said about the grind really not being as big an issue as some have stated it to be.

Also I think any sort of grind really only ever occurs if you're determined to have the monsters fight to the death at all costs.

 

[Obryn]

IME, the surest way to avoid grind is to have two Strikers in the party and keept the party size at 6 or lower (and ideally 4-5).

The surest way to encourage grind is to have no Strikers and two (or more) Leaders. (Or have 7+ players.)

Also, anything you can do to speed up combat can reduce or eliminate any perception of "grind" even on the long fights.

(1) Have your players know the rules and plan ahead
(2) Have them roll all their dice at once (...and practice their "number + d20 roll" calculation speed. )
(3) On the DM side of the screen, try using Masterplan or another program to make your end of the game go smoothly with minimal dice fumbling, built-in math functions, and pretty excellent condition & recharge tracking.

-O

 

[Amaroq]

I agree with Obryn, to some extent: extra strikers = more damage dealt out = fights end more quickly.

But, I think Hussar may have the right of it.

I've been using the Skirmisher as the base unit of opposition for my entire campaign, and we've not run into "grind" too badly. If I'm building a "wall of melee defenders", I might anchor it with one or two soldiers, but the majority of the defense will be Skirmishers "flavored" as soldiers - but at the fluff level, not the crunch level.

The times my group have complained about combats have been, as Shin Okada observed, when I've thrown too much "choke point" combat at them: fights in 5x5 corridors just get frustrating for all involved, even when I've tried to keep things "interesting" by having T-intersections, enemies in multiple directions, doorways, and side rooms one can use.

Open spaces are more tactically fun.

Open spaces with interesting terrain? Even better!

I also like Chzbro's advice:

I firmly believe that it's more an issue of encounter design than anything inherent in the combat system. I think that you (Hussar) will find that your ideas about having more appropriately leveled opponents to your group (+/- 2 levels) makes for much more exciting--and dangerous--combats than fights with fewer higher leveled opponents.

Don't be afraid to throw brutes at your players, even brutes a level or two higher. They are easy to hit, but do enough damage to make things frightening when they land a shot. Personally, I try to keep the soldiers around the same level as the group due to their stout defenses. Minions are fun to use (I use 6 for the xp value of 4), but take a care not to bunch them together to start a fight...because they're a lot less fun when your controller wipes them all out in round 1.

Except for the last bit - I actually think part of the fun of being a controller is nuking that group of bunched-together minions.

Minions, IMO, should have defenses a bit more like a Soldier - harder to hit, but once you land a punch, they go down. The idea is, your near misses are wounding him.

I'm also a fan of the "tough minion", as described over in the House Rules forum - implementations vary. Some use "two hits kill", some use "two at-wills or one encounter/daily kill", and some use an actual hit-point value. (Personally, I use a hit point value set so that an At-Will crit by the Defender or Leader kills; anything less wounds 'em.)

 

[DracoSuave]

Grind is in the mind.

This.

Combat is, no matter what you do, going to involve some repetitious actions. What constitutes grind is nothing more than repetition that your players do not enjoy.


It is entirely subjective, and the only way to avoid it is to find out. One group of players absolutely hates having to mop up smaller monsters. They'd be better off with less, but more powerful monsters that make them feel exciting.

Another group hates the sumo-tank effect of solos, so the solution is smaller monsters that can be dispatched quicker, in higher quantity.

Both groups experience grind, but it's a different reason in both cases, and -requires- opposite action... if you gave the grindy encounters from A and gave them to B, B would not find them grindy.


That said, the trick to reducing grind is variation. Traps, hazards, interactive terrain elements go a LONG way to making fights feel more exciting, especially when those elements present minigames of their own.

A black dragon by itself? Possibly a very grindy encounter. A black dragon that is of slightly lower level, but has acid pits all connected to each other in the four corners of the room, and tesla coils in the center of the room shooting lightning at each other that either side can push each other towards?

Now there's two games going on, defeat the dragon AND get the best position (i.e. not in the lightning blasts) Hella not grindy, because the variation in the encounter prevents anything from getting 'samey' even when it's down to the 'at-wills' stage.


Mind you, if your players don't take at-wills for utility and only for damage, they'll find things more grindy.

 

[Scribble]

I also find that, especially with the big solos, reducing the "grind" is possible by not having the encounter happen all at once.

IE in the black dragon encounter mentioned above...

Maybe have the dragon strike first at another location- then at some point if the characters are winning, have the dragon retreat, in order to lick it's wounds. Once the characters reach the next location, it's a new "encounter" so things like encounter powers have been refueled, but hit point and healing surges haven't.

 

[DragoonLance]

You already have the basics of how to avoid grind. If you are really worried look up Stalker0's guide to the anti-grind. Basically just avoid high level encounters, especially with soldiers. I tend to only use soldiers as a mini-boss or lieutenant and use elites+minions instead of solos for bosses. Grind is usually worst in WotC materials due to the high number of L+3 encounters and their dungeon crawl setup.

 

[Felon]

You already have the basics of how to avoid grind. If you are really worried look up Stalker0's guide to the anti-grind. Basically just avoid high level encounters, especially with soldiers. I tend to only use soldiers as a mini-boss or lieutenant and use elites+minions instead of solos for bosses. Grind is usually worst in WotC materials due to the high number of L+3 encounters and their dungeon crawl setup.

That last sentence is QFT. When it comes to grind, WotC are the worst offenders, rather than the guys to look to for solutions.

You heard it here: Revenge of the Giants is the worst D&D adventure I've ever been on.

As to soldiers, the thing that seems to make them a real pain IME is that players seem to lean heavily towards choosing classes that exclusively attack AC. Nobody wants to be the caster anymore. A soldier's AC is high, but his other defenses are more vulnerable.

 

[Felon]

Using more artilleries, lurkers, skirmishers, & brutes (yes brutes) helps to solve "grinding" issue. So as using not using choking terrains too much.

The key is to let monsters attack non-defender PCs. Even brutes can TAKE OAs from PCs and go adjacent to controllers, leaders & strikers. Brutes have tons of HPs. So go aggressive.

Being the guy with the lowest AC in a campaign where the DM uses this end-run strategy, I will attest that it certainly can backfire. You consistently pick the squishiest characters for the role of whipping boy, and you can easily find yourself without a character in the fight to output damage. Worse, you may find that players realize what a bad idea it is to play a squishy, so you start seeing everyone turtling up rather than boosting offense. That's what happened in my group anyway.

My bard rapidly started retraining feats to get scale armor proficiency, then uncanny dodge, then armor specialization, then picking up barkskin armor...and soon I suspect I'll just let the character perish so I can roll up a defender.

It's not a bad strategem, just exercise victimization in moderation.

 

[Obryn]

As to soldiers, the thing that seems to make them a real pain IME is that players seem to lean heavily towards choosing classes that exclusively attack AC. Nobody wants to be the caster anymore. A soldier's AC is high, but his other defenses are more vulnerable.

Word. I had two of the higher-level Boneclaws in a combat this past week. Their AC is something ridiculous like 34. Someone attacked their Fortitude, said, "Crap, only 25... No way." and on checking, I found that it somehow hit. We're talking a 10-point gap between AC and the other defenses.

-O