Combat takes too long

[jtarbox]

I'll have to agree with most of the comments.

We played a 4 hour session all at lvl 1 with a rogue, wizard, and paladin. This was a basic dungeon claw to get used to the mechanics of combat. Most of the fighting was fairly short lived, prolly longer on the initial fight and sped up considerably when we got used to the characters. We managed 2 trap encounters, a bit of searching around larger rooms, and 5 encounters. Unfortunately, we misread the hit point value calculation and we only added out con modifier to our hit points instead of our entire con score at 1st level, so we were all running at about half health w/ half valued healing surges.

Encounter 1: 4 gobbies, we did alright, but with half health I felt like a paper tiefling...

Encounter 2: 3 gobbies, we were a bit more prepared and hit em hard and fast.

Encounter 3: 2 beetles.. no idea what they were, but they went down fairly fast.

Encounter 4: 8 minions and an elite (i think, or a normal). This followed the beetle fight immediately due to the noise we made. They could only come at us one at a time and we had very good positions for attacks of oppotunity. The elite went down nicely after the wizard softened him up with a flaming sphere for a round or so.

Encounter 5: 2 elite (i think, or maybe an elite and a normal). Each party was aware of each other. Main guy in some circle room with his 'pet' dog thing up some stairs. I [rogue] ran in to the opposing side while the pally ran right up to the main guy and marked him. I got flanking from behind and we made short work of him. The dice gods were in our favor that encounter as I got 1-2 crits and the npc missed on the pally 2-3 times. The dog pet thing got into melee right around the time his master died, and we managed to take it out in a round or two.

Overall, once used to things, combat ran smoothly. Most of the hold up was figuring out what power to use at the right time.

 

[Jasperak]

It is probable that the DM put in extra opponents for us since we did have 6 people. All I know is that my dwarven fighter kept getting b!tch-slapped by kobold minions. Those 4 hit points keep adding up. And true, I get the feeling that we don't play well together, tactically speaking of course. It doesn't change the fact though that a couple bad rolls here, a couple extra monsters there, not a single one of our combats lasted less than 6 rounds. We were never really in any danger as a party, though our fights did drag on longer than I felt appropriate.

 

[keterys]

Honestly, I'm more than happy to see combats go at least 6 rounds, but the time required should go down at a steady rate as people get more and more experienced.

 

[erik_the_guy]

It might be a DMing issue. If the DM throws 5 monsters with 30 hp each against your party he isn't being fair, and the wizard is not going to be as effective. Strikers are the best characters in this situation. My level 2 rogue gets about +12 to hit (with combat advantage, and non min/maxed stats) and does around 18-20 damage on an average hit (more if I use an encounter power). If your party doesn't have a striker or two, the DM should not send a lot of high HP monsters against you.

Also, if the combats are taking over a dozen rounds, the DM might be hitting you with too much (an average party of lvl 1s would take down about 2 of those kobolds in 3 of 4 turns). As the wizard you can make combat a lot shorter by hitting 3 enemies in one turn, or using your spells to move control the battlefield and give your allies combat advantage.

 

[Jasperak]

It might be a DMing issue. If the DM throws 5 monsters with 30 hp each against your party he isn't being fair, and the wizard is not going to be as effective. Strikers are the best characters in this situation. My level 2 rogue gets about +12 to hit (with combat advantage, and non min/maxed stats) and does around 18-20 damage on an average hit (more if I use an encounter power). If your party doesn't have a striker or two, the DM should not send a lot of high HP monsters against you.

Also, if the combats are taking over a dozen rounds, the DM might be hitting you with too much (an average party of lvl 1s would take down about 2 of those kobolds in 3 of 4 turns). As the wizard you can make combat a lot shorter by hitting 3 enemies in one turn, or using your spells to move control the battlefield and give your allies combat advantage.

18-20 on average? My dwarven fighter does a MAX of 17 with a maul and dwarven weapon training. What the heck am I missing?

 

[keterys]

Well, you're a fighter and he's a rogue

That's about right for a rogue, assuming he's either a brutal scoundrel or a trickster using sly flourish. His attack bonus suggests he's using got at least 2 of (20 Dex, Dagger, +1 Magic Enh, Nimble Blade feat) - a rogue with backstabber deals 2d8 Sneak Attack, so you're looking at 1W + Dex + (Str or Cha) + 9 (+ Enh and/or Focus), which easily hits the range indicated.

 

[JaeKin]

Our party of 4:
Dwarf Fighter
Tiefling Warlord
Halfling Rogue
Elf Ranger

The encounters have been pretty short, most only last 4-6 rounds I think. Our DM was cutting back on some of our early encounters, but we were drilling through them pretty easily, and he's been throwing some encounters meant for 5 adventurers. Haven't had too many encounters with lots of minions, those usually took a bit longer (Not having a wizard drags them out, but with my fighter's cleave and the rangers two arrow attack we take them down pretty quickly. I had an impressive cleave + AP + cleave one encounter where I took down 4 minions in a single turn.)

Mainly our group works well together (Not to knock anyone who feels the combat is long or assume you don't know how to work together) I try to make sure as the fighter to get into the thick of it early and tie up the big hitters and keep the enemies off our soft targets, the warlord works well with the rogue easily moving him into flanking, and our ranger takes down their artillery and controllers early. Haven't really felt the enemies have too many hp either, usually once we concentrate on an enemy, it won't last a full round. We do have a lot of damage with the two strikers, warlord throwing around his great axe, and I'm pretty happy with my warhammer damage.

I think our longest encounter was in the kobold lair adventure against the large white dragon, and I think it only made it 6 or 7 rounds.

For me though, as long as an encounter stays fun, how many rounds or how much of the session it takes up doesn't ruin it for me. I just dislike when a encounter devolves into a tedium and I find myself simply waiting for the next round so I can take my single action and already know the outcome probably isn't going to be that spectacular. Haven't really had that encounter happen yet.

 

[KarinsDad]

With 4 hour sessions, we did:

1 Encounter and a lot of Roleplaying on session one (which lead to DMG and KotS dungeon crawls which we only left once)

4 Encounters on session two
5 Encounters on session three
3 (or 4, not quite sure if we combined two into one) Encounters on session four
4 Encounters on session five

So, an average of one encounter per hour. This includes exploring, looting, taking time out to search and heal, stopping for the players to discuss plans and goals, etc. My Wizard is even mapping (which we have not really done since 1E or possibly 2E days).

I would estimate that the actual combat portion averages about 40 minutes each.

That's typically better than 3.5 by a factor of maybe 1.5 times quicker with typically more 4E opponents on average (due to minions) than in 3.5.

 

[Jasperak]

Well, you're a fighter and he's a rogue

That's about right for a rogue, assuming he's either a brutal scoundrel or a trickster using sly flourish. His attack bonus suggests he's using got at least 2 of (20 Dex, Dagger, +1 Magic Enh, Nimble Blade feat) - a rogue with backstabber deals 2d8 Sneak Attack, so you're looking at 1W + Dex + (Str or Cha) + 9 (+ Enh and/or Focus), which easily hits the range indicated.

I think I'm going to pay little more attention to what the strikers do. A rogue better in combat than a fighter. I might just have to let a couple of those pesky minions through the front lines

 

[keterys]

Hah - actually, you're a lot better at dealing with minions than a rogue is. His 18-20 damage still only counts for 1 when hitting a minion.