Combat takes too long

[Zinovia]

I agree. The WWGD adventure I played in had fights that took way too long. The rounds took longer and the number of rounds was larger than any 1st level 3.5 adventure I've ever played. The monsters' ACs, defenses, and especially hit points were very high compared to the PC's attack bonuses and damage. If you are fighting several creatures with a 19 AC and 86 hit points when most of your party has a +4 to hit and does about 6 points of damage on average, it's going to take a long time, regardless of tactics and luck.

Whatever the WWGD adventure is, it sounds like it was designed poorly for first level characters. You shouldn't be facing several mobs with those sorts of defenses at first level. For a tough encounter (boss fight), I can see doing something like that perhaps, but that should be a deliberately hard encounter.

Furthermore it sounds like you are figuring your attack bonuses incorrectly. I don't see how you could possibly have less than a +5 to hit with any weapons-using character. The attack bonus should be [1/2 level + Stat bonus + Weapon proficiency bonus] On top of that, fighters will get another +1 to hit for using their preferred weapon style (one-handed or two-handed). So at first level your characters should have [0 + 3 or 4 + 2 or 3] which will be a minimum of 5, and as much as 7 (8 for the fighter). The weapon proficiency bonus applies to *all* attacks with the weapon keyword, which includes most powers except for spells / prayers. So you should be using your At-will powers with a +6 or so bonus to attack, and pulling out the daily and encounter powers when needed.

Spellcasters will have lower attack bonuses due to not getting a weapon proficiency bonus with them, but the defenses they are targeting are usually a couple points lower than AC is, so it evens out.

 

[Ginnel]

See what you all want to do, is for your first session for a 4th ed newbie group is run an equal number of minions versus the group for a first encounter, go ahead and take about hmmm 1 off all of their defences.

The players will be slaughtering through them like 3rd ed, this is where you jump em with the second encounter same number of kobolds again proper minions in the middle of the road again but this time you have an equal number of dragonshields/slingers/whatever join in, this is where you play the imperial march or something similar and cackle with glee as they wreck merry havok against your over confident party.

Mu..ha..Muhaha....Muwhaahahahahah!!

 

[Bump2daWiza]

Our first few combats have each taken almost an entire session to run. Largely because monsters appear to have so many damn hit points.

 

[keterys]

Curious: People complaining about monster hit points:

How many hits from an at-will would you expect a normal (non-elite or solo) monster to take to kill? Encounter? Daily?

How many rounds do you want a fight with a Solo to last?

For example, if you expect one hit from an encounter or two at-wills to kill a normal monster then a party of five launching five encounter powers would be expected to kill half the monsters (or more, with AoE) in the first round of combat.

The length of the solo one gets interesting because some Solo fights you're willing to burn all your dailies and others not really at all, and that makes a big difference on the fight length.

Then to reverse things - are you similarly dissatisfied with the damage output of monsters and feel they should do damage more quickly?

 

[Jack99]

Our first few combats have each taken almost an entire session to run. Largely because monsters appear to have so many damn hit points.

What is your party size?
Can you provide examples of a fight or two (as in what monsters did you fight)
And what is the length of your sessions?

 

[timbannock]

4e combat is roughly the same as 3e: roll-hit-damage-roll-hit-damage ad infinitum.

Haven't played enough to know if that's true or not, but based solely on the 1 combat I ran from Kobold Hall in the DMG, it seems a lot more like:

move-roll-hit-damage-possible forced move and/or condition-move-activate class feature-roll-hit-damage-special effect-condition and/or forced move...

There's a lot going on in there.

If the goal of combat is to kill baddies, how else can you do it but roll to hit and cause some damage? I think 4e shows you how else: you can move around, use the environment, deal out conditions and forced movement...I think that's everything and the kitchen sink to boot!

 

[Arbitrary]

You have to provide party specifics or it is hard to make sense of the issue.

 

[Jarec]

From my groups experience combat is a lot faster. We are typically getting two largist encounters done in a session plus some pure RP elements. Under 3.5 it would be more like 1-2 medium encounters or 1 and some RP. In last Mondays session they even wasted a dozen undead before the monsters got an action. Much more dramatic but can also be very brutal on both the party and the monsters.

 

[Tellerve]

Rogues can take out things fast. My lvl 1 brutal scoundrel rogue can currently do a +8 hit w/ an absolute max of 34 damage. (Easy Target w/ shurikens, 15 str, 18 dex, burtal scoundrel, backstabber: 2d6+4+2d8+2 & potentially slowed w/ CA till at least next round.)

However, we go down like wet paper bags. The best thing for me is to let the defender (pally in my case) take agro w/ a mark, then I'll come from behind w/ flanking for constant CA. We took out a 'boss' npc in 2-3 rounds like this. Defender characters should be positioning to better allow for rogues to come in from behind, or to position the npc so the ranger gets clear shots, or to position multiple npcs together for wizards, etc.

Why do you say like wet paper bags? Let's say you have a fighter with 18 str and 15 con, vs a rogue with 18 dex and 12 con (the 15 is the str like your character). At 2nd level the fighter has 36 hps, the rogue 29. Ok, 7 hps, but probably the ACs will be fairly close to each other. Scale and a shield for the fighter vs, leather/hide and dex for the rogue. I'm just not seeing the "wet bag" scenario. Obviously they have less healing surges so can't continue on fighting encounter after encounter, but off the bat I think they aren't such wet bags.

Or maybe I'm missing something?

Tellerve

 

[Pickles JG]

Fighter AC 20 Rogue AC 17. Kobold minion does 3.9% of the fighter's HP per swing & 6.9% of the rogue's. Add in the fighter's extra surges & you see why you don't want Rogues to be taking flack.