Why do 4e combats grind?

[ExploderWizard]

Generally though, you want at least one or two characters unconscious at the end of the fight -

Thats a rather strange desire. As an NPC or monster, I want ALL PC's unconscious or dead at the end of a fight.

As the DM I want to see how things play out naturally. If the PC's get into deep trouble via bad decisions or poor luck then thats ok. If by great planning, or good luck the PC's manage to make a tough challenge look like a piece of cake then thats ok too.

Looking to inflict a certain degree of injury/loss with a particular encounter isn't something I plan for as a DM. I have no trouble designing nasty lethal encounters or even situations that are almost a guaranteed TPK if stumbled into without thought. No design survives contact with a living breathing group of clever PC's and I wouldn't want it any other way.

 

[Vayden]

Thats a rather strange desire. As an NPC or monster, I want ALL PC's unconscious or dead at the end of a fight.

As the DM I want to see how things play out naturally. If the PC's get into deep trouble via bad decisions or poor luck then thats ok. If by great planning, or good luck the PC's manage to make a tough challenge look like a piece of cake then thats ok too.

Looking to inflict a certain degree of injury/loss with a particular encounter isn't something I plan for as a DM. I have no trouble designing nasty lethal encounters or even situations that are almost a guaranteed TPK if stumbled into without thought. No design survives contact with a living breathing group of clever PC's and I wouldn't want it any other way.

Ah, see, my goal is always to provide a good, thrilling fight. I try and set it up so that if things go normally, about half the party is down and the other half is bloodied at the point at which they knock off the last monster. Sometimes they have bad luck or make bad decisions and I kill one or two of them, and sometimes I have bad luck or they come up with something ingenious and they wipe the floor with me, but I'm always shooting for that sweet spot.

Because the point isn't for me to sit around dreaming up this beautiful world and populating it realistically - the point is for me to provide a dynamic, exciting world around whatever it is the party is doing. Nothing really exists before they come into contact with it.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Ah, see, my goal is always to provide a good, thrilling fight. I try and set it up so that if things go normally, about half the party is down and the other half is bloodied at the point at which they knock off the last monster. Sometimes they have bad luck or make bad decisions and I kill one or two of them, and sometimes I have bad luck or they come up with something ingenious and they wipe the floor with me, but I'm always shooting for that sweet spot.

I like a good thrilling fight too. I guess my question is: Why does half the party need to be knocked out for the fight to be thrilling?

 

[Dausuul]

I like a good thrilling fight too. I guess my question is: Why does half the party need to be knocked out for the fight to be thrilling?

It's not that they need to be KO'd, it's just that KOs are a reasonably good way to tell whether the fight is thrilling enough. If you aren't putting PCs into the negatives, you probably want to up the difficulty until you are.

 

[Felon]

It's not that they need to be KO'd, it's just that KOs are a reasonably good way to tell whether the fight is thrilling enough. If you aren't putting PCs into the negatives, you probably want to up the difficulty until you are.

Sorry, but add me to the "I don't get it" crowd. "you probably want to up the difficulty until you're routinely dropping PC's into the negatives"? Is that really what you meant to say? If so...Good God. Do you feel that way when you're playing as well as DM'ing?

KO's are not thrilling for the player who's KO'ed. Being benched is frustrating, disempowering, and yawn-inducing.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Sorry, but add me to the "I don't get it" crowd. "you probably want to up the difficulty until you're routinely dropping PC's into the negatives"? Is that really what you meant to say? If so...Good God. Do you feel that way when you're playing as well as DM'ing?

KO's are not thrilling for the player who's KO'ed. Being benched is frustrating, disempowering, and yawn-inducing.

Ah! no, one of the best fight I have been in was last session, the whole party was down at one stage, I was dropped twice. I was on the edge of my seat wondering we would pull it off or would we all die. The roll 20 on the death save is a winner. It also makes for a great story.

Its a way different from 3rd edition where a save or die meant that you could walk into the room and blam make a fort save, though your dead.

 

[ExploderWizard]

It's not that they need to be KO'd, it's just that KOs are a reasonably good way to tell whether the fight is thrilling enough. If you aren't putting PCs into the negatives, you probably want to up the difficulty until you are.

I have never RUN a session of 4E (probably won't) but we are playing it as our regular game right now. Are your players really hardcore and need to be beaten to a pulp every encounter or else dismiss the combat as unchallenging? Every group is different about the amount of beatstick that has to be applied before the fight is fun I suppose.

 

[Vayden]

Unconscious is a speed-bump in 4e. One minor action by the leader and you're back in it, or a standard action by someone else to use a healing potion on you (or make a DC 10 heal check if you haven't used 2nd wind yet). I'm not saying I end up knocking people unconscious every fight, but yeah, that's what I'm going for every time, and I expect the same thing as a player - if the monsters can't even damage us enough to drop one person unconscious at least once, it doesn't really register as actual combat to us when we're the players.

PS - It may seem brutal, but I highly encourage you to try it out at least once - it really is more fun the more risk there is.

 

[Dausuul]

Sorry, but add me to the "I don't get it" crowd. "you probably want to up the difficulty until you're routinely dropping PC's into the negatives"? Is that really what you meant to say?

Pretty much, yes. Although I suppose I should add a qualifier that that's the threat level I find works best; YMMV.

If so...Good God. Do you feel that way when you're playing as well as DM'ing?

Damn straight I do.

I get bored when I don't find a battle challenging. As soon as the outcome is a foregone conclusion, combat becomes a chore. And 4E makes this worse, because even a battle where the outcome is a foregone conclusion takes a while to play out.

And since characters in 4E can bounce back up from unconscious pretty easily, a challenging fight is likely to take somebody into negatives. (I actually dislike the way 4E characters tend to impersonate jack-in-the-boxes, but that's the way combat is set up.)

KO's are not thrilling for the player who's KO'ed. Being benched is frustrating, disempowering, and yawn-inducing.

If you end up benched for half the fight, yes, but that's quite rare. People dropped into the negatives are usually back on their feet a round or two later; and rounds go by fast enough that it's not a huge loss to spend one round saying "I roll a death save."

Again, the goal is not to knock PCs out of the fight. The goal is to push the PCs to their limits. Characters getting KO'd is a sign that you're succeeding at that.

 

[Jack99]

Thanks man, much appreciated. I'm particularly interested in hearing about what the players did to prevent the grind (assuming of course that it doesn't).

Okay, so the fight was on tonight. Unfortunately, one player was ill and had to stay home. So we had 4 players (fighter, warlock, cleric, rogue) against a 3500 xp fight (10th level solo dragon, 10 level 9 minions). A bit rough (that would be between n+4 and n+5 for 4 characters) I thought, so I made a few changes. I removed 20% of the dragon’s hitpoints (to be precise, I started it with 105 damage – it had 525 hitpoints in total), and a couple of minions, but kept everything else as is. I think that keeps the battle at par. Surely if the wizard had been there, he would have done his share of the damage. So a 10th level green dragon druid (Powers from APG) and eight 9th level minions (that deal a bit more damage than normal minions) against the 4 in the party.

The fight lasted 14 rounds and 1h45m (that’s 90 second per turn per person) in real time. But to be fair, it was more like 12 of actually combat, since the two groups started out at opposite ends of a fairly large cavern and there was quite a bit of moving around.

The cleric was first to run out of encounter and dailies in round 10. The warlock ran out of them in round 12, and so did the rogue. The fighter ran out already in round 9, because that’s when he went down.

The fight was very close. Rogue was down no less than 3 times (had 0 surges left at the end), and the fighter was down from round 9 and onwards (he died permanently). The cleric spent the last several rounds with very few hitpoints, and almost died several times of the course of the combat. The warlock ended the combat bloodied and a bit more.

I asked them afterwards to evaluate on the combat, and they were nothing but very positive. It was longer than normally, but in the good way. Fighting a dragon should be special. Regarding the grind, they had no issues with only having at wills for the last couple 2-4 rounds, as it only heightened direness of the situation. They were after all fighting for their lives, running on fumes and all that jazz.
At no point did the combat feel grindy or did they feel the combat was a given. From a DM’s perspective, I thought they were goners from round 10-13. Only when it missed its attacks in round 14 did I think they had a chance. So no grind for me either.

Regarding the setup, it was really nothing fancy. There was an edge they could push it off and pillars they could hide behind to dodge the breath weapon for example. There were also some stalactites they could have made fall down on its head, but no one got that idea.

Anyway, to sum up: It was a great fight, it worked perfectly. All my fears about solos seem to be unfounded (but we’ll see, maybe it was just a fluke ), but if I ever change anything at some other point in time, I will definitely just remove 20-25% of a solo’s hitpoints, assuming there are 5 players in the group. That should definitely remove any chance of a grind, at least in my campaign.

I hope all this made some sense, its 1 AM over here and it’s been a busy week.

Cheers

EDIT: I just wanted to add that I am not saying that people who experience the "grind" are playing wrong or anything. I am just relieved, because between the talk here, and my own fears of solos, I was worried (you know, as worried as one can get over a game) that it could happen to my group. That's why I pushed off using solos until level 9. I wanted the players to have developed their tactical skills and I wanted them to know their powers. Did this change the result? I do not know. But I can honestly say that I am not overly worried about using solos again, soon