Why Must I Kludge My Combat?

[Scribble]

Personally I think a lot of the "problems" with the combat system in 4e are actually user error.


I mean if I drive my car around in low gear all the time I will overwork my engine and get poor gas mileage... So is the problem the low gear? Should my car be fixed to not have a low gear anymore?

 

[Fanaelialae]

I agree to a point... I don't remember people having to tweak low level combat like that, but in 4e some people do... otherwise I agree with you, I haven't commented on 4e being objectively better or worse at all in this thread... I have given 3 points I felt abnout 4e combat and I have given my feelings that fudging can skew looking at the length of combats. In the end I don't think "3e did it too" is really a good way to justify things in 4e, but that's just my oppinion.

Folks may not have had to tweak low level combat in earlier editions "that way," but they often had different kinds of kludges to address problems such as combat being too swingy or lethal. House rules such as rolling 3d6 instead of 1d20 to hit, or adding Con to starting hp.

My point isn't that 3e, 2e, or 1e "did it too." It's that no system is objectively perfect (though if you're lucky you might just find one that's perfect for you).

 

[Storminator]

Our one house rule is designed to make 4e combats last longer. We give minions a save vs damage - make it, no damage, miss it and die. Our DM decided there were too many auto-damage with no attack roll powers for minions to be worthwhile. So far it's fantastic.

We only meet once a month for 4 hours. We devote most of our sessions to the combats, typically two or three per session. They tend to last an hour, tend to be level+ in difficulty, and tend to be important parts of the plot.

Our DM is pretty good about making the fights interesting and dangerous and a lot of fun. That's a big part of the draw for D&D, so we're very pleased that it works so well. I think our group is unanimous that 4e is the best edition of D&D ever. I certainly don't want to play any other edition again (I've played them all).

PS

 

[Raven Crowking]

Personally I think a lot of the "problems" with the combat system in 4e are actually user error.


I mean if I drive my car around in low gear all the time I will overwork my engine and get poor gas mileage... So is the problem the low gear? Should my car be fixed to not have a low gear anymore?

You may be right, but the content of WotC's adventures suggests (to me) that what seems to be "user error" is, in fact, what WotC intended.

Note, too, that it is fully possible to appreciate a thing while accepting that it has flaws. It could be that, for some, the 4e combat engine per RAW is flawed, but they find that, with the addition of their kludges, RAW+kludges beats whatever other engine they are aware of. As far as I am aware, there is nothing wrong with holding that sort of opinion.....indeed, based on their statements, I think that there are folks in this thread who do.


RC

 

[Scribble]

You may be right, but the content of WotC's adventures suggests (to me) that what seems to be "user error" is, in fact, what WotC intended.

Note, too, that it is fully possible to appreciate a thing while accepting that it has flaws. It could be that, for some, the 4e combat engine per RAW is flawed, but they find that, with the addition of their kludges, RAW+kludges beats whatever other engine they are aware of. As far as I am aware, there is nothing wrong with holding that sort of opinion.....indeed, based on their statements, I think that there are folks in this thread who do.


RC

Sure- I'm not indicating it's perfect, like Fanaelialae said, no system is perfect.

But again I see what a lot of people call flaws as user error. Monsters not being selected properly, encounters not being built in a good way, monsters fighting to the death instead of running away/surrendering, no one trying to regroup- and this doesn't even account for how the players act in combat.


I guess you could argue it's the fault of the system that it can't handle all builds/situations perfectly... But that seems kind of wrong to me.

Anytime you start adding more options to a system it's going to have more areas where if you combine the wrong elements it won't work right- but the benefits you gain from having those elements in the first place is better then the potential problems.

This is what I see here.

Arguing that just because I don't agree with what YOU say is a problem means I'm arguing that the system is perfect feels a little disingenuous man.

 

[Raven Crowking]

But again I see what a lot of people call flaws as user error.

Sure....And I am agreeing that, to some degree, you may be right.

I guess you could argue it's the fault of the system that it can't handle all builds/situations perfectly... But that seems kind of wrong to me.

Sure, again.....But it rather depends upon how proscribed the builds/situations it can handle well are. I would say that it's the fault of the system if it can't handle many builds/situations common to previous editions well. After all, it says "D&D" on the label!

"All" and "perfectly" need not apply!

Arguing that just because I don't agree with what YOU say is a problem means I'm arguing that the system is perfect feels a little disingenuous man.

Good thing, then, that no one is making that argument.


RC

 

[Obryn]

First, you are assuming he only does it for one monster per combat, Which I doubt is the case. Second, you assume it's the last monster in the combat so it's a given the PC's can gang up on it. And depending on the rolls doing this for more then one monster in combat can definitely affect the length of combat...

Hah! You're right, I am assuming that, but you're making the opposite assumption - that he's doing it all the time and it's making a major impact on his combats. I really have no idea which one is the case, so I'm just throwing out what I've done since my early days of gaming. And essentially we're arguing about two different things.

4e for me is no different than any other RPG I've played - on very rare occasions I fudge, giving a monster more or less HPs at the last minute for dramatic reasons, at about even ratios. There's nothing special about 4e that makes fudging like this remarkable, and we can look to one of the hundreds of fudging threads for discussion on it.

My argument is that slight and occasional HP fudging won't change a player's or DM's perception of combat length in the slightest because the amount of time we're talking about is minimal and inconsequential in relation to the combat as a whole. Maybe 2-3 minutes, every few fights. It's irrelevant.

NOW - If we're talking about effectively knocking 5%-10% of the HPs off every other monster, we'd be seeing a considerable difference. I'm guessing this is what you're interpreting the original statement as. Yes, that would be a big change, tantamount to a house-rule, that would certainly influence the length of combat, and you'll find no argument from me there.

In the end, my point is that it's kind of disingenuous to say "IME combat as written works perfectly"... but you're not running it as written, and admit so.

And I'd argue that, by focusing on the minutiae you're ignoring the big picture - that it doesn't matter in the slightest to the overall experience of combat. I mean, you can take a hard-line RAW approach like you're doing, but other than scoring rhetorical points, it's irrelevant.

Speaking of - Is having monsters retreat running combat as written? I mean, I could cut my combats by a third, easily, by having monsters retreat when the situation gets sticky.

-O

 

[Blackbrrd]

Personally I think a lot of the "problems" with the combat system in 4e are actually user error.


I mean if I drive my car around in low gear all the time I will overwork my engine and get poor gas mileage... So is the problem the low gear? Should my car be fixed to not have a low gear anymore?

A system with many user errors is often badly designed.

I usually discover that when I try to write the user manual for the software I designed. If it's hard to write the user manual my design usually stinks. If I don't write the user manual or write the hard-write user manual, I often get user errors.

I don't know what can be done to 4e to make it better, but it's quite likely something to cut down on the user errors.

 

[Dausuul]

Sure- I'm not indicating it's perfect, like Fanaelialae said, no system is perfect.

But again I see what a lot of people call flaws as user error. Monsters not being selected properly, encounters not being built in a good way, monsters fighting to the death instead of running away/surrendering, no one trying to regroup- and this doesn't even account for how the players act in combat.

IMO, the difference between "user error" and "bad design" lies in how common the problem is.

If 5% of users have a given issue and 95% don't, then it's reasonable to suggest the ones that have the problem may be doing it wrong.

If 50% of users have a given issue, that's a design problem and blaming it on user error is a cop-out. Well-designed systems don't lead large numbers of users into error.

 

[Scribble]

Sure....And I am agreeing that, to some degree, you may be right.

Cool... I like being right!

Sure, again.....But it rather depends upon how proscribed the builds/situations it can handle well are. I would say that it's the fault of the system if it can't handle many builds/situations common to previous editions well. After all, it says "D&D" on the label!

"All" and "perfectly" need not apply!

That's fine- but I guess this is where we disagree as to the nature of the problem.

Since we've added new options into the mix, it also stands to reason that while we can have the same "fight concepts" as in previous editions (since it has D&D on the label!) we can't always just rely on how we did it in previous editions for it to work the same (otherwise we wouldn't need 4th edition on the label.)

And again this is where I bring up user error.

In order to use a system we have to think about how it works, for it to work properly.

Good thing, then, that no one is making that argument.

Right on then!