Imaro
Legend
Because Dausuul seemed to get what I meant perfectly fine (as I suspect many other posters did as well) and took the time to post it... so I didn't feel like explaining it in detail was worth the effort or time.
Why Must I Kludge My Combat?
- Thread starter Stormonu
- Start date
Because Dausuul seemed to get what I meant perfectly fine (as I suspect many other posters did as well) and took the time to post it... so I didn't feel like explaining it in detail was worth the effort or time.
Scribble
First Post
Well if explaining your questions to those who ask for clarification isn't worth your time, perhaps trying to have a discussion with you about something we disagree on isn't worth mine.
I'm going to stop trying before the thread gets heated.
Have a good one man.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Scribble said:
This seems, I dunno, a little arrogant on its face.
One of my problems with 4e's combat system is that there is a high level of tactical positioning in it (it's too simulationist for me, I find it takes too long, takes too many accessories, and doesn't provide a dynamic enough result to be worth the effort).
That's not an error on my part -- that does exist. It's also not necessarily an error on the game's part -- they probably wanted that.
Where the problem occurs is when the game's goals are different from my own. The designers wanted highly tactical combat. I just want some cool options.
It's a mis-match of intent, not any "error," necessarily, from either side. You could maybe place some blame on 4e for requiring a combat system like that, but I think that would be kind of unfair -- they have to choose SOME combat system, and they probably figured this would be the best for the majority of players.
Saying "You're playing it wrong!" isn't really true, though.
I'm willing to believe a lot of problems with 4e's combat system result from this mis-match of intent, rather than misuse.
We could argue semantics all night, so let's change the term to "DM judgement." I think we can agree that monsters running away, without an Intimidate check, is a DM judgement call in 4E.
Now, DMs vary in level of skill. One of the explicit design goals of both 3E and 4E was to support the novice DM, by providing a ruleset which didn't require a lot of DM judgement calls in the regular course of play. Obviously there is room for DM judgement, and players will always do wacky things that aren't covered by the rules, but when the game is running squarely in the center of the intended design space - a straight-up fight against a bunch of dungeon denizens, no tricks - an inexperienced DM should be able to just run things out of the book and have it work.
I have played with a fair few novice DMs, and IME it's very, very common in such games to have all monsters fight to the death. For someone inexperienced with the combat system, who may not be very good at judging when a fight has become hopeless, it's the simplest and most logical approach.
Hence, if "all monsters fight to the death" results in grind and boredom... then I would say that's a problem, because the game is not supporting the novice DM as it should. (It's also not supporting the historically popular "beer and pretzels" school of gaming, in which nobody retreats, nobody surrenders, and the PCs emerge from every dungeon drenched in blood to the elbows.)
The problem is as far as I can tell, is that there is no consensus as to wither this is happening. I'm pretty happy with 4e and do not find grind or boredom so far. Others are of a different opinion.
Now, I think that Mallus nailed the issue up thread, with the observation that monster selection is the key. Not all monsters of a given xp budget are equal for a given enterainment value in a fight. Some combinations are grindy and others not. Furthermore, i suspect that it depends on party composition.
Imaro
Legend
Well if explaining your questions to those who ask for clarification isn't worth your time, perhaps trying to have a discussion with you about something we disagree on isn't worth mine.
I'm going to stop trying before the thread gets heated.
Have a good one man.
Scribble, you just seem to be coming off as unnecessarily passive-aggressive and snarky. Perhaps I'm reading you wrong dude, the internet isn't the best place to get a feel for someone, and if you are being genuine I apologize... but I just don't see the point of discussing this with you as you seem more intent on nit-picking details than actually discussing the issue of the thread.
No hard feelings though, because in the end it's just a game.
Fanaelialae
Legend
I think another piece of the problem is not reading the user manual. Perhaps it's just me but, sometimes when I read about problems with 4e, the poster seems unaware of advice in the DMG intended to address those concerns. One example is page 10 (Building a Party) which discusses what creature roles a party is weak against in the case of an unbalanced party.
Quite obviously though, it's only one of multiple possible factors.
Quite obviously though, it's only one of multiple possible factors.
Why is 4e combat this way? Well, because of the features of AD&D (1e and 2e) and 3e combat.
The feature about low-level AD&D combat that most comes to mind is "random". Yes, skill can mitigate luck to some extent, but it doesn't take long to put you on the ground, bleeding to death: just a couple of (un)lucky rolls. As the game gets into the higher levels, this damage randomness decreases, but instead the game hits the "one bad save and its over" swinginess.
I would say there are very few DMs who didn't fudge combat in AD&D - particularly low-level combat - so that PCs survive where they shouldn't have.
Once you get to 3e, you get that in spades, added to which was an advancement system that didn't have proper checks and balances. It was entirely possible to game the system: spell DCs that no-one could defend against except for the defense optimizers that no-one could touch.
At the higher levels, you were looking at one spell taking out all the enemies, or often no more than two rounds of combat. The problem? It'd take an hour or two to resolve those two hours! Swinginess and extreme length hit high-level 3e.
4E combat is designed with two major goals in mind: reducing the randomness of combat and stabilizing the length. Most combats should take 40-60 minutes to resolves, and last somewhere around 4-8 rounds.
It succeeds at the first pretty well, IMO. The second, not so well, although most of my combats have lasted about that long until recently (and we hit 18th level!)
Why does the second fail? The reason comes with an overestimation of the defenses of the monsters. Take an Elite Soldier of 2 levels higher than the PCs. At this point, the PCs have something like a 25% chance of hitting it. This is where the major problem of grind comes from. This soldier is (by the guidelines) something that the PCs should be handle - and, in fact they can - however, the combat takes so stupidly long that it destroys the pacing of the session.
(Stupidest monsters ever are those with insubstantial and cause weakness in the party. That's horrendously bad design).
Higher levels monsters in 4e are more dangerous, yes, but they also take substantially longer to defeat. If you check the Wizards adventures, they've got entirely too many combats that are more difficult than the PCs, and not enough easy combats.
Even with all of this, my 18th level combats in 4e are taking substantially less time to resolve (and with a lot more actions per character) than my 16th level combats in 3e.
In every single edition of D&D, I've needed to kludge combats. Not perhaps every combat - I've run a lot of it by the book - but there are times when the system just falls over.
Do I think the basic length of combat in 4e is too long? Certainly I do! However, the game still works pretty well for me until we start getting these 25% chances to hit. A little less defence, a little fewer hitpoints... 4e wouldn't need all that many changes before it ran combats in a more reasonable time and didn't have so many trouble with over-level monsters.
There is a secondary problem with the game getting a little too condition-happy (and thus trickier to track and slower), but it isn't as significant as the defenses issue.
Cheers!
The feature about low-level AD&D combat that most comes to mind is "random". Yes, skill can mitigate luck to some extent, but it doesn't take long to put you on the ground, bleeding to death: just a couple of (un)lucky rolls. As the game gets into the higher levels, this damage randomness decreases, but instead the game hits the "one bad save and its over" swinginess.
I would say there are very few DMs who didn't fudge combat in AD&D - particularly low-level combat - so that PCs survive where they shouldn't have.
Once you get to 3e, you get that in spades, added to which was an advancement system that didn't have proper checks and balances. It was entirely possible to game the system: spell DCs that no-one could defend against except for the defense optimizers that no-one could touch.
At the higher levels, you were looking at one spell taking out all the enemies, or often no more than two rounds of combat. The problem? It'd take an hour or two to resolve those two hours! Swinginess and extreme length hit high-level 3e.
4E combat is designed with two major goals in mind: reducing the randomness of combat and stabilizing the length. Most combats should take 40-60 minutes to resolves, and last somewhere around 4-8 rounds.
It succeeds at the first pretty well, IMO. The second, not so well, although most of my combats have lasted about that long until recently (and we hit 18th level!)
Why does the second fail? The reason comes with an overestimation of the defenses of the monsters. Take an Elite Soldier of 2 levels higher than the PCs. At this point, the PCs have something like a 25% chance of hitting it. This is where the major problem of grind comes from. This soldier is (by the guidelines) something that the PCs should be handle - and, in fact they can - however, the combat takes so stupidly long that it destroys the pacing of the session.
(Stupidest monsters ever are those with insubstantial and cause weakness in the party. That's horrendously bad design).
Higher levels monsters in 4e are more dangerous, yes, but they also take substantially longer to defeat. If you check the Wizards adventures, they've got entirely too many combats that are more difficult than the PCs, and not enough easy combats.
Even with all of this, my 18th level combats in 4e are taking substantially less time to resolve (and with a lot more actions per character) than my 16th level combats in 3e.
In every single edition of D&D, I've needed to kludge combats. Not perhaps every combat - I've run a lot of it by the book - but there are times when the system just falls over.
Do I think the basic length of combat in 4e is too long? Certainly I do! However, the game still works pretty well for me until we start getting these 25% chances to hit. A little less defence, a little fewer hitpoints... 4e wouldn't need all that many changes before it ran combats in a more reasonable time and didn't have so many trouble with over-level monsters.
There is a secondary problem with the game getting a little too condition-happy (and thus trickier to track and slower), but it isn't as significant as the defenses issue.
Cheers!
Yes, that is indeed the question.
I have certainly experienced grind, and I have seen enough complaints that I think it is indisputably happening - and happening to enough people that it can reasonably be described as a problem with the system.
In most cases when I've seen grind, it was not such that having the monsters run away was a suitable remedy. Either the monsters were not in a position to run (e.g., they were locked down by the party fighter and had already discovered that attempting to move was futile), or they were of a creature type that generally didn't run (e.g., shambling undead, orc berserkers).
Moreover, having the monsters flee often makes a fight longer. The PCs understandably don't want the monsters to escape; first because they might come back with buddies, and second because escaping monsters typically take the loot with them. So they make a point of running down and killing fleeing foes. In the end, it takes as much time to resolve the monsters' attempt to flee as it would to kill them all, and sometimes more.
On the other hand, this stuff is pretty specific to my group, and I can well imagine that at a table with less murderous players, less aggressive monsters, and no fighter in the party, having the monsters flee would do a lot to alleviate grind issues.
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I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
MerricB said:
Sure, this could have been part of it.
And part of the complaints are now that 40-60 minutes is too long for a single basic combat (though 4-8 rounds might be solid).
This gets back to the OP:
Stormonu said:
When I look at why combats last this long in 4e, I do see some defense/hp issues, on occasion, but I see far more issues with combat set-up, moving minis, mathematics (all the fiddly bits), tactics, choice paralysis, and rules questions. Compounded with the occasional defense/hp issues, it makes grind. Long periods of doing nothing significant while other people make decisions.
For certain groups (the well-prepared, the naturally tactical, the easily mathematic) it's not much of an issue, but for the "average group," with no special capacity for any of those things, I think it is more of one.
I think reducing the "moving parts" of D&D combat would be an admirable goal for the game. Less sim in combat, more game, a higher level of abstraction, with easier, less complicated, and, yes, less tactical rules.
At the same time, I think increasing the "moving parts" of D&D that aren't involved in combat would be also an admirable goal, though that's slightly orthogonal.
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