Why Must I Kludge My Combat?

[Shazman]

Actually, it is a real problem if you use pre-published adventures or play LFR. They have pretty standardized exp per mod or leveling rate per adventure, so if they use lower level monsters they have to use more of them or have more encounters to get the same exp. The only way around it would be to have more skill challenges and "quest" exp, which I hope would be the way the writers would go, although some may consider that a kludge as well.

 

[Mallus]

Actually, it is a real problem if you use pre-published adventures or play LFR. They have pretty standardized exp per mod or leveling rate per adventure, so if they use lower level monsters they have to use more of them or have more encounters to get the same exp.

Aha... got it. My friends and I play an all-homebrew home game with no real expectations regarding XP/leveling (outside of the DM using XP budgets to ballpark encounter difficulties, we don't use XP).

I forget that people play in more formalized campaigns.

 

[Hussar]

After having read through a good bit of the replies, I've organized my thoughts a bit and thought I'd present them:

I think what bothers me about the 4E combat system "kludges" is not so much the use of a grid; I've been using gridded combat and minis since I got into D&D. Its the changes like reducing monster hit points by half, increasing character damage output, not using monsters above the character's level +2, using egg timers to limit character's turns and those sort of tricks to get combats down to a "reasonable length" that irk me. Overall, the RAW combat of 4E simply takes too long to resolve, grid or no grid. If I had to pull the same stunts in my 3.X game or Vampire game to get a combat under 30 minutes, I'd be highly annoyed.

The 4E combat system, overall, annoys me because it is built like a mini-game within the game. If the base combat rules ran more along the level of detail of a skill challenge (say, a 12 success skill challenge; at-wills, encounter and daily "powers" would be akin to different skills) with the option to add deeper detail to the game (perhaps in its own splatbook), I don't think it would bother me so much*. Running combats that are the length (and appearance) of other wargame tournament rounds (such as Mechwarrior: Dark Age or WH40K games I used to play in or a DDM game), simply does not appeal to me, or several of my gamers.

* In fact, I've made several stabs at trying to convert 4E's combat system into a skill challenge. I just haven't had the energy to sit down and slog through it; there's other games that do what I want without having to rewrite so much of the system.

Hang on a second here. You run 3e combat with a grid in under 30 minutes, without using any house rules or table rules like shot clocks, but your 4e combats are far slower?

My suggestion would be to do whatever it is in 4e that you do in 3e to get that time down. If you are actually running combats with grids and minis in 3e at any significant levels (say 5th level plus) and your combats are routinely under or equal to 30 minutes, my hat's off to you. You have managed to accomplish something that very few have.

So, how do you run 3e combat so quickly?

 

[MerricB]

Hang on a second here. You run 3e combat with a grid in under 30 minutes, without using any house rules or table rules like shot clocks, but your 4e combats are far slower?

The question to ask is this: What level 3e combat?

For 5th level 3e combat, with miniatures, I'd often finish in 30 minutes or less. By 16th level, 3e combat was a monster taking often about 2 hours or more.

3e combat (at nominal levels of difficulty) varies in length far more than 4e combat, IME.

Cheers!

 

[IronWolf]

Hang on a second here. You run 3e combat with a grid in under 30 minutes, without using any house rules or table rules like shot clocks, but your 4e combats are far slower?

My suggestion would be to do whatever it is in 4e that you do in 3e to get that time down. If you are actually running combats with grids and minis in 3e at any significant levels (say 5th level plus) and your combats are routinely under or equal to 30 minutes, my hat's off to you. You have managed to accomplish something that very few have.

I think there are large number of variables here. 5th level really isn't that high to start causing issues with combat. Maybe up around the 10th to 12th level range you'll start to see longer combat times. But even that is going to vary with how many combatants on either side? Four characters against one BBEG is likely to go pretty quick. Those same four characters against eight to ten other mid-level combatants is likely to go slower.

I think it is hard to make meaningful comparisons among combat times unless one was to run one encounter under the 3.x ruleset and then run the same encounter under the 4e ruleset.

 

[Stalker0]

The question to ask is this: What level 3e combat?

For 5th level 3e combat, with miniatures, I'd often finish in 30 minutes or less. By 16th level, 3e combat was a monster taking often about 2 hours or more.

Cheers!

Definitely agree here. If we look at the sweet spot of 3e, than I think 3e combats running quicker and smoother than 4e. But at high levels, 4e's combat stays relativity consistent, where 3e becomes a lot slower and more time consuming.

 

[Stormonu]

The question to ask is this: What level 3e combat?

For 5th level 3e combat, with miniatures, I'd often finish in 30 minutes or less. By 16th level, 3e combat was a monster taking often about 2 hours or more.

3e combat (at nominal levels of difficulty) varies in length far more than 4e combat, IME.

Cheers!

I don't normally run games past 12th level in D&D (in fact, ever); my campaigns generally reach their climax by that point (and I just plain don't like the game above those levels) and the players have been playing long enough they're ready to move on to a new game. Most of my games have the heavy action in the 3rd-8th levels of play.

For running the 3E combats, I use fantasy grounds for a combat tracker and roll my dice (I can do up to 20 attacks on my side in one flick of the dice, and see what order they were rolled in). That's the only trick I can think of I'm using to speed up the combat in my game. I don't count battlemat / initial miniature placement in the combat time either, if that makes a difference.

I have occasionally used spell cards/spell books for the spellcasters so they have faster access to their spells, and in the last campaign I preprinted out stat blocks for the druid's summoned allies, but it didn't seem to save much time over just having the rulebooks handy.

Our WoD combats run even faster; usually they only last a round or two - perhaps 10 minutes or less?

Probably the longest combat we ran was a ship-to-ship fight in the last campaign. It involved four full crews - two ships on the player's side, two on the enemies. One galleon and one sloop size on each side with over 100 combatants total. I don't think the whole maneuver-broadside-boarding action took more than two hours total, but it was a major setpiece battle.

 

[Shazman]

My experiences are similar to Stormonu's. Earlier this year, I was playing in a Pathfinder campaign, and we could easily finish three fairly challenging encounters in one and a half to two hours. That was with the DM coming up with the encounters on the spot, having 6 PC's, not using any computer programs or other "kludges", and included setting up the minis on the battlemat. In my expereince, one similar combat in 4E could have easily taken the same time as those three combats in Pathfinder. That pretty much says it all as far as length of combat between the two systems goes. 3.5/Pathfinder moves like lightning but does get noticeably slower at higher levels, while 4E starts at a snail's pace and continues to get even slower as levels increase.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

My experiences are similar to Stormonu's. Earlier this year, I was playing in a Pathfinder campaign, and we could easily finish three fairly challenging encounters in one and a half to two hours. That was with the DM coming up with the encounters on the spot, having 6 PC's, not using any computer programs or other "kludges", and included setting up the minis on the battlemat. In my expereince, one similar combat in 4E could have easily taken the same time as those three combats in Pathfinder.

All that is well and good. But here's where you go off the rails:

That pretty much says it all as far as length of combat between the two systems goes. 3.5/Pathfinder moves like lightning but does get noticeably slower at higher levels, while 4E starts at a snail's pace and continues to get even slower as levels increase.

For you.

My mileage varies considerably, as it clearly does for several other people here.

Your experience does NOT "say it all." It says that your group uses the earlier edition more efficiently. That is pretty much all it says. Both of the groups I've played with, on the other hand, used 4e very efficiently, much more efficiently than even the latter portion of the 3e sweet spot. There are also dozens of 4e play podcasts on the internet of people knocking out much better than 1 combat per hour, mixed liberally with RP and goofing off in most cases, which I'm pretty sure you classified as "impossible" earlier in the thread.

If I said that my group's ability to run 4e fast and furious "said it all" about length of combat, I'm sure we'd have half a dozen people in this thread frothing at the mouth and howling for my blood. So let's keep this "fair and balanced", wot?

 

[D'karr]

My mileage varies considerably, as it clearly does for several other people here.

My experience also, with more than just several groups in both 3.x and 4e.