15 Minute Adventuring Day

[KarinsDad]

None of your arguments or points has any relevance to the fact power creep has done zero to combat difficulty - otherwise why on earth does this thread exist in the first place? PCs were wiping the absolute floor with monsters in paragon/epic from the start.

You are confusing certain powerful builds from wiping the floor in paragon/epic with everyone wiping the floor in paragon/epic.

That did not happen. I ran an Epic encounter with pretty average PCs early on and it was long and grindy and the PCs got popped pretty hard.

You keep harping on the super powerful builds and options possible with just the core rules, but that does not mean every single group used most or even a significant number of those powerful options.


The reason this thread exists is because monster damage was increased.

The reason monster damage was increased is because encounters at all tiers became so easy.

The reason encounters became so easy is because of all of the increased synergies of PCs (synergies that monsters did not significantly get). A small percentage of that comes from the PHB, but the majority of it comes from the other two dozen plus hard bound books, and the dozens of Dragon Magazines.

The PHB has 31 of 532 Paragon Paths.
The PHB has 4 of 101 Epic Destinies.
The PHB has 720 of 8977 Items.
The PHB has 707 of 7531 Powers.
The PHB has 161 of 3051 Feats.
The PHB has 8 of 60 Classes.
The PHB has 8 of 38 Races.

The errata has 23 pages for the PHB out of 123 pages overall (and some fraction of that is rules, skills, etc.).

The PHB is a super tiny drop in the overall bucket of everything with regard to items, feats, powers, races, classes, paragon paths, and epic destinies. The vast majority of game elements that determine PC power and versatility.

Sorry, but anyone who thinks most of this power and versatility comes from merely the PHB and not from the dozens and dozens of other sources is not being objective.

Yes, there was some significant PHB errata, but it doesn't mean that most groups wiped the floor at Paragon or Epic when the game first came out like they did immediately before the monster damage increase.

They did so then because of feats like Expertise. That one type of feat is a huge percentage of increased damage at Epic and it's a single feat.

 

[Abraxas]

With the increase in monster damage last year, I've noticed a trend back towards the "15 minute adventuring day".

snip the middle bits

What are other people's recent experiences with this?

Our group is in mid epic levels now and were high paragon when the changes were made. Since the changes our group has been averaging about 2 encounters before the PCs need an extended rest. The new damage output has been brutal. The people I game with were never optimizers - the picked stuff they thought was cool - so the old numbers worked great for us.

In addition, the newer monsters that always have some sort of debilitating effect on every blasted attack, or have huge debilitating auras, have caused more grind than we ever experienced previously. This is aggravated by the fact that unless the attack targets your strongest defense (and then even in spite of it some times) we never seem to get missed by attacks.

It has caused the players to switch to an overwhelming strike type mentality that wasn't present in heroic and low paragon levels for us.

To mitigate the problems we have encountered, the casters have obtained one ritual that allows the PCs to share healing surges and another that lets us take an extended rest in only 10 minutes.

 

[Aegeri]

You are confusing certain powerful builds from wiping the floor in paragon/epic with everyone wiping the floor in paragon/epic.

That did not happen. I ran an Epic encounter with pretty average PCs early on and it was long and grindy and the PCs got popped pretty hard.

You ran a single epic encounter and I ran an entire epic campaign, where players had time (months) to adjust to their powers and abilities - not just a single encounter. A single encounter is absolutely completely poor for judging anything - I've had encounters where I ground out the PCs as well while dealing considerable damage. I did so by being as abusive as possible with the rules - not because PHB characters weren't suitably powerful. People unused to epic tier and what they can do have a difficult time and struggle handling the options they have - players given several months to learn the system and build to that point? Entirely different.

But a well prepared group that had been playing from level 16ish to level 28ish had no such issues. They were all PHB classes, with mostly a base of PHB options. I would estimate my 50+ epic encounters over that campaign, with my PCs having time to adjust to the power level over several months of play to your one encounter, is a much better gauge.

None of the other things you mentioned were even remotely relevant at the time that campaign was going through its epic tier. In fact I didn't go to level 30 in that game because I just got sick of it and wanted to restart things. And because new and shiny options like the sorcerer and such were out.

You keep harping on the super powerful builds and options possible with just the core rules, but that does not mean every single group used most or even a significant number of those powerful options.

Mine did and given that other people had figured out that an Elven ranger with Blade Cascade (pre-errata of course) could one shot orcus - it didn't take a lot to see some things were damn good. Also the PHB still has some of the strongest core classes in the game in the Fighter, Cleric and Wizard. Conveniently these are iconic builds for DnD that a lot of players new to the system tried first. Early experience with epic 4E widely reported that it was daunting - fair enough as it was new - but that it felt long and grindy. Epic monsters and solos especially were quickly figured out to be far too weak to be competitive with PCs - especially epic level characters.

So this argument is a wash to me.

The reason monster damage was increased is because encounters at all tiers became so easy.

They did not become easy they already were.

Edit: Now I mention it, a key point is that my party found it very hard at level 16 initially as well. I sort of threw them into the deep end of DnD and insisted "SWIM MY PLAYERS, TRY NOT TO DROWN". But by 4 levels they had figured out this high level play thing and believe me - they didn't struggle anymore and now I was the one in trouble. So honestly, I'm not going to give any credence to a "Well I ran a random one shot encounter at epic" argument. It's irrelevant, because it discounts that a group of PCs develop their tactics over time. My second epic game - for the record - was a maptools game that went from level 1 to level 30. Things were most difficult in heroic tier and got easier as time went on - only MM3 pulled things back. Bearing in mind that party got massacred by a whole host of direct nerfs due to the aggressive errata schedule as well. Much of that errata - hate to say this - on PHB powers and options.

 

[eriktheguy]

I'm coming up to mid paragon in a campaign I'm running now. The party is nowhere near optimal. I still get the feeling that they crush through most fights (MM3 monsters) without losing many surges.

What level did this surge loss start to kick in? Would an extra 2 surges a day make a difference? I've been thinking of ruling +1 surge at paragon and +1 surge at epic if troubles crop up in my game.

 

[Mr. Wilson]

The new MMIII math has made my players sit up and take notice, for sure.

I tend to run huge set pieces, as oppossed to dungeons (though they do the dungeon thing on occasion), because my players like the non-combat aspect of RPGs as much, if not more, than the combat.

What I found was that I could throw a level + 5-7 at the party for that huge set piece and now I can throw a level +3-4 at the party.

Heck, last week I had them "rush the castle" so to speak to take out a terrorist organization, with a level, level +1, level +2 encounter setup and they were tapped out, even after blowing zero dailies on the first encounter.

 

[S'mon]

Usually I do roll. If a player is surrounded by 4 minions I might just say "2 hits, 12 damage", but only if the player won't notice.
I have player Defs written on a board and know what I need to hit. I try to stack multiple monsters on one player, so I can roll 3d20 at a time and immediately say "X hits". It takes maybe 10 seconds for a handful of monsters. More time is spent manipulating the battle-board, rolling, and communicating damage/effects to the player.


That sort of book keeping is for the players. Sometimes I have to remind them. Sometimes everyone forgets and a condition doesn't get tracked, but I tend to remember things like stunned, unconscious, petrified. I try to avoid overusing those conditions anyways.


This is what I'm doing during the players' turns. Sometimes I make stupid rushed decisions or misread an entry and apply an effect wrong. Whatever, that's combat.


Actually, this can slow up the turn a bit. Good point.


They can ask questions at any arbitrary time during the fight and slow things down. I don't see why there is any point in tracking this as time taken up by the monsters turn. What we are concerned about is whether adding additional monsters will increase the length of the monster's turn. Sure a 2 minute turn might take 7 minutes if I stop to explain cover to my new players, but it's hardly notable.




Maybe 2 minutes on average, 3 mins when a player uses a reaction/interrupt or a monster has strange powers.
I should point out that specific turns might take much longer if something interesting is happening. This can artificially drag up the average. It might be better to say 2 minutes is a median.

My techniques for faster combat

• ALWAYS use same or lower level monsters
• Don't roll damage, use an average or quickly select a random number in your head.
• Generally don't use more than 3 stat blocks in a fight. Even if you have 12 monsters on the board it's much easier if there are many copies of the same monster.
• Split the monsters into 2 or maybe 3 initiative groups of similar monsters. Use the passive initiative of the highest initiative monster in the group.
• Write player defenses, initiative, passive perception on a whiteboard
• Also record monster initiative on the whiteboard
• Don't think too much on the monster's turn, make quick decisions
• Give all monsters 1/2 HP, sometimes add more monsters to the fight, but in general stick to 1 standard/player
• Don't roll against non-player controlled targets at all. If monsters are attacking monsters, or monsters are attacking AI, just mark down some damage against each target based on level and role differences
• End the combat when the players have clearly won. Don't wait for them to sweep up all the monsters if they are not in danger.

Lots of interesting ideas there, thanks.

I find PL+0 or PL-1 level monsters seem to make for the most fun fights, yup. And you can use lots of them! I like the feel of using an L+2 monster for major bad guys though.

The 4e DMG says to limit the number of monster stat blocks in use, 3 is ideal I think, maybe 2 full blocks & a minion.

I find half-hp 'demi' monsters work well. But I use more of them and award 2/3 XP.

I like the idea of having monsters take-10 on initiative checks; it avoids a slight problem I've had with a single init roll for all of them where a high or low init roll severely affects the lethality of the encounter.

I have monsters run away if losing.

I like rolling monster damage, but for 'demis' especially I can see the value of a trait "always does average damage", making them more minion-like but barely reducing threat level.

 

[Aegeri]

I'm coming up to mid paragon in a campaign I'm running now. The party is nowhere near optimal. I still get the feeling that they crush through most fights (MM3 monsters) without losing many surges.

What kind of encounters are you running out of curiosity and the party composition?

What level did this surge loss start to kick in?

I'm seeing it from level 1 myself, but in my previous epic game it kicked in the second I upgraded from previous damage to MM3. I think the big difference there though was that the PCs weren't used to it whatsoever. It's rather like being thrown into the deep end of the pool, when you've been happily splashing around in the shallow part for the entire time. It was an absolute shock and most of the initial murder was because certain tactics fell apart. For example if the fighter drew in 5 creatures with come and get it - he ended up unconscious and not barely scratched.

Would an extra 2 surges a day make a difference? I've been thinking of ruling +1 surge at paragon and +1 surge at epic if troubles crop up in my game.

Is this across the whole party I take it? That actually wouldn't be a bad idea if you're concerned about it. But to be honest it depends on how you're designing encounters. I like very tactical encounters and use a wide variety of monsters - exploiting their powers quite efficiently. If you're using a lot more lower levelish creatures and generally not making terrain too taxing on the PCs you can get away with it. Hits are still going to hurt, but you probably won't grind them into dust too fast.

I have to admit though, I really don't mind this idea of yours whatsoever.

 

[eriktheguy]

I believe the original intent is that surges should not scale because surges * HP / 4 = total daily HP. If HP is already scaling then total daily HP is also scaling.

But monster damage scales faster with level to compensate for increased PC healing and damage mitigation. The PC's average hp in combat remains about the same, but the amount of healing they use to achieve this increases with level.

So you need an extra boost in total daily HP without a boost in actual hit-points. Extra surges achieves this. Note that this is a total increase of 3 surges from level 1-30, if you include the additional surge granted by stat boosts at levels 11 and 21. The points at which the surges are gained are weighted towards level 21, which is around the time when they are needed.


...strange that Con should add to HP and surges, but level only adds to HP.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think that any PC that can re-roll D20s or roll two D20s for virtually every attack is imbalanced.

And yet the Avenger is not a top tier striker.

I think that any PC that can do surgeless healing while many other types of healers cannot is potentially imbalanced.

Potentially Imbalanced is not the same thing as Imbalanced.

I find that anyone who ignores the increased amount of synergy due to the increased number of options (both at the PC level and the party level) and defends power creep as non-existent is not being objective.

And yet once again try un-errata'd PHB material. It will stunlock anything now existing.

There are over 3000 feats, almost 9000 items, and over 7500 powers. The sheer volume of different combinations means that there is the potential for very strong synergies.

I know a few. Which doesn't change the fact that the leading wave has actually been pushed back since the PHB. There's a lot more in tier 2, but less in the runaway lead.

High end PC power has gone down. Not up, down. And as for "very strong synergies", those existed in the PHB - and are normally for high end characters. Who aren't as high end as the old orb-locker.

In 4E, it's kept under control because of a 123 page errata document.

Which is extremely padded. But yes. Not everything gets playtested as well as it should. No other RPG has ever had the care put into 4e.

Our group is in mid epic levels now and were high paragon when the changes were made. Since the changes our group has been averaging about 2 encounters before the PCs need an extended rest. The new damage output has been brutal. The people I game with were never optimizers - the picked stuff they thought was cool - so the old numbers worked great for us.

Why hasn't the DM lowered the level of monsters?

This is aggravated by the fact that unless the attack targets your strongest defense (and then even in spite of it some times) we never seem to get missed by attacks.

Attack bonusses haven't gone up. In practice they've gone down.

Mine did and given that other people had figured out that an Elven ranger with Blade Cascade (pre-errata of course) could one shot orcus

I'd forgotten that one. Another solid example of how the power level of parties has been pushed back. You didn't even need to look for "Subtle synergies" to find Blade Cascade.

 

[Raven Crowking]

The DMG2 suggests occasionally having recharge conditions for extended combats; no reason you couldn't do something similar for extended days.

In fact, I've done this from time to time, usually in a sort of goal-oriented way, e.g. "If you guys rescue the prisoner you're after, you can recharge a daily power and regain a healing surge."

That's cool; I didn't know that.

And I am glad to hear it is working for some folks, as well.


RC