4E combat grind but not boring

[Shadeydm]

Well in our 4E game last night we got a first hand dose of the grind that is 4E combat. This is not to say that the battle was boring, it was certainly not, but it certainly felt like it took forever.

The party:
2nd level warlord, wizard, warlock, swordmage, and rogue. Plus two NPC clerics.

The opposition:
an Ogre, 4 or 5 orcs and 5 hobgoblin minions (approximations since I wasn't DMing)

The set up:
The party had camped for the night and was attacked by this group of baddies.

The result: a fun battle that took over 2 hours! The PCs eventually lost the fight.

As a player the fight was fun, but man it took way too long and this is only at second level, I shudder to think how long combat will take at paragon or epic levels.

PS
Playing the swordmage is a blast at least until the later rounds when at wills started getting a little stale and everything else had been spent. This is probably because of the grind though.

 

[ExploderWizard]

How important was this battle to the adventure? Were these foes ones that were part of your adventure goals or was it an ambush by some grunts?

I don't get quite as grumpy spending a long time on an important combat, but dragging fights with flunkies is rather tedious.

 

[Shadeydm]

I believe it was an important encounter we thought we had avoided earlier in the evening, but it eventually caught up to us.

I just don't ever remember low level combats taking 2+ hours in previous editions especially level 2.

If this is an exception then fine but I see lots of threads and comments to the contrary which make me wonder how often this goes on with this rule set in general, and how it may or may not get worse with more levels tacked on.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

How important was this battle to the adventure? Were these foes ones that were part of your adventure goals or was it an ambush by some grunts?

I don't get quite as grumpy spending a long time on an important combat, but dragging fights with flunkies is rather tedious.

Of course this is a problem with published adventurers, but if your only way to enjoy a combat is either:
- It's fast.
- It's important.

Don't run flunkie combats. Or rather, run _real_ flunky combats. Send Minions, maybe accompanied by one "real" monster. Don't care for "suggested XP by level". Go below that value. Maybe one variant might be to just use notable lower level monsters if you don't want too many one-shot-kills.

In all other cases, make the combat important, cruicial to the plot or the goals of the campaign. If the PCs want to rescue the Princess from the Dragons Claws, don't have them run through a Kobold infested Dungeon to finally challenge the Dragon. If you want defenses for the Dragon, use one encounter, not 4.

Keep on the Shadowfell could basically be reduced to maybe 4-5 cruicial encounters.
[sblock=KotS Spoilers]
1) The Excavation Site. This is where the PCs might for the first time get some solid info there is a threat beyond mere kobolds.
2) The Kobold Lair. Another way to gather clues for a larger threat. The two encounters there could be replaced with fighting lots of Kobold Minions and Irontooth as a regular Goblin.
3) Entering the Keep. You might change the upper levels a little bit - the Goblins are not having a safe base there, they are actually in great trouble trying to contain that Water-Monster from the Blood Reavers.
4) Interlude Combat with the Elven Spy, if you want too.
5) Final Combat against Kalarel.

Of course, these are just the combats. There are certain aspects of the plot that are related to combat, but don't always require a combat.
- How do the PCs figure out there is a spy (do they at all?)
- What does Kalarel want?
- What did happen to the Blood Reavers?
[/sblock]

In a way, not having long or many combats requires you to create more story ideas. This can be ... strenous, even for creative DMs. You need to be able to fill the time usually reserved for combat with advances to the story-line, vivid description, PC interaction with each other and the NPCs. If you don't like having too many or too long combats, then maybe you do not have a problem with that!

And of course, many players like combat, even if the only goal is to kill your opponents and not to gather any information or advance the plot.

 

[Obryn]

I have no idea what changed - it may have been die rolls, or it may have been the loss of a Wizard and Warlock, combined with gaining a Fighter and a Warlord... Or that the fights were mostly against Gnolls and Hyenas... Or it may have been that our slowest players were out for the night... but our encounters last night were quick.

Each level-appropriate encounter about 30 minutes, I'd say. In our 3-hour session, we finished 3 combat encounters and a complex skill challenge with plenty of role-playing. It was a very full, satisfying session.

I think the opponents' lower defenses may have had something to do with it, kind of reinforcing my belief that creatures' HPs are fine, but their defenses may be a bit too beefy. Regardless, there was pretty much zero grind.

-O

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I believe it was an important encounter we thought we had avoided earlier in the evening, but it eventually caught up to us.

I just don't ever remember low level combats taking 2+ hours in previous editions especially level 2.

If this is an exception then fine but I see lots of threads and comments to the contrary which make me wonder how often this goes on with this rule set in general, and how it may or may not get worse with more levels tacked on.

I am not entirely sure, but the extra number of levels don't seem to have a big impact on speed. We have several ongoing campaigns, and the highest levels started at level 15. Once you got into your character and understood what you did, decision-making and coordination becomes easier and thus the combat lengths seem comparable.

I will try to watch this more consciously, but I might be to "combat-enjoying" to notice the passage of time either way.

 

[Zsig]

I cant' speak for myself as I'm yet to play long periods of time as a player do think whether or not I like the "grind".

However, more and more I realize that the "grind" encounters are the ones that my players like better.

I usually run non-important, easy and fast encounters and for them, it's quite boring, some of them usually fall asleep during it, and that's certainly not a good sign.

On the other hand, on tougher, longer encounters, they feel it. They cheer and they enjoy it. They feel challenged.


Speaking now as someone who's seen quite a few "grindfest" encounters, I have to say that the fault comes partially from the players, and partially from the DM.

For instance, once I put my players against a lvl+3 encounter in which there were 2 leader type monsters (one of them being an Elite Warlord). There was overheal on the monsters' side. In the end, the battle lasted way longer than expected, for my side it didn't feel that good, and I learned from it.

On the players' side we have the issue with powers. Most complaints I see about grindfest encounters is that it happens when players go out of encounter powers and usually stays mindnumbingly "spamming" buttons 1 and 2 (the at-wills) non-stop.

If you stop to think about it, if the players use all their encounters/dailies without thinking, it's damn obvious they'll run out of such powers quite soon throughout the encounter and thus will end up with only at-wills. So where's the problem there? There are not enough encounter powers to spend? At-wills are not strong enough? Hell no! It's perfectly fine the way it is!

Some classes particularly are even worse at such things, take a ranger for instance, where at first level takes Fox's Cunning, and then at 3rd takes Disruptive Strike. He'll spend about 6 whole levels "spamming" Twin Strike and nothing else! That's extremely boring. It's not a problem with the encounters.

 

[Harr]

If the PCs want to rescue the Princess from the Dragons Claws, don't have them run through a Kobold infested Dungeon to finally challenge the Dragon. If you want defenses for the Dragon, use one encounter, not 4.

Keep on the Shadowfell could basically be reduced to maybe 4-5 cruicial encounters.

Yeeeeessssss!!!! I COULD NOT agree more with this. It was only after finally finishing KotS and looking back and realizing that we had spent SIX WEEKS on that single quest and that single dungeon, that I caught on to this and swore to make it my game philosophy from that moment on. (You can read about the result of that in the other thread I made "How I got rid of the 5 minute day" if you like, so as not to highjack this one)

Don't have a string of 20 combats before the dragon at the end. Don't delay the big fight. Start with the cool stuff. This is probably the best advice for DMing ever. At least this way when the fight does grind, it'll be worth it.

 

[vagabundo]

Could you go through the stages of the battle? Two hours seems excessive. I've been running a 4e game for 8 months now and I dont think any of ours have lasted that long.

 

[Shadeydm]

At the start of the battle the warlord and rogue were squared off against the ogre this may or may not have been related to who was on watch when the encounter took place. The swordmage marked the ogre to reduce his damage output and quickly moved to try and eliminate the minions who as I recall quickly took out one of our npc clerics. The swordmage didn't switch places with the rogue because we needed his damage to kill off the ogre and due to the ogre's size could not switch places with the warlord (range 3 utility) I think everytime a minion died it got a free attack on an adjacent enemy. I believe our wizard had the misfortune of being tied up one on one with a minion which kept him occupied for a couple rounds (his RoF kept missing as I recall). Our warlock was taking pot shots from range at the ogre and missing way too often. The Orcs engaged our other cleric and I don't think he last too long either, although the details are a little fuzzy im my mind at the moment.
To make matters worse the orcs had both a leader and a cleric. The cleric healed the ogre at least once if not twice.

It was ugly business to be sure. The orcs seems to have good hitpoints and good damage output. The leader lowered both the Rogue's and the Swordmage's AC by 4 points at various times during the battle.

The first two party members to go down were the NPC clerics as I recall followed by the wizard and then the warlord then the swordmage who by that time was tied up fighting the orcs. The last to die was the warlock who seemed to be missing so often i don't think our enemies viewed him as a credible threat and therefore killed him last.

I don't think we ended up killing much beyond the minions.

Again it is hard to get everything straight in my head since I wasn't running the battle but despite the fun there was no denying that it was a grind too. One which at second level seemed very edition specific to me.