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<blockquote data-quote="Reinhart" data-source="post: 6781165" data-attributes="member: 13080">Just to chime in again. 4e gets a lot of flack for grinding to a halt in later levels. And while that is very much my experience too, looking into the underlying system math revealed that the reason for this isn't purely about complex game mechanics. No, there were just a number of math errors that gradually made every PC and monster require more and more attacks just to get the job done. The way 4e was set up, Monster and PC HP scaled proportionate to each other. Monster and PC damage scaled somewhat proportionate to each other too. While this meant that the on level fights stayed at about the same difficulty, it creates some bad system design implications down the road. Instead, expected Monster HP should have scaled proportionately to PC damage, and Monster damage should have scaled proportionately with expected PC hp. That didn't happen. HP for both sides grew at a rate that gradually dwarfed damage. As a result, you could survive more rounds of damage before being endangered, but you needed more and more rounds to deal with any given monster. Unfortunately, the main way players chose to counter this deficit was to exploit the off-turn attacks and complex power interactions that slowed down turns.The point being that game mechanics do have an influence in the pacing of combat, but complexity can sometimes be a bit of a red-herring.&nbsp; Anyway, 5e isn't immune to proportional scaling problems either, but since it erred on simplicity and higher damage you can expect that regardless of how combat resolves, it'll probably be over pretty quickly.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Reinhart, post: 6781165, member: 13080"] Just to chime in again. 4e gets a lot of flack for grinding to a halt in later levels. And while that is very much my experience too, looking into the underlying system math revealed that the reason for this isn't purely about complex game mechanics. No, there were just a number of math errors that gradually made every PC and monster require more and more attacks just to get the job done. The way 4e was set up, Monster and PC HP scaled proportionate to each other. Monster and PC damage scaled somewhat proportionate to each other too. While this meant that the on level fights stayed at about the same difficulty, it creates some bad system design implications down the road. Instead, expected Monster HP should have scaled proportionately to PC damage, and Monster damage should have scaled proportionately with expected PC hp. That didn't happen. HP for both sides grew at a rate that gradually dwarfed damage. As a result, you could survive more rounds of damage before being endangered, but you needed more and more rounds to deal with any given monster. Unfortunately, the main way players chose to counter this deficit was to exploit the off-turn attacks and complex power interactions that slowed down turns. The point being that game mechanics do have an influence in the pacing of combat, but complexity can sometimes be a bit of a red-herring. Anyway, 5e isn't immune to proportional scaling problems either, but since it erred on simplicity and higher damage you can expect that regardless of how combat resolves, it'll probably be over pretty quickly. [/QUOTE]

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