Adding (or finding) some more swing to 4e combat

[blargney the second]

There are some parts of swinginess that I enjoy occasionally. I'd like to use this thread to brainstorm some ideas to add some fun swinginess to 4e fights every once in a while.

1) Intimidate skill already has it. Taking a monster from bloody to surrender in one die roll is reasonably swingy.

2) Add a doomsday device. It's a weapon or environmental feature that both sides can fight over that takes combatants out quickly. It can do it through stoopid amounts of damage, imposing harsh conditions, or even just fiat.

3) Make monsters' powers MUCH more powerful... but let the players know. Go ahead and toss in an elder beholder straight from a previous edition. Just make sure the players know ahead of time that you're changing the game's assumptions and this thing is going to be SCARY.

Go!
-blarg

 

[Jeff Wilder]

At the beginning of each round, randomly pick one group of allies (e.g., in a typical find, you'd just have "heroes" and "bad guys," but things could be more complex than that). That group gets +X to all attacks and/or damage rolls that rounds.

Roll one side three times in a row, and the complexion of a fight will change big time.

 

[Victim]

Use more guys, especially guys with ranged attacks. More guys -> more spike potential. The ranged attackers just make it easier to set up. Other high mobility combatants can also converge on a vulnerable target for a sudden attack.

Daze/stun/dominate the healer. It sucks when you're finally doing some nice damage to some character, and then the leader saves their ass. Spread some annoying conditions on that guy to make it more difficult for him to fix problems. Line of Effect shenanigans also work - monsters like Devourers or guys with Swallow, monsters with forced teleport, powerful Wall spells like those wizards have, etc can isolate a combatant so she can't be healed - or cut the leader off from everyone else, so he can only heal himself.

Some encounters or stages of a battle can be used purely for set up. Think about a tough monster with a damaging aura. It does some damage, hopefully to a bunch of people with the aura, slowly wearing at the group while they wail on it. Characters are hurt, but they're not worried since they can get healed quickly before things get bad. Then drop high damage monsters in suddenly to change things up, exploit the damage done by aura guys. What was an acceptable, manageable level of injury is now an invitation. You can work the same thing over a number of encounters if the party has a reason not to rest. Early on, focus on weakening most characters, and see who's low on surges. Try to hurt one guy enough that he can't be healed through a heavy beating. Then go for the throat.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

This is something I suggested to my 3E group about eight years as worth trying out. It was rejected without playtest because it seemed, you guessed it, too swingy.

I was thinking about the 3E initiative system and what I liked about it and didn't like about it, and it struck me that one thing I don't like about it is its predictability. A goes, then B goes, then C goes, then A goes, then B goes ... it's not very cinematic. There's no "ebb and flow" to battles.

For instance, I was watching Spider-Man last night, and in the climactic battle with Green Goblin, the Goblin just PUNISHES Spider-Man. Beats the living hell out of him, without Spider-Man having much of a chance to respond ... until the tide turns, and Spider-Man beats the living hell out of the Goblin. A LOT of cinematic fights go this way, and it's a pretty cool dramatic technique.

So I was trying to figure out how to do it in 3E. What if the first round of combat went normal, and after that every four rounds or so was randomized? IE, each participant would have four index cards in the mix, instead of one, and they'd be shuffled together.

Think about it ... it's POSSIBLE that your PC would be able to act 4 times in a row without the villain being able to respond. (And vice versa, of course, though in party-on-one fights it's very highly unlikely NOBODY would get a chance at the villain during his rampage.) If the villain gets his actions in early, you have to suffer through them, but you do so in the knowledge that soon things are gonna change and you'll get YOUR turn. Similarly, if you get all your actions in, and don't quite put the bad guy down, there's a lot of dramatic tension involved as you wait to see how he bounces back.

What do y'all think?

This has the potential for a billion unforeseen implications, so it's not something I'm advocating switching to. But would y'all be up for giving it a try sometime in one of our games' battles, just once or twice, to see how it plays?

Actually, the easiest way to do it would be to use a deck of playing cards, and assign each participant one rank (Ace through King), then shuffle and draw the cards in order. Either unused ranks could be set aside, or the DM could use an unused rank as a signal to pause for some description or to bring the environment into the battle.

Hmmm. This could really be a cool system, especially for a super-heroes genre game.

 

[Ourph]

Increasing the likelihood of critical hits and the damage that they do is a quick way to add more swinginess to combat. If you want to systemically increase swinginess across the board, halve all HPs.

If you really want to increase swinginess, add 1d100 to all damage rolls during surprise rounds.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Well, I feel that doubling monster damage (or just the dice) and dropping hit point by a third will do that. In this case I would jsut allow powers to recharge, or add a number or two to the recharge rate.

But whatever you do, let players know during character creation so they can plan for it.

If the party is gonna be facing monsters with high danmage, everyone should be able ot spend surges a bit (more than second wind, which becomes far worse when monster damage goes up) with utilities or the like.

 

[Kzach]

I'm currently testing a system with a group I DM WotBS for. It's a variation of a system I've tried in the past that worked well.

Firstly, every character uses their highest ability score to generate hit points instead of Constitution. Con still works normally for everything else.

Secondly, reduce monster hit points by 15%. Easy to do in the Monster Builder with a click of a button.

Thirdly, every monster does +1d6 crit damage every five levels. So a 1st-level standard will do +1d6 on a crit as will a 5th-level minion and a 6th-level minion will do +2d6 crit damage.

So far it's worked well. Combats feel faster and more dangerous. A few crits can swing things in the monsters direction quite quickly, but with reduced hit points, characters can swing it back just as fast.

 

[Daern]

i do the same as Kzach with monsters, but I usually also increase the damage die by one and or add a couple points to the bonus. I've heard of people using exploding crit dice as well... these are just the basic "Brutal" houserules. It adds a lil' swing, like the ballroom on a cruiseship.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

My suggestion is +1d20 damage on criticals for all players and monsters.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

My suggestion is +1d20 damage on criticals for all players and monsters.

Well, they swing when you're winning...

At the beginning of each round, randomly pick one group of allies (e.g., in a typical find, you'd just have "heroes" and "bad guys," but things could be more complex than that). That group gets +X to all attacks and/or damage rolls that rounds.

Kinda reminds me of Torg's Initiative system. The initiative cardscould give one side notable bonuses like "Flurry" (spend multiple actions) or "Up" (roll two d20 instead of one). During a "dramatic" encounter (e.g. "tough") the deck was in the villain's favor.