Anyone else not feel "the grind"

[hong]

(Some slight spoilers for KotTW ahoy)

...

Some time back, I bitched about a long ass fight in the Trollhaunt Warrens, against nothics with area-daze attacks and troglodytes who gave you penalties to hit. This combination resulted in a locked-down fight where everyone whiffed a lot, which was boring. There were also other fights in previous modules that were similarly grindy, and I was hoping this wasn't going to be a continuing trend.

Since then we've fought...

- a troll druid underboss, landing 3 critical hits on him within the first round, and taking him down in 2 rounds. The rest of the fight took a little bit longer, but not much.

- a troll leader of sorts, and his pack of trogs. The troll again went down in 2 rounds, and the trogs got wasted by AoE attacks.

- the King of the Trollhaunt Warrens himself, He-Whose-Name-I-Can't-Remember. We were 200 XP short of a level and we jokingly asked for another fight, so the DM obliged. This was the 5th fight of the day and we were almost out of dailies, and we kicked his ass.

- waves of monsters who attacked the local town, including wyverns, ogres, more trolls and trogs, and some weird plant monsters. We again kicked all their asses.

- a black dragon. Who put up her darkness cloud once the fight got to close quarters. We ignored it and kicked her ass anyway. (The dice were hot for us that session.)

- a hag and some troll skeletons. The rogue rolled a 1 on his first attack on the hag, I turned it into a 20 with Unintended Feint and a good reroll, and we metaphorically exploded her in 1 round. Over the next 3-4 rounds we similarly exploded the skeletons, but literally this time. The chain detonation when the skeletons set each other off was beautiful to see.... except maybe for the rogue, who was caught in the middle.

- the King of the Trollhaunt Warrens AGAIN, resurrected via some plot-device magic and obviously wanting more punishment after his first asskicking. We took down his bodyguards first, and then him for the 2nd time, all in 5 rounds.

3 sessions with nary a hint of grind in them. Just great fights, with good teamwork and tactics helping to ensure a successful outcome.

I suspect part of this might be because the DM has replaced the annoying nothics (with the area-daze) with less-annoying ones. I wouldn't know because I haven't read the module, but we haven't met any of the former since that original grind fight. Part of it might also be by good use of broken powers. The cleric has the divine oracle PP with a per-encounter critical hit on demand, and there's a ranger (nuff said). Still, we did just fine when we didn't have the cleric last session, and also the one before that without the ranger. So I guess we must be doing something right.

Of course, now that I've posted this, karma will demand that our next session will be grindy as heck. We're about to hop off to the Feywild where the final confrontation with the troll King is likely to take place. He's only been an elite the first two times, and I'm betting he'll be a solo for the next one. That might be a bit different.

 

[Storminator]

All games were 5 or 6 players. 1 or 2 could position enemies tops. Highest level was 7 ever, generally it was level 1-5 so not that many conditional modifiers. Usually, the game with the taclord, you just used action point and you hit. Other games? We didn't have conditional modifiers that could be leveraged at that rate, certainly not at the encounter level. Then enemies tend to rat pack players. Do gm's generally spread out baddies for you? Or does your wizard or aoe person make short work of the non-minions as well? Many of the players had 'get out of jail free' style abilities to help with that, but only one or so a piece. It then becomes "Oh crap. they used the same trick and that was an encounter."

That is different than our group. We have 3 players with move powers as at-wills, and everyone has encounter powers that move (hmmm, maybe the swordmage only has a daily). Also the Warlord and the Fighter have powers that move allies. As the Cleric I was pretty indifferent about Split the Sky when I picked it up; now it's one of my favorite powers -- very effective.

We also have 2 leaders (taclord and Cleric), so we're getting attack bonuses all over the place. Last fight we had the Warlord shift every PC into formation for the Cleric's Divine Glow (+2 attack) that also attacked both elite soldiers.

We work hard at herding our enemies together for the Wizard, whether the DM spreads them out or not. When someone gets surrounded we try to get the swordmage to swap in for them.

PS

 

[Nail]

FWIW: So far I've not seen "the grind"...but I suspect that's because I currently play in:

• low level (now at 4th!) games, and
• my DMs know about the supposed grind, and do stuff to head it off at th' pass.

...so talking about it ain't bad. Spread th' word.

 

[lkjopajdowma]

Pretty much the biggest grind factor I've experienced is when the PC's dice go cold. Add in a few soldiers and it only gets worse. For instance the PCs fought some rakshasas and cyclopses last week, and eventually the two defenders were going up against two rakshasa soldiers. They kept missing while the rakshasas kept hitting - they get to roll 2d20 and take the highest for their basic attack, plus mark the target as well as pounce on the target as an immediate reaction if they shift. This kept the defenders in one spot, missing round after round while the rest of the PCs chased down the artillery monsters. If they had called back the rogue & wizard they probably could have finished off the soldiers sooner, but the PCs stuck to their guns and ground it out. In this situation they probably contributed to the grind more than anything else!

This is the biggest issue leading to grind for our group.

4 whole rounds of NO ONE in the party rolling above 6 is not pretty.

 

[KarinsDad]

This is the biggest issue leading to grind for our group.

4 whole rounds of NO ONE in the party rolling above 6 is not pretty.

Which is why I've always thought that the game should be 2D10 (auto-miss on a 4, critical on an 18) instead of 1D20.

 

[Elric]

Which is why I've always thought that the game should be 2D10 (auto-miss on a 4, critical on an 18) instead of 1D20.

If you need an 11 or lower to hit, then switching to 2d10 increases your chance of hitting. However, if you need a 13 or higher to hit then switching to 2d10 decreases your chance of hitting. If you needed to roll a 15 to hit, for example, that's happening 21% of the time in 2d10, versus 30% of the time in 1d20. This is a big difference.

In general, the +1 to hit and defenses per level system would start to break down, as characters find it tougher and tougher to fight above-level opponents. I suppose you could scale monster XP values up faster, so a monster of level n+4 was worth more exp than the roughly 2*the xp of a creature of level n that's true now, but then you'd end up with a game with fewer options for encounter design.

2d10 in general favors the more powerful side, and this has a host of other effects.

 

[Storminator]

If you need an 11 or lower to hit, then switching to 2d10 increases your chance of hitting. However, if you need a 13 or higher to hit then switching to 2d10 decreases your chance of hitting. If you needed to roll a 15 to hit, for example, that's happening 21% of the time in 2d10, versus 30% of the time in 1d20. This is a big difference.

In general, the +1 to hit and defenses per level system would start to break down, as characters find it tougher and tougher to fight above-level opponents. I suppose you could scale monster XP values up faster, so a monster of level n+4 was worth more exp than the roughly 2*the xp of a creature of level n that's true now, but then you'd end up with a game with fewer options for encounter design.

2d10 in general favors the more powerful side, and this has a host of other effects.

One would have to design the game with that in mind, but it's been done for other games.

PS

 

[Keenath]

I really haven't been in many fights that weren't grinds.
I think it's because none of the player's at wills seem tactically interesting. Pushes and slides, unless you are in the room of grinding gears, tend to not matter much.

I don't know about that. Typically I see lots of push and pull to set up flanks or move enemies away from the squishies.

But that said, there's more to forced movement than the Room of No OSHA Compliance. This may be down to the DM, though. If he puts you in rooms that are always big empty boxes, of course it's boring. Every battle should have sources of cover or concealment and difficult terrain. (And this is "should" in the sense of "ur doin it wrong" if you don't.) Once you have stuff like that, then yeah, pushing people around is usually worthwhile.

I suppose if every encounter ever had some kind of mechanically and tactically interesting situation, that would be a bit better, but it tends to come off as contrived, generally.

Not at all. Mechanically interesting terrain doesn't mean every room has bottomless pits, swinging scythes, and spear guns! It means every room should have things that get in the way (furniture, trees, rocks, boxes...), things that break sight lines (deep shadows, smoke, hanging vines, curtains...), and things that hinder movement (debris, undergrowth, etc).

But there's more the DM can do to avoid "empty gymnasium syndrome" (which is where you might as well be fighting on a basketball court), in addition to the above. In a lot of cases you can add physical hazards to the battlefield. Pits or cliffs, water, fire, ice, whatever. This can also include traps, but it doesn't have to be something intentional -- in fact, it's better if the hazards affect enemies as much as allies, thus giving you a good reason to shove your enemies into them. And it's double-awesome if you can include skills that let you avoid the hazard, like athletics checks to leap pits or acrobatics to stay up on ice.

That, coupled with the default assumption that encounters miss a little under half the time, and you get people weefing with their cool effect and being forced to just spam correct tactical at will B. Is there something as a player I'm/we're doing wrong?

Well, yes and no. If you're at 50 percent you're probably not doing it right. I rarely see players with that low an attack bonus (60% is more common, and it's usually even better for attack-focused guys), and mere flanking position is worth an bonus 10% on whatever you had. You can always let another character set you up for an encounter power, too, such as a Lance of Faith to give you +2.

The whole party takes differently useful powers, generally speaking a damage at will and and utility one. (Like reaping strike/cleave or howling strike/pressing strike. The only use for positioning is to get a +2 to hit for essentially every character in any game I was in (nobody plays rogues....). The problem is that flanking works both ways and generally one or more enemies gets the same bonus to someone because you are out of formation.

That tends to depend on whether the fighter is locking people down or not. It's situational, certainly, but often worthwhile if you're going to be using an encounter power.

 

[Keenath]

I don't necessarily feel the grind (yet, ask me again in 15 levels), but I have a player that did.

He was extremely bored using the same old At Will and Encounter powers over and over and over again. He liked playing 3E spellcasters or psionic-types with a lot of options.

It's a shame he quit, but sometimes there is just a personality conflict. On the other hand, it might be that 1st level is too simple for him and he'd be happier as the levels went up and got more encounter and daily powers. By the time you hit 11th level, you're sitting on four encounter attacks, three dailies, and three utilities, as well as a number of class features and your two at-wills, and that doesn't even take into account any items he might be wearing. How many options does a guy need?

He still plays Star Wars with us, but at least so far, he refuses to come back to 4E.

Star Wars is much more repetitive than 4e... what, does he play a Jedi with tons of Force Training feats every time? One of the biggest complaints about SWSE is that it boils down to "I move and shoot again" every turn for anyone who isn't a focused force user...

 

[KarinsDad]

Star Wars is much more repetitive than 4e... what, does he play a Jedi with tons of Force Training feats every time?

Basically, yes. He has about 8 force powers plus he is a blaster expert and a pilot/gunner.

This is a lot more options than even seventh level DND (the highest we got) with: 2 At Will, 3 Encounter, and 4 Dailies.