Average rounds per encounter?

[ExploderWizard]

If this were true for my group, I would never ever play 4E again.

Ever.

And I think we come in pretty slow compared to most groups.

Yes indeed.

Our combats only last 4 rounds or so on average. I cut HP down by 25% (sometimes more) and increase at-will monster damage by at least 1 die (sometimes more)

Fights have been somewhat short and brutal. PC's burn through a lot of surges in a short time. This makes them more open to other options since combat stings so much- a desired side effect.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Are you claiming that all parties have to have a minimum of two strikers? Is that the norm?

No, I am saying you get shorter fights with more DPR characters. Some controllers and leaders are high DPR characters. The more of these characters you have, the higher DPR your party will have and the shorter the fights will be.

And, 3 out of 4 of the PCs in our group can do higher DPR, at least until they run out of encounter powers.

Yeah, that is where strikers, controllers and some leaders are better, they don't run out of steam. Their at-will powers and class abilities are geared for damage.

If you have a super-optimized DPR party, then of course the encounters will be shorter.

I opine that you have quicker encounters than normal due to having so many high DPR PCs in your party and because you have 6 PCs instead of 5.

I adjust the encounters for the extra character, but I think you are partly correct here.

I do not think my group is that far outside the DPR norm. They might lean a bit low role-wise, but with the Fighter being designed to attack multiple foes per round at a high chance to hit, they are probably fairly average. If you replaced the Fighter with a Wizard, then the Wizard could get Scorching Burst in on occasion more often on 2 or more foes, but the Fighter makes up for that with opportunity attacks, her burst attacks, and her high chance to hit (they just made paragon level yesterday and she took Kensai).

Your party isn't far outside the DPR norm, but there is probably little synergy between the characters DPR wise. Btw, I think your fighter does a good stand-in job as a controller with his close bursts.

Your group, on the other hand, averages 5 rounds only because the party is super-optimized for DPR. They are well outside the normal curve of parties.

Actually they aren't, the avenger and barbarian aren't cheesed out builds at all and the bard is a joke DPR wise. There are three SOLID characters that make the backbone of the party though with lots of synergy. (The fighter uses come-and-get it and the invoker AOE blasts the whole lot 2-3 times doing rediculess amounts of damage.

I don't see it as low DPR versus high DPR.

I see it as average DPR versus high DPR.

If your high DPR group is averaging 5 rounds, shouldn't they be averaging 3 rounds if the theory is that the game system is round balanced at higher levels?

I was probably a bit unclear in my post but I thought I made it clear when I noted that a healer cleric is extra-low damage.

The average DPR groups should average 5 or so rounds and the high DPR groups can easily be challenged with slightly tougher encounters to also do so.

Instead, an average DPR group takes a much longer time if the encounter is not same level. And n+2 encounter often takes 8 to 10 rounds or so.

In your 4 hours, you get 4 encounters. In our last two sessions of 5 hours, we got 3 encounters (n+2, n, n+1) two weeks ago and 2 encounters yesterday (n+3, n). Your average of encounters per hour appears to be about double ours.

And, that is to be expected for two reasons: 1) your group is higher DPR, 2) you have 6 PCs whereas we have 4 PCs. 6 PCs can gang up on a single NPC and change the action economy much faster than 4 PCs. 6 PCs where most of them have high DPR can do so even faster.

Now, a 4 person party is as much away from the norm as a 6 man party. A 6 man party has much more synergy than a 4 man party. In other words:

If you have fewer than 5 people and you are scaling the encounters by xp as the DMG says, in addition shave a little bit of the HP of the mobs to compensate for the lower synergy. 10-20% should be about right. In a larger party you can do the opposite, adding a small amount of hp.

One more thing is that combat speed in time also depends on your players. We have a very streamlined combat and people usually just act when it's their turn, instead of thinking... The same goes for me as a DM. We have had some funny situations because of it, but since it goes both ways it balances out nicely.

Our ranger for instance usually goes: "twin strike the ugly orc with the big rash. AC 25, AC 17, one hit, dmg 1d10+5+1d6 = 14". In other words his turn is over in like 30 seconds. Which is the right amount of time to use when twin striking.

 

[ValhallaGH]

Minor note. 63 damage, from a Ranger, at level 10 is merely above average. It is nothing worthy of high-fives, back-slapping, or celebration.
75+ damage would be worthy of such.

If your PCs are such that 63 damage at level 10 is a lot then they are a low DPR party.

 

[KarinsDad]

Minor note. 63 damage, from a Ranger, at level 10 is merely above average. It is nothing worthy of high-fives, back-slapping, or celebration.
75+ damage would be worthy of such.

If your PCs are such that 63 damage at level 10 is a lot then they are a low DPR party.

It depends. Show me a normal melee 10th level ranger design that does slightly above average 63 where the Ranger is not item optimized.

 

[ggroy]

The times I felt an encounter was dragging on "too long", I ended up "minionizing" the generic monsters/badguys once they became bloodied. One more hit and a "minionized" monster/badguy was dead.

Another way of shortening encounters in mid-battle, I had some of the backline monsters retreat, such as an archer running out of arrows, or a monster's weapon breaking (such as from a critical failure) and subsequently running away from battle.

Sometimes I'll do a fake "morale" check and have the monsters retreat on a d20 roll of less than 5, 10 or 15, depending on the type of monsters.

If a particular monster has resistance to a particular type of damage (ie. fire, etc ...), or regenerates hit points every round, sometimes I'll drop the resistance/regeneration once they're bloodied to speed things up.

 

[ggroy]

Another thing I've done which speeds up encounters slightly in my experience, is to use group initiative, alternating between the player group and badguy group. Usually I allow the players to have the initiative, unless they've been surprised.

In practice in my 4E games, typically the player group first has the wizard (or another spellcaster) doing a ranged area or blast attack on the badguys, before the melee players go in and fight. I try to arrange the badguys such that the players can't easily gang up all at once on one particular badguy and killing it in one round.

 

[Blackbrrd]

It depends. Show me a normal melee 10th level ranger design that does slightly above average 63 where the Ranger is not item optimized.

Why shouldn't the character be item optimized? It's the suggested way of giving items to a character.

Either way I do agree with you, 63 damage in one round is high. (Speaking from experience with our level 8 ranger).

 

[Elric]

Minor note. 63 damage, from a Ranger, at level 10 is merely above average. It is nothing worthy of high-fives, back-slapping, or celebration.
75+ damage would be worthy of such.

If your PCs are such that 63 damage at level 10 is a lot then they are a low DPR party.

It depends. Show me a normal melee 10th level ranger design that does slightly above average 63 where the Ranger is not item optimized.

Even if a ranger rarely hit 75 damage in a round, it wouldn’t mean anything about his DPR; it would mean something about his burst damage. DPR has been curiously ill-defined so far in this thread; expected value for damage with at-wills is the standard on WotC's charop board.

Why shouldn't the character be item optimized? It's the suggested way of giving items to a character.

Either way I do agree with you, 63 damage in one round is high. (Speaking from experience with our level 8 ranger).

Item optimization drastically increases character power, particularly at higher levels. For example, you need a Frost weapon to take advantage of the Lasting Frost/Wintertouched combo, and you can increase damage much further by adding Iron Armbands of Power, Gloves of Ice, and Siberys Shard of Cold.

 

[KarinsDad]

Why shouldn't the character be item optimized? It's the suggested way of giving items to a character.

He has items. For example, at level 10 he has a +2 Adamantine Craghammer and a +3 Earth-Wrought Hammer.

By item optimized, I mean a PC that could come straight off the optimization boards with the best possible items for that PC concept.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Even if a ranger rarely hit 75 damage in a round, it wouldn’t mean anything about his DPR; it would mean something about his burst damage. DPR has been curiously ill-defined so far in this thread; expected value for damage with at-wills is the standard on WotC's charop board.

Well, I can somewhat agree with you. Since we are discussing how long a combat takes etc., it is interesting to have at least encounter powers in the equation.

Pure at-will DPR is probably most interesting for the charop-board, and not as much for real gameplay.