Blog post: Speeding up Combat #3 - Barking up the Wrong Tree

[Quickleaf]

Absolutely. I'd also group stun along with healing as one of the culprits of combat" drag. I've avoided healing for monsters, even elites and solos, replacing them with bonus triggered actions, power up when bloodied, granting extra saves, etc. When you think about it narratively, besides the "bloodied" abilities HP have little mechanical effect on the story - they're the timeclock by which combats are measured. So Second Wind is really a PC focusing on defense...which is sort of backward from the cinematic archetype of a sudden burst of energy and speed. When designing monsters and especially leaders I try to keep this in mind. IMO players should be the only ones with the power to heal wounds a la HP.

 

[fjw70]

Just throwing another diagnosis here for perhaps installment #4.

I believe healing is one of the culprits to slow combat. Two leader words and an emergency button is all you should need for a party of 5. For a party of 6, add one more emergency button.

Healing is not fun to me. Learning to distribute damage taken among the party reduces the amount of mid-encounter healing, and during a short rest you can do all the post-encounter healing you need. I find this to be a fun tactical challenge.

Healing vs damage taken is often an arms race between DM and players. The more healing you have the more the DM wants to hurt you to challenge you, and either encounters run longer, or because of massive damage monsters have to do, you either run low on surges fast, or end up with some close calls or a few deaths due to the impact of focused fire from massive damage dealing monsters, especially against parties of 6.

The less healing you have, the DM will adjust the damage coming at you accordingly, and you can have thrilling combats, avoid slug fests, and can play through more encounters a day.

With the current state of things, it's not unusual for me to see a defender burn through 6 out of 12 surges in 1 encounter, and a striker burn through 4 out of 8. This is because there are so many ways to trigger healing surges mid-encounter, and you still have to heal up at the end. I would much rather see the defender use 3-4 surges per encounter, and expect the rest to use 2-3 surges (depending on their build and role).

I've played and run encounters where there was no leader in the party, and they are absolutely thrilling, and they are fast. I feel healing slows down combat (via DM meta to challenge PC's) and should be considered a culprit when examining solutions for speeding up combat encounters.

Why are low level encounters fast and furious? Because there aren't as many HP resources and healing surge triggers, and because monsters deal a proportionately challenging amount of damage. At levels 1-4 I was able to run 3 encounters in a session easy with a good bit of roleplay in between, and 5-6 encounters in an adventuring day. As you get to paragon, I don't plan for more than 1 combat encounter a session (so we actually have some time for RP), and I have a difficult time running more than 3 encounters an adventuring day.

When examining all the knobs and dials to speed up encounters, I think it would be prudent to take a look at the healing faucet as well.

My thoughts exactly. One of the houserules for my next 4e campaign is no leaders (for exactly the reasons you state).


The more I think about this thread the more I realize this is a eureka moment for me and makes me think about 4e encounter design much differently.

 

[KarinsDad]

The less healing you have, the DM will adjust the damage coming at you accordingly, and you can have thrilling combats, avoid slug fests, and can play through more encounters a day.

I doubt this is true most of the time.

I suspect that many DMs take x XP of monsters and throw them at the PCs based on the suggested XP in the DMG. They might adjust the monsters slightly, but unless the group has multiple healers or no healers, or the PCs get knocked unconscious a lot, or wipe through their foes easily a lot, I doubt that most DMs make any significant adjustments. Anything in the middle probably doesn't result in significant adjustments on the part of most DMs.

The people who make the adjustments are the players. If the fight is going against them, they pull out more action points and Dailies. If the fight is not going against them, they often do not.


I really don't consider "low amount of healing available" encounters to be thrilling. A hot dice streak by the DM and a cold dice streak by the players can easily result in a TPK if the group has little healing in it.

The main resource that PCs typically have and their main edge over NPCs is their healing. Focused fire by PCs works significantly better than focused fire by the NPCs because a seriously damaged PC can be healed and hence recover whereas a seriously damaged NPC typically cannot. Take away the PC's healing edge and it just means that encounters become more swingy and more susceptible to the dice gods.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Absolutely. I'd also group stun along with healing as one of the culprits of combat" drag.

Let's take that as a given for a moment, for the sake of argument: Then it follows that some "design judo" can turn both problems into a strength. Healing slows down combat, because it doesn't push the action to a close (that is, opportunity cost) and it lets the recipient stay in the fight longer. Stuns and other such conditions, OTOH, slows down combat because the possible offensive action is lost. So introduce a mechanic so that healing resources can be used to get rid of stun and other such conditions. And critically, make this mechanic attractive as an option, at least in most circumstance.

You might simply give every leader an at will (additional), that lets them spend a minor action to give the target the opportunity to spend a surge to remove a condition. Or you could let any existing healing power that uses surges instead remove a condition for the same cost. Or to really focus on the problem, I think I'd just say that as a move action, any character can spend a surge to remove a condition that would otherwise deny that character the opportunity to act. Then maybe come up with additional leader utilities that let them do this for other people, but they'd have to pick those instead of something else. So if you are standing right next to the dragon, and you are stunned, you can blow a surge, and still have your minor and standard actions left. It might even make sense to allow this without any action cost--only the surge cost.

Now, characters are getting to act immediately, and they are potentially setting themselves up to be out of the fight later (maybe later today, but still later). Best of all, the players get to pick in each instance. So if the fight is moving reasonably fast, and they want to save healing resources they can. Or if things are dragging, they can bring the heat. Or if they think better to risk the resources to blow through the impediments, they can.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

If you really are good enough with skill challenges that your players truly enjoy them, please post some examples -- the world needs them.

Most of our skill challenges are contests of seeing who can make what skill *possibly* useful.

It's amazing how often the barbarian's flexing has somehow turned into something useful.

Brad

 

[samursus]

Great thread.

The "Healing as culprit" idea sparked an idea. What if in-combat healing ONLY granted temp HP's and you couldn't use Healing powers during short rests? Its just off the top of my head, but what does everyone else think?

Actual Healing could only be granted by Rituals?

In my mind this would use up healing surges quicker (those who didn't use their temp hps would lose them) and have the added bonus of making the ritual caster feat necessary for at least one party member.

 

[Redshirt]

I was talking with one of my players the other day about length of combat in 4e and how some of the mechanics like action points have changed how I run the game. In 3e I would put random guards at doors and patrolling the grounds. I never used them in my 4e games because of a couple of players who would want to call them an encounter to get a action point. I could of handled it in several ways but chose just to ignore it.

My player reminded me that action points are a good way to speed up fights, so I'm hoping these "free" AP's will help.

 

[KarinsDad]

Great thread.

The "Healing as culprit" idea sparked an idea. What if in-combat healing ONLY granted temp HP's and you couldn't use Healing powers during short rests? Its just off the top of my head, but what does everyone else think?

Actual Healing could only be granted by Rituals?

In my mind this would use up healing surges quicker (those who didn't use their temp hps would lose them) and have the added bonus of making the ritual caster feat necessary for at least one party member.

I think all of the temp hit point healing would sometimes be used up in the first few rounds (not necessarily on the PCs that need it) so that all temp hit points are used up first. I think that people would use up a lot of Second Winds during short rests thereby having fewer encounters per game day.