D&D 4E Changing the Combat Parameters of 4th Edition

[Myrhdraak]

I think it puts a MUCH greater premium on the most vanilla high damage-output powers, and then even more so on anything that 'front loads' damage output, such as minor action attacks, reactions, and interrupts. Certain classes, like rangers obviously, will REALLY benefit from this. Other classes, like most controllers, will find their shtick has been significantly devalued, 2 rounds simply isn't enough time for most control to really be leveraged effectively (though at least a few of the more ephemeral UEONT effects may be a little bit more worthwhile).

Yes it would - if you recover all you HP and encounter powers without a cost after a short rest. However, if we make this associated with a cost for these recoveries, you would like to save you high damage output powers. This means that for a low threat encounter that last for two rounds (like in 5th edition), you might only want to use your at-wills and maybe one encounter power. As the damage output decreases, this lower threat actually becomes harder to handle, allowing me as a DM to place small logical skirmishes in my adventure design (without creating a 1+ hour fight). Some sentries, a street thug, etc. which might fit into the overall story, but is maybe not the "grand battle", the party is saving their resources for.

 

[Myrhdraak]

Frankly though, I don't entirely agree with the initial analysis of 4e. It isn't anywhere near as slow, IME, as it is being made out to be. I do think, however, that 4e is made for 'cutting to the chase' and isn't a game where you toss around lots of trivial encounters, generally. It gives you tools to make every encounter dramatic and dynamic instead. That doesn't mean some of them can't be relatively lighter weight than others, just that they probably will want to emphasize something else besides straight up combat difficulty (IE an at-level encounter probably should feature some plot element, some setting element, and some character element that make it more three-dimensional and interesting). Luckily 4e combat INHERENTLY caters to this because it can be quite interesting!

Totally agree with you that I love the 4th Edition interesting battles. That's why I am not switching over to 5th Edition. The question I am asking myself is - why can't I as a DM be allowed to have both? Why can't I have one system that allows me to run the climatic battles 4th Edition gave me, but also allow be as a DM to place smaller skirmishes, that not only feel like a waste of time as it will in no way impact the players in any way. Is that possible? What would have to be changed to do it. 5th Edition took away the climatic battles and replaced it with non-strategic fast moving encounters. Why can't the two worlds not be combined?

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

I do both in 4E. The trick is all in the encounter design. Lower level brutes that pack a wallop but are easy to hit are perfect for quick skimishes a la 5E. Support them with a few minions - especially minion artillery - and you can have a quick, meaningless, but fun encounter in the same time it takes to something in 5E or the earlier editions.

 

[Myrhdraak]

So, yes, it may take an hour to do a really cool interesting 4e encounter (maybe longer even for a real end-arc type of thing) but that should actually be a GOOD feature!

It sounds great but I think DM David summarize it quite well when you convert 3.5 or 5th edition games to 4th edition, there is a time drawback that cannot be neglected. "My fourth-edition time budget means that I have to cut locations, enemies, and material like a sailor jettisons weight as my ship takes water. I must condense each location to a couple of key encounters, and two fights.”

I see it in at my gametable. The combat-strategists love it, while the role-players and story-tellers feel things are not moving fast enough. I want to be able to combine both, not only serve 60% of the crowd (now refering to my own players). And yes, you can probably by putting a lot of effort into predicting and planning your players every move when writing the adventure serve them both - but what if there is some simple game mechanisms that we have overlooked that make this much simpler - just due to the fact that the 4th edition game had other design parameters in mind when doing the system, and 5th edition their own?

 

[Myrhdraak]

I do both in 4E. The trick is all in the encounter design. Lower level brutes that pack a wallop but are easy to hit are perfect for quick skimishes a la 5E. Support them with a few minions - especially minion artillery - and you can have a quick, meaningless, but fun encounter in the same time it takes to something in 5E or the earlier editions.

I do them as well. That is not the problem. They are free XP, that you could almost replace with the following sentence, as it has the same game impact: "There are two ogres stepping out in the road. You quickly kill them and recieve 400 XP. You are now finally on your way to the Dungeon of Doom". Is there a way that this skirmish somehow could reduce the partys resource in some meaningful way for the real encounters at the Dungeon of Doom?

 

[pemerton]

If the party manages to kill all the sentries outside the orc kings hall. There is just a door between them and the 30 orcs inside. If this had been 4th Edition I would have asked myself, what is the likelihood that there is a an orc coming out of the door during the 5 minutes rest? Maybe I would even have turned it to a dice roll, maybe estimating the likelihood to 10%. However, if I were playing 5th Edition in the same situation I would have deemed it 90% chance that somebody steps out of the door during the 1 hour short rest the players take to be ready for the orc king. Same situation, but totally different end result due to the parameter settings of the two combat universes.

But that is exactly what I mean by GM decisions about pacing!

If the GM wants the PCs to have a 1 hour rest, all s/he has to do is decide that the orc king is giving an hour-long address to his swordthanes. Or they are all participating in a ritual to honour Gruumsh. Or . . . That's not even that unrealistic - I give lectures where no one leaves or enters the room for an hour at a time, and that's in a much less hierarchical environment where people have far more busy schedules than an orc fortress!

And to flip it around - if the PCs want have ganked the sentries and you (as GM) want to run it as "waves" style encounter, all you have to do is tell the players that they can hear some voice approaching on the other side of the door. Now they have a minute or so to take their positions and get the benefit of surprise, but they don't have five minutes to rest. It's not as if there's anything unusual about a pair of orcs leaving the throne room, and at worst it's a bit of bad luck that it happens to occur right at the moment the PCs would like to be hanging around outside, unnoticed.

This is why I would suggest that you first work out what sort of pacing structure you want (eg what sorts of encounter levels, how you want the creatures that make up the encounter to be parcelled into "waves", etc), and then decide what sort of ingame treatment of short rests will work best to achieve this.

Yes it would - if you recover all you HP and encounter powers without a cost after a short rest. However, if we make this associated with a cost for these recoveries, you would like to save you high damage output powers. This means that for a low threat encounter that last for two rounds (like in 5th edition), you might only want to use your at-wills and maybe one encounter power. As the damage output decreases, this lower threat actually becomes harder to handle

I do them as well. That is not the problem. They are free XP, that you could almost replace with the following sentence, as it has the same game impact: "There are two ogres stepping out in the road. You quickly kill them and recieve 400 XP. You are now finally on your way to the Dungeon of Doom". Is there a way that this skirmish somehow could reduce the partys resource in some meaningful way for the real encounters at the Dungeon of Doom?

Again, as far as I can tell you are talking about splitting an "encounter" (in the technical sense of a certain bundle of challenges which are collectively bookended by short rests) into multiple "waves" that do not permit short rests between them.

So the two ogres are significant because they will inflict some hp loss, or suck an encounter power, or whatever, and the PCs won't recover that before coming to the next "wave" of the "encounter".

The answer to how to do this? Just do it! of how a situation a bit like this unfolded in my 4e campaign (although each constituent "wave" was a bigger deal than two ogres).

As far as how you rationalise it in the fiction - I think that's a secondary concern. That is, I wouldn't encourage you to simply tell your players that you're houseruling short rests into 1 hour, and then hope that your new "combat universe" will emerge organically. After all, there's no necessary guarantee that it will.

Rather, I'd be upfront and tell your players that you're wanting to change the pacing a bit, and that short rests will be on a stricter ration. And then, if you want to block the players getting a short rest you just come right out and block it!, adding some appropriate narration - whether that be "You hear some voices approaching the door", or "Dragging the ogre bodies off the road takes a bit longer than you hoped - you're going to have to get going without stopping to rest if you want to avoide getting caught outside in the storm," or whatever else seems to work.

13th Age is very upfront about this in relation to long rests - if the players take one before 4 level appropriate encounters have been handled, the GM is allowed to inflict a "campaign loss" on them. You could do the same thing for short rests.

TL;DR - your concern is ultimately about how to pace the unfolding of "encounters" (in the technical sense). Focus on taking control of the pacing; be upfront with your players; and then let the fiction fall into place around that.

 

[Myrhdraak]

If the GM wants the PCs to have a 1 hour rest, all s/he has to do is decide that the orc king is giving an hour-long address to his swordthanes. Or they are all participating in a ritual to honour Gruumsh. Or . . . That's not even that unrealistic - I give lectures where no one leaves or enters the room for an hour at a time, and that's in a much less hierarchical environment where people have far more busy schedules than an orc fortress!

And to flip it around - if the PCs want have ganked the sentries and you (as GM) want to run it as "waves" style encounter, all you have to do is tell the players that they can hear some voice approaching on the other side of the door. Now they have a minute or so to take their positions and get the benefit of surprise, but they don't have five minutes to rest. It's not as if there's anything unusual about a pair of orcs leaving the throne room, and at worst it's a bit of bad luck that it happens to occur right at the moment the PCs would like to be hanging around outside, unnoticed.

I think we run a little different games. Yours seems more story focused where you adjust circumstances and rules based on characters actions. In my games I try to stick with the rules and based on the players knowledge of those rules (or the game world), their actions have consecuenses. If they would be stupid enough to take a 1 hour rest in front of the orc kings hall when they are low on resources, then they are in for a tough ride. I would not “pace” that to be nice - bad choices are rewarded with dire consequences. But the only way that can work is if we have a set of agreed rules that everybody understands and knows about.

 

[Myrhdraak]

The answer to how to do this? Just do it!

I intend to, but before implementing something I was hoping to take advantage of all the other sharp DMs out there. Maybe somebody have already tried something similar and have some important learnings they can share? Maybe somebody have thought about these same ideas and done some house rules themselves they were willing to share? Maybe somebody is running much more frequent games and have seen a lot of different game play from both 4th and 5th edition to share how the rest and recovery changes between 4th and 5th has really changed the player behaviour at their table? Who knows? Hopefully somebody can contribute with some learnings or analysis, other than sticking to the rules that have been given us. In 5th Edition we were at least given options for various play styles in the DMG - that never happened in 4th Edition - it was one way or the high-way (even though I seem to remember som Dragon article towards the end of the 4th Edition era when they started to loosen up things a bit).

 

[pemerton]

I would not “pace” that to be nice - bad choices are rewarded with dire consequences.

Fair enough, but then you're still going to have your ogre problem. Because unless the PCs really have to get to the Dungeon of Doom in a hurry, adding a 1 hour rest to their day or more of travel is going to make the resource expenditure against the ogres of little or no significance. (Maybe the fighter burns a surge during the short rest.)

Maybe somebody have already tried something similar and have some important learnings they can share?

Lots of 4e GMs have varied rest durations - eg short rest = 1 day, extended rest = 1 week, or = a few days in a haven (ie not just anywhere with room to lay down a bedroll).

And, as you've seen in this thread, some 4e GMs use encounters with fewer opponents and/or minions to introduce short or "filler" combats between the bigger deals.

And as I mentioned, 13th Age uses a "swap an early rest for a campaign loss" system that could easily be adapted to short as well as long rests.

But what I'm trying to convey in my posts is that the issue you're asking about - how to vary the ratio of combats to recovery - has a clear mechanical meaning in 4e: it's about spacing out the elements of an encounter (in the technical sense of a resource-consuming event that occurs between short rests). What you are asking for is advice on how to have encounters that come in waves rather than all at once (ie there are discrete moments of combat, although in mechanical terms they're all part of one encounter). For instance, wo ogres on the way to the Dungeon of Doom, who suck an encounter power and some hit points that don't get recovered before the PCs enter said Dungeon, are - in mechanical terms - just one wave of the encounter that is (in mechanical terms) ongoing until the PCs take their short rest.

If you want to do this simply in terms of dungeon design, you build your whole dungeon using an appropriate encounter budget (say, Level +4 for heroic tier PCs) and then deny the PCs a short rest while they're in the dungeon. Whether you achieve this denial by way of fiat, or a 13th Age approach, or via random encounter tables, or via your extrapolation from the "living, breathing" dungeon environment, is secondary: choose whichever one works for you. The key thing, in order to get what you want, is the denial.

Now if you want to extend it to the two ogres, though, you're going to have to look more closely at how you achieve the denial. 13th Age-style will work. So will fiat. "Living, breathing" adjudication might - but equally your players might find it a bit odd that they can never get a peaceful hours rest by the side of the road after knocking over a couple of ogres. And random encounters raise the same issue.

This issue - of the problems that arise from using an in-fiction concept ("rests take 1 hour") to manage what is essentially a pacing question ("I need this many enemies to be fought before the first short rest, or else the resource attrition won't work like I wanted it to") - has been discussed at great length in relation to 5e. (And before then, going back to discussions around 5 minute workdays and nova-ing.) The only solution that is generally offered is that the GM should pour on time pressure such that the players won't want to rest because if they rest they'll lose. In effect that's the 13th Age approach, only cloaked in a veneer of in-game logic. (And how thin that veneer is, and how likely to be seen through if the same pattern keeps recurring, is a major topic of discussion on those threads.)

I don't really recommend those threads, as they rarely cut through to the analytical nub: which is that the fundamental question is "How much do I want to ration short rests relative to the events of the game"? And if the answer is "no short rest between every moment of fisticuffs" then you need to focus on that, and then think about what technique you are going to use to enforce the rationing. Getting caught up thinking that the means (the technique for rationing short rests) is an end in itself - which is a frequent feature of those threads - is just a distraction from the real discussion, which is the feasibility of different techniques for diffrent playstyles and different campaign set ups. (Eg as I've said, a time-extension to short rests might work for a dungeon campaign, but probably won't help with the two ogres on the road.)

 

[Myrhdraak]

Fair enough, but then you're still going to have your ogre problem. Because unless the PCs really have to get to the Dungeon of Doom in a hurry, adding a 1 hour rest to their day or more of travel is going to make the resource expenditure against the ogres of little or no significance. (Maybe the fighter burns a surge during the short rest.)

The 1 hour rest might have an impact in a dangerous zone, such as a dungeon, where there is limited available areas to find a safe haven for 1 hour. In 4th Edition this is not the case. A dungeon of 4 major encounter areas would guarantee 3 short rests between each area, with full recovery of encounter powers and HP between each encounter. That would not be the case if the short rest were 1 hour and there is no chance in hell to find a spot without leaving the dungeon. As a DM this could allow me to create 3 simple encounters and one really hard. The first three is basic skirmish and the final one uses the full advantage of 4th edition tactial combat. The first would involve at least 2+2+2+2 hours of tactical combat the later maybe ½+½+½+2 hours, while still having a nice 4th Edition experience in the last battle, leaving me with 3½ hours of exploration, puzzles and roleplaying opportunities I could never had fit in to the 4th edition version of the dungeon during the same time period.

However, as you say, it would not solve the Ogre ambush while travelling to the Dungeon of Doom. That would require another mechanism. What would that be? You could go back to 1st edition with no healing surges whatsoever. You only recover encounter powers after a short rest. You regain 2 hit points after an extended rest. Yes, now those two Ogres would have a serious impact on the party. Maybe the party will have to try to find solace somewhere in the dark forest for two weeks to recover enought hit points to dare enter the Dungeon of Doom. I might not want to take my game back to those lovely days again (without risking by players' wrath), but I hope you see my point. There are mechanisms - parameters - that changes how taxing the Ogre encounter becomes.