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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7564233" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>The whole 'combat is too long in 4e' thing actually mystifies me. Maybe we played it wrong, or maybe we played AD&D wrong (pretty much skipped 3.x as a DM). It seemed like combat in 1e/2e and combat in 4e didn't occupy a radically different amount of time. They were different, and the time wasn't allocated in exactly the same way, but in most cases I would say combats in AD&D took a pretty solid amount of time to run. It would be hard to set one up and run it in less than half an hour. Anything that took less I would be hard pressed to really qualify as 'combat' (IE the level 3 party runs in 2 kobolds and a giant rat, squish). </p><p></p><p>That last thing you just wouldn't run in 4e, it doesn't really meet the definition of a combat encounter in the normal sense. I mean, you COULD waste your time resolving it with combat, but why? In AD&D you wouldn't break out the minis for this 'fight' either, you'd just roll a few dice to see if maybe the vermin scattered too quick to instantly curb stomp. You can do the same in 4e, just treat it as a complexity 1 SC or even just roll a couple dice, or just narrate what happens. In all truth the whole incident would probably be some aspect of a larger SC anyway.</p><p></p><p>BIG fights, well, they really don't take any longer in 4e, as long as GM is moving on along and familiar with the rules, has some decent organization of combat, and players that are at least willing to do their own tracking. If things move along, the players stay engaged, tactics are solid, the combat resolves pretty quickly. </p><p></p><p>That was my experience anyway. I never thought there was really justification for hacking on hit points or other stuff people seemed to think was needed. Good encounter design made 4e work quite well. I think MM3 grade monsters are a lot more fun, often, but its more a matter of cooler things happening more often vs an actual problem.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 7564233, member: 82106"] The whole 'combat is too long in 4e' thing actually mystifies me. Maybe we played it wrong, or maybe we played AD&D wrong (pretty much skipped 3.x as a DM). It seemed like combat in 1e/2e and combat in 4e didn't occupy a radically different amount of time. They were different, and the time wasn't allocated in exactly the same way, but in most cases I would say combats in AD&D took a pretty solid amount of time to run. It would be hard to set one up and run it in less than half an hour. Anything that took less I would be hard pressed to really qualify as 'combat' (IE the level 3 party runs in 2 kobolds and a giant rat, squish). That last thing you just wouldn't run in 4e, it doesn't really meet the definition of a combat encounter in the normal sense. I mean, you COULD waste your time resolving it with combat, but why? In AD&D you wouldn't break out the minis for this 'fight' either, you'd just roll a few dice to see if maybe the vermin scattered too quick to instantly curb stomp. You can do the same in 4e, just treat it as a complexity 1 SC or even just roll a couple dice, or just narrate what happens. In all truth the whole incident would probably be some aspect of a larger SC anyway. BIG fights, well, they really don't take any longer in 4e, as long as GM is moving on along and familiar with the rules, has some decent organization of combat, and players that are at least willing to do their own tracking. If things move along, the players stay engaged, tactics are solid, the combat resolves pretty quickly. That was my experience anyway. I never thought there was really justification for hacking on hit points or other stuff people seemed to think was needed. Good encounter design made 4e work quite well. I think MM3 grade monsters are a lot more fun, often, but its more a matter of cooler things happening more often vs an actual problem. [/QUOTE]
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