Combat- Group Style

[Belen]

I am wondering about the push to have multiple combatants in a fight. While I often use this method in my games, I also enjoy having the single monster ripping the PCs to shreds. The lone direwolf or dragon that attacks the village or city is something I enjoy running. I am not sure why there is an emphasis on multiple creature encounters or why they are attempting to push for that style of play, unless there is a minis reason.

What do you all think about this? I admit that I am torn on the concept of 4e and I move from positive to negative feelings about it everyday. Sometimes I really love what I hear, then others....

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I get the impression that they're trying to make it easier to run multiple-on-multiple kinds combats while still leaving it open for the one-against-many "boss" fights. My impression from many, many DM's I've talked to is that they'd go to one big boss to keep the complexity down, not because they necessarily preferred those kinds of fights thematically.

 

[mhensley]

I'm all for faster combats. The last two sessions, we had multi-hour fights that dragged on and on. :\

 

[Victim]

As a player, I vastly prefer group style combats. When there's only 1 enemy, or when all the enemies are alike, the battle is generally (but not always - the array of defenses on a high level caster can certainly be tough to unravel, and terrain has a big impact on how a horde type encounter works out) lacking in tactical complexity and thus I don't enjoy it as much. Target selection, for instance, is basically trivial.

 

[Wik]

Multiple combats rock, but they're hard to pull off in current D&D.

You can either throw a bunch of mooks that have the same stats at the PCs, and have fun, or you can mix and match critters, and flipflipflip through your books to actually run the combat.

As a case in point, in a sidequest for my STAP game, I had a fight where I was using 6 pregenerated pirates, a Chasme (From Fiendish Codex), a Shield Guardian, a Cleric, and some Kytons - on two sides, with the PCs coming in as group number three.

It didn't go well. While I had no problem running two different factions, and each stat block was from a different source (so no page-flipping), it was pretty damned hard to access all of the stats.

***

By comparison, when I was running d6 about a year ago, almost all of our fights were against large numbers of opponents, often using the "two different sides" technique (I call it the "halo approach", because if you ever play the original halo, there are four factions in the game that all hate each other, and there were numerous parts in the game where you'd come across two or three factions duking it out).

And the result? No problem! About the only difficulty was in moving the combats, due to how damage worked in d6, but that wasn't a huge problem (NOTE - if you run d6, use the hit point system! So much better!)

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Yeah. This is "give them lots of mooks to kill for a while, then hit them with the big nasty evil guy".

 

[Jhaelen]

I am wondering about the push to have multiple combatants in a fight. While I often use this method in my games, I also enjoy having the single monster ripping the PCs to shreds.

Well, there will still be single monster fights (see the fight against the dragon they put up).

However, it is (currently) very difficult to properly challenge a party with a single foe, especially if the group has more than four pcs (remember that 4th.ed. assumes a larger party!). In my game I have 8 players, so unless I use large numbers of diverse enemies no fight takes longer than 1-2 rounds.

Additionally, using a single high CR monster against the group will often mean that a single PC will have to take the brunt of the attack and die while none of the others are even in danger.
Intermittently, this has almost caused a problem in my game because (understandably) noone was willing anymore to play the tank role. Adding a couple of mooks instead of using a single advanced creature helped to counter that development.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Well, there will still be single monster fights (see the fight against the dragon they put up)

Yeah, the main problem I found is that in 1 enemy against 5 PCs model in 3.5, the PCs get 5 actions for every one the enemy takes. So, if they ALL go first, the enemy is dead before it can act. If the enemy goes first, he MIGHT be able to hurt one of the PCs a little bit before he dies.

It looks like they are designing monsters for their intended purpose. If a creature is designed to be the type of creature you use as a "boss" monster, then he should have the stats of 5 enemies combined. He should have the hit points of about 5 creatures of his level and be able to take close to 5 actions a round with free actions or special attacks that hit many PCs at once.

This is a good thing.

 

[Gundark]

Right now my group is playing Warhammer fantasy rpg. You can fight multiple foes and the combats are fast. Honestly I don't see us switching back to D&D until 4e. 3.x really really wore us down.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Right now my group is playing Warhammer fantasy rpg. You can fight multiple foes and the combats are fast. Honestly I don't see us switching back to D&D until 4e. 3.x really really wore us down.

Well, I guess after 8 years of Warhammer, that might also put some strain onto you. But I agree, Warhammer combat is a lot faster. Warhammer's combat system also very much promotes the idea of fighting against multiple opponents, as participants get only one dodge (if they have the skill at all)) and one parry attempt per round. A 2+ on 1 scenario is pretty bad for the single one, even if he has advanced a lot more than his enemies.