Combat speed - works for our group; one-hour encounters

[Quickleaf]

Dude, you totally stole my brainwave! Well, okay, my goons aren't exactly the same but close enough to be freaky. And I totally use goons more often than minions.

I didn't mean to, I swear!

Just checked out your monster creation guide, and I think you're closer on the mark with your goons damage threshold than my quick and dirty version. Personally I don't like the threshold for minions as I *want* them to drop like flies to auto damage and such; but I understand why you'd want to have them last longer.

I've been wonderin what the XP values for minions and goons should be. My experience is that I often use 50% more minions than I planned (eg. 6 instead of 4).

 

[Kzach]

I'm currently in the DDI VT beta and I have to say that, although I've only played in two games so far, my current impression is that MapTool is the FAR superior choice. What's more, it's free and comes with a really awesome community of players and testers and coders.

I'd still recommend using Veggiesama's or Rumble's frameworks as I feel they speed up combat rather than slowing it down. And now that they can import from (I think) the Compendium to tokens (or maybe it was the Monster Builder... I can't remember as I've never used the function, I just remember that it was in development last I used MapTool and that I saw recently that it had been implemented), even the DM's job with the frameworks is easier.

Having said all that, VT combat is simply slow. It's the nature of the internet and voice communication. Skype is terrible I found. Teamspeak or Ventrilo are FAR superior. And even then, more than one person speaking at a time makes it go funky, and there's ALWAYS one person who can't figure out their settings so they sound crackly, too loud or too soft.

Then there's just the amount of buttons you have to press to do anything in a VT. They take time. Until someone comes along and really refines the UI and reinvents how you interact with a VT, that's simply the nature of the medium for now.

 

[DNH]

I'd still recommend using Veggiesama's or Rumble's frameworks ... Then there's just the amount of buttons you have to press to do anything in a VT. They take time. Until someone comes along and really refines the UI and reinvents how you interact with a VT, that's simply the nature of the medium for now.

I did try running Veggiesama's framework for a bit and while it *is* very good at what it does, we are left with your second point. There are numerous possibilities, options, buttons, character properties and so on that we found that it slowed us down. I even pared it down a bit but that wasn't enough. We spent too much time saying "What is this modifier drop-down thing? Do I need that?" or "How do I do the extra thingy from my wotsit?"

Like you say, the medium is the thing. Pen-and-paper, face-to-face, role-playing - the way the game was designed to be played - just requires you to pick up the dice and roll them, then you add the modifiers in your head and maybe make a note about effects and conditions. My players now use paper character sheets and real dice (okay, some use maptool dice macros!) and things run a lot quicker and smoother and we are less obviously aware of the fact that we are not actually sitting around a table playing the game.

 

[DNH]

I found that halving hitpoints just trivialized tactics. There's really no point whatsoever in bothering with control. Having a leader is good to the extent that they can grant surges in a pinch and greatly extend the value of each surge, but you rarely really need lasting debuffs. Fighters aren't hit so bad, mainly because they can put out some good damage. The problem is with even haphazardly optimized strikers a good hit with an encounter power, sometimes even an at-will, is a killing blow.

It speeds things up, but the problem is it isn't speeding up melee rounds, it is just making half as many of them happen. With 3 round average combats you really don't need much beyond 'do lots of damage'. The game gets pretty lopsided.

This was a concern and I will be watching things to see how they go. Like I said in the thread title though, this works for our group. By that, I mean that our group is not into optimisation very much (if at all) and none of them is likely to always choose the big damage option over control.

That said, if I find that things do not work quite as intended, then I will revise this method (maybe 2/3 HP, as suggested here and elsewhere). Also, although I never actually said this in my original post, I will be maintaining any "signature NPCs" as written, so the party will occasionally have more challenging combat encounters (oh go on, 'boss encounters'!) that will require more than simple hard hitting.

 

[Kzach]

I did try running Veggiesama's framework for a bit and while it *is* very good at what it does, we are left with your second point. There are numerous possibilities, options, buttons, character properties and so on that we found that it slowed us down. I even pared it down a bit but that wasn't enough. We spent too much time saying "What is this modifier drop-down thing? Do I need that?" or "How do I do the extra thingy from my wotsit?"

Yeah, I experienced a lot of that with people new to the framework. But in groups that knew the framework well, games went a lot faster because of all the leg-work the framework picks up. Select five targets, press the macro, add any bonuses (making macros for stuff like hunter's quarry helps) and bam, it even does crit dice on a per target basis! Listing which enemy is hit by what power and what effect it has all right there in the text box made DM'ing a lot easier as well.

But hey, whatever works best for you. Just unfortunate that the medium itself presents a time hurdle.

 

[DNH]

We used to use Fantasy Grounds 2. That was excellent and everything and they have made *huge* strides forward over the past year or so (since the parent company SmiteWorks was taken over). It dealt with all that too - targeting, application of effects, modifiers, dice rolling and so on. But it still required an amount of clicking here and there and manipulation of windows and so on. And we were never quite confident enough that it was all accurate, no matter how often we checked! And I suppose the other thing is that, like I said in the original post, we only play for a few hours once a week, so we never really got the chance to get to know the software well enough.

As an added bonus to moving to a lo-tech MapTool setup is that I can use its excellent lighting and vision tools to easily adjudicate cover and concealment, something I always struggled with in FG2.

 

[S'mon]

I found that halving hitpoints just trivialized tactics. There's really no point whatsoever in bothering with control. Having a leader is good to the extent that they can grant surges in a pinch and greatly extend the value of each surge, but you rarely really need lasting debuffs. Fighters aren't hit so bad, mainly because they can put out some good damage. The problem is with even haphazardly optimized strikers a good hit with an encounter power, sometimes even an at-will, is a killing blow.

It speeds things up, but the problem is it isn't speeding up melee rounds, it is just making half as many of them happen. With 3 round average combats you really don't need much beyond 'do lots of damage'. The game gets pretty lopsided.

It suits me and my playstyle very well - 3 rounds for a typical fight is plenty of time IMO, I'm far more concerned about combat dragging than it taking too long. And like I said, if I think a foe will die too easily I can just make them Elite; this gives them an AP, which makes their first round even scarier. I tend to hate non-damaging Control and Buff effects (Visions of Avarice, Moment of Glory) and I'm happy that shorter combats discourage their use.

All that said, I did have a ca 8 round combat not long ago, thanks to a Goblin Hexer's Vexing Haze. It ended in a TPK.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I didn't mean to, I swear!

I'm just joshin'. My ego isn't that big, that I suspect other gamers of stealing my brilliant ideas!

Just checked out your monster creation guide, and I think you're closer on the mark with your goons damage threshold than my quick and dirty version.

Get this: my damage thresholds are the second draft of my goon rules. Originally my goons lived or died by rules almost exactly like yours! Blog link.

It wasn't until my group's optimizer repeatedly complained that my goon rules 'screwed over' his favorite class -- the avenger. He was a whiny twit, but CharOp explained his PoV well enough that I realized he did have a point. So he no longer games with us, but I did change over to the threshold rule since then.

I've been wonderin what the XP values for minions and goons should be. My experience is that I often use 50% more minions than I planned (eg. 6 instead of 4).

I've been treating minions as the game originally suggested -- as one-quarter of a monster. I treat goons as one-half of a monster. So four minions per PC or two goons per PC -- for a standard encounter. That might be conservative though, and I might start using more.

 

[Quickleaf]

I'm just joshin'. My ego isn't that big, that I suspect other gamers of stealing my brilliant ideas!

It appears your tinfoil hat is out of charges!

Get this: my damage thresholds are the second draft of my goon rules. Originally my goons lived or died by rules almost exactly like yours! Blog link.

Wow, almost the same. It makes sense though, since my players would feel they wasted crits on minions and there was no benefit to hitting say an undead minion with a radiant power. I think you're right that requiring 'bloodied value' damage is a bit steep even for most strikers or daily powers...probably should be healing surge value (which comes out slightly higher than what you have).

It wasn't until my group's optimizer repeatedly complained that my goon rules 'screwed over' his favorite class -- the avenger. He was a whiny twit, but CharOp explained his PoV well enough that I realized he did have a point. So he no longer games with us, but I did change over to the threshold rule since then.

Tell us how you really feel

I've been treating minions as the game originally suggested -- as one-quarter of a monster. I treat goons as one-half of a monster. So four minions per PC or two goons per PC -- for a standard encounter. That might be conservative though, and I might start using more.

It's almost like the value of minions diminishes as soon as a controller enters the picture. Though when I had minions begin aiding the stronger monster's attacks my players started seeing red, and took out something like a dozen minions in one round.

 

[D'karr]

Our group rather plays for the story. Sure, combat encounters are fun but when they become a bit of a chore like they were doing, that's less fun. My players (and me, certainly) would much rather get through two or three quick encounters and have the story progress throughout the session, than spend each week plodding through a single combat encounter and not really achieve anything more than that.

A friend of mine, [MENTION=38140]Frylock[/MENTION] here on the boards, spent quite a bit of time figuring out and playtesting how to give the combats in the game the same feel as the old dungeon crawls.

If you remember 1e, or maybe you don't, there were combats between the party of heroes and 20-40 creatures, and that didn't seem to bother the game framework.

So he went ahead and wrote an article about it. Follow this link for the full article.