Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 5121813" data-attributes="member: 15470">The other suggestions I've got are all table-mechanics items:- Put the Initiative Order in a public location; we use a white board.- Put all status effects in a public location (prone, immobile, etc).- Use Character Builder character sheets.- Pre-calculate all your bonuses so people aren't calculating at the table.- Have the DM's monsters go as quickly as they possibly can.- Have the DM have print-outs, sheets, etc, of his monster stat blocks.- No reference books during combat. The little things add up. If you're the DM, you might consider keeping track of time spent on certain aspects, to identify and speed up your group's &quot;worst offender&quot;, whatever aspect of the game that is.In my experience, though, the sense of &quot;grind&quot; in 4e seems to come from the moment where the party figure out that they've won, but there's one or two sticky bad guys who just won't go down, but who can no longer effectively threaten the party - Brute, Elite, and Solo monsters seem to be the biggest offenders, especially Solo Brutes. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin&nbsp; &nbsp; :D"&nbsp; data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />I think the trick to being an effective 4e DM is to be able to correctly identify that moment, and to have the monsters correctly identify it as well. So, for example, the monsters change their goal to &quot;survive this nightmare&quot; whether its surrender, escape, parole, flight, hostage, whatever technique they might have for it, they switch to that. You can also build very effective combats where &quot;kill 'em all&quot; isn't the goal. &nbsp;- Stop the ritual&nbsp;- Complete the ritual&nbsp;- Complete the in-combat skill challenge&nbsp;- Defeat one specific monster&nbsp;- Rescue somebody from a time-delayed-threat&nbsp; &nbsp; - Can work for mounts, pets, NPC friends, and even Grabbed PC's.&nbsp;- Escape the room before a time-delayed-threat&nbsp;- Cross the room before a time-delayed-threat makes it impossible&nbsp;- Grab the McGuffin and get back outI think those are the type of encounters where the 4e system works the best; &quot;Clear the Dungeon&quot; crawling doesn't feel like it is as fun in 4e as it was in some previous editions.The ideal 4e session, I think, includes one or two &quot;grind&quot; encounters with which to wear down Dailies, Healing Surges, etc, and two or three challenging encounters, where the victory condition feels unique and tense in its own right.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Amaroq, post: 5121813, member: 15470"] The other suggestions I've got are all table-mechanics items: - Put the Initiative Order in a public location; we use a white board. - Put all status effects in a public location (prone, immobile, etc). - Use Character Builder character sheets. - Pre-calculate all your bonuses so people aren't calculating at the table. - Have the DM's monsters go as quickly as they possibly can. - Have the DM have print-outs, sheets, etc, of his monster stat blocks. - No reference books during combat. The little things add up. If you're the DM, you might consider keeping track of time spent on certain aspects, to identify and speed up your group's "worst offender", whatever aspect of the game that is. In my experience, though, the sense of "grind" in 4e seems to come from the moment where the party figure out that they've won, but there's one or two sticky bad guys who just won't go down, but who can no longer effectively threaten the party - Brute, Elite, and Solo monsters seem to be the biggest offenders, especially Solo Brutes. :D I think the trick to being an effective 4e DM is to be able to correctly identify that moment, and to have the monsters correctly identify it as well. So, for example, the monsters change their goal to "survive this nightmare" whether its surrender, escape, parole, flight, hostage, whatever technique they might have for it, they switch to that. You can also build very effective combats where "kill 'em all" isn't the goal. - Stop the ritual - Complete the ritual - Complete the in-combat skill challenge - Defeat one specific monster - Rescue somebody from a time-delayed-threat - Can work for mounts, pets, NPC friends, and even Grabbed PC's. - Escape the room before a time-delayed-threat - Cross the room before a time-delayed-threat makes it impossible - Grab the McGuffin and get back out I think those are the type of encounters where the 4e system works the best; "Clear the Dungeon" crawling doesn't feel like it is as fun in 4e as it was in some previous editions. The ideal 4e session, I think, includes one or two "grind" encounters with which to wear down Dailies, Healing Surges, etc, and two or three challenging encounters, where the victory condition feels unique and tense in its own right. [/QUOTE]

Verification