Combat very swingy

[conanb]

One of my friends has successfully petitioned to be allowed to roll 3d6 instead of d20 for all his rolls. Whereas before he had an unnatural ability to roll below 6 90% of the time, now he averages more like 9 (which is still below average, but good enough to hit from time to time).

I'd be tempted to housefule this into my game for people who get frustrated low rolling. That is you give up the crit/failure on either end for an average. That is more like your player being very careful where he hits. Your not going to get that lucky hit that kills em dead but your not going to fail either because your being very careful about how you hit.

I might yoink this into my game as a houserule.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I've certainly noticed the phenomenon. In one combat, my Warlord (with the worst attack bonus in the party) was the only one who hit the first two rounds, because everyone else just got a string of single-digits. It made things tougher, because we had to deal with minions a couple rounds longer, but it didn't change the outcome.

Last session, our ranger was 'cursed' and hardly hit at all the whole time, even when getting attack bonuses, he was just rolling really low. OTOH, our wizard blasted 14 minions and a leader and hit every one of them (then proceeded to miss one soldier for several rounds in a row).

It's never led to character deaths or changed the outcome of a combat, just made one a little faster or more frustrating. But it does happen.

It's not 4e, specifically, so much as using a linear distribution randomizer for resolution. That is, d20's are swingy. The 3d6 alternative, used in Hero System, GURPS, and others, is much less so, because it's a 'bell curve.'

3d6 for D&D would be wierd, but you could do it. Give up crits in return for having more dependable rolls. Unfortunately, more dependable means closer to average. If you need an 8 to hit, it's in your favor, if you need a 13, you could be missing a lot.

 

[Stalker0]

3d6 for D&D would be wierd, but you could do it. Give up crits in return for having more dependable rolls. Unfortunately, more dependable means closer to average. If you need an 8 to hit, it's in your favor, if you need a 13, you could be missing a lot.

This is an important part of the bell curve people should be aware of it. Its not a simple, hey I hit average more often. If your fighter needs a 10 to hit, he gets more bang for his buck with 3d6.

On the other hand, note that crits seem to make up increasingly more of your damage at higher levels.

 

[zillah]

this happened because in 3.5 a solo PC could take down an entire freaking army.
Well, now we have to have teamwork. So, if the cleric sets up for you to get a +4 on your next melee attack, and the warlord gives you another + and you have combat advantage, or even if you don't, you will have a better chance of hitting with others helping you.

This is the whole point of 4.0 it makes people say to themselves "I need to work with the party in order to survive"
not "I have the broken build to deal with anything the DM throws at me"

 

[Mad Hamish]

Is it just me or is the intentional design choice of setting the average hitpoint at ~50% making combats very swingy?

I didn't really notice it when 4e first came out, but after a few weeks of running it the problem seems to be quite severe.

I've so far only played at low levels and there I think it's less swingy than earlier editions.
In part because characters are harder to take down so a bit of good luck for the monsters or bad luck for the PCs is less likely to take somebody out completely.

PCs rolling badly or NPCs rolling well tilts encounters unreasonably far towards certain sides. This doesn't help given high damage potential monsters like fire beatles or guard drakes. I put my PCs into what should have been an "easy" encounter, but because of good rolls on an alpha strike, one character died on the first round and then the situation became much much worse.

Then again it's probably less bad than a critical or 2 from surprise in 3rd ed.

On the other side of the coin, combat can also become boring snorefests when both sides missing alot.

Just wondering if I was the only one having this problem or if others have noticed it as well.

At low levels I find it less boring than things commonly used to be in 3rd ed because at least you have options as to what you're doing.
Playing a low level ranger archer in 4th ed vs a low level fighter archer in 3rd ed I have move choices in terms of attacks (o.k. 90% of the time I choose twin strike but I could choose other things) there's more maneuvering.

Saying that our Wizard has a habit of missing minions on his area attacks but then again we had some 3rd ed mounted combat specialists who kept rolling 1s to hit...

 

[Chen_93]

I'm finding things much LESS swingy in 4th than in 3rd. In 3rd if you had a bad round and the enemies had a good one things got really bad due to the damage output. This is especially magnified if the foes got a good surprise round when you couldn't act.

Due to combat length the swings in 4th are rarer and tend to even out over the length of the combat fairly well. You still get some swingyness but that comes with any die rolling game. Thing is I find recovering from swingyness in 4th is easier than in 3rd where you just plain died.

 

[Runestar]

Could the impression of swinginess come from creatures having just 1 attack/round in 4e, and not dealing any damage on a miss?

Consider a 3e monster with multiple attacks, such as a pit fiend or the tarrasque (assume it power attacks for 20). In any round where it can make a full attack, some attacks should hit and others miss, but at the end of the round, you should still have done some damage. So that round of attacks was not a total loss.

But in 4e, you either hit for good damage, or miss for none at all (baring dailies). Same for monsters. There is no "in between".

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

This is an important part of the bell curve people should be aware of it. Its not a simple, hey I hit average more often. If your fighter needs a 10 to hit, he gets more bang for his buck with 3d6.

On the other hand, note that crits seem to make up increasingly more of your damage at higher levels.

Using 3d6 (or 2d10, or similar "add multiple dice" systems) makes modifiers more important. If you need just a 10, a +1 is weak, but if you need a 15, it's a lot more important.

I think that's what makes balancing modifiers in these systems harder.

 

[KarinsDad]

One of my friends has successfully petitioned to be allowed to roll 3d6 instead of d20 for all his rolls. Whereas before he had an unnatural ability to roll below 6 90% of the time, now he averages more like 9 (which is still below average, but good enough to hit from time to time).

This is actually a really really bad idea.

There are a lot of synergy bonuses in 4E. Most of them +1 or +2. But with 3D6 near the middle of the spectrum, a +1 is closer to (and sometimes greater than) a 10% gain than a 5% one. A +2 is closer to a 20% gain than a 10% one.

Just FYI. Bonuses like Combat Advantage gain a lot more bang for the buck.

For example, a +4 to hit over 50% results in a +40.7% chance to hit instead of +20%:

11> 50%
10> 62.5%
9> 74.1%
8> 83.8%
7> 90.7%

The opposite occurs with penalites. A a -4 to hit over 50% results in a -40.7% chance to hit instead of -20%:

15> 9.3%
14> 16.2%
13> 25.9%
12> 37.5%
11> 50%

This is the number one reason that 3D6 based games are mathematically flawed.

Your fellow player pulled one over on your DM because well designed PCs in 4E typically have a 50% or better chance to hit with most attacks.

 

[Trevelyan]

this happened because in 3.5 a solo PC could take down an entire freaking army.
Well, now we have to have teamwork. So, if the cleric sets up for you to get a +4 on your next melee attack, and the warlord gives you another + and you have combat advantage, or even if you don't, you will have a better chance of hitting with others helping you.

This is the whole point of 4.0 it makes people say to themselves "I need to work with the party in order to survive"
not "I have the broken build to deal with anything the DM throws at me"

Winner!

The party where everyone just throws out an attack on their turn will find things far more difficult than the party where the the wizard uses Thunderwave to push the enemies into a position where the fighter and the rogue can flank them and the Cleric provides a buff to ensure that the rogue's sneak attack definitely hits.

People who find combat swingy in 4E are often the guys who fail the teamwork test. Of course, nothing can be done to help a player who can't roll above a 5 all evening.