Combat very swingy

[nyhotep]

The 1d20 swingyness problem was noted in the boardgame "runebound". In the second edition, they changed to 2d10 (and adjusted the bonuses accordingly).

If anyone wants to use critical hits (and fumbles) using 2d10, the 5% value lies between 18 and 19 and between 5 and 4. In other words, an 18 or more would be like rolling a 20. (Actually a 6% chance rather than 5%).

 

[Regicide]

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.

So if the DM rolls well, the players are losers who have failed the teamwork test?

4E should be less swingy at low levels, the main reasons are that PCs have more HPs and they fixed critical hits. On top of that, PCs also tend to have a larger selection of powers and a greater amount of healing available to fall back on.

At high levels though all bets are off. Although there are fewer save-or-dies to deal with, players will have less healing available and fewer HPs than their 3E counterparts, and have less defensive options as well meaning they can often be taking higher relative damage. At high level 3E could be extrememly swingy for unbalanced parties, don't have a mage to deathward and mindblank the party, expect to fall over dead every couple encounters, but prepared parties had pretty predictable combats.

 

[OchreJelly]

If anything I think 4E is less swingy than earlier editions, especially at low level play. The following things just don’t exist, or are less prevalent in 4E:
- the classic example of the Orc critting with a great axe against a level 1 char.
- less save or die / save or suck scenarios in 4E.
- shorter durations of the save / suck scenarios in 4E.
- super buffed damage.
- combats typically lasting 6-7 rounds in 4E, vs. 1-2 rounds leaves more room to recover from bad luck.
- action points as a recovery resource for bad luck. N/A to previous editions.
- every character has the ability to heal to some extent so you are less reliant on the misfortunes of one PC at the table. Possible in previous editions but usually only thru items / potions.

 

[Victim]

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".

I agree that having only 1 attack under most conditions puts a lot of weight on that one roll. Especially for attacks that have secondary targets that require an initial hit before you can even roll the attacks.

I think this problem is more noteworthy at higher levels (especially at mid-high paragon, since monsters require lots of damage to drop, but at wills haven't upgraded yet). Character power is weighted mostly toward their special encounter or daily abilities over at wills. So a poor roll on a limited power isn't just a chance to waste that turn, it also wastes that power. And it makes the fight take longer and/or uses more resources, since the deficet between At will hits and encounter hits will have to made up somehow. If the fight takes longer, then the monsters presumeably do more damage, thus expending more surges. Or the PCs can use more dailies than originally planned to hopefully close that gap quickly.

 

[DLichen]

Swinginess isn't coming from d20s, bad rolls happen. My problem is that the designed damage output of an encounter is supposedly (max damage * .5). So max damage is pretty high compared to total hp. If you have 4 monsters hit and all 4 hit instead of the expected 2, the actual damage output compared to the expected is quite high. It's true that PCs will usually survive the fight, but the drain on resources encourages the short work day that was the problem in 3e.

Of course, the problem seems to be coming from a few select monsters that aren't expected to hit too much or something, so a list of particularly swingy monsters seems like a better idea than switching to 2d10.


3e is swingy around levels 1-5, but combat as a whole was kinda wonky with 3e with mages in the mix I'm not going to even try to analyze what's going on. Fights tended to go mage: sleep/other save or die, fighters easily mop up remains.

 

[Anthony Jackson]

Swinginess of combat is a function of the average importance of each attack. The more attacks it takes to put someone down, the less random the outcome will be. With the exception of a few dailies, a 4e fight is unlikely to be turned around by the outcome of a single roll.

 

[Moorcrys]

It's a little more swingy in my opinion than 3.x, but what I really noticed about 4e is that the party is brutalized if they don't cooperate and fight tactically. We've had a few combats where we've rolled very poorly but squeaked by because of good tactical fighting. We also TPK'd in one of our first combats because we rolled poorly and weren't fighting efficiently as a team. 4e seems to really punish you severely for tactical mistakes -- much more than 3.x where it always seemed like we had a few more tricks up our sleeves to deal with mistakes or a weak player.

 

[KidSnide]

I found that 4e combat is less swingy on the whole, but -- in some combats -- there are a few rolls that really swing the battle one way or the other. The right warlord daily power can really be the make-or-break for a battle. Of course, a well organized party goes to efforts to make sure those rolls take place with combat advantage and rightious brand (or whatever else is available). But still - if everyone has manuevered to give that +6 bonus to the battle changing power - that natural 1 is rough.

 

[Syrsuro]

Swinginess of combat is a function of the average importance of each attack. The more attacks it takes to put someone down, the less random the outcome will be. With the exception of a few dailies, a 4e fight is unlikely to be turned around by the outcome of a single roll.

I do think the Dailies can be swingy, although the consolation prize effects you get if they miss make up for that somewhat. (And if, as my group did, they crit on two dailies in the first round when fighting a solo, you can really see that swinginess in action, although that has more to do with crit swinginess then daily swinginess, perhaps).

But I am considering allowing them to spend an action point to reroll a missed daily. It doesn't seem as if that will have a huge effect overall, and it will reduce some of the let down when you save up your big daily for that key encounter and then miss.

But then, I'm possibly biased since the first two times I ever attempted a daily I missed. Badly.

Carl

 

[Nail]

Swinginess of combat is a function of the average importance of each attack.

Exactly.

In 4e, it's hard to kill a target in just one round. Yes in can happen, but much less so than in 3.xe. Ergo "less swingy".

BTW: the orginal poster meant "one character went unconscious", rather than "one character died" after one round, right? You have to take massive amounts of damage after you've reached 0 hp in order to be dead-dead.