D&D 4E Fast 4e

[Rath Lorien]

I'm having fun with the 4.0 rules, but I do notice a difference between how 4.0 feels during combat and how previous versions of D&D felt. My recollection of my 3.5 games seem to have a higher level of tension and seat-of-your-pants excitement and we seemed to spend less game-time resolving each combat.

The danger factor (volatility) of combat does not seem to be as high in 4.0. Occasionally a character will drop to near-zero hitpoints, but it takes an hour and a half of game-time combat to do it. I also think that long drawn-out encounters contribute to the feeling that encounter powers are scarce. The players either blow their wad early and then sulk about having nothing to do, or they seem to hoard their encounter powers and it feels like a real loss when the characters use a power and it misses.

I don't think the solution is to throw more powerful monsters at the party. I think more powerful monsters will just result in longer battles as the players have a harder time hitting higher AC's and eroding the larger hitpoint totals.

But I had an idea and I want to get some feedback:

I propose to cut the hitpoints of all monsters in half. That should have the result in making the critters die twice as fast. I'll also cut the hitpoints of the characters in half. That will make the environment twice as dangerous to the characters. Statistically it should result in the same outcome, but the combats should resolve twice as fast. It should make combat feel more fast-paced and more volatile. Crits will hurt the PC’s more, but they will also hurt the monsters more. Minions will be twice as dangerous, so I will double their XP value to compensate. Since the encounters will run in half the number of rounds it will give a higher prominence to encounter powers.

I still think the combats will be cinematic. The PC's should still feel tough and capable, but it will be easier to send a character reeling from a single well-placed attack. I realize this is a big change. I admit that I have probably not thought through all of the implications. I hope you will give this some thought and give me your feedback.

Happy New Year!

 

[Paul Strack]

A commonly suggestion for speeding up combat is to have attacks always inflict max damage, with double max damage for crits. That has the same net effect of what you are suggesting, but requires fewer changes to other rules (e.g. you can leave all the healing rules the same).

There are some older threads on the topic, if you dig through this forum.

 

[Archus]

There was a thread here, rpg.net, and/or wizards forums that discussed the designers suggesting halving hit points of monsters at gencon. I've been doing just that and it seems to be working pretty well. The actual sweet spot seems to be between a 25-50% reduction in monster hit points plus liberal use of minions (I love minions).

Hero hit points I've left just as is because otherwise they would have to stop for an extended rest much sooner. They still feel in danger and combats don't drag. I believe that reducing player hit points would annoy most of them - halving the monster hp made my players feel better because the kobolds no longer had more hit points than they did.

I don't think if you half hit points of PCs that minions would be worth double the xp - minions are worth less xp for many reasons (1hp, no encounter/recharge abilities, etc. they are just mobile damage dealing hazardous terrain).

I haven't tried max damage and double damage on a crit. It would speed things up by reducing the number of rolls and calculations. Not sure how it would play out at my table - do my players like the thrill of rolling damage or do they hate when they roll min (several of my players have the worst luck with dice). I'll have to look at some discussions on this to see how the extra damage from strikers and magic weapons (on a crit) is handled.

 

[Rath Lorien]

Thanks! Good feedback. I'll search the threads and see if I can find some of the other discussions you mention.