Fewer conditions?

[keterys]

Slow, used at the right times, results in a -5 to attack and granting combat advantage (Run) and occasionally results in (effective) Stun, much like Immobilize.

In many cases, such as once melee is already mixed up, or if your melee allies are not disciplined, it's not as worthwhile. It is one of the most minor conditions, absolutely, but I don't think it's helping anyone's game if it lasted all combat. Especially if you could apply it with regularity (Ray of Frost with slow for encounter? Bleah!)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I've seen fights where the rogue was denied the ability to deal sneak attack damage, or to use most of his useful powers, for multiple rounds at a stretch due to be being slowed. I've seen fights where defenders were basically kept from "defending" at all, because the enemies were easily able to stay away from them while getting to the "squishier" targets. This is especially true with artillery and controller creatures, but even melee-focused creatures can take advantage of it.

And while you dismiss "keeping creatures from running away" as a minor advantage, it means that the entire party can more easily gang up on a single target and take it down fast.

You keep saying "People should learn to carry ranged weapons," but for the bulk of melee-oriented classes, that still leaves them unable to use the overwhelming majority of their powers. Sure, doing a basic attack for four rounds straight is better than nothing, but only marginally.

It's really not hard, unless the battlefield is relatively confined, for a creature with halfway decent speed to keep more than four squares distant from a slowed character. And the fact that a slowed character can still do something doesn't remotely alter the fact that their options (and, in many cases, access to powers) is substantially reduced--which is, ultimately, the entire point of tactical use of conditions.

Mmmmm, I gotta somewhat agree with KD on this one. I HAVE seen slowed work effectively, but it really is pretty marginal. In 150 or so DMing sessions of 4e I can count the number of times it was really significant on one hand, and I'd have to rank it dead last overall as an effective condition. If it didn't exist nobody would really miss it. Slow wasn't at all common in previous editions either.

While I don't necessarily agree with a lot of things KD says I really do think he's getting at an underlying truth. Most of the fiddly and more marginal conditions and effects and a lot of the more intricate interactions between them really are NOT necessary to have a good solid highly tactical system. Real tactics isn't about exploiting mechanical interactions, its about using solid tactical principles, mobility, firepower, terrain, etc. I still think that element is prominent in 4e's combat system but if class features, powers, etc had been designed around a more restricted set of less fiddly effects it would have been just as tactical and worked just as well.

Let that be a lesson to future game designers. Less is more. If you want to improve a game, take something out and see if its really needed before anything else.

 

[KarinsDad]

I've seen fights where the rogue was denied the ability to deal sneak attack damage, or to use most of his useful powers, for multiple rounds at a stretch due to be being slowed. I've seen fights where defenders were basically kept from "defending" at all, because the enemies were easily able to stay away from them while getting to the "squishier" targets. This is especially true with artillery and controller creatures, but even melee-focused creatures can take advantage of it.

And while you dismiss "keeping creatures from running away" as a minor advantage, it means that the entire party can more easily gang up on a single target and take it down fast.

You keep saying "People should learn to carry ranged weapons," but for the bulk of melee-oriented classes, that still leaves them unable to use the overwhelming majority of their powers. Sure, doing a basic attack for four rounds straight is better than nothing, but only marginally.

It's really not hard, unless the battlefield is relatively confined, for a creature with halfway decent speed to keep more than four squares distant from a slowed character. And the fact that a slowed character can still do something doesn't remotely alter the fact that their options (and, in many cases, access to powers) is substantially reduced--which is, ultimately, the entire point of tactical use of conditions.

I'm still not buying it. Your examples are not concrete enough to be persuasive.

Which Rogue powers were prevented? Why weren't other PCs able to help out the Rogue gain Combat Advantage? Why were monsters so far away that they could run circles around the Defender, but the other PCs could not get close enough to the Defender that melee foes would also have to get close to the Defender?

So what if one creature can stay away? That doesn't mean that all creatures can stay away.

If all 5 PCs are Slowed or if there are additional conditions on the Slowed PC, sure.

But, against one or two PCs at a time, Slowed is a nuisance.

Are you playing the game on a massively large outdoor arena were the artillery can keep backing up forever so that one Slowed PC cannot reach them? How is it that if the Slowed PC cannot run at 8 per round and get back in a group of foes?

How come the PCs cannot go back the way they came and head around a corner and force Artillery and Controllers to either come to them or flee?

How come the non-Slowed PCs cannot gang up on Artillery and Controllers while the Slowed PCs concentrates on melee foes?


Sorry, but your "easily able to stay away from them" claim doesn't make sense at all. Sure, there could be special unusual terrain where there are pits and the PCs cannot move in straight lines once in a blue moon. Granted.

But for most encounters, the Slowed melee PC just moves up to the nearest melee foe. He doesn't bother with the ranged Artillery or Controllers. He lets his allies handle those. The Slowed range PC doesn't care and just attacks whomever is within 10 or 20. Usually, not all foes are 10+ (or 12+) squares away in an encounter for most of the encounter.


Slowed could present some real issues for a Solo monster, but not much of an issue when there is a group of monsters or a group of PCs. I cannot remember a single encounter where Slowed made a significant difference. Maybe our players take more precautions. 4 out of 6 PCs can teleport. All of them are Paragon and 2 of them have an additional move action if they use an Action Point. Some also have items like Boots of Eagerness. All of them have ranged attacks.

The only things that bother my players are Dominated, Stunned, Blinded, and to a lesser extent, Weakened. There was a monster in Scepter Tower of Spellgard that made 3 out of 6 and eventually 5 out of 6 unconscious for the entire encounter once and that was scary for a while.

But, Slowed or Immobilized or even Restrained? Not a real big worry for them, even when they were in heroic levels.


It does sound like the players that you are talking about are not using good anti-Slow tactics. It's really not that hard to do so, especially if the players work as a team.

If the Fighter is Immobilized or Slowed, Slide a foe 3 squares towards the Fighter if you have a Slide power. There are a lot of ways to skin a cat, especially in 4E where every PC has a plethora of abilities. The players just have to figure out cool and sometimes different ways to use them, and they have to help each other out.

Does that mean that the players have to sometimes not use the power they had originally planned to use and use a different power instead in order to help out the team? Sure it does. But, that's typically not game breaking and that happens even when we are not talking about Slowed.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Sorry you're not convinced, but I'm not real interested in trying to minutely remember and describe the precise placement of individual creatures and terrain over multiple combats.

I've seen it happen, multiple times--enough to convince me that, while Slow is indeed one of the weakest conditions, it's far from being nigh-useless. Your experiences don't bear it out, and that's fine, but I've no intention of trying to defend the legitimacy of my own experiences.

 

[KarinsDad]

Let that be a lesson to future game designers. Less is more. If you want to improve a game, take something out and see if its really needed before anything else.

This is an overall problem with game mechanics design. Designers love to design and they love to come up with new ways to do the same basic thing.

How many ways does one need to minimize damage to a PC?

4e has:

1) Damage Resistance
2) Temporary Hit Points
3) Regeneration
4) Healing
5) Non-damage resistance Damage Resistance (e.g. Primal Swarm)
6) Bonuses to Defenses
7) Feats or Special Abilities that add Hit Points (e.g. Toughness)
8) Weakened
9) Insubstantial
10) Bonus saves vs. Damaging Effects like Ongoing Damage
11) Immediate Interrupts
12) Special powers that restore x hit points when a creature goes to zero or below (e.g. not just epic destiny powers, but powers like Berronar's Salve that allow for a Healing Surge, or even the Heal skill for that matter)

and probably more.

Any additional way that a game designer thinks up to either minimize the damage a creature takes or give the creature back hit points does tend to eventually show up in the game system.

Do we need all of these game mechanics? Probably not.

Their introduction is merely a way to give players more mechanical ways to do more or less the same thing.


This can be seen in other game systems like Champions as well. Armor. Hardened Armor. Force Field. Hardened Force Field. Resistant Defenses. Hardened Resistant Defenses, Non-Resistant Defenses, Hardened Non-Resistant Defenses, etc. All of these (and more) are just slightly different mechanics to determine how much damage a creature takes after all of the game mechanic rules are applied depending on which of the plethora of different attack types was made.

The more different ways to do the same effective thing that the game designers think up, the more complicated the game system becomes.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I will say that the one "official" condition I'm not entirely sold on is weakened. It doesn't change much in the way of play; it just makes things more frustrating.

I understand the need for it, dramatically; I just wish there was a better way to model it mechanically.

 

[KarinsDad]

Sorry you're not convinced, but I'm not real interested in trying to minutely remember and describe the precise placement of individual creatures and terrain over multiple combats.

I've seen it happen, multiple times--enough to convince me that, while Slow is indeed one of the weakest conditions, it's far from being nigh-useless. Your experiences don't bear it out, and that's fine, but I've no intention of trying to defend the legitimacy of my own experiences.

Fair enough. I do think that people's opinions are colored by their overall experiences and even a single situation can be remember for a long time. If the DM is a rat bastard in encounter design, Slowed might be more hindering. If the players are tactically clever, they design their PCs well, and work together as a team, Slowed is probably a lot less useful.

Like AA said "In 150 or so DMing sessions of 4e I can count the number of times it was really significant on one hand". I've been in 5 different 4E groups and around 200 sessions and I haven't really seen it either. keterys, on the other hand, has probably played in more games than I have and he seems to agree with you.

I think your claim of "great effectiveness, both for and against PCs, with rather substantial frequency" must reflect a DM and/or players who use it a lot. Ours don't. There are just too many better options.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

I'm not sure you understood the concept. He could do this at any time, just like Combat Challenge today. It doesn't require flank.

Combat Challenge: If a foe is within melee attack range of the Fighter and the Fighter can attack, the foe is threatened (i.e. marked) and Combat Challenge works as it does today.

The only difference is that one does not have to keep track of that mark. If the miniature is next to the Fighter miniature, the foe is threatened. No bookkeeping necessary.

It actually makes Combat Challenge a little bit stronger and the Fighter a little bit stickier because every foe around the Fighter is always "marked".

The players just don't need to use the marked terminology and they don't need to do bookkeeping for it. It would be a Fighter Class feature called Combat Challenged. No mark involved. The monsters are "threatened" instead.

There is more than one flaw with this new defender mechanic w/o marks.
1) Punishment stacking
2) Once the defender punishes in a round all other monsters are free to do whatever they want - there is no -2 to hit or what ever could keep them attacking the defender.

Slow:
Slow is no spectacular condition but combined with the ultra rare terrain feature difficult terrain it becomes really hard to close a distance.

Sure you can make your party in a way to soften the impact of slow, your party had to give something up to be prepared for that - there is at least an opportunity cost.

There are topics about all ranged parties and how do you think they can kite the monsters - the cheapest way is obviously slow.

 

[keterys]

So, let's guesstimate for a moment that I've done, say, 500 sessions of 4e, with 3 combats per session. So, out of those 1500 combats, I'm willing to say that no more than 100 of them would slow have made a crucial difference (defender is forced to use ranged weapons and can't defend, leader can't get into range to buff or heal, etc), beyond forcing someone to Run for one round or possibly not get an attack at all for one round, which would have had scattered appearances (mostly depending on terrain, initiative and enemy choice) in, say, another 200 combats - which, btw, is a benefit closer to Blind or Daze at that point, so still not bad.

The trick is that if Slowed does last for the encounter and you can count on doing it, you're further encouraging Ranged, and you're further encouraging parties that can exploit it. So, your party shifts to becoming more ranged and picks up a couple slowed and starts beginning combats 20 squares away. Now the Brute requires 3 rounds of full out Running just to reach the enemy, which means the combat is over before he gets to roll an attack roll (and miss, poor guy).

In quite recent memory, some examples from published adventures where Slowed would have been a serious problem (as in, not being able to do melee attacks that combat) if inflicted on my character:
2 Underdark fights where melee had to move 10-20 squares, some over difficult terrain, or jumping gaps to engage each other from first sighting
1 fight over floating earth motes that required jumping from platform to platform while being ranged attacked on the way in - this combat actually had traps that slowed, and they entirely changed the combat even though thankfully I avoided them for the first 12 or so squares of movement.

1 fight out in a Jungle where the enemy drakes and harpies were 10+ squares away to start and had a 40 ft pit to drop people into (Ugh, being slowed at the bottom of a 40 ft pit = 4-8 rounds of climbing! And can't even make ranged attacks from down there)
1 fight in a huge tomb where we had to get past a gauntlet of enemies and get under a sliding door to disarm the trap and save the day (get the treasure) in just a few rounds

EAST1-6, IMPI1-6, and SPEC2-1 P2 from LFR so not like just fights my DM was making up.

If I make the party all ranged, Slowed becomes far more useful since it's very very common for fights to start more than 4 squares apart - and such a party often has ways of controlling some portions of the battlefield further. Perhaps upping it to a crucial difference - if turned into a whole encounter penalty (removing a monster from consideration of combat, drastically altering the tactics of the combat) on 500-1000 of 1500 combats. I imagine in a lot of cases you'd see a reaction from the DM/adventure design where suddenly melee was always much closer, and the terrain was less choked or difficult, so that slowed would be less useful.

 

[YRUSirius]

I don't think this whole "+1 bonus for the whole encounter" for encounter powers is the way to go for current 4E DMs who want an easy, quick and dirty "fix" for extensive condition and effect tracking.

I had a look at the 4E miniatures rules and they had the standard as "till the end of the affected creatures turn", but this only seems to work cause there are effectively only two initiative counts, cause both sides take their turns with their creatures one after the other. But one side may only use two creatures/miniatures per round so they still have to think tactically about what two creatures they want to use. Am I right?

So I'm still left wondering if this could still be adapted for D&D somehow...