House Rule: Faster minor battles

[Harlekin]

It seems to be pretty well accepted that 4ed rules allow for gripping and balanced fights at the price of extending combat length. I consider this a fair trade for major battles that have a serious chance of killing the group or that significantly advance the parties goals.

However, this does not describe all fights; in many situations, the PCs may face inferior foes. In that case, the outcome of the fight is almost a foregone conclusion, but going through the motions can still end up a significant amount of game time. Such fights may be avoided by adventure design or hand-waved by assigning some damage to the group without rolling the actual fight, but both of these solutions may be unsatisfying.

So in this thread I am trying to brainstorm how to modify easy fights (encounters at the level of the group or lower) to make them faster while also making them more exciting.

Here are some suggestions that i would like some feedback on:

1. Double Damage: Monsters deal double damage while having half the hit points.

Advantage: This obviously speeds up the fight, but it also makes the fight more random. While in a typical level-1 encounter, it is very hard to imagine putting a PC in jeopardy, with double damage, every player will feel threatened after being hit once or twice.

Disadvantage: The fight gets swingier which makes PC death more likely. I am hoping this will be ameliorated by using this only on easy encounters.

2. Loose the map.

Advantage: Save time for setup and during combat.

Disadvantage: Many powers with forced movement work less well. Area effect powers are less well defined. Ganging up is even easier than before.

Am I overlooking any other simplification?

What could I do to reduce the disadvantages of loosing the map?

 

[Radiating Gnome]

I don't think making the minor encounters more difficult is the right approach -- if they're minor encounters, let them be minor encounters.

The bigger problem you will need to deal with is the power economy. Your players may or may not be able to take short rests after these encounters, but you certainly don't want to count them towards milestones, etc.

If you're trying to create a truly minor encounter -- dealing with a small handful of guards, make them all minions. Let the players blow through them in the first round, you'll be done and onto the next encounter in seconds.

After all, the important thing to think about is WHY you're trying to include these minor encounters. To my way of thinking, the best reason to include these sorts of minor speed bumps is to flesh out the environment around those awesome set-piece encounters. That has always been a sort of side effect of the big cinematic encounters -- the connective tissue between them has been, in many cases, lost. We explain to the players "you continue down the passage, make a few turns through empty chambers, then you come across this room" and you jump into the next encounter.

I've done a few things in past games to try to counter that. I'm making plans to try some other stunts, too. Here would be my toolkit (and I'd recommend trying all of them -- different situations will always require different solutions).

1. Minions, as I said. Just turn your minor encounter in to a minion encounter. A party can cut through a half-dozen minions in no time flat, but the point of the encounter should not be whether the party can kill the minions or not (that's not really in question) -- it's whether they can kill the minions before one of them sounds the alarm, or triggers the deadfall that seals that door, and so on.

Good times to use it: Guards, pickets, sentries, opponents that don't stand much chance of putting up a fight. Make sure there's something at stake (like not raising the alarm), even if the combat will be short.

2. Skill Challenges, rather than actual encounters. I've posted about this before:http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4t...cted-combat-minor-encounters.html#post5856009

The basic idea is to create a sort of combat-based skill challenge, abstracting combat. Give PCs special abilities based on party role, and use it to deplete some resources -- but make sure that your system preserves some choices for them to make -- picking one passage over another should have consequences, etc.

Good Times to use it: mass combat with minor opponents, etc.

3. Skip it entirely:

Not just lose the map, but lose the whole thing. Tell them they had a few minor skirmishes along the way and move on.

When to use it: When nothing is at stake, when there are no interesting choices to make.

 

[Viking Bastard]

We run all small skirmishes without a grid; we only break out the battlemat for bigger battles and setpieces. It only requires putting more trust in DM fiat. I actually think those kinds of fights are a lot more fun when played this way.

 

[MortonStromgal]

You could loose the grid rather than loose the map, play it more fast and loose with distances. So if your 6.5 inches away call it 6 etc. It wont make it a whole lot faster other than you stop counting spaces and just charge in if your close.

 

[Quickleaf]

I halve most monster HP anyhow so I can confirm that will speed up your fights. Doubling damage I've heard makes the game lethal... A weird side effect of implementing these changes only in minor battles is that your players will eventually notice the difference and adopt a different strategy for minor skirmishes: the all-out offensive.

Anyhow, as far as not using a map for fights, I've read several blog posts of folks who do this successfully and I've done it a couple times. It requires the players trust their DM. What I sometimes do is design combat "zones" which require either a move or double move to transition between; each zone has different properties, for example: Parapets: anyone subject to >1 square forced movement on the Parapets must make a save or be tossed over the edge, falling 40' to the ground. The Parapets connect to the Ballista Tower (double move) and the Outer Bailey (move, Acrobatics 30' fall).

You could make these even more generic if your group want s'more granularity, turning zones into "melee", "close", or "far" range from a reference point.

One thing you'll want to pay attention to is encounter design, using lower level opponents with half HP is a great start, but you'll also want to be picky about what monsters you choose:
* Use soldiers and controllers sparsely
* Incorporate minions or the equivalent
* Minimize monsters that inflict conditions
* Avoid especially complex monsters

Also consider that even if you double damage, the PCs are likely to win these sorts of fights. So what's the point of playing it out if the conclusion if pretty much foregone? The key IMO is to threaten the quest more than you threaten the PCs. This means interesting combat objectives...escort the miners to safety, convince the kobolds your cleric is the avatar of their god...that sort of thing.

 

[Rune]

1. Double Damage: Monsters deal double damage while having half the hit points.

Advantage: This obviously speeds up the fight, but it also makes the fight more random. While in a typical level-1 encounter, it is very hard to imagine putting a PC in jeopardy, with double damage, every player will feel threatened after being hit once or twice.

Disadvantage: The fight gets swingier which makes PC death more likely. I am hoping this will be ameliorated by using this only on easy encounters.

2. Loose the map.

Advantage: Save time for setup and during combat.

Disadvantage: Many powers with forced movement work less well. Area effect powers are less well defined. Ganging up is even easier than before.

I do both of these things for skirmishes, and they work well (although, I multiply damage by 1.5, not 2--still swingy, but not that swingy). I also use lots of minions in skirmishes. Sometimes, nothing but minions.

In addition, I rarely ever grind a fight out to the bitter end. At a certain point, the PCs' victory is a foregone conclusion, and at that point, I'll let the players tell me how they mop things up (which usually amounts to them letting the enemies escape with their lives, or not).

What could I do to reduce the disadvantages of loosing the map?

The important thing is to describe it very well. And, when in doubt, err on the players' behalf (it is just a skirmish, after all).

This helps the players to trust your visualization, which is necessary, as all description (theirs and yours) will, ultimately, be based upon that. If discrepancies arise, work through them with the players, but, again, unless they are clearly trying to break the game, let them pull off the stuff they want to pull off.

When all cylinders are firing cohesively, this will not make forced-movement powers less valuable; rather, it will give the players license to be more creative with their application.

 

[Rune]

I don't think making the minor encounters more difficult is the right approach -- if they're minor encounters, let them be minor encounters.

I don't think the idea is to make such encounters difficult, but to make them quicker. Increasing the damage of a monster you've cut half of the hit-points out of simply ensures that it will remain somewhat challenging (and still use up resources), even while only lasting one or two rounds.

The bigger problem you will need to deal with is the power economy. Your players may or may not be able to take short rests after these encounters, but you certainly don't want to count them towards milestones, etc.

If you're trying to create a truly minor encounter -- dealing with a small handful of guards, make them all minions. Let the players blow through them in the first round, you'll be done and onto the next encounter in seconds.

After all, the important thing to think about is WHY you're trying to include these minor encounters. To my way of thinking, the best reason to include these sorts of minor speed bumps is to flesh out the environment around those awesome set-piece encounters. That has always been a sort of side effect of the big cinematic encounters -- the connective tissue between them has been, in many cases, lost. We explain to the players "you continue down the passage, make a few turns through empty chambers, then you come across this room" and you jump into the next encounter.

These are good points. I will emphasize that (in my experience) skirmishes that only last a round or two do a very good job of highlighting the upcoming Awesome of the cinematic fight coming up later in the session.

1. Minions, as I said. Just turn your minor encounter in to a minion encounter. A party can cut through a half-dozen minions in no time flat, but the point of the encounter should not be whether the party can kill the minions or not (that's not really in question) -- it's whether they can kill the minions before one of them sounds the alarm, or triggers the deadfall that seals that door, and so on.

Good times to use it: Guards, pickets, sentries, opponents that don't stand much chance of putting up a fight. Make sure there's something at stake (like not raising the alarm), even if the combat will be short.

Good stuff.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

In what way are the opponents inferior? You could make swarms of them.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

I recommend using skill challenges to represent minor skirmishes, with loss of healing surges or taking damage as a threat in the game. I use a modification of Stalker0's Obsidian skill challenge in which the players 'bid' healing surges to get skill checks. If they succeed, they don't lose the surge.


Also, alternative combat methods include the 'Stealth Combat', in which combatants that are unaware have a reduced hit point total, allowing the one-hit kill to take out a sentry and a botched job ending up with a valid threat facing the group {also keeps a gang of minions guards from being auto-killed by a controller}

First round minions... I love this rule. Every once in a while declare out loud that it is a first round minion fight. The PCs get to deal a ton of damage and slaughter for the first round. It gets them to charge in headlong and spread out instead of clumping up.

Ditch the grid and use Zones. In the General forum I recently posted about Runeward Zone Combat from a blog about game options. Zones reduce the focus on precision and still provides support for most of the powers. For example, a bard that grants an ally a shift 1 is useless as movement but can be converted to a bonus to defenses or a bonus to a single attack roll.

Half hit point monsters, use of Blood Stone terrain {creatures crit on a 19 or better}, and morale rules can cut down on the length of the game.


Off the table... circular initiative. Ditch rolling to see who goes first, just start with the player to your left and work around the table.
Pre-roll monster attacks. Use a sheet of paper with 10 columns, each column has 10 pre-rolled D20 checks. At the start of the session randomly select a column and then work your way down the column.

Use average damage for monster attacks, low-ball slightly to off-set the randomness of dice.

Use a monster group dice pool. Instead of tracking damage for each critter on the field, just track clumps of hit points and bloody/kill monsters that are narratively appropriate.

Avoid complex monsters! In the session last night I lost track of the special abilities as there were 6 critters on the board, each with special tricks. Use skill stunts in place of special abilities to make the creatures memorable {basically make up their encounter powers on the spot... don't tell my players this one!}


Radiating Gnome's thread has some good stuff in it too

 

[Harlekin]

Thanks for your ideas. Below are some replies to your suggestions:

I don't think making the minor encounters more difficult is the right approach -- if they're minor encounters, let them be minor encounters.

The goal of doubling all damage is not to make the fight more difficult (on average) but to make it less predictable and thus potentially more exciting.

The bigger problem you will need to deal with is the power economy. Your players may or may not be able to take short rests after these encounters, but you certainly don't want to count them towards milestones, etc.

Not allowing short rests is certainly a way to make things tougher as well, but that is most appropriate for dungeons et al. I tend to run games where multiple encounters one after the other makes little sense.

After all, the important thing to think about is WHY you're trying to include these minor encounters.

Of the top of my head, for two reasons
1) Provide texture, e.g. highlighting how dangerous a part of the slums is.
2) Introduce some action if the game stalls. This is basically following Raymond Chandler's Man with a gun rule.

2. Skill Challenges, rather than actual encounters.

This is a good option, but with two weaknesses:
a) I have yet to run a skill challenge that is as exciting as a real fight.
b) Often, the only real effect of a failed skill challenge can be lost surges. However, if the fight at hand is the only fight of the day, that loss is meaningless.