[House Rules] Speeding Up Combat

[techno]

I love 4e but would like to speed up combat and make it more exciting and dangerous. I have seen various suggestions on how to best do this--typically by reducing monster HP and increasing damage. An idea I am considering is just adding the attacker's Level to all damage inflicted. I would like to try this out but I am also wary about potential unintended consequences that may result. Has anyone ever tried something like this? Do you see any potential problems with this approach?

 

[Will Doyle]

Depends what monsters you add the damage to: MM3 monsters (and later) could get pretty lethal. Probably works well for the rest though (in my games, I add 5 damage per tier to pre-MM3 monsters (20 at epic).

The only thing to bear in mind is that upping damage can make fights quite swingy. If a PC missteps and gets caught out by a bunch of monsters, they can drop very quickly.

 

[Dragonblade]

The best way to speed up combat in my experience is to make sure your players know their characters and actually pay attention to what is going on. When their turn comes up, they should already know exactly what they want to do.

If they are chit chatting or surfing the web and their turn comes up, and then they are like "What's happening? Who is that monster?" Or they wait until their turn comes up before they even begin to look over their sheet, then your combat will slow and nothing else will help until you address that. It also feeds on itself. When everyone takes 10 minutes, then other players start to check out and stop paying attention, so now their turn takes 10 minutes.

Once my group realized this was our problem, we got a handle on it. We started calling out players who weren't paying attention, or who just started looking at their sheet when their turn came up. It was draconian, but we actually started to time people at first. We no longer do that anymore. No need.

We went from 5 to 10 minutes per player turn to 30 seconds or less. Our 2 hour combats went down to about 30 minutes. It makes a HUGE difference.

As to your second point, yes you can bump up damage to help with grind and make combat more exciting and dangerous. +5 damage per tier per attack works pretty good for pre-MM3 monsters. MM3 and Monster Vault monsters already do good damage, so be careful about upping them as well.

When I first started upping damage, but players were like "Whoa! Stuff just got real!" Only they didn't say "stuff".

Another house rule I like is to bring in the escalation die from 13th Age. Essentially, you set a big d6 down in front of the DM screen starting with the 1 facing up in round two of the combat. Every round, you increase the number on the die by 1. This number is a bonus to hit that the players get (if you want to get really nasty, give the monsters the bonus too). Essentially, the players get +0 to hit in round one, but a cumulative +1 to hit for every subsequent round to a max of +6.

This helps reduce grind by increasing the odds of successful hit as combat goes on. It also encourages players to use their dailies later when they are more dramatically appropriate, instead of blowing their whole load in the first couple of rounds.

 

[techno]

Great points. I think I will try the escalation die approach. I have noticed that many DMs recommend reducing monster HPs to cut grind but I have not seen many recommendations to increase both PC and monster damage to speed up combat and make it more lethal for both sides. To me, this seems like a cooler and easier way to deal with the issue (who doesn't like doing more damage?) but I also have to wonder why most DMs usually only modify monsters (reduced HPs and sometimes increased damage). Perhaps I am missing something.

 

[Paxter]

I agree 100% with Dragonblade. Put some responsibility on the players to know their characters and to pay attention. As long as you're not jumping into a Paragon or higher game with characters made by someone else, you shouldn't have much to consider on your turn.

When my players get stuck, I always remind them that at-wills are a great standby.

Also, I would definitely have the escalation die work both ways if I were DMing. No need to coddle the players!! I'll see how my current DM feels about it, it sounds awesome!!

 

[Terrance888]

Escalation die sounds great! I will try it on my next session as well.

I use these bonus rules and they work rather well. Brutal shakeoff works really well against those Controllers, but don't be too greedy with them! Too Savvy for Tricks is the Elite/Solo version from Marvelous Monsters (love them!) and they get dealt 1d6 damage per tier per effect they wish to roll to ignore at the start at the turn: letting your players roll them might be fun.