keterys
First Post
Give the monsters bonuses to attack and damage, rather than adding more enemies or hit points.
D&D 4E How long are your 4e combats taking, real time?
Give the monsters bonuses to attack and damage, rather than adding more enemies or hit points.
Nail
First Post
Making combats more difficult in 4e is no problem at all. Just add hp, attack bonuses, extra powers, AC, synergies with other monsters in th' group....the list goes on and on. Making combats more difficult - by definition - will make them longer.
What's more of a problem - and I've yet to see any DM pull it off - is to *really* use terrain to make combat more tacticly interesting and exciting. 4e promised this, and yet all the combats I've seen (including those DMed by me) have been fairly standard toe-to-toe slug fests.
....which is all completely tangential to this thread's topic. Carry on, carry on......
What's more of a problem - and I've yet to see any DM pull it off - is to *really* use terrain to make combat more tacticly interesting and exciting. 4e promised this, and yet all the combats I've seen (including those DMed by me) have been fairly standard toe-to-toe slug fests.
....which is all completely tangential to this thread's topic. Carry on, carry on......
ForbidenMaster
Explorer
I am actually surprised that people have combats lasting more then an hour. Beyond small delv like adventures I have run two campaigns. One was SOW with 6 PCs and the other is KOTS and TS with 5 PCs, and unless its a boss fight, all of the fights pretty much take an hour or less.
We arent heavily optimized, but some of the PCs do use power cards, at least since the character builder has come out.
Our combats last from 35 minutes to 6 hours, depending on the encounter and group we 're playing with.
I don't hesitate to throw encounters at the group that are level-1 or level-2. The fastest non-trivial combat encounter I ran was between a group of 6 PC's, and 2 artillary monsters making use of a trap. It lasted about 35 minutes, but I was resolving the trap and 2 monsters very quickly on their turns since their tactics were pre-determined and fast to run. The group just had to figure out how to get to the monsters without taking too much damage, and once in melee I was sure they could take them out. The group ignored the part about not taking damage, and bulldozed their way through the encounter. Not an effecient way to do it, but it was certainly fast. The encounter ran one of the players down to 1 healing surge, and he died in the next encounter.
The 6 hour combat we had was against a trap, 8 or 9 standard creatures (not all at once), and wave after wave of minions. Our objective was to disable/destroy the "trap" (which put an end to the waves of minions). It took as about 6 hours to accomplish that task, no idea how many rounds. To add insult to injury, the encounter didn't even end there. We immediately entered a skill challenge to avoid reinforcements and sneak away to safety.
There is a lot the DM can do to make encounters fast or slow simply through encounter design, and there is nothing wrong necessarily with long epic encounters, though I'd suggest that they don't become the norm.
Also sometimes encounters just start out bad, or luck of the dice can drastically increase the number fo a rounds a combat takes.
I really like the idea of giving some sort of bonus if the enemies are taken down under a certain amount of time (or certain number of rounds). I might give a bonus action point, or have them heal up a healing surge at the end of the encounter without spending surges.
I might even come up with a par concept where I expect an encounter to be X rounds. If they complete it under par, they get the bonus.
I don't hesitate to throw encounters at the group that are level-1 or level-2. The fastest non-trivial combat encounter I ran was between a group of 6 PC's, and 2 artillary monsters making use of a trap. It lasted about 35 minutes, but I was resolving the trap and 2 monsters very quickly on their turns since their tactics were pre-determined and fast to run. The group just had to figure out how to get to the monsters without taking too much damage, and once in melee I was sure they could take them out. The group ignored the part about not taking damage, and bulldozed their way through the encounter. Not an effecient way to do it, but it was certainly fast. The encounter ran one of the players down to 1 healing surge, and he died in the next encounter.
The 6 hour combat we had was against a trap, 8 or 9 standard creatures (not all at once), and wave after wave of minions. Our objective was to disable/destroy the "trap" (which put an end to the waves of minions). It took as about 6 hours to accomplish that task, no idea how many rounds. To add insult to injury, the encounter didn't even end there. We immediately entered a skill challenge to avoid reinforcements and sneak away to safety.
There is a lot the DM can do to make encounters fast or slow simply through encounter design, and there is nothing wrong necessarily with long epic encounters, though I'd suggest that they don't become the norm.
Also sometimes encounters just start out bad, or luck of the dice can drastically increase the number fo a rounds a combat takes.
I really like the idea of giving some sort of bonus if the enemies are taken down under a certain amount of time (or certain number of rounds). I might give a bonus action point, or have them heal up a healing surge at the end of the encounter without spending surges.
I might even come up with a par concept where I expect an encounter to be X rounds. If they complete it under par, they get the bonus.
I currently DM for a group that can have as many as 9 people playing at at time, but can often get down to as few as 4 or 5 as the evening wears on. The thing I've mostly found is that the fewer players, that means the fewer monsters, and thus faster combat. 4e suffers severely from encounter bloat with larger numbers of players. An encounter with everyone will last hours, while an encounter with only four or five players will go a much-more-appropriate hour or so.
redwulf25_ci
First Post
I'm consistently surprised that anyone is having an average combat last longer than 20 minutes. What are you people doing that's taking so long? In a 2-3 (never longer than 4) hour session I can normally get through a skill challenge and 6-8 combats + role play.
DrSpunj
Explorer
Well, while that's great for you & your players, can you please elaborate on what kind of combats you're getting through in 20 minutes? How many players? What levels are they? How many mobs and according to the XP budget are they easy (<APL), standard (=APL) or Hard (>APL) encounters?
If we had a 20 minute fight it's because one side or the other fled or there was a 1st round TPK; I guess if the party came up against a dozen minions or so that'd be quick too. None of those, however, would likely be any fun for us.
If we had a 20 minute fight it's because one side or the other fled or there was a 1st round TPK; I guess if the party came up against a dozen minions or so that'd be quick too. None of those, however, would likely be any fun for us.
PeelSeel2
Explorer
Last one I did in about 20 minutes was 8 orc minions lvl4 , 3 orc beserkers lvl 5, 3 orc soldiers lvl 4, and an orc shaman lvl 4. Most party members are between 3rd-5th, with 7 characters. Only 2 of the party members had a dance with death.
Once initiative is established, we roll through it quickly, I do the count, if the player is not ready with his/her power, we skip them and move onto the lower initiative count. If they can fumble through what they want to do by the end of the round, we let them. If not, they just lost their action! If I can group players actions, I do. So three players come up in the initiative count and they are all against different monsters, I have them all roll their hits and damage. While they are doing that, I am determining what the next person/monster in the count is doing. Generally speaking, we might have three-four resolutions of powers/attacks going on at once.
Myself and another player are the 'movers' for the combat grid (if we use it). Meaning if player a says I want to attack this guy, we quickly take his movement, and tell him what effect, negative or positive the move will generate. If the player still wants it moved, we move it. Players like to an inordinate amount of time if they are moving the pieces themselves. If the players is good and fast at it, we generally let them do it. This speeds up grid combat.
Sometimes to speed up grid combat even more, I just have a lot smaller version of the map behind my screen. I make pencil marks where everybody is at, and move them as I would my own character for the action the player wants done. If questions arise, I can quickly show them the map, the route, and why. If they want to change it, that is fine. It is still a lot faster!
That is how we get through combats faster.
Once initiative is established, we roll through it quickly, I do the count, if the player is not ready with his/her power, we skip them and move onto the lower initiative count. If they can fumble through what they want to do by the end of the round, we let them. If not, they just lost their action! If I can group players actions, I do. So three players come up in the initiative count and they are all against different monsters, I have them all roll their hits and damage. While they are doing that, I am determining what the next person/monster in the count is doing. Generally speaking, we might have three-four resolutions of powers/attacks going on at once.
Myself and another player are the 'movers' for the combat grid (if we use it). Meaning if player a says I want to attack this guy, we quickly take his movement, and tell him what effect, negative or positive the move will generate. If the player still wants it moved, we move it. Players like to an inordinate amount of time if they are moving the pieces themselves. If the players is good and fast at it, we generally let them do it. This speeds up grid combat.
Sometimes to speed up grid combat even more, I just have a lot smaller version of the map behind my screen. I make pencil marks where everybody is at, and move them as I would my own character for the action the player wants done. If questions arise, I can quickly show them the map, the route, and why. If they want to change it, that is fine. It is still a lot faster!
That is how we get through combats faster.
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