D&D 4E How to speed up combat?

[AbdulAlhazred]

I was taking you at face value when you were saying skip to the good stuff and embrace that 4E is designed to be an action thrill ride of big set-piece battles. Combat is the least interesting thing about playing D&D. Especially when the results are so boringly predictable. For me, skipping to the good stuff would mean skipping the combat entirely. Hence the question about how to speed up combat in 4E so we can skip to the interesting bits, i.e. the non-combat stuff.

Yeah, well, you could certainly do away with MOST combat in 4e. You have the SC system, and you can certainly structure many action scenes using that as well. I would say you really would then just do a very few really 'big ticket' battles. Those would be super dynamic roller coaster type affairs, which might eat up table time but would only come every so often.

One area where I think 4e has an issue is there are TOO MANY LEVELS, 30 is a lot. If the game had half as many, then a big combat once per level would be almost perfect. As it is, if you despise fighting, 30 fights might be a lot, but then it really depends on how long you want your campaign to run. I mean, you could do 1 every 2-3 levels, but that might not be enough for a lot of people. Again it depends on pacing in terms of how quick you level up. I just found that doing it too often in 4e meant players didn't really get to try out all their new 'stuff' before they leveled again.

 

[meltdownpass]

Right. I tend to play in a bit more of a 'Dungeon World-esque' fashion where the GM is the one deciding the details of the threat, at least at the "here's what is in this scene" level. The fighter maybe has made it clear he hates and loathes giant spiders and has a personal quest to wipe them out wherever he finds them. Well, guess what he finds! Note that 4e provides Quest as a thing, but also I'm sure there are backgrounds, feats, PPs, etc. that all say, or can be flavored to say, "give me giant spiders."

SCs, as described in the DMG2, should never ever be static things like "there's a rock in the way." Frankly I wouldn't even make that a Skill/Ability check, since failure isn't interesting. In DW parlance it is more of a 'soft move' like "Bad News, the passage ahead is partly blocked, it will take a while to clear, and in the meantime your torches are burning and you are boxed in if anything comes up behind you." Obviously you can apply this as an ELEMENT of an SC, it is perfectly fine there. So your 'traverse the crypt' is perfect here, not withstanding a few differences in how we frame things. 4e sticks to the traditional concepts here, in theory, which is one of the reasons it is a bit of an oddball transitional game.

Anyway, many people have suggested 'better' SC-like mechanics, such as clocks and whatnot ala BitD. 4e however does lack some of the detailed check mechanics of BitD, so I'm not sure that is something that can just be dropped in.

I am not familiar with Dungeon World specifically, but that sounds worth checking out. Thanks for the recommendation.

To the broader point, yeah, I agree 4E does mechanically lack some of the bits I'd like to see for driving plots, scenes, amplifying stakes, and so on. It's why I don't run it currently despite being the best D&D for tabletop miniatures play. And as much as I enjoy the tabletop miniatures and crunch aspects I think everyone can appreciate they definitely will bog down a game if you insist on running back-to-back combats that aren't in-themselves progressing the game's narrative.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, I’ve found that to be true as well. More player input and looser, more more narrative skill challenges work better. Though I’m not sure I’d get buy in if I handed them so much control thry get to decide what they encounter. Though it’s definitely worth a try. Sticking with that idea, combat as skill challenge, would that be satisfying in play? How would you handle resource loss or failing the roll? Combine them? Have the obstacle get worse on a failed roll?

I think you can design encounters like this, yes. I have not created an encounter that was both combat focused AND just a skill challenge myself. I have created plenty of SCs where some minor fighting was possible/expected. Usually I would treat the opposition in these scenarios like minions, although you don't really have to be all that specific since you will simply use "make a successful check of some sort which deals with this obstacle (the monster)." It could be an attack, etc. You could also consider the degree of resource usage in the results. Aiming an at-will at your problem is an ordinary check, it might produce success or failure. Aiming an Encounter power at the problem is a bit more substantive, perhaps. In this case maybe you give another guy advantage or something. Burning a daily is probably auto-success on that check. All of these obviously are going to be modulated by fictional position, some powers may not be useful in all cases, or might produce sub-par results.

Obviously another option is to make a combat be a consequence of SC failure. It isn't guaranteed to happen, but if the PCs mess up, then the situation escalates. If they are careful and good at their jobs, they won't fight often, unless they want to.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I am not familiar with Dungeon World specifically, but that sounds worth checking out. Thanks for the recommendation.

To the broader point, yeah, I agree 4E does mechanically lack some of the bits I'd like to see for driving plots, scenes, amplifying stakes, and so on. It's why I don't run it currently despite being the best D&D for tabletop miniatures play. And as much as I enjoy the tabletop miniatures and crunch aspects I think everyone can appreciate they definitely will bog down a game if you insist on running back-to-back combats that aren't in-themselves progressing the game's narrative.

Well, I simply built better rules myself. So, while I'm happy enough with 4e, we have moved on to playing something that is not really the same game anymore. The next version is much more narrative, although it still has tactical combat. Even so, only the players roll dice in the new incarnation. This seems to be a good idea.

 

[meltdownpass]

I think you can design encounters like this, yes. I have not created an encounter that was both combat focused AND just a skill challenge myself. I have created plenty of SCs where some minor fighting was possible/expected. Usually I would treat the opposition in these scenarios like minions, although you don't really have to be all that specific since you will simply use "make a successful check of some sort which deals with this obstacle (the monster)." It could be an attack, etc. You could also consider the degree of resource usage in the results. Aiming an at-will at your problem is an ordinary check, it might produce success or failure. Aiming an Encounter power at the problem is a bit more substantive, perhaps. In this case maybe you give another guy advantage or something. Burning a daily is probably auto-success on that check. All of these obviously are going to be modulated by fictional position, some powers may not be useful in all cases, or might produce sub-par results.

Obviously another option is to make a combat be a consequence of SC failure. It isn't guaranteed to happen, but if the PCs mess up, then the situation escalates. If they are careful and good at their jobs, they won't fight often, unless they want to.

Building on this idea 4E definitely has a pretty good way of handling failure in a more abstracted combat -- You can have them expend powers. The other common resources that you can key off of are things like hero points and healing surges. In a certain sense the use of healing surges is expected. The assumption of the system is having X number of encounters per Long Rest, so if you're eliding over tactical combats to keep the pace of the game up then it seems reasonable to use healing surges as a resource to represent stress.

 

[fearsomepirate]

The only thing I have to add is that when it is clear that an enemy is fully rekt, but still has several rounds of HPs left, just kill it on the next hit. No need to drag it out.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Building on this idea 4E definitely has a pretty good way of handling failure in a more abstracted combat -- You can have them expend powers. The other common resources that you can key off of are things like hero points and healing surges. In a certain sense the use of healing surges is expected. The assumption of the system is having X number of encounters per Long Rest, so if you're eliding over tactical combats to keep the pace of the game up then it seems reasonable to use healing surges as a resource to represent stress.

Yeah, consequences of either total CS failure, or even just failure of a single check, is a whole other dimension of ways to assess resource costs. You can also hit a couple other options, like "OK, try to defeat this guy. Oh, you failed a check, you can take a failure, or expend a daily!" In this case the check would be more generic, maybe a basic ability check on your Prime Requisite. Maybe then using an Encounter power makes it an Easy check? You can do a lot of this stuff. Likewise with APs, item use, consumables, etc. I think I'd mostly just leave it open ended. We did that mostly, if the player could, at any point in the process, describe a narrative explanation for why "guzzle a healing potion" would turn failure into success, well, OK!

 

[pemerton]

I feel like 4E was hardmode on GMs. Every combat encounter is a setpiece. To work well the terrain always has something interesting, like rickety bridges, or lava flows, or gravity wells or something. All the monsters have differences and special things, controller/defender/lurker etc, AND the objectives are often also complex, e.g. stop the ritual before the rift is complete.

These make for great setpieces, but 4E struggles outside of epic setpieces.

I'm with @AbdulAlhazred on this. Why include stuff in your game that is not an "epic setpiece" of some sort?

So your advice on how to make combat take less time is to make combat take all the time.

The non-combat “filler” is the main reason some of us play.

Combat is the least interesting thing about playing D&D. Especially when the results are so boringly predictable. For me, skipping to the good stuff would mean skipping the combat entirely. Hence the question about how to speed up combat in 4E so we can skip to the interesting bits, i.e. the non-combat stuff.

If you're not interested in combat as part of your play I'm not sure why you're using 4e. What is it bringing to the table? Without knowing what you're looking for, it's hard to give helpful advice.

I would say, though, that if you find the results of your 4e combats "boringly predictable" then I think you're not using the system to it's full potential. Here are some links that show what I mean.

You could remove action points from PCs. That should also speed up combat.

I wouldn't advise this. I don't see how reducing the ration of player turns to GM turns will make things quicker.

 

[Voadam]

More minions as foes. Any standard monster can turn into a minion by having 1 hp.

Turn solos into elites for hp, and elites into standards. They still have the powers and action economy, but less hp that drag out a fight for extra rounds. Use the standards encounter balance of monster hp for important climax fights when you want the longer fight.

 

[Voadam]

One thought I had was bringing in B/X morale checks. Make morale checks at first personal hit taken, on bloodied, first combat death, etc

B/X suggested rolling twice, first foe downed, and when half are down (sort of like the enemy group is bloodied). Keeps it simple but still relevant.