Is This How it is Supposed to Be?

[Sunseeker]

Doesn't that get maddening on your turn? If you don't know who's dazed, slowed, immobilized, or whatever, how are you able to have team monster take any actions without a dozen interruptions/do-overs?

I get having the players track weird status effects (when I'm DMing, monsters under oddball effects get an * next to their names), but basic effects need to be obvious at my tables or it just gets frustrating.

To be honest, I don't have a lot of status-effect players. But the simple things like who can or cannot move I can keep track of in my head, I don't need to remember the specific effect because I've got a handy DM screen and memorizing 3-4 basic effects is pretty simple. It's special conditions like "if X then Y", or numbers and types of ongoing that I make my players remember.

For a while I gave everyone little slices of post-its when I used little paper-cut-out monsters to stick on them to help people remember effects, but that's harder with minis.

 

[adamc]

Well, the length of 4e combats _is_ one of the biggest complaints about that version. An hour for a round is more than I've personally seen, but the combats _can_ definitely be long. There are things a DM can do to shorten the combats, but without that, as you go up in levels and the characters get more options, this is a natural problem with 4e.

(I like 4e, all things considered -- this is a weakness, but you can work around it.)