Legends & Lore: Combat and Other Forms of Violence

[KidSnide]

We play for 4 or 5 hours every other week (in theory; it seems to end up being once every 3 to 4 weeks). There are usually three combat encounters each session, and the typical encounter takes 45 minutes to an hour or more to play out. So the immediately obvious issue is that 2/3 to 3/4 of each game session is consumed by combat encounters. True, I could run only one or two battles per game, but they need to be tougher (and thus probably longer) encounters or else the PCs daily resources are never tapped out. Also, my players like combat and find it exciting... for the first 15 minutes or so.

...

I agree completely, on both counts. 10 to 15 minutes for a typical encounter sounds about right to me, with 30 minutes as an upper limit for an important set-piece battle. A very rare climactic encounter at the end of a long story arc could even take up to an hour.

I have a similar desire, but with very different numbers. My group plays for 3-4 hours roughly every other week. IME, a single combat takes up most of that session, so we only have combats every 4-5 sessions or so. I would love a system that let me run an encounter in 30 minutes or less. In contrast, I don't mind rare climatic encounters taking 3-5 hours, so long as those hours include a ton of interesting decisions and serious excitement.

-KS

 

[Havrik Stoneskimmer]

I don't really like to throw incidental combat encounters at PCs for the sake of having them. I want them to add something to the game either tactically: Because they would be fun, or because it advances the plot/story in some way (due to rescuing an NPC, finding important lore or whatever else).

I usually do encounters the same way, although I will throw in the occasional "random" encounter with no real plot relevance just because it gives me an opportunity to use an iconic monster or one with interesting powers, etc. Maybe that falls under your "they would be fun" category.

 

[Saracenus]

On the minion/mook front, you could do what I have seen done with minions elsewhere...

Mook, first hit bloodies it, second hit kills it. Miss will not damage a mook. Bring up the damage expression a bit, but keep it an "average", say 75% per hit.

This allows the mook to use conditions that are contingent on bloodied status, say a vampire spawn mook that regenerates to unbloodied if it is not hit by radiant damage.

They are still going to pop like popcorn, but they will last a little longer than a minion and pump out a slightly higher risk to the party.

I will say I have seen a really evil minion in the latest season of D&D Encounters. The Leeching Shadow minion will merge with your PC's shadow on a hit and deals 4 necrotic damage at the start of your turn, the truly evil part is that it is removed from play until you save...

Essentially you cannot kill it if it merges with you and does damage to you each round until you save. Possible ways to get it out is to have an ally make a heal check so you can save before you take the damage on your turn...

 

[Aegeri]

I usually do encounters the same way, although I will throw in the occasional "random" encounter with no real plot relevance just because it gives me an opportunity to use an iconic monster or one with interesting powers, etc. Maybe that falls under your "they would be fun" category.

Yeah that almost certainly would.

 

[Keldryn]

I have a similar desire, but with very different numbers. My group plays for 3-4 hours roughly every other week. IME, a single combat takes up most of that session, so we only have combats every 4-5 sessions or so. I would love a system that let me run an encounter in 30 minutes or less. In contrast, I don't mind rare climatic encounters taking 3-5 hours, so long as those hours include a ton of interesting decisions and serious excitement.
-KS

After my group wrapped up The Slaying Stone in December, we had one week left before we needed to break for the holidays but I didn't want to start a new adventure and leave things hanging for a month. So I ran a one-shot Basic D&D game, and 3 of the 4 players loved it. The longest battle took 20 minutes, and we must have run 8 or 10 encounters that took less than 10 minutes each. Most of the session was exploration and role-playing. When we finally got started again this spring, I started running them through Heavers of Harkenwold to give 4e another chance. Things ran more smoothly than before, but combats were still taking too much time.

Between combat length and the overall complexity of characters (making it difficult to supplement the party with NPCs when we have a smaller turnout), I'm fighting the system to run the kind of game that we want to play. In that light, we're starting over with a new AD&D campaign.

Yeah, AD&D has some really clunky bits, but I'll gladly take the clunky bits if it means that I can run combat encounters in 15 minutes or less and get on with the game.

 

[LostSoul]

Burning Wheel has a very detailed, drawn-out, and fiddly combat system called Fight! It also has a one-roll violence resolution called Bloody Versus. The game is better served having both.

This thread is making me consider a Bloody Versus-type resolution for my own game: halve HP and double damage.

 

[Raith5]

I am repeatedly surprised by how long 4th ed fights go. It is slower on may circumstances that 3rd ed but I love the tactical side of 4th of choosing the right power, right placement etc. I find the problems with 4th combat speed is not the choices players have available but actually making a quick choice on their round.

I think 4th monster have too many hp in many situations and monsters with the insubstantial quality turn fights into a real grind.

One simple tweak that could be turned on or off is to give PCs (or PCs and monsters- heh high stakes poker) two standard actions per round for a given fight.

Two standards would put more damage around but also means that tactical choice still matters.

 

[pemerton]

the rules system should have flexibility to change complexity within a single game session.

<snip>

I would like to see a ruleset that allows players to have some very simple, 10-15 minute fights when the conflict isn't too crucial to the plot, then break out the serious tactical options for the 2-hour back and forth epic battle with the BBEG.

HeroQuest has two different resolution systems - simple contests, and extended contests. Neither is tactical in the D&D sense, but extended contests involve lots of dice rolling and the ebb and flow of fortune. Whereas simple contests are based on a single die roll (like most D&D skill checks).

I was going to speculate that Burning Wheel probably has something similar, but then came to this post:

Burning Wheel has a very detailed, drawn-out, and fiddly combat system called Fight! It also has a one-roll violence resolution called Bloody Versus. The game is better served having both.

This thread is making me consider a Bloody Versus-type resolution for my own game: halve HP and double damage.

For 4e-style mechanics, one issue with a simple combat system is to find a way of making it soak daily powers and action points - otherwise, the more serious combats will be over-resourced on the PC side.

Your suggestion looks like it would soak daily defensive powers (including action points, perhaps, on the "best defence is a good offence" principle), but perhaps not offensive ones that aren't multi-target. Whether or not that's a problem probably depends on the details of PC builds.

Personally, I'd like a way of using skill challenges for some combat resolution. The DMG2 has only the barest (and inadequate) hints in this direction.

Personally I avoid this by making quite a few combats important to the story in some way.

<snip>

I don't really like to throw incidental combat encounters at PCs for the sake of having them.

Definitely. I think that 4e won't work - at least, not to its full potential - if your group is one where combat is not part of the roleplaying. And eliminating "filler" encounters is a necessary step to making combat matter to the story.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

HeroQuest has two different resolution systems - simple contests, and extended contests. Neither is tactical in the D&D sense, but extended contests involve lots of dice rolling and the ebb and flow of fortune. Whereas simple contests are based on a single die roll (like most D&D skill checks).

Personally, I'd like a way of using skill challenges for some combat resolution. The DMG2 has only the barest (and inadequate) hints in this direction.

Yeah, I'm still leery of this concept. It seems like it puts a heavy burden on the DM to decide when each system is appropriate, and I can imagine players being divided as to how they want to resolve things. It could also be a rather meta-game driven kind of thing. No 2 systems are going to resolve things the same. One will favor certain players/characters, the other will favor others. They will also probably represent different trade offs for the DM.

I guess if I were going to have 2 systems I'd want to make them very distinct so that one would only be designed to deal with fairly trivial encounters for instance, and the other would be for everything else. SCs could certainly be used as the way to deal with 'trivial' encounters, make it a low complexity SC where using a daily resource lets you erase one or more failures, which are otherwise surge loss, or something like that.

Definitely. I think that 4e won't work - at least, not to its full potential - if your group is one where combat is not part of the roleplaying. And eliminating "filler" encounters is a necessary step to making combat matter to the story.

Yeah, my solution has definitely been to make trivial encounters just go away in general. I also do a lot of things to make sure that encounters never drag. That won't ever be 100% effective, but I have gotten it down to maybe one in 5 encounters starts to drag a bit. At that point I can break them off without things starting to feel artificial. Some limited numbers of enemies will flee for their lives or surrender, etc. I've had some of those turn out to be the most interesting and fun situations. The players LOVED chasing the BBEG as she fled, taking pot shots at her and trying to catch up or slow her down with powers, etc. That was a pretty cool one. The bad guys COULD have just slugged it out, the end result would have been about the same, but that turned out a lot more fun.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Yeah, I'm still leery of this concept. It seems like it puts a heavy burden on the DM to decide when each system is appropriate,....

I do not beleive that the burden should be on the DM it should very much be on the part of the players.