Long Combats are Bad

[Lanefan]

You're now talking about potentially starting in on a fight, realizing it is boring, and switching mechanics mid-stream?

If that were only possible...

Eew. That's ugly. In terms of player expectations, I mean. I'd rather just truncate the fight, give the PCs the benefit of the doubt, and move on to the next thing.

Problem is, often you don't know how interesting any given battle is going to be or how long it'll drag out for until you're already three or four rounds in...by which point you're committed.

I agree it's ugly, but truncating the fight isn't an option if you don't know who's going to win...

Worst example in my current campaign: party come out of a hallway into a room full of Orcs and back up. Party's two front-liners back away 5' down the hall to limit the number of enemy that can get at them; the Orcs charge, and battle begins. Party back-liners use up their spells (accomplishing little), Orc back-liners use up their ammunition (accomplishing less); meanwhile the front-liners on both sides are rolling garbage and just can not hit each other! The back-line Orcs were eventually reduced to throwing furniture at the back-line PCs, who happily threw it back...

This went on for about 25-30 rounds, during which time any lucky hit or critical turns the tide in favour of the side that gets it; but none do. Meanwhile, other than the laughter caused by the gross ineptitude of both sides, we're all getting bored out of our minds.

I can't call it off and say the PCs win, as at this point there's nothing saying that they will...but some sort of quick-resolution mechanic would have saved us hours! (I can't remember whether the Orcs had anywhere they could have run to, as a way of ending that particular fight; but they were supposed to be half-drunk anyway so "run" would not be in their vocabulary)

Finally, the PCs get an opening when the Orc front line collapses and from there it was just a matter of a few quick rounds worth of mopping up. The entire battle went for 32 rounds.

Lan-"the worst enemy of fast combat is good armour"-efan

 

[LostSoul]

For those who are interested, I tried to keep track of the time it took us to resolve the two fights in our last game using my combat system.

The first fight (2 players, 1 DM; 2 PCs + 2 Henchmen vs. 5 fire elementals and 5 water elementals) took about 20 minutes. The second fight (same party, against 4 skeletons and 1 burning skeleton) took another 20 minutes.

 

[Hussar]

/snip
Worst example in my current campaign: party come out of a hallway into a room full of Orcs and back up. Party's two front-liners back away 5' down the hall to limit the number of enemy that can get at them; the Orcs charge, and battle begins. Party back-liners use up their spells (accomplishing little), Orc back-liners use up their ammunition (accomplishing less); meanwhile the front-liners on both sides are rolling garbage and just can not hit each other! The back-line Orcs were eventually reduced to throwing furniture at the back-line PCs, who happily threw it back...

This went on for about 25-30 rounds, during which time any lucky hit or critical turns the tide in favour of the side that gets it; but none do. Meanwhile, other than the laughter caused by the gross ineptitude of both sides, we're all getting bored out of our minds.

I can't call it off and say the PCs win, as at this point there's nothing saying that they will...but some sort of quick-resolution mechanic would have saved us hours! (I can't remember whether the Orcs had anywhere they could have run to, as a way of ending that particular fight; but they were supposed to be half-drunk anyway so "run" would not be in their vocabulary)

Finally, the PCs get an opening when the Orc front line collapses and from there it was just a matter of a few quick rounds worth of mopping up. The entire battle went for 32 rounds.

Lan-"the worst enemy of fast combat is good armour"-efan

And this is my point. Why was this the set up for the encounter? Why was there only one single bottleneck that the players could block up? Where were the side passages? Why wasn't there stairwells going up and around and then back down so that the orcs could move around? Why were the orcs not constantly bull rushing to force the PC's out of position? Where was the cook pit that the orcs could grab cauldrons of boiling water to throw onto the PC's?

In other words, you had an encounter with a single choke point, no additional environmental effects, a single creature type and then wonder why it turns into a boring encounter?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Would have been a great encounter in RCFG, or in any other system with fatigue rules. The orcs can afford to rest; the PCs cannot. Simply slogging on and on is not an option. Also, the combat advantage/special manoeuvre rules mean that either side can attempt things to break the bottleneck.

Also, when a single round goes by in a few minutes, even 32 rounds can be done in about 1 hour, 1 1/2 hours, depending upon the round. In one playtest (using Crucible of Freya) we had a big battle with orcs, skeletons, a priest, and an ogre that spanned a lot of real time but was very engaging.

Fast, tactical combat systems are good.

My editting in the Beta is a mess, though



RC

 

[Lanefan]

And this is my point. Why was this the set up for the encounter? Why was there only one single bottleneck that the players could block up? Where were the side passages? Why wasn't there stairwells going up and around and then back down so that the orcs could move around? Why were the orcs not constantly bull rushing to force the PC's out of position? Where was the cook pit that the orcs could grab cauldrons of boiling water to throw onto the PC's?

In other words, you had an encounter with a single choke point, no additional environmental effects, a single creature type and then wonder why it turns into a boring encounter?

I didn't design this particular module so I can't speak to the layout; there may have been side passages, but if so the PCs had not explored them and during a battle is usually not a good time to go exploring. The Orcs aren't going to think of anything like using passages...they're too busy cheering on their front line (while stealing their beer). And "bull rush" doesn't exist in my game; even if it did it would have been a bad tactic for either side to use in that to build up any momentum you'd first have to give ground and thus let the enemy through your front line.

What turned it into a boring encounter was mostly the pathetic rolling on both sides. A few good early rolls (for either side) and the whole thing goes 5 or 6 rounds, tops, before the losing side flees or dies.

Lan-"sometimes, critical hits are your friend"-efan

 

[nedjer]

Combats can be long without getting dull and short without going narrative. Comes down to a choice between holding the reins or handing the reins off to the rule book:

"Know the self as a rider in a chariot,
and the body, as simply the chariot.
Know the intellect as the charioteer,
and the mind, as simply the reins.”

 

[LeStryfe79]

Combat got REALLY long in 3.5 later on in levels, but I found the fights in 4th to be too long out of the gate. I found AD&D and SWSE to have a good balance here (I'm not even going to get into Shadowrun). Other games that have quick combat tend to have underdeveloped systems of advancement. I'm a really big fan of critical hit charts, however, as I think it adds a certain dynamic to things.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Combat got REALLY long in 3.5 later on in levels, but I found the fights in 4th to be too long out of the gate. I found AD&D and SWSE to have a good balance here (I'm not even going to get into Shadowrun). Other games that have quick combat tend to have underdeveloped systems of advancement. I'm a really big fan of critical hit charts, however, as I think it adds a certain dynamic to things.

I agree that combats got really long in 3.5 at higher levels, plus it required a lot of prep time for me as DM. However, I got to be very good at designing challenging encounters at higher levels. So, I felt a lot of those higher level encounters were very memorable.

However, my early experiences with 4E has been that the combats are much quicker because each side has fewer choices to make and many of the powers are fairly simple for each player (and me) to remember. That said, the group is on the verge of level 4 in that campaign whereas my 3.5 campaign went from level 1 to 18, so it remains to be seen if it will be as simple at level 12 or 15.

However, I still don't know 4E well enough where the encounters are rewarding to me as a DM - I loved 3.5 when the PCs had the fear of death in nearly every major encounter in a "OMG how are we going to survive this?" sort of way. I haven't quite found that yet in 4E, but I had a good encounter last night, so I hope I'm on the way there.

 

[Rel]

I don't want to see this thread go down the path of edition warring so let's make sure that any comparisons are made respectfully. Everybody is doing a fine job of that so far but I thought I'd reiterate that as a priority.

Personally I found that 3.x combats were somewhat faster than 4e combats per the RAW. Once I adopted the "60% monster hit points, 1/2 Level +3 damage" solution then 4e became significantly faster. But my real issue with 3.x combat was how swingy it was and how that swingy-ness was arrived at after considerable debate.

Of course there will always be a difference between how a party fares when they initiate a battle vs. when it is sprung upon them. But in 3.x I found that gap to be rather large. Buffing spells in particular made a huge difference in performance. Additionally, when the party had time to prepare, there was often a lengthy debate about how much of these expendable resources they wanted to expend. As a result the total time required to resolve the combat, if the PC's were the ones initiating it, certainly exceeded the average combat times I'm seeing in 4e. The combat itself was rather shorter but the prep time was considerable.

By limiting the resource management aspect mostly to eyeballing their healing surges and Daily powers, the prep time is much reduced in 4e. Even if the total time taken to resolve a battle is the same, I'd rather more of that time be spent in combat rounds than in deciding whether or not to cast Bulls Strength or Bears Endurance and whatnot. And it is easier for me to estimate combat difficulty if I don't have to account for a several point swing in attack bonuses and damage afforded by buffing spells.

 

[Lanefan]

Of course there will always be a difference between how a party fares when they initiate a battle vs. when it is sprung upon them. But in 3.x I found that gap to be rather large. Buffing spells in particular made a huge difference in performance. Additionally, when the party had time to prepare, there was often a lengthy debate about how much of these expendable resources they wanted to expend. As a result the total time required to resolve the combat, if the PC's were the ones initiating it, certainly exceeded the average combat times I'm seeing in 4e. The combat itself was rather shorter but the prep time was considerable.

Valid point. I hadn't considered prep time as part of "combat time" but of course it is.

Then again, around here "prep time" usually consists of kicking in some door or other. If nothing else, they've learned that advance plans usually go out the window as soon as the enemy gets involved anyway; so now they mostly don't bother much.

By limiting the resource management aspect mostly to eyeballing their healing surges and Daily powers, the prep time is much reduced in 4e. Even if the total time taken to resolve a battle is the same, I'd rather more of that time be spent in combat rounds than in deciding whether or not to cast Bulls Strength or Bears Endurance and whatnot. And it is easier for me to estimate combat difficulty if I don't have to account for a several point swing in attack bonuses and damage afforded by buffing spells.

Same is true in 0-1-2e. Such few buff spells as there are e.g. Strength tend to last for ages, so it's easy enough to account for them if it matters. That said, I rarely if ever get to that level of fine-tuning when dreaming up an encounter.

Lanefan