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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Forrester" data-source="post: 4344744" data-attributes="member: 1279">I have not played a lot of 4E, but the bit I've played so far suggests a problem -- from my point of view, at least. The problem is that in some battles, after the first 2-3 rounds, it may become very clear to the DM and players that they are almost certainly going to win the battle, even if it should be a challenging encounter. BUT the natural course of battle would take another 90 minutes to complete. For instance, I was in a battle where the characters were going up against a controller, a few artillery, and two or three brutes, and due to some early luck and good tactics (the team put down a Wall of Fire *here* and hit the baddies with an Ice Storm *there*), we managed to clearly gain the upper hand and take down one of the brutes and severely wound another. We also found that while the bad guys have wads and wads of hit points, the average attack most of the remaining baddies did was only doing 7-10 points of damage, and they only hit half the time. At this point, the battle is essentially over. If the bad guys had managed an ambush, or surrounded the party, it would have been a close (and perhaps fatal for the party) battle, but at this point it's mostly a matter of cleanup. Yes, most of the foes are still alive, but they're controlled, and they aren't going to surprise the party by doing a wad of damage. But they've got a TON of hit points, so the battle could *easily* take another 7-10 rounds, and another hour and a half. Contrast this with a 3E battle, which would typically take less time, and which had monsters that often, with a successful hit (or especially crit) could take out half or more of a tank's hit points. Even i they were behind, monsters could get lucky and do some real harm. By the time a battle might be called early, i.e., the DM says "Anyway, you clean up the remaining monsters and . . . ", you were probably only cutting out the last two or three rounds. That's not how it works in 4E -- monsters that tear off a huge chunk of hit points simply *do not exist* -- that's not the way encounters are designed to work. Battle isn't BOOM BOOM BOOM, it's drip drip drip. In a lot of ways, I can see how this could be seen as a feature and not a bug, but . . . well, it just seems a little annoying that there could be battles against theoretically even foes that need to be called 7-8 rounds ahead of time because most of the suspense is gone. I haven't played a ton of 4E, though -- and I don't want to generalize from a battle or two that's left a bad taste in my mouth. But has anyone else had this experience?</blockquote>

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