Monsters and Action Points

[Markn]

Our group has been playing around with ideas to speed up combat. I've google'd tons of threads regarding this and read most of them. We have been playing with monsters with 20% less HPs but with a 1/2 level bonus to damage and so far it has worked well but we realize it doesn't scale very well in higher levels. This quickly becomes deadly to PCs at higher levels.

Something I've been thinking about is reducing monster HPs by 10%-20% and giving 1 extra Action Point to every monster. Thus, ever monster has 1, those that had 1 now have 2 and those that had 2 now have 3.

Anybody foresee any issues with this or have any other ideas?

 

[Sporemine]

Giving more action points to monsters will slow combat and majorly increase their damage output. That causes a pretty obvious problem.

It will slow the game less if you don't reduce health in the first place.

Kudos

-Sporemine

 

[Markn]

I can see that action point slowing things slightly but not as much as leaving creatures at full health. As a DM, I can make my decisions pretty quick - the slowness comes in from misses, effects and other player related stuff and not so much from the DM for our group. So overall, lower health, 1 extra action should be quicker than the standard.

As for increased damage output, we have played with the 1/2 level bonus to monsters for quite some time and I think that thats way did more damage than the 1 AP action the monster will get - that isn't even guaranteed to hit.

I can see your concerns, just for our group, I'm not worried about it. Thanks for your thoughts though.

Edit - As I give this idea some more thought, I am now of the mind that I will put creatures HP at 75% their normal and if they hit with their AP, it will be max damage (not a crit but max damage as their is a slight difference in the two). I'm loathe to reduce HPs any further than that becuase then it messes up creatures that rely on being bloodied/not bloodied.

Our group believes that monsters just don't do enough damage AND they can routinely handle fights at 3-4 levels above their level. This in an of itself is part of the reason for the long combats but my players are a very tactically sound bunch. They also want to be threatened in any given fight and with the changes I've talked about in my Healing Surge thread, I think this will help.

Still, I'm not 100% sold on the AP idea and would be happy to hear other ideas on how to speed up combat. Our main goal is to not do anything too drastic to the system - just make faster combat.

 

[jeffhartsell]

So your goals are:
1. More threatening combats
2. Faster rounds
3. Fewer rounds in an encounter
4. Don't nerf the charactes

One of the things I have tried that works well for elites is make one of the attacks a minor action. You could try this with a few choice standard creatures and that helps quite a bit make an encounter more threatening, but it is one more attack so it is not faster.

Reduced mob HP will address #3.

 

[Pale Jackal]

Our group believes that monsters just don't do enough damage AND they can routinely handle fights at 3-4 levels above their level. This in an of itself is part of the reason for the long combats but my players are a very tactically sound bunch. They also want to be threatened in any given fight and with the changes I've talked about in my Healing Surge thread, I think this will help.

Yeah, I tried doing a two-fight day for a while, with encounters at around 4 levels above the party's level. (Primary tweak was x2 use of Encounter Utilities, since magic items weren't an issue at the time.) Also halved Healing Surges per day, which I don't think was an appropriate tweak. It challenged the players, and definitely made for some fun fights, though one player felt the fights took too long.

I have been considering reducing player HP to 75%, and then having a four fight day with normal encounter levels.

 

[Markn]

So your goals are:
1. More threatening combats
2. Faster rounds
3. Fewer rounds in an encounter
4. Don't nerf the charactes

One of the things I have tried that works well for elites is make one of the attacks a minor action. You could try this with a few choice standard creatures and that helps quite a bit make an encounter more threatening, but it is one more attack so it is not faster.

Reduced mob HP will address #3.

1,3 and 4 are right on. Although I like 2, its at the bottom of the list and so much so that it might as well drop off the list mainly because I don't think its possible without massive changes.

The biggest reason for number 4, is that we use the Character builder and I have found that if we make any changes on the character end, then there is so much more work for the players to do and a higher chance for errors. I'd like it to be seemless from the players point of view so they can just print their characters and be done.

Thanks for the idea for the elites. I will take that under consideration!

 

[Markn]

Yeah, I tried doing a two-fight day for a while, with encounters at around 4 levels above the party's level. (Primary tweak was x2 use of Encounter Utilities, since magic items weren't an issue at the time.) Also halved Healing Surges per day, which I don't think was an appropriate tweak. It challenged the players, and definitely made for some fun fights, though one player felt the fights took too long.

I have been considering reducing player HP to 75%, and then having a four fight day with normal encounter levels.

In my Healing Surge thread, I've talked about a few ideas there. One intriguing idea I have come up with is to take each characters healing surges and cut them in half. They then get that many healing surges until they hit a milestone. Once they get a milestone, they get their other half. If they have an odd amount of healing surges, they get to pick which milestone they will use the extra one in and they can choose it as needed (so if a fight turns badly and they need it now, they declare it at that point). Then after two milestones, it starts over again - that is they get half their healing surges again. This takes healing surges out of the game as a reason for resting (unless they blow them all in the first fight). Technically, they can hit milestone after milestone and this works well for adventures that have time limits. I've learned that HPs don't mean so much for players, its the management of healing surges that can make a fight more scary.

Anyways, I digress, back to our regularly scheduled topic.

 

[Pale Jackal]

In my Healing Surge thread, I've talked about a few ideas there. One intriguing idea I have come up with is to take each characters healing surges and cut them in half.

I recall reading that idea, and I liked it, though I'm not sure if it will solve the core problem of fights not being tough enough. Maybe I just need to get better at designing fights: up the difficulty when terrain/area will impede the monsters more than the players. Stupid PCs, using tactics...

 

[Markn]

I recall reading that idea, and I liked it, though I'm not sure if it will solve the core problem of fights not being tough enough. Maybe I just need to get better at designing fights: up the difficulty when terrain/area will impede the monsters more than the players. Stupid PCs, using tactics...

I haven't tried it yet so I'm not 100% certain but keep the following in mind - Unlike previous editions of D&D where HPs were the determining factor for how tough a fight is, in 4e it is now the management of healing surges. PCs can go from down to full in 1 round and that is on any level, not just the high levels like the old editions allowed. In my experience, the last fight of the day has been the scariest for the PCs when they are close to running out of surges. It means possible death or possibly out of the action for a while at the least and so they play a lot different. So don't underestimate the management of the healing surge resources.

Based on some math I have come up with for my players this will give strikers/controllers about 4-5 surges per two encounters, defenders about 6. If the first fight goes bad and the striker uses up 3 surges, then he knows he can only get 1-2 surges in the next fight and this reflects in his battle tactics. This also causes the leaders to be careful with healing effects that don't require surges since it will be more often that a player may not have access to a surge since he is out. Its all about resource management which is a strong theme for 4e.

Having said that, using terrain is a weakness of mine too. It is something I need to improve on.