My 3 quibbles with 4e

[MerricB]

Many PC at-will powers (especially the Warlord) often affect other PCs until the end of a round.

Many? Only those belonging to the Leader characters, because that's what they do. Leaders are like bards, they help everyone else.

How do people keep track of all these modifiers? With chits or other such markers?

First of all, I have the official DM screen which lists all the conditions and what they do. It's one of the most useful bits of information I have.

Second, I keep track of monster HPs on a bit of scratch paper. When they suffer a condition, I write that next to their hp. A little M indicates that they're marked, and it's generally very obvious by whom.

The players keep track of their own conditions on scratchpaper. So, "o5 poison, slow (save)" or something similar. They check that at the beginning of their action and remember what is going on.

Cheers!

 

[mearls]

I can't help you with #1. That's pretty much part of the game as it is now.

However, for #2 an #3 I'd be curious to hear how you are building encounters. It sounds like things are a little too easy for the players. Here's what I'd suggest:

Skew your encounters toward higher level brutes and artillery.

Brutes do lots of damage and have low accuracy, but using higher level ones counters the accuracy issue.

Artillery has high accuracy and low damage, but the damage adds up with two or three of them. If they are higher level, they also pack a relatively heavier punch.

I'd recommend aiming to spend your XP budget on fewer but higher level critters of those two roles. So, if the party has 5 PCs, use 4 brutes and artillery, with higher levels to set the encounter's level to where you want it.

If you're using lots of brutes that are below the party's level, soldiers, and lurkers, encounters might drag out. The brutes miss all the time, but have lots of hit points so they take a while to grind down. Soldiers have high ACs, so they take a while to beat down, and lurkers have a naturally tendency to spin things out.

Also, if you are using lots of elites and solos I'd recommend dialing those back a bit.

If the changes I recommended work, then look to mix things up a bit.

IME, and after spending a fair amount of time following threads about the grind, I think the issue comes down to a mis-match between how the DM builds encounters and how the players handle them. I think there are certain combos of roles and DM tactics that are better matches for some groups than others.

 

[Lancelot]

1) All the Powers: In my game, it's the player's responsibility to track the conditions they place upon their targets with colored chits. We use small colored plastic beads to do things like marks, quarries, etc. It's also critical that all players have power cards. Most of my players use their own home-crafted cards, even if they're just pencil scrawls on a scrap of paper. That's for their convenience as much as mine.

2) Combats aren't scary: I have a hard time with this one. Our group plays an average of 1.5 sessions per week (4 hours sessions), since the release of 4e. We've had 32 permanent PC deaths and 4 campaign-ending TPKs (I keep a record for my own warped statistical interest in the classes that seem to die the most often).

4e is BRUTAL. I've seen short modules in products like Open Grave which simply drop my jaw when I look at the quantity or power of monsters that my party is "supposed" to be overcoming. I've never, ever, run an encounter which is outside the recommended DMG range for XP challenge, and I've taken to rolling behind a screen so I can fudge things from time to time to help save them.

Now, my group ranges from 3-5 players and they don't always choose at least one each of all the "roles" (sometimes they lack a controller, or even a leader!). But they're very experienced players, at least some of them are min-maxers, and they have a reasonable grasp of tactics.

3) Combat Grind: ...and yeah, this is the point I sympathize with the most. It requires some real artwork from the DM. I ran some really grindy encounters in my first few months with 4e, but I'm slowly getting better. It's not always easy.

The tricks I've learned to use are:

a) start whacking the monsters once it's clear the party has won the battle (e.g. make the survivors flee, surrender, or start dying like minions);

b) select your monsters carefully (e.g. some of them, particularly certain solos like purple worms, are just boring);

c) make free use of attack forms and tactics that aren't included in the stat block (e.g. have a troll attempt to grapple a foe, chuck a table at a PC, or pick up a PC and attempt to hurl them down a well - use the "average DCs and damage values" table to figure out something appropriate, rather than just clawing and biting them every round).

 

[Jack99]

Hi Mike.

Since you are reading this, and considering the advice you just gave, is there any chance you could comment on the discrepancy been the DMG advice for custom monster damage and the MM monster damage. While I realize there must be some variation, there seems to be quite a bit of difference for some monsters.

 

[Obryn]

How do people keep track of all these modifiers? With chits or other such markers?

I use a set of Alea magnets. They work pretty darn well, now that they're the neodymium sort and don't interfere with one another nearly as much.

Also--and this is more rhetorical--if everybody has special powers, then they really aren't so special.

I hear this a lot, and I think it's a pretty hollow catchphrase. It sounds good, so people say it a lot, but it doesn't make much sense. Basically, you're conflating definitions of "special."

2. Combats aren't scary for the players
With all the healing surges, cleric's minor actions to heal, and finally three saving throws when a PC drops, most combats just don't seem intense as they should be for the players. This sort of fits in with this thread:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/247429-d-d-4th-edition-creatures-not-scary.html

Monsters just don't seem to do as much damage as they should.

In 3.5e, players would think along the terms of CR--that was easily solved with tossing in higher CR monsters. But in 4e, there's just so many second chances that even more powerful monsters just don't scare the PCs like they should.

What can be done?

Hm. All I can say is that I haven't found this very much. My players go into many fights thinking "Oh, we're screwed" within the first few rounds. That's when the tactics kick in, the abilities kick in, and ... it never becomes easy, but it is made to be manageable.

One of the things I've noticed in my group is that an extra leader makes a gigantic difference. Do you have a cleric and a warlord in your group, maybe?

3. Combat Grind
This has been covered in other threads, so I won't belabor it here. One solution is to use more minions, but that makes combat even less scary. I'm sort of at an impasse with this, and haven't found a desirable solution.

There's two ways to approach this. They are, of course, directly contradictory.

(1) Grind isn't inevitable. It's a direct result of mediocre tactics. Improved tactics will minimize grind. If the whole party isn't working together to set up their buddies, combat will last much longer than it should.

or

(2) Grind is almost inevitable, given the system. In this case, I think the best thing you can do is reduce all enemy defenses by 2 and increase their damage by 1/2 their level whenever you see a combat grinding. This won't block poor rolls, but it will help everyone land their attacks a lot better.

Regardless, I think a great way to minimize grind is (as mearls said) to scale back on elites and solos. I think it's one reason Pyramid of Shadows can feel so grindy at times.

-O

 

[Keefe the Thief]

Everybody wins, everybody gets prizes.

#1) Its everyone's birthday all the time and everyone gets presents-or the unfun begins.

Necessary contributions like these aside, i somewhat agree with the grind but cannot fathom the "4e combat is not dangerous" one. What? Bloodied has become the natural situation state for my PCs, especially if i use loads of minions.

 

[Nightson]

Man, I have not had a combat yet where I have not managed to knock at least one PC into the negatives. My PCs are uncanny at making death saving throws though, it's crazy, one of them made five in a row in a fight before someone wandered over and rolled a natural twenty on the untrained heal check to give them a second wind.

 

[mearls]

Hi Mike.

Since you are reading this, and considering the advice you just gave, is there any chance you could comment on the discrepancy been the DMG advice for custom monster damage and the MM monster damage. While I realize there must be some variation, there seems to be quite a bit of difference for some monsters.

The DMG's table is a baseline, while many of the critters in the MM have damaged adjusted for other stuff that the critter delivers with the attack. We have some basic guidelines we use to shift a critter's damage up or down based on accuracy and other effects.

I think some creatures that had incorrect damage (usually too low) were errata'd, like the ogre savage and a few other brutes.

 

[LostSoul]

Skew your encounters toward higher level brutes and artillery.

Brutes do lots of damage and have low accuracy, but using higher level ones counters the accuracy issue.

This is a pet peeve of mine. Brutes in the MM do far too low damage.

However...

1) All the special powers allow players to make more important decisions during play.

2) PCs are tough, but they can easily be brought down with higher level encounters.

3) I have not encountered the grind in my games.

 

[frankthedm]

(1) Grind isn't inevitable. It's a direct result of mediocre tactics. Improved tactics will minimize grind.

Yep. Focusing on one foe at a time is pretty vital to make things feel less grindy. If the party takes on multiple foes at once, the longer it will take before one of those foes bloodies or drops, delaying the sensation of progress. Even if it is only psycho-logical, disemboweling a foe in rounds 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11 is going to feel less grindy than if the foes internal organs don't start littering the ground until rounds 10 and 11.