Number of monsters and length of combat?

[ArcaneSpringboard]

Been doing a lot of thinking lately about ways to speed up combat. Currently, one of the aspects I'm thinking about is the paradigm that each combat must be challenging to the PCs.

Realistically, the PCs are going to win any combat that is equal to their level, yet that combat still is going to take somewhere around 60 minutes at the Paragon levels.

What occured to me today was to wonder about the effects of dropping one monster from the combat.

This in effect is a Level - 1 encounter, assuming all of the monsters were equal to the party's level. Having equal or more monsters than the party's number, yet lower levels, isn't necessarily a good thing since it reduces the to-hit bonus of those monsters. We want the PCs to at least use some healing surges and possibly a Daily in this combat. I would think that going with fewer PC level (or even just fewer PC level +1 or +2) monsters could possibly provide enough challenge to use up some resources, yet should speed things up a bit.

Any thoughts?

 

[weem]

What you will see suggested if you look around is lowering the HP's of the monsters (down to 75% of normal or so - so if they have 100 HP, move them to 75) and adding a damage bonus equal to their level (or so).

I also like to add taking a look at how you do initiative, because I changed the way we do ours and it sped things up a lot - plus it added a whole new dynamic to combat.

 

[ArcaneSpringboard]

Yes, I've done both of those. The issue with effect durations/ongoing damage/saves/death saves caused me issues, and I didn't really think that we had that much difference on combat length when we tried that.

As for the hp change, it seemed to speed things up a bit, but I think I need something more drastic.

I'm going to be trying using the Torg Drama Deck with 4e soon though which would put initiative back into the you-go-we-go frame of mind, so I'm going to need to solve the effect duration issue anyways.

I don't mind the 60-90 minute combats for dramatic set piece battles. It's the 'normal' ones that while they may have a point, still shouldn't take 60 minutes IMO.

I guess the bottom line is that I want standard combats to take 30 minutes, take away some resources (ie healing surges) but probably not threaten death...yet the dramatic combats take however long it takes, but be very threatening unless the PCs do some clever gaming.

 

[weem]

What I do, when I want those (much) quicker encounters is have them occur, but once the tide has turned (it starts to become obvious that the fight is theirs) I generally say something to the effect of...

..."bodies are dropping... you can see the fear in their eyes as they realize this is going your way" etc. I then give them the option to "finish it" effectively ending the combat right there explaining they easily mow through the rest.

Another thing I do is, when it gets to that point, have some of them (enemies) begin surrendering - especially if they are intelligent enough to know... I am about to die, and this cause is not worth it. I have had fights where men dropped their weapons and fall back to a wall trying to stay out of the way while others remained on their feet fighting to the end. The players then have someone to deal with at the end, perhaps for some information, it's more realistic, and it ends a fight quickly when it is not something you wish/need to drag out.

 

[S'mon]

Contrary to my expectation I find that the PCs plough through large numbers of monsters just fine, where they are of equal or lower level to the party. Grind does not occur from using too many monsters, it occurs from using Solos and higher level elites.

My suspicion is therefore that reducing monster numbers will just make for a trivial, boring fight. If you use higher level monsters, it becomes a grindy boring fight. I'd stick with the DMG 2 advice - "Use more monsters". If you want the fight to go quick but still feel challenging, lots of lower level monsters beats a small number of high level monsters, IME.

 

[ArcaneSpringboard]

Just running the numbers...say for Level 10 skirmishers...the total hp for the encounter goes from 530 hp for 5 Level 10s...to 640 hp for 8 Level 7s.

Obviously there is some impact from reduced defenses, but I wonder how much of an impact. For Level 8s, that's the equivalent to another monster's worth of hp to take off the table, plus there would be additional wastage of damage due to overkill. Yet going from Level 10 monsters to Level 8 only gets you a +2 to hit the monster.

Wish I knew more about doing Monte Carlo simulations on this.

 

[S'mon]

The thing is, PCs often have area attacks that hit more than 1 monster. The effective durability of a Solo with x4 the hp is *much* more than 4 individual standard monsters.