podcast: 4th edition combat too long

[Gradine]

And people have pointed out the hit point creep outpacing the damage creep. Fights balloon up to about twice as long by Epic tier as they are in the first few levels.

I hope I'm not alone in saying how awesome that is. Not only can epic level characters (and monsters) simply do a lot of different things in combat, but epic battles should just be harder and longer.

 

[zerotkatama]

The Rogue forgot about the Effect on his Clever Riposte, it seems. The damage, at least.

 

[RabidBob]

· The rogue charged in to the mind flayer, then used his action point to stun it and knock it prone. On its turn, the mind flayer made its save, then stood back up on its turn after that. The rogue tried to stun it again, but the mind flayer interposed a rakshasa to take the attack instead, then grabbed the rogue with its tentacles and began eating his brain.

This .... is weapons grade win! It makes me want to DM 4E and I hate DMing!

 

[Mirkurnas]

So, this is David Noonan DMing? The one they call one of the best DM's of the Wizards office?

I think I would have more fun playing with my goldfish as DM.

Horrible, I think they shouldn't make podcasts like this. I am very positive about the way 4.0 focusses on Roleplay (more than 3rd edition) in the books. And then you get to see this 'battle-game' with boring players and a horrible DM.

Alright I'll stop ranting now. Nonetheless combat in this podcast is indeed very slow, at my table is goes much quicker, and 4th edition actually quite focusses on quick combat and less rules. So this podcast is bad marketing.

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

4th edition podcast too long. blargney not downloading 200+ mb of video - blargney waiting for coles notesyoutube to come out.

Looking at the stats for the video. They could have easily halved the file size without issue.

 

[balhaza]

So, this is David Noonan DMing? The one they call one of the best DM's of the Wizards office?

I don't think it is Dave who they claim is the best. I think it was Chris Perkins, but then again, I am more than happy to give him a benefit of a doubt consider it is more of the combat showcase than anything else.

Of the group in the podcast, only the DM and the fighter are in the R&D department that wrote the books, so I am not really surprised that half of them has yet to know the rules inside out yet. As for the rather selfish play, I can't see for them, but if it was me, I would be pretty eager too to use those paragon powers given the opportunity to.

I, however, am confused by some rounds where the players seem to be taking more actions than was allowed, such as the warlock when upon missing her attack, she rolled again, hit, went on to roll another attack - which I understand was the secondary attack - on another rakshasa I think.

 

[Vael]

I've been really impressed with Chris Perkin's DMing in the Penny Arcade podcasts. I like how he can combine teaching the system while smoothing keeping everyone on track.

 

[buzz]

wow, 4th edition combats seem to go on forever with no end in sight...

Dude, in 3.5, finishing a fight with five 15th-level PCs in under an hour would be a goddamn miracle. If the podcast was moving too slow in your estimation, D&D is not the game for you.

Really, the whole thing was like watching paint dry.

When isn't watching people play D&D combat like watching paint dry?

I'll grant, I think the play section of the podcast would have benefitted greatly from a subtle soundtrack, with a little ducking to insure you could hear everyone. All the dead air and bad room sound contributed greatly to the appearance of slow pacing.

I'll also grant that Noonan wasn't particularly riveting, but I don't think he was much better or worse than a lot of GMs I've seen.

As for the players making poor choices, I don't really agree. That is, I don't think they were necessarily playing below the level of most people out there. That Sara Girard (a marketing person) could basically keep up with a table that included some developers and the extensively-prepped Jennifer Clarke Wilkes says something about the player-friendliness of 4e, IMO.

Anyway, the truly interesting part of the podcast that everyone seems to be ignoring is the fact that a lot of the players were using fan-created play aids. Wilkes was using those PDF power cards, and one other guy was using one of Neceros' landscape character sheets. I hope WotC are taking note of this.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

We have a lot of issues with churning through combat in a timely mannor, and it's not due to adapting 4E as we've been playing an ad hoc version of it under similar rules since December.

I simply allow players to add 1d6 for each half level they have to tack onto any Powers damage or Basic Attack damage they make. It moves combat faster along the grid, makes it more dangerous and cuts out nearly 4 rounds of combat on average from what we've found.

 

[Felon]

Boring to the nth degree.

Here we see our WotC staffers just mashing their hotkeys enthusiastically. No personality, no discussion of tactics, nobody really adhering to the notion of party roles, not even much in the way of humor of playfulness. If you pay attention to where the eye contact is most of the time, you'll see it's down towards their books and characters sheets. Basically, it was like playing an RPGA tournament session at GenCon without the $1000 overhead for travel and hotel.

I keep hearing everyone talk about bad dice rolls. I wonder if that's really the case, or if the party's chances of hitting just happen to be in the 50/50 area, maybe a little worse. The mind flayer's lowest defense was 33. What's the average attack bonus of the party's level?

And even when bloodied, the monsters all seemed to have 100+ HP. The warlock was only doing 26 on a crit.