Slow combats

[Kunimatyu]

I like what I'm hearing about halving hp and increasing damage getting. If I keep hearing more positive reports, maybe I'll try DMing 4e again!

 

[Jhaelen]

I guess that could work. I've had bad experiences with minions in the past - too much XP for too little risk - but they would run by much faster. (That was mostly my fault though, inexperience.)

The thing is, I want to maintain the challenge, but get along to other things as well.

Do you recommend dropping monsters and levelling up the others? That is, keeping the XP budget the same?

My recommendation would be to just stop tracking XP.

Let the PCs level up when it fits the story. That way you can have them gain a level after slaying hundreds of monsters or after solving a tricky mystery without a single fight.

This will also allow you to focus on the fights that are actually required to advance the story and handwave the rest, replace them with skill challenges, use minions or lower-level encounters with few monsters, or whatever else you prefer to use at the time.

It helps to look at adventures for other game systems from time to time. D&D modules tend to be stuffed with combat encounters. But is this really required for a good adventure? I don't think so.

 

[LostSoul]

If it was all about the story I would award XP based on Quests alone. I'd also allow players to write their own quests, though I'd veto it if I wanted.

I feel like the standard XP system allows for more player choice than just levelling up PCs when I feel like it.


As far as slow combats go, I think I'm going to take S'mon's and mearls' advice and throw in more minions, and see how that goes.

 

[ggroy]

Just an update, in case it had any interest.

Last night, in my usual campaign (players are level 17), I changed all monsters (so easy with Monster Builder) by removing 33% of their hit points and adding +50% damage (for example, 3d8+7 became 3d8+17).

I was very happy with the result. The fights were fast and furious. The first 3 fights were fairly simple n to n+2 fights. All three lasted between 15 and 24 minutes, including initiative setup etc. The last fight lasted 1h15 but that was *final battle* against a trio of vampire - so lots of regeneration and dominating effects. It was supposed to be long, but I didn't expect (after the duration of the 3 first fights) that it would last that long. Should probably have clocked in around 45 minutes, but I made the list of powers of the vampires way too long and I think I took too much time per round.

Either way, I am still pumped about last night. 15-25 minutes is perfect (for me) for fast and brutal fights, but with a certain amount of tactical options.

How fast did the players use up their healing surges for each combat encounter?

 

[Jack99]

How fast did the players use up their healing surges for each combat encounter?

I am not sure what exactly you mean. But the cleric ran out of surges towards the end of 4th encounter, mostly because they were facing a nasty vampire that drained a surge on a hit (much like a wight).

In other words, they seemed to use the same amount of surges per encounter as they usually do, (although this can vary quite a lot) but in a shorter amount of time/rounds.

EDIT: Will do it again on thursday and keep updating this thread.

 

[Rel]

I'm reading this thread with interest because my combats are running a bit slower than I'd like. I've been thinking a lot about why this is and I think it is a variety of factors.

The players aren't super fast at making decisions. I think this itself has its own set of contributing factors. They aren't as tactically minded as I am (which is fine) and it takes them a bit to determine their best move. But I think I'm contributing to this because I have a tendency toward having fewer but tougher combats. So they are facing tough opposition and it really behooves them to make the "best" move they can make so they don't die. So maybe my problem is that I'm making them perform at peak level too often. Comes with being a Rat Bastard I guess.

I also think that the monsters could stand to have a few less hit points. This would require that I bump their damage output a bit and that's cool too.

The one thing I worry about with doing that is I don't want the Cleric to feel like they are spending their time doing nothing but healing. But I'm hoping this isn't a major issue since several of her healing powers are Minors.