speeding up combat by halfing hit points

[Ismaul]

damn double post

 

[Stalker0]

Well, if you reduce a monster's life expectancy by "x", it stands to reason to increase his damage output by "x", so he deals the same amount of damage in half the time. Two examples:

Keep in mind that bumping up the damage by a great amount can have a much larger effect in a few ways.

1) Focused fire. With normal damage, a group of monsters concentrating on party member might get that party member close to death, forcing the party member to retreat, take a second wind, get some healing, etc. With 50% more damage, you might just outright kill them.

2) Weakens in combat healing. Normally a cleric healing might give you another round or two of action. With higher damage, it might not even buy you a round. Further, a standard action becomes a much bigger cost action wise when you cut the number of rounds in half.

Not saying the idea isn't good, just remember its a little more complicated then take off X here, add X there, everything is fine and wonderful.

 

[Celtavian]

re

I don't know if I will halve hit points. But 4E combat is longer than previous versions with a huge amount of round to round bookkeeping. The idea hat 4E is a faster, more fluid, and easier to run combat system than 3E or previous editions were way off. I am 25 plus year DM and I bothered to measure the amount of time a 3E combat took versus a 4E combat and 4E combats are longer by quite a bit of time.

Monsters have more hit points is the biggest reason. Another reason is that players don't have as much means to spike their damage because everyone does roughly the same damage with encounter powers and ACs are so high that feats like Power Attack are risky in this game. Whereas in 3E caster damage spiked quite a bit and fighter-types could spike their damage with Power Attack. And neither of those options is available in 4E. So you get your encounter powers and your once a day dailies, and if you miss with them, you're out of luck. No damage spike for you.

And the monsters are imbalanced as well. Some are far too easy. And some are very difficult. An Ogre is easier to kill than a Shadow Hound for example.

It's going to take a while to get the feel for 4E combat and scale it right. Sometimes my players can take on an encounter two to three times larger than the stated encounter in a book (especially if there are mnions) and sometimes they can't even take on double like with Doppleganger Assassions or Shadow Hounds.

If you don't get much time, the half hit point idea might be a good idea. It is definitely a primary culprit of the increased combat time in 4E given that player damage doesn't improve that much past 1st lvl and enemy hit points seem to improve far faster. Do what you have to do to bring the combat time down.

 

[Klaus]

Keep in mind that bumping up the damage by a great amount can have a much larger effect in a few ways.

1) Focused fire. With normal damage, a group of monsters concentrating on party member might get that party member close to death, forcing the party member to retreat, take a second wind, get some healing, etc. With 50% more damage, you might just outright kill them.

2) Weakens in combat healing. Normally a cleric healing might give you another round or two of action. With higher damage, it might not even buy you a round. Further, a standard action becomes a much bigger cost action wise when you cut the number of rounds in half.

Not saying the idea isn't good, just remember its a little more complicated then take off X here, add X there, everything is fine and wonderful.

If I end up doing this, I wouldn't use "50%" as the "x". More likely 25% or 30% (okay, 33.33333%).

 

[s0l0m0n]

We've played a few sessions and found combat a bit on the slow side, so last time, we just doubled all damage for PCs and baddies.

Worked like a charm. Mind you, this is a high-level campaign, so I'm not sure if this is the best solution at lower levels.

 

[Obergnom]

Well, I reduced all Monster HP by (level+1)*2. (Twice that number for elites, four times that number for solos). This is equivalent to reducing the basic HP for each monster type by 2. (An avg. of 25%). This reduced combat lenght down to 30min each, what was my goal.

I did not see a reason to add to the enemies offense, combats stayed deadly enough and if that ever changes, I would just build encounters as if there was one more PC in the group.

 

[Klaus]

We've played a few sessions and found combat a bit on the slow side, so last time, we just doubled all damage for PCs and baddies.

Worked like a charm. Mind you, this is a high-level campaign, so I'm not sure if this is the best solution at lower levels.

Y'know, I like this better than reducing HP. Whatever damage the PCs tell me, I just increase by, say, 25% and apply it. Whatever damage I roll for the monsters, I add 25% and apply it.

 

[Malacoda]

I wonder if this might be solved by giving players more powers, or more access to their powers. After playing with Bo9S, 4e's power system just seems less dynamic. You have fewer powers, and little opportunity to refresh them. If players were tossing around more encounter and daily powers, instead of at-wills, combat might go faster, and possibly be more fun anyway.

At the moment, giving players more powers seems like it would be difficult, since for any given build, there are going to be a lot of sub-optimal choices at each level; Great-axe fighters aren't going to be more effective when their additional choices are all shield-based. But, as more books with powers come out this might work out rather well.

The other option is to make all daily powers twice-daily powers and encounter powers twice-encounter powers.

Or, combine the two. Double the number of powers players get, and let them take some powers twice. These powers are signature moves tha the character has trained himself to use more often.

I haven't run 4e yet—first game should be this weekend—so I am sure I am missing some repurcussions, but it might be a good place to start.

 

[Hawkwind]

thanks for all the advice guys, food for thought. I think we may be on to some by way of increasing the damage players do in combat. One of the players in my campaign has suggested using the exploding dice mechanic from Savage worlds and Hack master.

 

[deleteme123456]

I don't know about your parties, but in my party, the bugbear brutal rogue is hitting for 3d6+8 with deft strike from stealth (he can achieve stealth with something like 80-90% against most enemies because passive perception is just really bad, and he only needs to beat one anyway), and typically rolling 10+1d20 vs AC, which hits level 1 monsters 80% of the time if we assume the average AC of a monster is level + 14 (most Kobolds for example, are under this even, making that hit chance more like 90%).

So let's say 80% stealth * 80% to-hit * (3d6+8) + 20% no stealth * 80% to hit * (1d6+4) = 11.84 + 1.2 = about 13 damage every round (more, since I didn't consider the 5% chance of critical and because that stealth percentage is probably much higher). If you have typical level 1 monsters with say 12 CON, they have something like 8+12+(1*8) = 28 HP, which is about 2 turns for the rogue, or one turn for the rogue to soften it up and the rest of the party to take it down.

Plus minions die quickly if the party has a controller or anyone has encounter powers with multiple targets, etc.

Last encounter they wiped out about 10 Kobold minions, a Dragonshield, and a Skirmisher, in about 4 rounds, and the slinger got away when all his friends suddenly died and he decided that sticking around was a really bad idea.