speeding up combat by halfing hit points

[Paul Strack]

This might be kind of a radical suggestion but ... you could just have fewer fights. The combats in my game run about an hour or so, and that works fine for us. I generally have 3 fights total in a single adventure, and have about a 50/50 ratio in combat vs. non-combat time.

I haven't used the traditional "20 rooms, 20 fights" dungeon in years.

 

[TarionzCousin]

One of the players in my campaign has suggested using the exploding dice mechanic from Savage worlds and Hack master.

I hadn't thought of this option. In theory, I like it.

 

[zearon]

ok what is exploding dice mechanic from Savage worlds and Hack master ??

 

[Stalker0]

ok what is exploding dice mechanic from Savage worlds and Hack master ??

When you roll a die, if you roll the max on that die, you get to roll it again and add the previous result with the new roll. You can roll as many times as you get the maximum value, and you keep adding.

 

[Hawkwind]

the exploding dice mechanic is where if you roll the maximum damage dice say a 6 on d6 you roll again and add to the damage score and you keep on rolling to you don't roll a six. Hackmaster calls the mechanic "penertration dice" and suntracts one from any additonal damage dice. It makes fire ball spells a whole new world of fun in hackmaster

 

[s0l0m0n]

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.

I forgot to mention in my first post that we made all powers reliable as well. (i.e. a power is not expended on a miss). Powers that already were reliable get an instant reroll. This may seem overpowered, but all it does is do away with potential frustration when the dice are conspiring against you. The DM can always up the power level of encounters to make up for this advantage, if neccessary.

 

[thc1967]

I house-rule something like that. For Elite and Solo level mobs, I half their hit points and healing, but I give them a bonus to hit and increase their damage dice by one size. This speeds up combat on these big bad guys, but makes them a big risk, too.

I don't do anything for normal level mobs. If you have enough strikers in your party, combats with normal mobs should go quickly enough. My players have 1 leader, 1 defender, 1 controller, and 3 strikers.

 

[Hawkwind]

I finally got to try some of the suggestions in my game last night; I reduced monsters hit points by a third and used the exploding dice mechanic. The 1/3 hit points reduction certainly speed combat up especially when the players met their first solo monster (the blue slime in KOTS). The exploding dice didn't go down with the players to well with one player almost dying by one of the worse ways possible - death by DM’s house rule. They were happy enough when they were dishing it out. it added a sort of rolemaster -ish sort of danger where you know that a fluky dice roll can fell the strongest of character. We got in three encounters including one with a solo in 2 hours of play so I was a happy dm.

 

[Orcus Porkus]

Making all daily/encounter powers reliable...

... is one of the best ideas, and I've pondered it myself for a while.
One of my players is an Eladrin wizard, and she's always very frustrated when a carefully planned strategy doesn't work out because she wasted the sleep spell on a roll of 1. And I hate to frustrate my girlfriend! Hahaha.

At the same time, I noticed the happy fighter with his already reliable "brute strike". Of course there is a reason why this power is reliable. It makes the fighter more powerful on purpose.

So if I make all powers reliable, I need to give the fighter something fun too.

Any ideas? Also, which powers are actually reliable? I could only find the brute strike so far.

 

[Obergnom]

I would rather use a recharge system like Stalker0s (Posted in the houserules forum). Making all encounter/daily powers reliable will just add headaches once more of them are available.
And as you progress in level, it become less and less of a problem. Missing with your single cool power (+daily) at level 1 sucks, later on it is less problematic, as you get more powers.