The D&D 4th edition Rennaissaince: A look into the history of the edition, its flaws and its merits

[Zardnaar]

I have a slightly different perspective on this. 4e combat is pretty dead on, but not for what Mike Mearles (based on his module and his comments on play) and a lot of the player base assumed.

4e combat absolutely sings when you approach it as very wide-open action scene type play. My games have been full of collapsing mineshafts, complex 3D spaces, challenging terrain, and STORY. A 4e fight should play like some kind of Spielberg movie scene. If it is looks anything like 5 orcs in a room, that's bad.

In defense of most players/GMs they were fed modules of bad design and DMG adventure design guidelines which didn't sufficiently emphasize this (though it is stated, but just not strongly enough).

No amount of twinking with the numbers could ever fix this, and the original numbers were perfectly OK. MM3 is even better, but you would hope designers would learn, right?

Fights like that can be fun but it's a lot of work for the DM. BG3 for example has them but it does the hard work.

I sometimes do stuff like that for boss fights.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That said and in addition, in my experience even a standard 5 orcs in a room can also work and be an engaging encounter with properly chosen orcs (a pair or trio of brutes, a solider, leader, maybe a lurker). The tactical bits can be there to make for a solid base, and then every bit you add on (terrain, timers, interactive elements, narrative, themes, etc) acts as a multiplier.

The main bit I'd say is to recognize that even that 5 orcs in a room encounter ought to be intended to be engaging. Room after room after room of hit point sponges is the poor adventure design (or as a replacement for adventure design) mode in 4e.

This and what @AbdulAlhazred said are big parts of my motivation for "skirmish" rules. I don't think 4e erred in making combat be "this needs to be meaningful, it needs to be story-rich and engaging in its own right" type stuff. But the fact is, some of the playerbase of D&D wants those amazing action sequences to be just a Sometimes Food, a special treat at the end of the dungeon or the like. Hence, even if it were truly perfect for its purpose at release (which it definitely wasn't), it would still have left a gap between designer intent and player desire for a meaningful, vocal, and important chunk of the base. Well-constructed skirmish rules would have filled that gap, making fast-paced conflicts that could still sap resources and make confrontation a risky play, without having to turn every "three goblins in a hallway" into an EPIC CINEMATIC MASTERPIECE OF AWESOME UPHEAVAL etc. ad nauseam.

I do think that when a full battle map comes out, players should expect things to get exciting and dramatic. That's good, it means combats need to really stand out. But if the system does that, it needs to have rules for violent conflicts that slowly add up to standing out, but which are individually too small to be dramatic. The death by a thousand cuts rather than a single epic clash.

 

[Kannik]

I do think that when a full battle map comes out, players should expect things to get exciting and dramatic. That's good, it means combats need to really stand out. But if the system does that, it needs to have rules for violent conflicts that slowly add up to standing out, but which are individually too small to be dramatic. The death by a thousand cuts rather than a single epic clash.

Cortex Prime does something like this by using it's Challenges module (https://www.talesofxadia.com/compen...he-game#ChallengesOvercomingExtendedObstacles) and it's Timed Action mode. The later is the more familiar turn-based individual tracking action (aka 'standard' combat in D&D), while the former can be used when the players are trying to overcome any kind of fraught challenge, including skirmish combat or hordes of minions or environmental challenges or violent pursuit or even something like "round up all the necromantic horses that are running wild through town". During the challenge, each character in turn declares what they're doing to overcome the challenge, a test is made, and (here's where it differs from a 'regular' skill challenge) on a failure the character takes a penalty of some kind (for 4e, this could be HP or Healing Surge, or maybe an ongoing condition?). The challenge itself also gets a turn at the end of the order, using it to either attempt further injury to a character or to bolster itself (recover some of its "HP").

In play, this ends up being very free flowing and creative, allowing players/characters to use the full of their abilities/RP/skills/ingenuity/etc in wild and flavorful ways. It's quick, it has consequences for later, and you can create vivid moments without needing to go full on tactical map/turns.

With something like this integrated into 4e, there would be four types of resolution methods based on what's being overcome:

Skill Test for a single point
Extended Tests / Skill Challenges for complex and extended obstacles or endeavours
Skirmish/Crisis for complex and extended obstacles that pose a threat
Combat for... full on combat.

Could also make a case that Skill Challenges and Skirmish/Crisis could operate in pretty much the same way, just tuned differently. For something like a skill challenge, there's less immediately harsh penalties assigned and the SC doesn't get a turn to attack the players.

This obviously is just a framework and would need work to turn how CP does it into something that works for 4e. But having run something like this in CP for us it became quite seamless to flow between the different modes and keep the adventure moving excitedly forward.