Unearthed Arcana: Combat Velocity

[Klaus]

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Combat Velocity)

A quick read, with interesting insight into alternatives to speeding up combat. The article lists:

Roleplaying (monsters surrender/flee/cut deals)
Doubling PC damage
Doubling everyone's damage
Using average damage
Using fewer monsters
Keeping PC options simple
Making combat interesting (won't speed up combat, but no one will care )

 

[DNH]

I read this yesterday and was disappointed with it. After waiting all month to read, I was expecting a little more. Our group already does the rp thing and we use a VTT so dice-rolling is less of an issue (the average damage option), which just leaves us with either modifying damage or removing player options, neither of which sounds particularly attractive to me (or my group). I dunno, I was probably deluding myself but I was expecting something meatier, a more fundamental approach to 4e combat encounters that will get them to run faster. It's not like WotC have not already acknowledged the issue.

 

[Mengu]

I was disappointed too.

My least favorite part of combat is the clean up where monsters know they are going to lose but want to drain as many resources as possible before keeling over. DM's (including myself) tend to "call it" when there are one or two monsters left, and they have acted. Instead of waiting that long, and going through monster turns that don't really add to tension, once the meat of an encounter is clearly over, I'd like a mechanic to say, you two closest to these last couple monsters lose a healing surge as they fight to the bitter end, but you defeat them.

Without any rules support, I unfortunately can't do this, because players tend to say, no thanks, we'll keep fighting and try to save the surges, and it becomes tedious dice rolling, and in the end, the monsters likely chew up two surges worth of hit points before (or sometimes after) they die, as I suggested.

I'd like an "endgame" mechanic that lets me determine the resource cost to call it the end of an encounter.

 

[TerraDave]

I would have also liked something a little more original.

But I think we will see more on this.

 

[KidSnide]

A discussion of how the simple math changes affect the game is a perfectly reasonable and worthwhile article, but it's only a beginning to the process of solving the combat time problem.

At the very least, I'd like to see a similar treatment to miniature-less combat. Futzing with position is part of what complicated D&D combats fun, but it's also part of what makes them complicated.

It might also be fun to see "rules" for gaming with a rough inexact map where you can see the relative position of the various combatants, but movement, range and positioning are all handled on an ad hoc basis. (That's how my groups played back in 2e...)

-KS

 

[Stumblewyk]

I was disappointed as well, but then I remembered that it's Unearthed Arcana, and essentially just words on a page with no testing or balancing within the actual framework of the rules.

So, the article is essentially, "Here's a bunch of options, none of which are particularly satisfying or actually manage to solve the problem at hand, but you're welcome to try them. Don't blame us if your game sucks because you used them." Which isn't all that different from "Here's a bunch of options, none of which are balanced or tested for average game play. Feel free to try them, but don't blame us if you're game falls apart because of it, or if your players hate it/love it too much."

=/

 

[Pseudopsyche]

Count me among the disappointed but unsurprised. If there were a silver bullet solution that would fit in a few pages, we probably would have seen it by now.

Instead of crude rule hacks, I think I would have preferred to see a discussion of tips for encounter design. Things like hazards that speed up combat by inflicting damage on everybody, or variant rules for characters on both sides using hp as a currency for flashier, more damaging stunts. (The combat version of martial practices, but available for everybody?) Something more out of the box.

It is good to see Mearls give the issue of combat speed some thought in his latest Legends & Lore column, but I hope he comes up with something sooner rather than later.

I think D&D should also enable groups to focus on tactical combat, or dial down to simple, fast fights.

 

[Badwe]

One of the more difficult balancing acts is player preference. Many of the words written with regard to speeding up combat (as well as beefing up solos) praise the constant damage aura, but some of my players happen to find that particular mechanic unbearable.

I agree the article didn't have a particularly solid conclusion, but it was also honest about the impacts. The fact is, the problem of combat length is very difficult to solve without making SOMEBODY unhappy.

I'll be running Revenge of the Giants in the next month or so, and I'm wracking my brain trying to come up with combat speeding mechanisms that won't piss anyone off but allow us to go through it in less than a year's worth of sessions.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Anyone else wondering why they didn't just copy Stalker0's guide to the antigrind? Seems to me they covered only a small portion of that excellent post....

Sent from my SPH-M900 using Tapatalk

 

[Klaus]

Count me among the disappointed but unsurprised. If there were a silver bullet solution that would fit in a few pages, we probably would have seen it by now.

Instead of crude rule hacks, I think I would have preferred to see a discussion of tips for encounter design. Things like hazards that speed up combat by inflicting damage on everybody, or variant rules for characters on both sides using hp as a currency for flashier, more damaging stunts. (The combat version of martial practices, but available for everybody?) Something more out of the box.

It is good to see Mearls give the issue of combat speed some thought in his latest Legends & Lore column, but I hope he comes up with something sooner rather than later.

Mearls mention the "draw orcs into oil-soaked corridor and light them on fire" aspect of 1e and 2e combat (i.e., a good plan could end an entire encounter). I like that aspect, so if my players come up with a good plan (such as the one above), I turn every monster into a minion. Of course, XP is reduced accordingly, but the PCs advance pretty much unscathed.