Vs. Minions: Why are combats so long?

[Herobizkit]

I realize this is purely a pedagogical question. In a combat where your opponents are largely or entirely minions, what motivation does a person with one attack have to use powers over a basic attack?

Now, I realize that some powers affect multiple opponents and such. I'm asking because I plan on DMing a solo 4e campaign, and I've been reading threads where combats seem to take upwards of 15 turns. It is my understanding that minions are generally easy-to-hit and die when hit, and only really bad rolling prevents combat from advancing. What's taking a team of 4-6 players mowing through minions (or minions + a boss) so dang long?

 

[Mort_Q]

Saving the Dailies for the Big Bad typical... if you know there is going to be a Big Bad. As for other powers... why not?

Encounter powers can be fun... and you get 'em back anyway. Why not?

The real question is, why use expendables?

 

[Infiniti2000]

Combats are long in solo campaigns because there's only 1 attacker! It'd be even worse if the solo DM didn't use (almost) entirely minions. In a normal campaign, I think the average combat length is 6 rounds. It's probably a round less if/when the DM short circuits the mop-up.

So, in effect I think I disagree with the premise of your question, or I didn't understand it.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

In my experience, minions don't tend to increase combat length, and are a good way of shortening it, instead. Elites and solos, however, are a surefire way to prolong the length of combat, to the point where I am very careful in when and how I employ them.

Except for a couple solo boss fights, I have not to date had a combat last 15 turns. I think I've had a few get close to 10 turns in particularly large conflicts, but most seem to take 3-6 turns at the most. On the other hand, I run campaigns that offer more opportunities for short and extended rests between encounters (storyline events are spaced out more, due to pacing; fast-paced multi-encounter events with no rests between are much rarer) so my players feel more inclined to pop their encounters and dailies in almost every encounter. If a group is tight on resource management, I could see a lot of power-hoarding in anticipation of bigger things to come, and that could slow encounters down.

EDIT: Ah, forgot to mention my solo experience. I've run a few one-on-one games. They tend to go more quickly (with only one player) but you want to budget carefully to avoid an unexpected death....favor easy to average encounters and make tougher encounters (EL+1 or more) very, very rare or make sure the soloing PC has companion characters to assist.

My wife ran a solo game for me; I played a wizard (level 1) and in the course of the game she threw one combat encounter in with a kobold (skirmisher type iirc). It was a fun and even fight; two kobolds might have been my death, though. She also ran it sans map/minis, incidentally, and that method works rather well in one-on-one games with very few combatants involved.

Minions in solo scenarios are tougher. Four decrepit skeletons, for example, can deliver 16 points of damage to a 1st level character if they all get lucky and hit in one round....two or three rounds of that and you have a dead character, should he then get unlucky and fail to polish them off.

 

[Mr. Teapot]

I realize this is purely a pedagogical question. In a combat where your opponents are largely or entirely minions, what motivation does a person with one attack have to use powers over a basic attack?

Depends on what else the power does, doesn't it? If my Warden has an attack that grants temporary HPs, he'll use that to avoid losing real HPs to the minions. Or my Swordmage uses Luring Strike to shift around. Or my 1st level rogue hasn't picked up Melee Training (Dex) yet, so using a power is definitely better, since my Str score is crud. Or my assassin can turn invisible when he hits an enemy, so he uses that power instead of a basic attack.



I don't understand what you're trying to say relating minions to combat length, though. So maybe that doesn't answer the question.

 

[BruntFCA]

Flasks are your friend.

d10 damage, *half damage on miss*, Burst 1....goodbye minions. Available level 1 for 20g!

With an infernal warlock, he will have fun. Embarrassingly I only just found out about these! Now I give most of my first level chars 2 of these, one fire AoE, and one slow version.

 

[Gruns]

Flasks are your friend.

d10 damage, *half damage on miss*, Burst 1....goodbye minions. Available level 1 for 20g!

Except, of course, that you don't deal *half damage on a miss* to minions...
Later!
Gruns

 

[fba827]

In a combat where your opponents are largely or entirely minions, what motivation does a person with one attack have to use powers over a basic attack?

A basic attack is (often) strength or dex based. Whereas a power is (often) based on whatever attribute is primary for you (i.e. could be int/cha/wis/str/dex/con, etc). So your chance to hit is (often) better with a power rather than a basic attack if Strength (or dex) is not your primary attribute.

It is my understanding that minions are generally easy-to-hit and die when hit, and only really bad rolling prevents combat from advancing.

Minions have the same defenses as other 'normal' monsters of the same level. So it isn't that they are easier to hit, but rather they do go down if they are hit.

Minions also have the benefit of having much simpler attacks (i.e. you don't have to decide between 3-5 different attack powers, it's often 1, maybe 2 attack powers or features to track). Thus, making it easier on the DM to make tactical decisions since there is less to decide from.

What's taking a team of 4-6 players mowing through minions (or minions + a boss) so dang long?

Generally, minions make combats go faster.

However, recognize that it means more people on the battle field. I could have 16 minions on the battlefield vs. 1 solo (i'm using extremes to show my line or thinking, i realize this is a corner case situation, but the concepts mentioned below carry through to less extreme situations).

16 minions take a lot longer if you don't have multi-target attacks. Also, it's 16 attack rolls (and potential damage rolls) for the DM vs. 1-2 attack rolls and damage rolls for the solo (since they often get more than one attack in a round).

That's also several more opportunities for opportunity attacks to sneak in there (which are good, but they do break a little of the flow when someone has to stop someone else and interrupt what the first person is saying/doing)

Also, conditions that a PC imposes as part of their powers are somewhat meaningless against minions (you can stun/daze/impose penalties/mark/gain combat advantage/etc but it doesn't really allow the combat to end any faster against minions; where as if your powers stun/daze/impose penalties/immobilize/mark/slow/gain combat advantage against the solo you're either denying the solo his turns/movement or increasing the rate at which it does get killed)


In my own experience, multi-target attacks and minions being clumped makes all the difference between fights with several minions taking a few rounds vs a couple rounds.

 

[Amaroq]

Yeah - I'd suggest that if you want quick fights, you want minions a level or three below the solo PC: you want the solo PC to hit almost every time he takes a swing.

Its also really going to depend on the build: a ranger with Twin Strikes can chew through 16 minions in 8 rounds, while a fighter (edit: without Cleave) using only At-Wills is going to get through just one a round.

Until he gets powers like Rain of Steel and Come and Get It, when he's going to suddenly take out an entire army of minions in a single round.

In my own experience, multi-target attacks and minions being clumped makes all the difference between fights with several minions taking a few rounds vs a couple rounds.

Fully agree: as a DM, you need to play the minions as though they think that they have more than one hit point. Cluster them together, overwhelm by numbers, have them expect that the PC is no tougher than they are ... that way they come at you in droves, and die in droves.

Having them spend all their effort on defensive tactics will really drag a combat out: a minion can conceivably spend his Standard action to "Aid Another" and give the other a +2 AC bonus. Well, if all your minions are doing that every round, they're not going to die easily ... but the PC is in no danger, because they're not actually attacking him. Long, boring combat ensues.

You probably also want to:
1. Allow the character to have a Twin Strike equivalent as an At-Will: attack twice but without damage bonuses, unless your character has some sort of area-based at-will. (E.g., a solo sorcerer doesn't need Twin Strikes; a solo fighter kind of does.)

2. Encourage the character to focus on "crowd control" encounter powers, even if it takes explicitly stating "remember, you're going to face lots of minions, even in the big boss fights." ... let them focus their Dailies on really walloping a single target, though, so that they get a "I can really go to town on a single guy" effect too.

 

[Victim]

Enemies tend to have better AC than other defenses, so using powers besides basic attacks can hit the other defenses and thus be more accurate. Also, many powers provide a benefit to the user like healing, temp HP, free attacks, movement, etc, rather than a penalty to the enemy. Sometimes minions do weird things like explode when they die, so Push or Slide powers can punt them far enough that your team isn't in the blast radius.

A minion heavy battle that runs quickly could also be completely trivial. It doesn't matter how fast they are if no one runs them because it's so easy. For example, our cleric has an enemies only close burst 8! 1 round and more than half the minions nearby are down. And then our defender has some big close bursts too. If you want the minions to not die immediately later on, then it's better if they're dispersed range attackers or they come in a few at a time (which only really works well with some other threat, otherwise it's just whack a mole as they enter the battle). Both of which are going to increase DM handling time since he has to manage 16 individual positions with care or deal with the enemies and the flow rate.

Making the combats faster isn't really a good thing if you're also stripping out pretty much everything interesting about them.