Why is 4E so grindy?

[Badwe]

The biggest complaint I have about WotC pubished adventures is that they tend to write encounter for level X and use monsters of level X+3. This is what I find as the cause of the worst of the almost hit / missed by 1 type problems.

this isn't as big of a deal as you might think, so long as you don't go too far out. The math behind monster values is that a monster of level n+4 is worth twice the XP as a monster level n, in fact the same amount of XP as an elite of level n. if you're using something like an n+3 monster for a level n encounter you are using close to (dependant on level) 2/5th's of the encounter's XP budget.

for simpler math let's use the level n+4 example, along with brutes (the most notorious offenders of "grind" along with soldiers)

a level n+4 brute will be equivalent to 2 level n brutes in terms of XP cost. Brutes have HP equal to 26+10.5*level (10 at odd levels, 11 at even), and their AC is equal to 12+level (you can pick any defense you want, the importance is the relative difference).

so the total HP will be 26+10.5*(n+4) vs. 2*(26+10.5*n) or 68+10.5n vs. 52+21*n, so the net difference will be 10.5n - 16, which is to say that at level 1 the big monster will have more total HP and thereafter the two smaller monsters will have more total HP, in fact there will be a greater deficit the higher level N is.

next compare AC. the base assumption is that, on average, you'll hit something of your level on a roll of 10 or better. for brutes this is a bit lower, especially vs. AC. a level 1 character will likely have at least +3 to their hit stat and at least +2 from their weapon, so they'll be hitting AC 13 on an 8 or better, and someone with 18 and a longsword will hit on a 6 or better, but let's assume 8. this means 12/20 or 60% of their swings will hit, and the accurate hitter will net a 70% hit rate. go up for levels and you essentially lose 20%, so 40% and 50% respectively. if you can achieve combat advantage or get a temporary hit buff, you could quickly propel these chances higher.

alright, so what does the percentage mean? flatly you'll do less damage on average. it won't seem like this in the thick of the battle because you'll have anamolous high and low rolls as well as streaks of such rolls, but that's the average. to take our examples thus far, let's say our 60%/40% chance hitter is wielding a battleaxe, d10+3 (remember the hit mod?) or an average of 8.5, so he'll average 5.1 damage to the 2 brutes every round and 3.4 to the bigger monster. this is just an at-will attack. so if you do the math it turns out it takes more rounds to whittle that big monster down until about level 9 or 10, at which point the HP growth of the two small monsters outpaces the lost chance to hit on the big guy. at level 1 the difference is greatest: roughly 9 rounds (or less than 2 rounds of an entire 5 party team hitting with just at-wills), shrinking from there.

Those are all averages of course. Your encounter and daily powers do many rounds worth of at-will damage, and missing with one of those will cost you not just the round but the use of the ability. moreover, having a really good chance to hit is often incentive to use a daily or encounter to try and finish the job sooner, whereas you might hold such powers when you're having trouble hitting a big monster, and of course missing with a daily on an enemy who's already hard to hit is going to create a bigger impression than getting lucky with the daily and doing massive damage. similarly, you generally avoid using too high of levels because eventually it becomes nearly impossible to hit a particular enemy.


===end mathification===

ok, so that whole calculation aside, i don't have this problem with my combats in the least. my players are not completely power gamers except for one, but early on i impressed upon them that your +hit stat was important because in 4e hitting = doing things. it's easy for a player of older editions to assume that an 18 in any stat is an anomoly and a sign of a munchkin and go as low as 16 or even 14 before racial bonuses in their hit stat, then similarly pick an inaccurate weapon like an axe, or be a spellcaster who is slightly behind the curve _JUST_ for lower levels and become frustrated at the frequent missing. this is the 4th edition version of "weak low level players", you miss a lot more often because there's no way to send monsters lower than your level over. As early as 3 or 4 this is barely noticable and indeed by 6 and 7 it ceases to be a problem. I struggle to challenge my PCs because they so handily crush my monsters. I am running H2 as-is and they are slaughtering everything that gets in their way, often ending even tough combats in no more than 5 rounds.

 

[ScottS]

Looking over that Stalker0 post and other similar posts that have come along, I'd say that the 4e fixes floating around are "a good start". I'm currently using the 75%hp/133%damage fix, and a version of the "watch action-denying effects" fix (by just getting rid of at-will daze etc. entirely). I also made minions 12:1 xp rather than 4:1 (although that's not specifically a "grind" fix).

One problem with the fixes, though, is that they tend to "treat the symptoms" rather than "find the cure". When I look through some of these time-saver lists, I start to wonder why the underlying issues weren't dealt with in the edition upgrade (e.g. If "rolling to-hit and damage dice together" is an actual time-saver, then why are separate rolls for those two functions still in the game? Why was "giving creatures large HP so they can't be one-rounded" given design priority over "fast, non-boring encounters"? Why do I have to finesse the monster-role mix in order for fights to come out right, when the design conceit was supposedly "throw any creatures you want into an appropriately-sized XP-budget bin, and the fights should always be balanced"?).

My line of thinking now (post-4e and looking back at older editions in hindsight), is that there are more fundamental issues with the game structure the way it stands; something to the effect of, "everybody getting individual turns" plus "everybody having a menu of spell-like, board-changing powers to use" equals "game drag". In other words, if people really want to get combats down to a reasonable length, i.e. 15 minutes or less, then at least one of those major game assumptions has to be chucked out the window. I don't think that grid movement by itself causes that much drag (i.e. you could probably still have "tactical depth" in the game without the other stuff). Keeping individual initiative and ditching everyone's-a-spellcaster is probably the easier way of approaching the problem, although simultaneous initiative was used in earlier eds. and occasionally still gets thrown around as an idea.

 

[Mistwell]

The only times I've encountered a problem with grind in 4e have been when 1) The players are new and aren't familiar with how to use their powers synergistically with each other; and 2) on the 5th or 6th encounter between extended rests when everyone has used their daily powers, most of their healing surges and action points.

Same here.

Once the party is familiar with everyone else's powers at the table, and has had some experience working together to take down foes, the grind seems to go away for us. It's only when people do not know how to effectively use their powers, and how to use them in conjunction with the other players, that grind seems to set in for us.

 

[Shazman]

I don't think 4e combat is grindy but fast-paced and tactical. (I am comparing it to level 10+ dnd 3.5 combat). Each round is much faster, but we have a lot more of them. In addition we have much less rules-lookup because the rules are printed with the powers. Last time we played I don't think we used a single book during the whole 4e session.

I can see that 4e combat takes time and that other rpg systems have faster combat systems, but I really like 4e's tactical combat.

Now, I might bring something constructive to this discussion instead of just my opinion based on my games.

We do the following:
a) If it's your turn you say what you do or ask some relevant question, if not, you get skipped
b) when I say who's players turn it is, I mention who is the player after that
c) optimize the party for dps (no cheese)

The result is that combat goes quite quickly, some odd things happen due to the time constraint and people bother to learn their characters properly.

I keep hearing of people that say that rounds go quicker in 4E than in 3.5, and it is more fast-paced (less time between turns) but I have yet to see it. In fact, I have seen the exact opposite. In 3.5/pathfinder you move up and take a swing at an orc or cast a spell, and it attepts to save, and you are done. It does get more complicated later on, but optimal actions seem easier to decide on and resolve than in 4E. In 4E, even at low level, you have to decide which power you want to use (which can take a while), and work on positioning yourself to use it to good effect. Later in the fight, you also probably have to deal with several conditions on yourself, and remind the DM of the conditions you put on enemies. The DM will probably have to keep track of a lot of conditions on his side of the screen as well. It seems like the extreme tactical nature of 4E combined with a "spellcasting" system for everyone and dozens of conditions being throw out like candy lead to lots of fiddly on the spot decision making and tracking that slow the rounds down. Then you have every non-minion creature having tons of hit points and you end up with a lot rounds. All of this leads to long, drawn out slugfests that get old quickly.

 

[MerricB]

Same here.

Once the party is familiar with everyone else's powers at the table, and has had some experience working together to take down foes, the grind seems to go away for us. It's only when people do not know how to effectively use their powers, and how to use them in conjunction with the other players, that grind seems to set in for us.

Double Ditto.

 

[keterys]

In my experience, 4e combat isn't grindy on its own, but a lot of it comes from the DM and PCs...

Most importantly, are people agonizing over every decision or not paying enough attention so they're ready to go when it becomes their turn? If a particular player can't finish their turn in a minute, they're probably part of the problem. If a DM can't figure out what powers to use or who to attack, they're part of the problem. Etc.

Are PCs or monsters built so they can do damage and finish the combat, or are they built so they can lockdown enemies or be effectively invulnerable? There's a huge difference between a group with extra leaders and defenders (or controllers and soldiers) who have difficulty doing double digit damage and another group with extra strikers (artillery, etc) who work together to down something rapidly.

Stalker's thread has all kinds of good advice, but if you're having trouble with grind then create scenarios where time is the issue and not maximizing effect per healing surge. For example, the monsters are blocking kids from escaping an orphanage that is on fire and about to collapse. You have until 10 o'clock, real time, before the orphanage collapses. Go! Or the eldritch light ebbs and flows from the ritual gem, but it seems to be building up towards an explosion. Stop the ritual before it blows up (and again pick a RL time), costing the PCs treasure. Once you get the players on board, you're most of the way there.

That said, some of it also just experience with character creation or what things people cared about in character creation. For example, comparing my fighter to a fighter a friend is playing in another game, and he does half the damage I do. Which is notable since I'm a guardian fighter and he's a greatweapon fighter, so I'm also up on him for defenses. Boy will he always win initiative over me, though. I think he has three feats for it. He's also way more into crits. Basically he loves going first and loves getting that 'big hit' - a very luck-based player. And more power to him, but that's a big difference in combat length unless he gets a lucky streak to catch up.

Pacifist clerics? Just ban 'em now - they _can_ be played so that they help combat to end, but a lot of people won't play it that way, so better to just avoid it. Warlords with extra attacks and damage buffs? Yay.

Friend of mine is playing in a 4E game with new players and she said they were taking 40 minutes per round of combat. And I was like 'How is that possible!?' and she's all 'Well, they're figuring out the optimal marks, and the optimal bursts, and...' and I'm like 'But you're only 2nd level! You barely have two things to choose from.'

These are programmers, though, and they love optimization. So I told her to get them to optimize for _time_. You get more treasure and xp the more encounters you get through!

 

[ScottS]

Before the conversation goes much further: could the people saying "our group doesn't find 4e grindy" please put an actual time figure on how long it's taking you to clear level-appropriate fights? The baseline we're working with here is "hour-long combats on trash, two-plus-hour combats on solos/big fights, are too much". So is "not grindy" like half-an-hour, or is it still an hour and just a matter of word choice/differing tastes?

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Same here.

Once the party is familiar with everyone else's powers at the table, and has had some experience working together to take down foes, the grind seems to go away for us. It's only when people do not know how to effectively use their powers, and how to use them in conjunction with the other players, that grind seems to set in for us.

It also helps to have characters who are built to be effective. The differences are most apparent at RPGA events, where you might have a bunch of professional killing machines alongside other people who have trouble remembering which end of the sword is sharp.

There is a big difference between a 7th level Dwarven Fighter who can average over 20 damage per hit with a spammable at-will(while having 4 encounter burst 1 marks and solid defenses) and a timid Rogue who is too scared to move to flank and uses sneak attack once or twice per fight.

 

[keterys]

An easy fight should take 30-60 minutes and a difficult fight should take 30-90 minutes, depending on setup and execution. A campaign/arc ender final battle should take 60-90 minutes likely. In my experience, most combats are effectively resolved by the fourth to sixth round and at paragon+ I'm not finding myself using at-wills all that often at all. Supercharged end battles can take a couple extra rounds, but combats should resolve within 8 rounds, or a maximum of 12 rounds if there's a lot of bad luck.

I'm used to doing about three fights, a couple skill challenges, a bunch of RP, and a bunch of talking about other random stuff (tv, video games, kids, whatever), and dinner for one four to five hour game.

I've actually run 'speed' games of 4e where we've been keen on going through combats rapidly. Doing those recently, we did... ten moderately difficult (but not boss ender, nor easy) combats... in less than 3 hours. I believe it was about 15 minutes per combat.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Also--focus fire.

The difference between PCs who are static and each swing at their own unique enemy and those who move into position to gang up on single enemies and eliminate them one by one is massive.