Why Must I Kludge My Combat?

[Wiseblood]

In MerricB's example the orc defied the odds. He roll the six at the beginning of combat. There were four specific rolls that killed the ranger.

Init Ranger<Orc
Orc attack roll Nat 20
Orc confirms probably 10<
Orc inflicts damage Rolls 9< on d12 to exceed 50 Pts of damage.

That was one lucky orc or one tragically unlucky Ranger.

Had the ranger been seventh level I could understand a problem but truth be told he wasn't much better than the orc to begin with. In fact seeing how lucky the orc was I might have recruited him for the party. He's Magically-y Vicious.

 

[Hussar]

I found the forked thread where it was first discussed, in which you participated, so I think that you have seen this.

There was a link in the thread the discussion was forked from to the Scott Rouse original, but with the changes to EN World, the "forked" link no longer works, and my Google-Fu hasn't been strong enough (yet) to reaquire the original thread.


RC

Went through the link you provided. Interesting stuff.

Although, since my name doesn't appear anywhere in that thread, I'm not sure why you think I participated.

But, what I find really interesting about your quote is the order of events. 4e was designed to incorporate minis, not to sell minis as you claim, but because using minis is how their target audience was playing.

In other words, they didn't make minis important, they were already important and then they responded by catering to that market.

Which puts a much different spin on things than you were with the idea that "4e was built to sell minis". A point you've made repeatedly in the thread.

In other words, it's no different than any other publisher responding to their audience, not some money grab.

 

[pemerton]

What has the threat level been like using these levels of monsters? Most encounters with opposition of roughly the same level have been fairly easy for my players.

I consider an encounter that stands less than a 50% chance of dropping at least one party member to be a speed bump.

I don't think I can give you percentages - I don't have my records handy, and my memory is not reliable enough - but I would say that at least one PC drops unconsicous in probably a little more than half these combats.

Most of the encounter levels I use are between level and level+3, with probably every 5th or so being more like level+4. As you've probably already worked out from these numbers, I tend to use a lot of monsters - often twice as many as the PCs, plus minions. I find that large numbers have the same virtues as artillery - the combat gets spread over the battlefield, automatically bringing terrain and tactics into play, but invidivual threats are getting dropped at a reasonably rapid rate, which means that there is a sense of dynamism rather than grind.

I think that large numbers of opponents also reduce the "speed-bump" feel of a low-threat encounter. With large numbers there is always a sense that the PCs may be surrounded, or that one enemy might break through and start butchering the wizard and sorcerer. So even if the encounter is not that dangerous in the abstract mechanical sense, for the players to actually achieve that absence of danger can require them to engage in interesting tactical play. I should add - this is an approach to encounter design that I bring out of GMing Rolemaster, where higher level foes can be very deadly, but large numbers of lower-level foes can still be interesting without being deadly, precisely because good play is required to prevent them becoming deadly.

In the past 18 months I've only GMed two encounters with a single monster - a black dragon and a solo vampire - and in both cases terrain figured heavily in making the encounter interesting rather than just a grind.

EDIT: I'm thinking back over some recent sessions - maybe the drop rate is a bit below, rather than a bit above, 1 in 2. I should also add - one thing that adds to the excitement of our game is that we only have half a leader. So the PCs are relying on attacking rather than on healing as their basic strategy for getting through a fight (this is also the way the same group used to play Rolemaster). I think this is an approach to play that pushes in favour of dynamism and excitement, but unlike the encounter build stuff, is obviously not something that the GM has control over.

 

[ArcaneSpringboard]

I think that one of the issues here is that we've all grown up expecting a certain pattern to adventures, especially when going into lairs or other areas of similar type creatures (say for example the Steading of the Hill Giant King).

You expect several encounters as you enter the lair but largely with similar monsters, but they're usually over very quickly. Then you eventually get to the leader and have a tougher, longer encounter.

The thing with 4e is that it does the epic end-battle AWESOMELY, but even the basic earlier filler encounters take 45 minutes to resolve.

This is where I think a lot of the WotC adventures have problems. They are still writing the adventures with the old school flow in mind.

Minions I think help.

Torg also had a mechanic to deal with this via the Dramatic vs. Standard combats.

I think 4e really needs something like that.

 

[ArcaneSpringboard]

I agree with most of what you said, and would also point out that in 3.x it was perfectly viable at times for some melee characters to just attack...

though many claim classes like this are boring and lack tactical depth (which I agree with, but do not agree this was a bad or good thing in and of itself)... I am really starting to see the purpose classes like these serve as I struggle in 4e to find a class that can be operated by my young nephew as well as players who maybe aren't as interested or adept at grid-tactics but like roleplaying games without someone else having to basically coach them.

The problem is that 4e forces you to take part in the tactical nature of it's combat or punishes your party as a whole (unless the DM makes special allowances as far as his encounters go). Even supposedly "simple" classes like the Ranger are forced to make multiple decisions within a single round of combat...

Move or don't move (can you flank?), use or don't use Hunter's Quarry (figure out who you can use it on), Use an At-Will, Encounter or Daily, more than likely 2x attk then figure damage, did it cause conditions/movement/etc.? If so resolve those (or keep track of them) as well.... and so on. It just seems that there is no class that can be played effectively but in a simple fashion now... I guess whether this is a good thing or not depends on your preference but I would rather have the choice for a player to have a class like this if they want.

I'm really hoping that the Essentials builds are exactly this.

 

[Hussar]

What has the threat level been like using these levels of monsters? Most encounters with opposition of roughly the same level have been fairly easy for my players.

I consider an encounter that stands less than a 50% chance of dropping at least one party member to be a speed bump.

Do you mean "drop" as in dead or "drop" as in below 0 hitpoints?

Because, if you mean "drop as in dead" then that means you should be whacking a PC every other encounter. That's a bit bloodthirsty don't you think?

 

[MerricB]

This is where I think a lot of the WotC adventures have problems. They are still writing the adventures with the old school flow in mind.

Although it's a good theory, I think it fails once you actually analyse the adventures and realise how poorly they mimic the old school flow.

Combats against less dangerous foes don't really take that long in 4e. Unfortunately, try finding an encounter like that in a 4e published adventure. Every combat is written to be a major challenge, with the final encounters being insanely difficult challenges.

The other part of old-school adventures - negotiation, exploration and discovery of strange tricks to play with - are almost completely absent in the published adventures. Every so often one or two bits are snuck in, but the adventures are overawed by combat after combat after combat. Once you get around to exploring the room after combat... nothing interesting presents itself.

There are exceptions (P2), but that's mainly due to additional material in one of the books, the main flow of the adventure would be combat after combat if you let it.

The sad thing is that I'm sure that the Wizards designers could do better if they were allowed to... but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a corporate policy dictating how the adventures must be. (The element I'd really expect is this: Because each combat takes so much space, every combat must be encountered! Stupid dictate, but it seems likely).

Cheers!

 

[mach1.9pants]

I disagree totally with you Merric, I have only run the first 3 modules (then quit 4E) but the combat was a doddle 75% of the time. I had only 4 players, instead of 5, but I never reduced the monster numbers and they walked them mostly.

H1-3, with a few notable exceptions (Irontooth IIRC) were easy. Too easy, after I dropped the HP by 1/3 and upped the damage they became a little quicker but still easy.

My guys are not optimisers and only one spends any time at all outside sessions reading the books or DDi.

 

[Shazman]

This one thing that I don't want any part of-combats that last a relatively predictable number of rounds. Nothing screams yawnfest like a ring announcer stepping out and saying " This combat will be a single fall with a 60 minute time limit!"

IMHO predictable sends both barrels into the face of exciting.


Especially when the combat is predictably over an hour long (that can easily increase with levels) even for 1st level combats.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Erm...

Not quite sure what your point is, RC. Sorry about that.

Simply agreeing with the point I thought you were making; increasing the risk doesn't necessarily make combat better. And the "level of risk determined by the manufacturer" is relatively unimportant, so long as it can fairly easily be "modified by playing groups".

Went through the link you provided. Interesting stuff.

Although, since my name doesn't appear anywhere in that thread, I'm not sure why you think I participated.

Forked from that thread was a thread called "It's All About the Minis" which you did participate in. Until I had dredged up the quote, I imagined that you might have been part of the original conversation as well.

4e was designed to incorporate minis, not to sell minis as you claim, but because using minis is how their target audience was playing.

Well, you could read things that way, I suppose.

What we do know is:

* Prior to the advent of 3e, using minis was relatively uncommon. Over 40% of the gamers polled by WotC claimed to have never used minis at all. The remaining under 60% had used them, but we don't know how often.

* The WotC data also showed that those who bought minis spent 10 times as much as those who did not (on gaming materials), or more.

* 3.0 was mini-friendly, but did not require the use of minis. From the statements of Monte Cook, and from the previews in Dragon, I expect that WotC wanted the game to be miniatures-friendly, but nothing more.

* I suspect that, as the marketing data indicated was likely, the minis sold very, very well. If the marketing data is correct, then the sale of books is 1/10th the sale of minis; the game becomes a means of selling minis, rather than the minis becoming an adjunct of the game.

* 3.5 comes out, and references to real distances are replaced by references to the grid; the game is made to forward the use of minis more than 3.0 did.

* 4.0 comes out, and all but requires minis. Scott Rouse: "With effort you can play with out but them but it does require a fair amount of DM hand waiving and/or behind the screen position tracking to make area effects work."

* We know that this was a business decision related to the use of and sale of minis in previous WotC editions (3.0 & 3.5). Scott Rouse: "This was a rules decision influenced by both a style of play that had come out of 3e and the business model that style of play created." (emphasis mine)

Frankly, if I know that I can sell X, or I can sell X + Y and make ten times the money, and I know that I can produce X so as to make Y all but mandatory, I would be a fool not to produce X in such a manner.

Even if doing so caused 10% of my current clientele to desert (and there were lots of threads where folks thought this unlikely), those clients would not be my meat-and-potatoes clients anyway, as they were presumably less likely to buy Y in the first place. And, if my marketing data is correct, the sales in Y will more than cover the loss of sales in X.

I would find it more than vaguely insulting, were we to assume that my goal was to make money, were you to suggest that I am incapable of seeing the obvious and responding accordingly.

I would, therefore, suggest that it is more than vaguely insulting to imagine that the good people at WotC are somehow incapable of following the obvious profit trail.

That could just be me, though.

YMMV.


RC