Why Must I Kludge My Combat?

[cdrcjsn]

I honestly don't know where this talk about a grind comes from.

95% of the time, combats take 45 minutes to resolve.

The exceptions I've found are:
1) Solo Soldiers
2) No Strikers
3) Too many players
4) All the encounters are built like it was the climax of the adventure (i.e. 2+ levels higher than the average party level rather than -1 to +1 which is supposed to be standard).
5) Everyone statted up high level characters and are trying them out for the first time.

 

[Obryn]

I honestly don't know where this talk about a grind comes from.

95% of the time, combats take 45 minutes to resolve.

I don't doubt peoples' self-reports about combat times. I know that mine go longer than that, for example, because I generally have 6-7 players, and everyone is pretty casual - both in character optimization, and in keeping track of the fight. I've sped things up on my end to accommodate. We still have a blast, mind you - but we'd frankly have less fun if we stayed 100% focused.

Some games fit some play-styles better than others. I have no trouble believing that two different groups could play the same combat with the same characters against the same monsters, and take wildly different times doing so.

-O

 

[mach1.9pants]

Well I see your list but we still had the grind with 2 players, the major part of grind for me was the encounter being effectively over but still half a dozen rounds til the enemy is dead. Yeah I could hand wave the end and/or make the enemy surrender/run etc but doing that every encounter? No thanks. Our combats are much more to our pace now, with Dragon Age (modded to have no grid, using WHFRP3E's lack of grid system)

Still good for you if you don't get grind, I wish it was the same for us. 'The Grind' (even after I had done many of the tricks given in this site, lowered HP and upped damage) ended our 4E campaign at 11th level.

 

[Shazman]

This is a rant; it is mostly aimed at 4E, but it is just as validly aimed at other games as well that have overly involved combat subsystems.

Most games I've been involved in are generally about relaxing, getting together with friends and having fun. Relaxing is an important part; I play these games to get away from the stress of my day-to-day life, kick back and pretend I'm someone else, doing something I could never hope to do in my own life, facing dangers and obstacles I could never survive in real life. Sure, I like dramatic (and big) battles, but I like to be able to both soak in what is going on, as well as have the time to properly plan my own actions (I have the personal flaw of being a poor tactician and often taking a minute or two to "catch on" to many things).

If I'm engaged in a relaxed game, why must I resort to using tricks to "speed up my combat"? I'm talking about the type of tricks mentioned in several threads about speeding up 4E's combat - halving monster hit points, having PCs roll attack and damage together in the same roll and all the other "tricks" people have presented just to get their combat down to a reasonable time span. Why can't the game just present a combat system in which you can resolve the situation in a reasonable amount of time in the first place. Why do you have to kludge the system to make it work for you? Why is it acceptable?

I think any RPG that requires you to rush through combat by using various tricks or techniques is a telling failure in that part of the game. A combat can be dramatic and exciting without having to be rushed. I don't want to be hastened through running a combat just so I can get it to be over with in a half-hour to hour instead of two-hour, three-hour or longer combats in an RPG. If I can't play through a combat at about the same pace I run the rest of the game and reliably have 15 minute to half-hour combats (or about the same length it takes a group of characters to interact with an NPC or search a non-empty room in the game), I think that's bad game design - a faulty focus placed on one aspect of the game over another portion of the game.

From what I can gather, the designers of 4E wanted to make sure fights lasted long enough for the monsters to do all of their "cool" or "special" attacks. In 3.5 ,characters could sometimes kill monsters off so quickly they didn't get a chance to do much, so they wanted to get away from that in 4E. The problem is that they (IMHO) went way too far in the other direction, and it either wasn't caught in playtesting or they decided it was "good enough". The mechancis of 4E pretty much demand that fights will last a long time unless it's an easy fight, house rules are used (less hit points, more damage for monsters, free expertise feats for players, etc.), players optimize PC's to extremes, or the PC's have astoundingly good luck. If you don't want long fights and don't want to use house rules, I would play something besides 4E.

 

[Shazman]

My wife is fatally allergic to strawberries. Does that mean that strawberries on a cheesecake are a telling failure in a dessert, in general? No.

We frequently confuse "failure to meet our particular needs" with "failure in general", and forget that no single game is going to please everybody. Yes, many folks need to speed up combat in 4e - but many people don't. The folks who don't need it sped up are probably happy with it - speeding it up would be a detriment to them, not an improvement in design.

I have to disagree. The fact that 4E combat takes so long that it's difficult to have time to do much else is a failure of the system. The fact that you do have to houserule or put in extra work so you can actually finish more than two 4E combat encounters in an evening of gaming is a glaring failure of the system. Strawberries on cheescake aren't good for you wife, but they also don't require most other people eating said strawberry cheesecake to put in extra work to enjoy it. IMHO 4E combat does require more work to make it enjoyable than it should.

 

[TerraDave]

Oh, I sympathize with the OP.

But I also, overall, like 4e, and 4e combat.

You can play 4e in a relaxed way. But not if you want 30 minute fights. You can have 30minute fights, but loose 4e by the book and relaxed 4e.

My solution is to be slightly less relaxed, slightly less by the book, and to have fewer fights.

Yours might be something else entirely.

 

[Mallus]

When I'm running a game, I try to pick an RPG that's good at what I want to get out of the campaign. If I want dungeon-crawly, tactical goodness (and believe me, I do), I'll pick 4e. Yes, you can play highly political, intrigue-centric games using 4e, and I'll argue vehemently against anyone who says it's impossible, but it's really not what 4e is best at.

While it's hard to argue with choosing the right tool for job, in a sense, my group doesn't --gamers are a stubborn lot. Watching one of our D&D campaigns unfold, you'd swear we should be playing FATE or Burning Wheel (or, alternately, starting our own sketch comedy troupe). Yet we're currently playing 4e (tomorrow, in fact).

We seem to choose the game that's good at providing the tools we're bad at creating ourselves. For example. we like the 4e combat engine --a lot-- but never would have put the time and energy required into creating something like. On the other hand, we essentially added FATE-like Aspects to our 3e campaign, albeit informally, without even realizing it.

 

[Obryn]

I have to disagree. The fact that 4E combat takes so long that it's difficult to have time to do much else is a failure of the system. The fact that you do have to houserule or put in extra work so you can actually finish more than two 4E combat encounters in an evening of gaming is a glaring failure of the system. Strawberries on cheescake aren't good for you wife, but they also don't require most other people eating said strawberry cheesecake to put in extra work to enjoy it. IMHO 4E combat does require more work to make it enjoyable than it should.

I think we've been down this road before, and been down it already in this thread. Umbran covered it pretty succinctly, I think.

I have absolutely no doubt that you and/or your group did not like 4e combat, and that you found it both long and grindy. You, however, seem to doubt that others find it works just fine as-is - and can finish more combats without houseruling. Groups vary, and tastes vary.

If a tool doesn't work for you, it does not mean the tool is broken. Your experiences are not everyone's experiences.

-O

 

[Shazman]

I'm sure that a number of people have no problem with 4E combat. However, a lot of people do have problems making it work out of the box. I'm not saying it should be perfect, but it shouldn't be so easy to have long, grindy combats. I believe more playtesting would have resulted in a system with better math that would be more enjoyable for everyone, which would be good for the game, good for WotC, good for the hobby, and good for gamers. Even if people do enjoy the lengthier combat time of 4E, it does make it less feasible to progress through a campaign at a reasonable pace. How many people can have a marathon session everytime they want to game, so they can fit in more than two combats? I'd say not too many.

 

[Obryn]

Well I see your list but we still had the grind with 2 players, the major part of grind for me was the encounter being effectively over but still half a dozen rounds til the enemy is dead.

Honestly, I'm not sure that reducing the number of players to 2 would help combat length that much, either. IME, 4e works best with 4-6 players. Much bigger than that (I've had 9 at one point) and everything takes forever. Much smaller than that, and it's tough to get a cohesive team going with complementary abilities. With only two or three, focus-firing becomes a bit of a joke, and it's very possible you'll make no progress whatsoever one round out of every four, assuming a 50% hit rate.

But, this is another one of those cases where some games won't work for some groups. I mean, it's not like you can magically find more players if your group is too small, or you would kick people out if your game is too big. Better, IMO, to find a game that works better for the size of your group, if you expect it's a semi-permanent state of affairs.

-O