Why Must I Kludge My Combat?

[Storminator]

I don't really think that the combat trun has been sped up, though. More decisions to make, more concern about forced movement and where to place you mini or powers, more conditions to track, more actions to consider (most people in 3.5 only worried about move, standard, or full-round actions) plus many times making multiple attacks with bursts and blasts means that 4E turns can easily take just as long or longer than in 3.x. Even if they are shorter for many people, they are only marginally so. Slightly shorter rounds plus doubling the number of rounds equals much longer combat.

That depends on your PCs. My last 3e game, at 10th level, included a 2 weapon dervish - 7 attacks, different attack and damage roll for each, with movement between each attack. His turns took a LONG time to resolve. On the order of an entire round of our 4e combat (same players). Next up was the wildshaping, summoning druid with animal companion (with multi-attacks, follow-up rakes, and a poison attack - which forces a stat-block recalculation). He could have a 20 minute turn, if he didn't need to pick a new wildshape. Thank god he spent literally hours outside the game day creating the statblocks for his wildshapes and Augmented summons, and various combinations of buffs on his companion.

Now the bow ranger and the sorcerer would take maybe a minute or two each, but we're still over half an hour per round, without the DM's turn in there. Certainly if you have no iterative attacks, no TWFers, no spellcasters, no cohorts/companions/familiars, no summoned creatures, and no ambiguous rules, you can make 3e combats short. Start stacking those things up tho, and the turn resolution goes in the tank.

PS

 

[Shazman]

I've seen many 4E rounds that took that long or longer or least felt that long since I didn't break out a stopwatch and time them.

 

[Storminator]

I've seen many 4E rounds that took that long or longer or least felt that long since I didn't break out a stopwatch and time them.

Our 4e game is only at 8th level. So far, 5 minutes (often less) and it's my turn again is normal.

PS

 

[Raven Crowking]

Claims that 3e and then 4e D&D was designed to sell minis seems about as valid as saying D&D (any edition) was designed to sell graph paper.

I am not saying that they are exclusively designed to sell minis, but that selling minis was a part of the design.

But, if TSR had owned a graph-paper-making business, and each new product came up with new reasons why you should buy more graph paper, and the language of each new product related increasingly to using graph paper, I would, indeed, assume that there was a design goal of selling graph paper.

Frankly, TSR dropped the ball on selling support items like this. Hex paper is an obvious one to have been selling, esp. before the Internet, and esp. with nested hexes (as shown in the 1e DMG).


RC

 

[Mallus]

Overall combat length measured in real time did not change noticably but combat _feels_ faster because everyone gets to act more often. Triggered actions and granting other players bonuses and extra actions also mean that players stay focused on the action when it's not their turn.

This matches my group's experience w/4e...

Slightly shorter rounds plus doubling the number of rounds equals much longer combat.

... but this doesn't, exactly. We average about double the rounds per combat compared to 3.5e, but they're not much longer. Then again, our last 3.5e game featured 3 full-progression spellcasters, whose players were quite well-versed in the rules. A three-round encounter could last a really long time by 13th level, without any of the 'participate even when it's not your turn' mechanics found in 4e to mitigate things.

Of course the problem is that many people will tell you that if these things are slowing your 4e game down, it's not the rules that are at fault but instead that it is some form of user error when implementing these things.

I think it comes down to this: there are ways to run 4e faster, and ways to run it slower, strictly by the RAW. But the same is true for 3e. Choose a bunch of creatures with miss chances and high SR and watch what happens -- I speak from some experience w/this.

Now this doesn't necessarily mean they were bad encounters... my players really enjoyed when I rained incorporeal ghost-ninjas down on their home city... but it did take time to resolve (one entire session + play-by-post on the campaign board).

 

[Raven Crowking]

That's totally incorrect, though, as you probably full well know.

So, one of the initially announced design goals was not to speed up combat?

There are certainly designer quotes out there about how combat was designed to take longer (so as to allow the PCs to use their abilities).

I cannot remember if one of the design goals ever was to actually speed up combat (but it may well have been)

Oh, so when you say "totally incorrect" you don't actually mean that you know something is "totally incorrect".

Maybe you missed the point:

3e combat can take a very long time (IRL). WotC was aware of complaints about the same, and early in the 4e process stated that it was a design goal of 4e to shorten the amount of time a combat took IRL. That proved to be incompatable with some other design goals, which were deemed more important, so it got ditched. Eventually, WotC had to increase the length of combats so as to meet those other design goals.

(Specifically, those design goals were to give the players a chance to use their abilities, while not making the chance to use their abilities be dependent upon longterm attrition ala 1e, 2e, 3e, and OD&D.)

EDIT: Whether or not the trade-off was a good one is, of course, dependent upon personal preference.



RC

 

[Kingreaper]

One PC will roll an Intimidate check at the beginning of round 5. If he beats the average/leader's will defense, the bad guys run tail and run. If he does not, then they go into a berserk rage, believing this to be their blaze of glory. All standard monsters become Minions with 1 hit point, though they still roll damage normally. They lose all encounter and recharge powers and deal increased damage (I want to say doubled but I'd have to test it a bit).

Thoughts?

Seems a bit unbalanced, it would teach the PCs "Turtle up, and they'll become weaker, and you can mop them up"
If you're going to say that enemies can't get fighting past 5 rounds, why not the PCs?

ie. at each round past the 5th one person on each side makes an intimidate check, modified by number of men (not counting minions) lost/left. If one side wins by 5 or more, the other side are immediately demoralized, and must choose to run or surrender.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I'd be interested in seeing this.

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

 

[Raven Crowking]

The Rouse speaketh:

"I think it is pretty safe to say the 4e rules were designed with minis use in mind. 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. 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. WoTC didn't invent playing D&D with maps and minis but we certainly folded it more into the core that TSR had done."

http://www.enworld.org/forum/4828135-post35.html

 

[MerricB]

So, one of the initially announced design goals was not to speed up combat?

No.

As I've said on more than one occasion, the goal of 4e wasn't to speed up all combats. It was to make combats last a more predictable length... and (especially) speed up high-level combat.

From my experiences with 3rd edition, 16th level combat could take two or three hours to resolve, and only have a handful of rounds. (Two hours for three rounds? Entirely possible). The only way the final session of my 16th level Ulek game got played in a reasonable amount of time was because everyone had a lap-top, and pre-rolled their dice on it so that when their turn came around they just announced the result of their attack.

That was a system that was broken at the higher ends.

Meanwhile, at very low levels, combat would last a very short time with a great deal of swinginess. One hit and your PC was dying. One set of unlucky rolls and your character was dead. There was one infamous combat I ran between a 1st level orc and a 3rd level ranger in a gladitorial arena. First round, the orc won initiative, charged the ranger, critted, and did over 50 points of damage, killing the ranger stone dead.

The other problem with low-level 3e combat just related to the abilities of the wizards: Do I fire my crossbow (which I'm awful with) or cast my one spell for the day.

The design behind 4e was to extend the "sweet spot" of 3e (levels 5-12 or thereabouts) and apply it to all levels in 4e. Combats wouldn't be entirely swingy, they wouldn't be over in a round, nor take forever to resolve.

The way they did this has caused other problems - related mainly to tracking modifiers and overly high defenses of the higher-level monsters they seem very happy to put in their adventures. Elite Soldiers of two levels higher? Urgh. To be fair, they've realised a few problems and they've modified later monster manuals, but I'm not quite happy with where they've pegged a few values.

However - in general - the system has worked pretty well. I'm currently running an 18th level game, and the combats are taking about 50-80 minutes to resolve... without people prerolling attacks on laptops. And this is against some of the insane monsters of the official adventures; when I run my own encounters against more level-appropriate foes, they take less time.

Is 3e minicentric? Not at all. It does something new, which is provide rules to enable the use of miniatures within the core game, but the game isn't really that dependent on the use of miniatures. Not more than earlier editions, at least! 4e, on the other hand, is quite definitely minicentric. You don't make that many powers that force movement without needing minis. It certainly can be played without minis, but the default method using them.

I find it amusing - with a touch of sadness - that the DDM line has failed in 4e rather than in 3.5e.

Cheers!