Wrong facts about D&D3 combat?

[Holy Bovine]

I've been reading over some of the replies here and I can only say that I wished my high level 3E combats could have been finished in less than 2+ hours. We once had a combat, with 20th level PCs vs 2 fairly tough "non-boss" monsters last 3 hours. There were 4 rounds total with 5 players.

 

[Hussar]

These feel about right for our group as well. Combat is sometimes shorter at higher levels because of lucky die rolls: Order-of-the-Bow guy gets two arrow crits, or one of the main opponents rolls a 1 on his Disintergration save, etc.

The last one is especially baffling, and I suspect it comes from a too-rigid reading of the CR system or mis-interpreting what the designers 'meant' to happen. If the party is level 10, neither one of us has a problem with them facing 3-4 CR 10 critters in a combat.

Your level 10 party is regularly facing EL 14 encounters and not dying? How?

Actually, let me guess a few reasons why.

1. Your character point buy values are 35+
2. You have more than 4 PC's.
3. You use a lot of supplements.
4. You use a lot of classed humanoids as opponents.

My guess would most likely be number 1, because that seems to be the usual suspect whenever this comes up.

 

[evilgenius8000]

My group's biggest time-sink is the abundant banter that occurs when friends converge around a table. We're all pretty proficient in the game, but combats typically take a long time (we've made it up to 3 hours before) due to frequent pauses when we get distracted.

 

[Dausuul]

Your level 10 party is regularly facing EL 14 encounters and not dying? How?

Actually, let me guess a few reasons why.

1. Your character point buy values are 35+
2. You have more than 4 PC's.
3. You use a lot of supplements.
4. You use a lot of classed humanoids as opponents.

My guess would most likely be number 1, because that seems to be the usual suspect whenever this comes up.

EL 14 is expected to be about an even fight for a typical 10th-level party of four PCs; if the party is fairly well optimized, they should be able to handle it reliably.

 

[Runestar]

Your level 10 party is regularly facing EL 14 encounters and not dying? How?

MM crs appear to be accurate only when using core material, and even then, only when the party adheres to the "Fighter tanks, rogue flanks, cleric heals and wizard blasts" assumption.

My guess is that their party is fairly optimized, and broke away from those 4 boxed roles. For instance, battlefield control trumps direct damage, healing during combat is generally sub-optimal anyways, and the best thing a fighter can do is to wield a spiked chain.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Is my group, are my games the anomaly, or are the “accepted facts” of the edition wrong for you, too?
Total Bullgrit

I ran a few 3rd Edition games, and I am a player in a 4th edition game at the moment. I never had much opportunity to run my 3rd edition games into higher levels due to a variety of issues. I still think I have a good frame of reference for comparison, however.

First, much of what happens in any game is very dependent on what is in your players have chosen for class and feats, and what the DM likes to use for monsters, but in 3rd edition games, I did notice the following.

- Fights with basic humanoid monsters, or any opponents with a reasonably limited set of options for attacking will run just fine, especially if HP, AC, and Saves are all the same.

- If your players go for Save or Screwed spells, (anything that lasts for X rounds and prevents those who fail the save from attacking effectively) fights can be fairly easy for them.

- If your players go for buffing spells, things may start to slow down if they have to cast them mid fight.

- Combat will slow down when players start to get multiple attacks, or when the DM is running multiple monsters (say, more than 4 at a time) that have a variety of options when attacking.

- Combat will slow down when the players start having to track durations of effects.

- Anything that forces recalculation of attack and damgae rolls in the middle of fight will slow things down a great deal.

- Any fight with multiple opponents run by the DM where many of the combatants have wildly different attack options and abilities will be very slow to run. (Try statting out a 4 or 5 member band of classed opponents of level 6 or higher, each with a different class, and running that fight).

- Fights with a single combatant at higher levels will result in the opponent being dogpiled and dropped fast. Fights with a single combatant who is a legitimate threat to the entire party will tend to be either a cake walk or a TPK.

- In theory, I could set up fights to have several in a single day. In practice, having more than one fight in a single day is hard to justify plot-wise outside of a dungeon, and the players will dictate the pace. If the players will absolutely rest when either the cleric has used up most of his spells for healing, or if they suspect they will need access to any spells they have depleted.

- Balancing combat to be challenging against the players is difficult, and it is easy to end up with a TPK if the players enter a fight much weaker than you expected them to.

Now for what I have noticed about 4th edition combat.

- Fights will almost never be over quickly unless the encounter is a cakewalk.

- It takes much less time on average for a player or the DM to decide what to do, when you consider the number of options available.
-- Splitting actions up into Standard, Move, and Minor allows players to easily know what they can do in a round.
-- The allocation of actions often allows players to do more in a single round.

- Healing surges and per Encounter abilities make is much easier to have a series of challenging fights within the same day. Per encounter abilities dictate the baseline power level of your party. The availability of healing surges dictate if the players will push on or rest.

- We do run more combat encounters, and cover more story per game in 4th edition than we did in 3rd edition.

When was running games in 3rd edition, I would end up having fights balanced assuming players were at near full HP. I could set up entertaining fights, but it was a non trivial amount of effort, and there was a huge margin for error. So I would generally run only a few fights, but they would all be challenging. Running a series of combats in a single in game day was just not cost effective in terms of prep time. Under 4th edition, while I am certain that the XP value of some combatants are not as accurate as I would like, setting up a fight is much easier, and running it is much easier.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Vegepygmy]

Combats are short, 1-3 rounds – we regularly experience 4-8 rounds of combat, with some going up to 10+, only occasionally 3 or less.

I run a 3.5 campaign online and save a log of each session, so it's easy for me to check. The last 5 encounters I ran lasted 12, 14, 12, 3, and 8 rounds. So "short combats" would seem to be the exception rather than the rule.

Combat is the PCs vs. one opponent – we regularly fight multiple enemies, usually 3-6, sometimes a dozen or more, only occasionally just 1.

Of the last 5 encounters, only 1 was against a single opponent. (It lasted 12 rounds.)

Is my group, are my games the anomaly, or are the “accepted facts” of the edition wrong for you, too?

FWIW, my experience has just been too different for me to accept the "accepted facts" about 3rd edition, though I have seen some 3rd edition games that fit them.

IMO, your chosen style of play determines your experience, not the 3rd edition rules themselves.

 

[chriton227]

I've been reading over some of the replies here and I can only say that I wished my high level 3E combats could have been finished in less than 2+ hours. We once had a combat, with 20th level PCs vs 2 fairly tough "non-boss" monsters last 3 hours. There were 4 rounds total with 5 players.

This is closer to my experience too. Three characters that I've seen in games that stand out:

I had a mid-to-upper-teens duskblade that was a nightmare to track. He had the feat to allow him to burn spells for +1 to hit and +1d4 to damage per spell level, made frequent use of power attack at various levels, had both a bard and a cleric in the party so was under different buffs from round to round including haste, heroes feast, bardic music, etc., channeled spells through his weapon (usually Vampiric Touch which not only did damage but also gave him temp hit points), had a weapon crystal that gave him a to-hit bonus when he channeled spells, used a vampiric weapon that healed him when he hit, got 4 attacks per round (5 with haste), and could rapid cast spells to get another casting in on his turn. It wasn't uncommon for him to be throwing either a 10-die AoE or 3 4-die scorching rays on top of his weapon damage (1d12+1d6 vampiric+1d6 acid+1d6 electric+1-4d4 arcane strike+5-6d6vampiric touch+power attack+bardic music+misc), and a lot of the damage would have to be tracked separately because of damage resistances.

The other was my wife's character in a one-shot, an elven dervish. 7 attacks per round most of the time, 14 per round when using 1000 cuts, got full movement when attacking, used weapons that would crit on 15+, one weapon was a holy flame burst, the other was a
prismatic burst (roll on the prismatic spray chart on a crit). It could take quite a while to go through the whole process of plotting the movement to make sure she could use all the attacks against the targets she wanted in the right order, then "step, attack, damage, step, attack, damage, step, attack, crit damage, roll prismatic, replot the rest of the turn because the target just got sent to another plane, etc."

One game I ran had a half-giant psi-warrior/monk grapple/trip specialist. Even at fairly low levels that took a while, with flurry of blows, the opposed trip rolls, the freebie attacks on a trip that were inevitably used to start a grapple.

With a few exceptions, combat time started at 15-30 seconds per player turn at levels 1-5, but the time started increasing rapidly, especially once we got up towards level 15 and beyond, when greater dispels become opening attacks on both sides because every combatant has 4-8 spells on them at any given time.

 

[Hussar]

EL 14 is expected to be about an even fight for a typical 10th-level party of four PCs; if the party is fairly well optimized, they should be able to handle it reliably.

Well, if by even fight you mean that the party has a 50% chance of dying, then I'm right with you on that. EL+4 encounters are doable but the chances of fatalities are very, very high. Considering that a given creature of a given CR can kill an equal leveled PC in a single round by and large, using multiple par CR creatures should result in fatalities fairly often.

MM crs appear to be accurate only when using core material, and even then, only when the party adheres to the "Fighter tanks, rogue flanks, cleric heals and wizard blasts" assumption.

My guess is that their party is fairly optimized, and broke away from those 4 boxed roles. For instance, battlefield control trumps direct damage, healing during combat is generally sub-optimal anyways, and the best thing a fighter can do is to wield a spiked chain.

This is very much not my experience actually. The non-core classes are almost universally less powerful than the core classes, with very few exceptions. Every single poll on En World that asked to rank the power of the various classes put core classes at the top every single time. It's CoDzilla for a reason.

There are a number of Factors that can affect CR and EL but splat books aren't usually a major issue.

In the past when this has come up, the biggest culprits have always been high point buy values of PC's (usually the result of die roll creation) and using a lot of humanoid classed opponents. If you're using monsters and 25 point buy characters, EL+4 will result in fatalities regularly.

 

[Dausuul]

Well, if by even fight you mean that the party has a 50% chance of dying, then I'm right with you on that. EL+4 encounters are doable but the chances of fatalities are very, very high. Considering that a given creature of a given CR can kill an equal leveled PC in a single round by and large, using multiple par CR creatures should result in fatalities fairly often.

Against a "standard" party, yes. Against an optimized party, not so much... particularly since this is level 10 and they have a lot of possibilities for optimization by that point.

This is very much not my experience actually. The non-core classes are almost universally less powerful than the core classes, with very few exceptions. Every single poll on En World that asked to rank the power of the various classes put core classes at the top every single time. It's CoDzilla for a reason.

Right, but CoDzilla is very much not following the standard paradigm of fighter tanks/rogue flanks/cleric heals/wizard blasts.

If you have a 10th-level party that follows the paradigm of cleric tanks/druid flanks/wizard controls/sorceror controls, it will perform well above its "weight class" in terms of CR.