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Alejandro
2012-08-06, 10:25 AM
Data: I am a player in a 4E game. We are 6th level:

Wizard (me)
Artificer
Bard
Paladin
Ardent
All of these characters are well made, stats wise.

Our ranger has not been showing up. For some time now, we cannot get through more than one 'violent' encounter per game session. I thought the problem might be that we had no striker and thus could not damage enemies quickly enough, so the GM let me make a second PC, a Slayer, and I have been playing both this Slayer and my Wizard at the same time.

However, at yesterday's session, we still only managed to have one encounter. It took six real-time hours to complete, and was a battle between us, and one dragonborn elite defender, two 'volcano dragonlings'? I think they were called, and two kobolds who appeared to be leader-ish, as they were giving their allies various buffs and bonuses.

As I said, it took the entire gaming session to resolve this encounter, with everyone playing well (bard uses staggering note to give the slayer a free basic melee attack whenever she can, wizard inflicts mean things on enemies as much as possible, etc.)

Should this be happening? Is this normal? I do want to note that I did not use either of my wizard's daily spells until the very end of the encounter, because I was trying to save them for what I knew was about to happen (we were battling the guardians of a warded and locked chamber, within which was an actual dragon, who when released, we had to flee from as fast as possible because we had no useful powers or many healing surges left to actually fight, much less not having enough real time left for the encounter.)

If this is normal, should I instead be casting all of my best spells at the start of the first encounter we have, assuming that it is the only encounter we will play that day, and thus I should use all my best powers right away? Or is there some other flaw in our party makeup or something I am missing?

Ashdate
2012-08-06, 10:58 AM
That seems excessive, even by 4e standards. In my game, I found that unmodified encounters that were (by the book) challenging would take about an hour to an hour and a half.

Most of the time (from my experience) is simply from players making decisions about what to do. Monsters are generally simple enough that they don't take too long to adjudicate. There are many things you can do to "shorten" the amount of time a player/DM takes, but the question to be asking is where you and your group (and this includes your DM) are losing so much time to. To take six hours, there are two big offenders in my mind (and possibly both are happening at once):

1) the DM made the encounter too grind-y. Monsters that have too many hit points + good defenses + ways to prevent damage can drag encounters out. If a fight lasts more than five rounds, this is probably because of bad encounter design.

2) lots of tactical discussion between players. Some tactics are fine, but it can be easy for players to start suggesting courses of action, "modelling" outcomes, etc. It's in these situations where the DM needs to start laying down the law on OOC discussion.

You've got to identify where the time is being wasted. Encourage your DM to half monster hit points and double their damage; encourage players to be ready to go when their turn comes around. It's everyone's responsibility to not drag encounters out!

Binks
2012-08-06, 11:14 AM
4E combat does take quite a bit of time, but 6h at level 6 with 5 enemies seems like FAR too long. Battles with my group generally take 1-2h at level 16 (lots more options and more rolls than level 6 most likely).

Here are the things I would look at with regards to speeding things up (all things I've read at various sites, apologies for not crediting but I don't remember off-hand and don't have time to google).

1. Are people taking a long time on their turn to decide what to do? If the majority of people are spending a minute or two to figure out what to do that's going to slow things down a LOT overall. 4E is a pretty deterministic combat system, generally there aren't going to be a huge number of changes in a battlefield from 2-3 turns before you to your turn, so you can start figuring out what you want to do then. Obviously something might change your plan completely right before your turn but in that case you just say that you need a moment to plan and work it out in response to what happened. 90% of the time when the GM says its your turn you should be ready to start moving immediately.

2. You have 3 characters that likely have large numbers of area attacks (bard, ardent, artificer, it depends on their builds). Are they pre-rolling damage? That means they roll the damage, announce what it will be on a hit (or miss) to the GM, then roll the attacks. It's not much of a speed up but it does help the GM immediately record damage on each enemy hit rather than waiting until all the attacks have been rolled to mark damage.

3. Ask your GM where they are getting their monsters from. Some of the earlier monsters (Monster Manual 1 in particular) have way too many hit points and way too little damage. Particularly for your group (light on strikers) this would increase the time for combat significantly as some of those creatures have about twice the equivalent health of the later designs, so that's twice as long effectively.

4. You have 3 leaders, a controller and a defender. You say you're playing a second PC who is a striker, but playing 2 PCs does slow things down a bit as it means twice as many decisions for you and chances for a missed interrupt. This is not a very balanced party (way too much healing, way too little damage) but there are two possible options here. You need to have an open discussion with your GM on this and basically tell him that your group's damage output is subpar, but your healing and support is above average.

Ideally this means that the GM should tailor the monsters to have less hp but do more damage, even after applying the 'use newer monsters, they have less hp' fix I mentioned earlier. The overall difficulty of the combat is the same whether you have a monster who deals 10 damage per round and has 100hp or 100 damage per round and has 10hp (to use an extreme set of examples), the difference is how many rounds it takes to kill said monster.

If your GM is not confident they can properly manage that borderline without random super-hard and super-easy encounters then the other alternative is that one of your leaders needs to start doing more damage, probably by swapping to a striker.

There's no silver bullet for making 4E combat run faster, it takes a commitment from the players to be ready when they're called, work from the GM to make sure the enemy's turns don't take too long, and a proper balance of hp to challenge. Hopefully one of these suggestions can help you speed things up. 4E combat is slow, but it can be made fast enough that 2 combats per session is entirely doable.

tcrudisi
2012-08-06, 11:54 AM
LFR typically does 3 combats and a skill challenge in a 4-hour block. This is for 6 players plus the DM.

My home groups typically take 20ish minutes for a combat. Our skill challenges often take longer than a combat.

My tips for speeding up combat (and masculine pronoun will be used generically. Many of my players are female!):

1. Use a deck of cards. Give the highest init person an Ace, the second highest a 2, the third highest a 3, and so on. Have everyone put it clearly in front of them so that everyone can see who's init turn it is and when they will be coming up.

2. Roll damage with your attack roll. Have the dice ready when it's your turn.

3. As a DM, I tell the players what the highest and lowest defenses are on the board. If one monster has AC 30, Fort 29, Ref 27, Will 27 and another monster has AC 28, Fort 29, Ref 26, Will 28, then I will tell the party: "The highest defense is 30 and the lowest is 26." Now they know: if they roll below a 26, they say it's a miss and move on. If they roll a 30 or above, they say it's a hit and move on.

4. As a DM, I trust my players. If a player wants to attack then move, as soon as the attack is resolved, I will go to the next player. If he moves in such a way as to incur an OA, he will let me know.

5. When I'm down to a single monster and it's just taken it's turn, I'll either call the combat or ask the players if they would be willing to lose a healing surge from the party (they'll usually pick the defender) to go ahead and kill him quickly.

There might be other things, but I only recently woke up, so if so, I'm forgetting them at the moment.

tanstaafl48
2012-08-06, 12:08 PM
Huh. People on this forum are way better at 4E than I am, apparently (I rarely have fights that don't take at least 1-2 hours).

So, as someone who can understand having problems with encounter length... 6 hours in heroic tier is crazy. There really isn't any combination of monsters/terrain/party configuration that should create a fight where you don't either wipe or finish dramatically faster than that.

Was there a lot of side conversation? What % of the fight time would you say was actually taken up by rolling dice?

obryn
2012-08-06, 12:16 PM
Wow, 6 hours for a standard fight is insane. :smallsmile: Mine generally go 45-90 minutes, and really I start getting antsy about it after 60. If I remind my players to focus and get their dice ready ahead of time, it speeds things up. (I'm using Masterplan on my end; it makes things way faster because I don't need to pause for math time or condition tracking.)

I got a lot about your party makeup in your post, and some about the opposition ... So for starters...

Yes, it does look like your party is remarkably low on damage-dealing. You have a controller/leader heavy party. It's a perfect storm for grind, especially when I read about the enemies. (more on them in a bit). When it comes down to it you can (1) prevent monsters from attacking well, (2) heal up any damage they do to you, and (3) not deal any damage in return.

So. Given that none of these characters can likely deal much damage, if you're trying to deal with an over-leveled Elite Soldier, well... that's a recipe for disaster. Especially with the buffers in the enemy group. I can easily see fights going way, way too long with that group. (I hope you targeted the kobolds first. :smallwink:)

In other words, when I see your party makeup and the enemies you faced, it's a recipe for disaster. Even with every player involved and ready on their turns, it will be a grind. I think 6 hours is surprisingly long, but at least 2-3 would be expected even with involved, expert players. Your DM should probably re-think encounter design and start handing out items that buff your damage. (Iron Armbands, Staff of Ruin, Jagged stuff...)

I think I know how it's probably gone. With all the healing you have, he's not able to suitably challenge you. So there's been an arms race of sorts, where he needs to throw overpowered (read: long, grindy, over-leveled) challenges at you. This arms race doesn't end well!

Edited to add: Dailies. Managing Dailies is hard, but as a general rule of thumb, hoarding them is not a solid plan. Saving up one (when you have two) for a final battle is great. Otherwise, it's best to use them just whenever they seem appropriate. Now, given that you probably didn't feel particularly threatened in this encounter (more bored, probably), it might not have seemed like a good idea. But really - don't blow your dailies, but also don't hoard your dailies.

(Otherwise, both Binks and Ashdate had some excellent advice. tcrudisi's is solid, too, but I don't think any of those will help with the party's composition and that sort of encounter design.)

-O

Alejandro
2012-08-06, 12:21 PM
Our GM (my girlfriend) does a good job of challenging us. We always have some new thing, twist, danger, etc, to deal with. It simply takes soooo long to do it. Things have gotten better since I started playing a Slayer as well (his turns are very short, since he's almost always making melee basic attacks, and the character himself is mute, so he cannot speak, which means I never have to actively talk to myself :) )

However, maybe the right monsters are not being used, or they have too many HP. We are all very aware that we are too leader heavy, but everyone was encouraged to make and play the PC they wanted to play, not filling a specific game-design roster.

obryn
2012-08-06, 12:31 PM
We are all very aware that we are too leader heavy, but everyone was encouraged to make and play the PC they wanted to play, not filling a specific game-design roster.
And that's perfectly fine. Now, 4e's fights work most smoothly as a team sport where you have all four "positions" filled, but if your DM is judicious about the sorts of encounters you face, it should wash out. Otherwise ... well, you can end up with 6-hour fights. :smallwink:

I'll note that adding a Slayer to the mix is a good idea. That's a perfect sort of NPC/PC. You could also look at having an actual "monster" in the party, for even easier management.

-O

Alejandro
2012-08-06, 01:11 PM
Can you comment more on using the 'wrong' monsters? Are there some whose stats don't actually fit the game? What about minions?

The GM uses her DDI account to craft our adventures.

Ashdate
2012-08-06, 01:36 PM
"Wrong monsters" is perhaps the, er, wrong, way of putting it. With a few exceptions, most monsters are appropriate challenges for a particular party to face given their level. However, different compositions are going to have an easier/harder (as well as quicker/slower) time dealing with some enemy compositions. As has been pointed out, with a lack of strikers comes a lack of outgoing damage.

Therefore, a "Dragonborn Commandant" (a level 7 elite solider) might take a long time to kill due to it's combination of high AC and high hit points. It might not threaten your party, but it would be a tough creature for a group of level 6 leaders to take down quickly. 4e generally assumes that a party of five characters will have two strikers, who can deal more damage and take such threats out quickly. It doesn't mean that the encounter can't work, it simply means that it will take your party longer.

That said, it is only potentially "part of" the problem. There are numerous things on both sides of the DM screen that could be slowing things down (and honestly, "improper" encounter design shouldn't increase the amount of time it takes to do an encounter by several hours).

Alejandro
2012-08-06, 02:04 PM
Well, it could certainly be the players' fault, too. We might take too long on our turns, or talk too much, or not be ready, etc. I GM a game for the same players (Star Wars Saga Edition) though, and this problem does not happen, though.

Ashdate
2012-08-06, 02:07 PM
Well, it could certainly be the players' fault, too. We might take too long on our turns, or talk too much, or not be ready, etc. I GM a game for the same players (Star Wars Saga Edition) though, and this problem does not happen, though.

Well, you're at the table. What's taking so long? :)

obryn
2012-08-06, 02:13 PM
It doesn't mean that the encounter can't work, it simply means that it will take your party longer.
...
(and honestly, "improper" encounter design shouldn't increase the amount of time it takes to do an encounter by several hours).
Yep, that's exactly what I meant with "wrong monsters." Thanks! And I agree, no way it would take 6 hours just because of this. Stretch from 1 hour to 2? Maybe. But 6 is far outside my realm of experience. 3 has been my own extreme limit, and that was pre-MM3, with a fairly mediocre high-Paragon party in a capstone encounter. Or with a kind of custom "mass combat" deal I put together, but I knew that would take all session ahead of time.


Well, it could certainly be the players' fault, too. We might take too long on our turns, or talk too much, or not be ready, etc. I GM a game for the same players (Star Wars Saga Edition) though, and this problem does not happen, though.
I wouldn't be so quick to take it all on yourselves. There's stuff you can do as players to speed things up - tcrudisi laid out the best above - but I think it must have been a combination of stuff to turn an encounter into a 6-hour process.

-O

Alejandro
2012-08-06, 02:17 PM
Everyone generally knows what they are going to do when it is their turn. Now and then there is a moment of consideration, but it isn't anything major. (Usually when someone is deciding to use a daily power, or item's power, etc.) The GM generally knows what her creatures are going to do, though sometimes she is slower simply because she has to manage all the creatures, which is fair.

We do a lot of table talk and general talking, which bothers me sometimes, but everyone else seems to be OK with it. This doesn't usually happen during a battle, though, other than conversing about what is happening.

I have a well optimized control wizard, and I do my best to be a good controller. All the leader characters do a good job, and so does the paladin. The Slayer I made is simple and effective to play. It just seems like we can't effectively stomp the bad guys in any sort of timely fashion. When we finally bloodied the dragonborn elite, we were like "oh no, now we have to grind through the other 50% of his hit points, assuming the kobolds don't heal him again."

At least I am a tiefling and was resistant to the fire damage we were receiving, or else I would have gotten far more badly stomped. As it was, we went into the encounter at about 75% capacity, and finished it with almost no PC having any daily power or item power left, and some of us having no healing surges left at all.

obryn
2012-08-06, 02:29 PM
The GM generally knows what her creatures are going to do, though sometimes she is slower simply because she has to manage all the creatures, which is fair.
Yep, the DM has a lot to juggle. That's why I really, really like Masterplan; it makes my job just that much easier. I can focus on the situation and roleplaying an entertaining game more than on the math and conditions.


I have a well optimized control wizard, and I do my best to be a good controller. All the leader characters do a good job, and so does the paladin.
That's outstanding. My main question is ... while you're keeping the enemies neutralized as a good Wizard should, what's happening to them and their allies? Without some damage-dealing on the back end, control can only get you so far. Immobilizing melee enemies is great to keep them off your back, but if they're right back into the fight next round, it's only so useful. Same with defenders, for that matter; it's great to keep a monster locked down, but mostly only if it's important to keep them away from someone else.


When we finally bloodied the dragonborn elite, we were like "oh no, now we have to grind through the other 50% of his hit points, assuming the kobolds don't heal him again."
I bolded the important part here. Any time monsters are healing up, it's an ingredient for grind - and a major, major reason to focus fire on them, first. So ... did you try to kill the kobolds first? :smallwink:

-O

Alejandro
2012-08-06, 02:46 PM
Yep, the DM has a lot to juggle. That's why I really, really like Masterplan; it makes my job just that much easier. I can focus on the situation and roleplaying an entertaining game more than on the math and conditions.


That's outstanding. My main question is ... while you're keeping the enemies neutralized as a good Wizard should, what's happening to them and their allies? Without some damage-dealing on the back end, control can only get you so far. Immobilizing melee enemies is great to keep them off your back, but if they're right back into the fight next round, it's only so useful. Same with defenders, for that matter; it's great to keep a monster locked down, but mostly only if it's important to keep them away from someone else.


I bolded the important part here. Any time monsters are healing up, it's an ingredient for grind - and a major, major reason to focus fire on them, first. So ... did you try to kill the kobolds first? :smallwink:

-O

Well, there are only so many options for us at 6th level. I use Color Spray, for example, so I can harm a large block of enemies and hopefully daze them all, and then the other PCs take advantage of an enemy being dazed to get combat advantage on them. I use Beguiling Strands to push enemies away from PCs in danger, and into harmful things (if I can.) I can't really deal a lot of damage unless I made my wizard to be a blaster, which I didn't.

The paladin actually was not present for the encounter in question, I should have clarified that. We had no defender.

We wanted to kill the kobolds, but the battle took place in the hold of a ship, with limited mobility, and the dragonborn elite did everything he could to keep us from getting at the kobolds. We definitely should have gone after the kobolds first, but they were behind all the other monsters and there were limited options for moving around. We did eventually get someone back there with a teleporting power, but as they were not a striker, they couldn't do very much damage to the kobolds, who (apparently) had decent HP too.

obryn
2012-08-06, 03:38 PM
Yeah, that'll hurt. I mean, it's good tactics for the monsters, but it makes for a very hard fight. A long one, too; I generally don't like monsters that can regularly heal up their allies. I would have been more inclined to stick some artillery back there. :smallwink:

My point on the control thing was basically this... A good controller does awesome things to the action economy by taking away the monsters' ability to act effectively (or at all). Without some strikers to capitalize on this action gap, you're losing some of the benefit of that control. It's not impossible to overcome this gap, but as you mentioned, you're seeing long combat times, and this is one possible contributor. :smallsmile:

What about focus fire? One way to overcome individual low damage is through focusing on one enemy at a time. Would you say this is something your group regularly, or only occasionally?

-O

kyoryu
2012-08-06, 03:40 PM
Well, there are only so many options for us at 6th level. I use Color Spray, for example, so I can harm a large block of enemies and hopefully daze them all, and then the other PCs take advantage of an enemy being dazed to get combat advantage on them. I use Beguiling Strands to push enemies away from PCs in danger, and into harmful things (if I can.) I can't really deal a lot of damage unless I made my wizard to be a blaster, which I didn't.

The paladin actually was not present for the encounter in question, I should have clarified that. We had no defender.

We wanted to kill the kobolds, but the battle took place in the hold of a ship, with limited mobility, and the dragonborn elite did everything he could to keep us from getting at the kobolds. We definitely should have gone after the kobolds first, but they were behind all the other monsters and there were limited options for moving around. We did eventually get someone back there with a teleporting power, but as they were not a striker, they couldn't do very much damage to the kobolds, who (apparently) had decent HP too.

Limited mobility can *definitely* increase the time for an encounter.

There's two possibilities for combats taking too long:

1) The combats are designed to be slog-fests (limited mobility can lead to this, as can inflated hp, high defenses, etc.)
2) Players are taking too long on their turn.

The key way to differentiate between these two, I think, is to look at how many rounds the combat is taking, and then use that to figure out how long a round is taking the group, and then by simple division, how long each turn is.

Using made-up numbers, if a group can normally do an encounter in an hour as a random number, and an encounter takes 6 rounds on average, then you're dealing with around 2 minutes per turn - not super fast, but not terrible. A six-hour encounter then should likely be either six times the number of rounds, or six times the time per round, or some combination.

I'd say that either extreme is probably bad, but they have very different solutions. An encounter that is taking 36 rounds to complete is just way too long. And if people are taking ten minutes per turn, that's also just way too long.

Edit: Sounds like the kobold was a pact-bound adept, which has 58 hp and can heal 10 in a burst, with a 5/6 recharge - IOW, each one should only have been doing a heal every third turn, on average. That's the only kobold I found that heals at a quick glance.

Even given that, it sounds like part of the issue may be that the DM gave the kobolds and crew an ideal group makeup, and absolutely ideal terrain for them. In that case, I'd probably consider the terrain to be worth some xp in and of itself - an archer may be 200 xp, but an archer behind an arrow slit that cannot be reached is certainly worth a lot more.

Healing enemies are especially dangerous in this situation, and doubly so if they have theoretically unlimited healing potential. Any time you give the enemies healing, you'll be adding to the encounter length, and if you've got a leader-heavy group you're already at risk of longer-than-typical encounters, especially if your leaders tend towards "healy" rather than "buffy".

Alejandro
2012-08-06, 04:23 PM
Yeah, that'll hurt. I mean, it's good tactics for the monsters, but it makes for a very hard fight. A long one, too; I generally don't like monsters that can regularly heal up their allies. I would have been more inclined to stick some artillery back there. :smallwink:

My point on the control thing was basically this... A good controller does awesome things to the action economy by taking away the monsters' ability to act effectively (or at all). Without some strikers to capitalize on this action gap, you're losing some of the benefit of that control. It's not impossible to overcome this gap, but as you mentioned, you're seeing long combat times, and this is one possible contributor. :smallsmile:

What about focus fire? One way to overcome individual low damage is through focusing on one enemy at a time. Would you say this is something your group regularly, or only occasionally?

-O

We do try to gang up on the largest threat. At least, those of us who have to choose. As the wizard I can usually hit every enemy equally if I want to, depending on what spells I have left. Perhaps in this case, we should have ganged up on the kobolds first, instead of the dragonborn and his pets.

huttj509
2012-08-06, 09:44 PM
We do try to gang up on the largest threat. At least, those of us who have to choose. As the wizard I can usually hit every enemy equally if I want to, depending on what spells I have left. Perhaps in this case, we should have ganged up on the kobolds first, instead of the dragonborn and his pets.

So it sounds like there's a few possible contributing factors, which combined multiplicatively. We were not at the table, you were, so only you can really judge what factors applied how much:

1) Party makeup: This has generally been covered, you're aware, and it can be fine as long as it's accounted for in expectations.

2) Encounter design: High HP High Defenses with backup healing already leads to a grind, and combined with #1 can multiply badly.

3) Encounter Strategy: You didn't focus on the healers first. This exacerbated the issue with #2, which itself combined with #1.

4) Table Delay: Seen a number of good tips on this, whether or not it was a large contributing factor in your situation (I like the "damage first" suggestion for aoe attacks, I know if I were DMing it'd help my bookkeeping). If the group has a number of shorter side discussions, some time you might want to bring a stopwatch and surreptitiously click it on when you feel "side chatter" is happening. 5 minutes here and there can add up, and it might help in a situation of "wow, that combat took 6 hours!" "Well, we spent 2 of them chatting about side stuff." 4 hours would still be long, but it can help provide perspective.

INDYSTAR188
2012-08-06, 09:48 PM
In our game we usually get 3-4 encounters and/or a skill challenge and some RP/randomness in about 6-7 hours. The encounters were taking longer but our Paladin reskinned his character to an Ardent Vow in place of Lay on Hands and took some Striker-y powers with charges and a badge of the berserker. The party is a Greatspear Figher (kinda controllery), Bard, Warlord, Artificer, and the above mentioned Paladin. I don't know if the player would be interested but it's an option to consider.

Musco
2012-08-07, 09:28 AM
We do try to gang up on the largest threat.

I believe this is the issue.

Perhaps your party's ability to assess the "largest threat" is not as optimal as it should be. Sure, at first, it makes sense that, even fluff wise, people would gang up on the huge scary menacing Dragonborn and not some Kobolds, but Player Characters are NOT average. They are trained. They are professionals. Or they're at least semi-trained, quasi-professionals, at any rate.

This means it IS ok to "metagame" a little and "take out the support". Of course, it's not ok to metagame math at the table (Rufus there will take out this guy with an average of X damage), but the general outcome is. if you know that Mark hits twice as hard as you, and it took Mark three good swings at the monster (you can see if it was a good swing, if it didn't do too little or too much damage, this is possible even in real life terms), it should take you six. Your character KNOWS that.

The largest threat is not always the most seemingly powerful monster, and usually "largest" actually means buffed up in HP but not always in damage output, so it's usually better to take out support first. Taking out support also reduces the load on the DM, and makes combat go faster simply by having less enemies on the table to take care of (and speeds up your turn, since it fress up movement options without AoO to take into account, for instance).

If you gang up on a Brute, combat will go longer, because the brute will wear off the brunt of the assault, you'll lose damage output to clear the smaller threats, and there will simply be more turns happening.

Alejandro
2012-08-07, 09:36 AM
You're probably right. In retrospect, we should have just taken the attacks of opportunity and the difficult terrain in order to eventually reach the kobolds (who can keep shifting away) and kill them first.

I didn't, at least, because in our campaign, dragonborn are the Great Enemy (no PC can be a dragonborn) and my PC has thorough reasons to wish to go after one first.

obryn
2012-08-07, 09:43 AM
Edit: Sounds like the kobold was a pact-bound adept, which has 58 hp and can heal 10 in a burst, with a 5/6 recharge - IOW, each one should only have been doing a heal every third turn, on average. That's the only kobold I found that heals at a quick glance.
Yeah, but with two of them ... Healing each other ... and every enemy ... against a low damage group ... behind a competent and capable guardian ...

That's like sending MM1 sword wraiths against a group, and allowing them to slip back through walls to regenerate. :smallsmile: (Which, I'll note, at least two WotC adventures did...)

-O

kyoryu
2012-08-07, 12:17 PM
Yeah, but with two of them ... Healing each other ... and every enemy ... against a low damage group ... behind a competent and capable guardian ...

That's like sending MM1 sword wraiths against a group, and allowing them to slip back through walls to regenerate. :smallsmile: (Which, I'll note, at least two WotC adventures did...)

-O

It's an average of 7 points of healing per turn, factoring in recharges, and assuming that everybody is in the burst. Significant, yeah, but I don't think at level 6 it's enough, *by itself* to account for the length of the combat.

The encounter design sounds a bit like it was set up to be "draggy". Movement difficulties, optimal terrain for the enemies, healing... it all adds together to create a combat that sounds like a slog. Add in a leader-heavy party, and a moderate amount of table-delay (especially after the first hour of combat), and I could see it all coming together to create a 6-hour encounter.

obryn
2012-08-07, 12:37 PM
The encounter design sounds a bit like it was set up to be "draggy". Movement difficulties, optimal terrain for the enemies, healing... it all adds together to create a combat that sounds like a slog. Add in a leader-heavy party, and a moderate amount of table-delay (especially after the first hour of combat), and I could see it all coming together to create a 6-hour encounter.
Yep, I agree 100%. These are the things a new DM only learns through experience.

Now, one of the other things a new DM learns is when a fight has gone on quite long enough and it's time to bring things to a close. :smallsmile: I've run into this on occasion where I just didn't think things all the way through. Some ideas might have been....

* Have the Dragonborn go berserk when bloodied. Decrease all his defenses by 2 (maybe his AC by 4 if he's a soldier), remove any marking/defending ability and add an extra ... 3 damage to all his attacks should be enough. Maybe 1d6 if you want.

* Stop rolling for the healing recharges. Maybe they ran out of juice.

* Shake up something with the terrain - punch a hole in the wall, for example, after a missed attack. Should this cause a leak in the hull ... well, there's your time pressure.

* On a boat, fire is a great reason to stop messing around.

Again, though, no criticism of a new DM implied, here. It's a learned skill.

-O

kyoryu
2012-08-07, 01:11 PM
* Stop rolling for the healing recharges. Maybe they ran out of juice.


"Forgetting" things is one of my favorite ways to fudge without fudging. Forgetting abilities, OAs, recharges... heck, even entire turns can swing a fight pretty easily without having to once fudge a number.

And, agreed, no criticism of the DM is intended. These can be tough lessons to learn, I just wanted to point a few of them out.

Unfortunately, "slow combat" is one of the things that tends to become a vicious circle. The slower combat is, the more bored players get, and the more distracted they get when it's not their turn. This can lead to table talk, and players being unprepared when it's their turn... which makes the combat go even slower, exacerbating the very things that are making it slow.

I'd seriously like to do an experiment with number of players at a table and see how adding a single player impacts combat time for an "even" encounter. My guess is that it's significantly non-linear.

obryn
2012-08-07, 01:24 PM
I'd seriously like to do an experiment with number of players at a table and see how adding a single player impacts combat time for an "even" encounter. My guess is that it's significantly non-linear.
My personal experience concurs.

I've run 4e for anywhere from 4 to 8 people at the same table, and the increase is significant. For starters, more PCs = more monsters, usually. Second, more players = more time between turns = more distraction.

I think also that 1 player playing 2 characters takes significantly longer than 2 players playing 2 characters.

-O

Alejandro
2012-08-07, 01:31 PM
The ship was actually enchanted such that it could not catch fire (because they were smuggling a red dragon in the hold.) Otherwise we would have set the boat on fire. :)

obryn
2012-08-07, 01:43 PM
The ship was actually enchanted such that it could not catch fire (because they were smuggling a red dragon in the hold.) Otherwise we would have set the boat on fire. :)
Okay then. :)

Let's add a new idea:

* The red dragon escapes! And eats the kobolds! :smallsmile:

-O

Alejandro
2012-08-07, 02:04 PM
After we had killed both dragonlings and one of the kobolds, the dragonborn tried to escape, while the remaining kobold tried to release the dragon on us. The dragonborn failed (because I used both of my daily spells on him to help stop him) and the kobold succeeded. We then fled for our lives :)

TheKoalaNxtDoor
2012-08-07, 08:50 PM
Hmm, you guys are more efficiant at 4e than my party is... Of course, for us, DnD is pretty social, with lots of side talking. There's also only three players, so we all play two characters apiece. And we eat dinner and snack as we play. Combat for us tends to take about 2-3 hours.

To speed things up, we like to do "Swift actions." If you make your move in 5 seconds or less on your turn, you get a +1 bonus to attack rolls for being so swift and quick with your attack. Take too long, however, and you just make a basic attack against the nearest guy.

We also do the "Low defense, high defense" thing mentioned before.

huttj509
2012-08-07, 09:33 PM
Hmm, you guys are more efficiant at 4e than my party is... Of course, for us, DnD is pretty social, with lots of side talking. There's also only three players, so we all play two characters apiece. And we eat dinner and snack as we play. Combat for us tends to take about 2-3 hours.


That's not a bad thing.

Unless someone's complaining combat takes too long.

There are many conventions among gaming groups that vary. I've been in different campaigns, in the same system, with the same people, where some were relaxed 'hang out' type games, and some were 'srs business, keep things moving' style.

It's one of those variables that can go however you like as long as everyone has the same expectations, but if people differ in what they expect/want it can grate quickly.

Nu
2012-08-08, 05:38 PM
Monsters that have powers that heal have been mostly phased out in later editions of the monster manuals for precisely this reason, so I'd advise using them very sparingly to your DM.

Dralnu
2012-08-09, 09:23 AM
I'm running a group of 4-6 lvl 7's through Madness at Gardmore Abbey and encounters take about 40min on average.

Some things that can help:

1) Newer monsters hit harder and die faster. I remember the old monsters from Keep on the Shadowfell were atrociously statted to hit for nothing and had insane defences and health. Your players shouldn't miss often and combat shouldn't last more than 5 rounds unless it's a boss fight.

2) The DM should limit the amount of planning amidst combat. After all, if the PCs are engaged in combat and each round represents 6 seconds of game time, each player shouldn't have 5minutes before their turn to ask others what they should do. Players should be keeping tabs on what's going on and have an idea of what they want to do before their turn comes up. Also reading what your ability does before you declare using it is very helpful. Saying "I use X power" and then having to look up what it does slows down stuff. I encourage my players to also hold their initiative if they haven't figured out what they're doing yet.

3) The DM should avoid using too many "defensive" monsters that can drag combat on. Defensive buffs should be used sparingly and I absolutely avoid heal abilities. Don't hesitate to make some monsters reckless if it suits them too. For example, I decided that the aptly named "orc berserkers" in Madness would use their high HP to charge straight through my party's frontliners, taking AoOs to get to the squishy PCs. This made encounters more deadly while shortening combat by a couple rounds as well.