4E - Samey Battles from Dwarves to Dragons
Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 08:56PM Last week I mentioned that I was considering quitting 4E. I started soft with my gripes about skill challenges (and received some excellent advice in the process—watch for the précis on that soon, or visit those comments to benefit from the wisdom of others right now).
Today I’m writing about something much more serious and, I believe much less treatable (but I could be wrong).
4E Battles are Grindy and Boring
Whether your PCs are 1st level or 15th, I’ve found that combat generally rolls out the same way, and this becomes boring. I believe there are several reasons for the universal feel of 4E combat.
1. The Powers System and Blanket Balance
While most classes have a different role, the powers generally function in much the same way and have similar effects (damage, plus a secondary effect for encounter and dailies). You’re most effective when using your powers (not bad in itself, of course), but there’s little reason to explore interesting tactics or additional combat manoeuvres. Less variety means more boring battles.
2. The Marking Mechanic
As a DM you can count on one or more of your critters being marked every round, which forces you to “decide” between simply attacking the marker, or acting normally and being dealt automatic damage or provoking OAs that may halt you in your clawed tracks while dealing damage anyway.
It's a frustrating form of aggro “management” that used to be accomplished through positioning, teamwork, and skills. Marking takes what few options a creature or PC has and further reduces them, making round after round play out exactly the same, which is compounded by points 3 and 4. Worse, there’s no defence against PC marking as the marks occur whether you’re hit or missed, so they are as effective against a dwarf as they are against a dragon at every level.
The marking mechanic (or more accurately, my dragon's unwillingness to risk losing his movement and taking extra damage on his turn, every turn) ruined that particular solo encounter, and homogenized many of the rest of them. I would prefer that marking wasn’t a part of the game.
Unfortunately, I believe that its lack would break the defender role and have further consequences to the system as written, so there's no easy solution that I can see.
If this is 4E, that dragon is screwed...
3. Bloated Hit Points
Creatures have lots of hit points, which take time to work through. Limited options and samey powers can make the trip from full to bloodied to death a grind.
4. Monsters With No Bite
To balance out the mounds of HP that the DM commands, most monsters deal very little damage and cause few lasting effects (even grievous wounds from solo creatures are healed with minor actions and pockets filled with healing surges). This keeps the combat manageable for the PCs, but helps drag out the battle in both directions.
5. A System Fearful of Hurting its Players (in some situations)
This one’s a bit hazy, so I’ll use a recent example to illustrate. My gargoyle manoeuvred around the ranger and attempted to bull-rush him into a river of lava.
As I recall it took five rolls to carry this out (two from the gargoyle, two from the ranger as he attempted his OA and a power that may have saved him, and one from an allied PC well across the room trying to teleport his companion out of harm’s way). Any one of those rolls could have ended the whole event, and I wouldn’t have complained if any of them had.
However, none of them did, but the result-by-the-rules simply forced the ranger to fall prone in his square—what would have been the result of my gargoyle’s flyby attack anyway! In this instance I placed my gargoyle at greater risk by not using a flyby attack, traded in my normal damage to deal none, and I had to roll twice as much to do it! Hardly streamlined; certainly unsatisfying.
On later reflection, even the players thought it was a poor moment for the system, maybe preferring that their ally plunge into the hazard (which really only would have damaged him a round before he climbed out) rather than feel that 4E is toothless in any respect.
As a side note, our goal was simply to experience 4E at multiple levels, so we decided to avoid any house ruling during the session. This particular example is, therefore, an easy future fix with a houserule or two, but I believe there's a trend.
My Opinion for Now
Battles in 4E are fine, and can certainly entertain, but they don’t seem to offer the tactical player or DM much depth outside of using your powers when the opportunities present. Combat seems limited. In some cases at least, 4E discourages actual tactical play in favour of "tactical" positioning as a part of powers and often only hinted at in flavour text.
I’m eager to hear about your experiences, similar or otherwise, and whether you’ve had any of the same concerns in your game.
Thanks for reading.
4E, Combat, Grind in 4E, Combat Tactics, Game Design 
Reader Comments (22)
I have started sometimes cutting monster HP in half. That cuts out a lot of grind. I also use a significant amount of minions. They make the battles really deadly for PCs in large numbers, and they cut some grind as well. Many attack rolls per round mean that many hit, even if they are small damage hits and the attackers can't even take a punch. It also makes the PCs feel threatened at the start of the battle, and makes them feel really tough as the battle continues. Also gives the wizard something to do.
For marks, I typically move the monsters before they attack. That way I get to see if I can escape the fighters. If not, I just attack the fighters. This is the same result as if the monsters had not moved at all, except it helps to cut the grind. I let the fighters have their fun, the monsters die quicker, and I play the monsters like they have an adjenda other than just standing and trading swings with the fighter. It might not be exactly what the monster would do if they had perfect knowledge of the rules and any tactical acumen, but it does make the fights seem more fun.
I would be curious about whether you use a lot of minions. They have improved my 4e play drastically. 4e was meant for minions.
Exactly what PrecociousApprentice said. I half the number of monster Hit Points and use lots of Minions too, and that's made the world of difference to combat length.
I participated in the World Wide D&D Game Day Player's Handbook 2 event at a local hobby shop and I have to agree that I found combat encounters required an insane amount of time to complete. It took nearly two hours to finish the initial combat encounter and we ended up running out of time before we could make it to the end. Granted we rolled horribly for hits and damage but it just seemed to take forever to grind a monster down. I wonder if automatically making all hits do max damage (for players & GM) would streamline the combat some?
Mike Mearls' advice on making combats more interesting (for those of you who find it boring, It's not been the case for me) is the creation of terrain hazards that can use the improvisation rules from DMG Page 42. Pushing rocks on monsters, or putting devices in the encounter that PCs can use like giant mounted crossbows or whatever, can contribute to creating a situation where the player or a monster has an option aside from using powers.
There can be as much variety in an environment as is actually put there. If there's a chandelier in the encounter, or a brazier, or a window, but your DM doesn't let you do anything with any of them, they are dressing, when they could have been interesting.
I've been running my games online and have, thus far, not altered any monster health up or down. I use minions in about 1/3 of the fights and they make up anywhere from a quarter of the encounter to about a half. I've found that some of the fights are long, but that they don't really drag out. There are plenty of monsters with recharge/encounter abilities which tend to keep things interesting along with the fact that there isn't less variety in the fights.
I recently helped a friend DM his 3.5 game and he handed an encounter to me. I put in a few buildings, a couple of piles of hay and that was about it for a fight against some satyrs. It was, to me, the most boring fight in existence. The players dropped the monsters after one, sometimes two attacks and the monsters did piddling damage to the group. I'd have needed at least 5-6 fights of that type, without resting and healing in between for the party, to have even threatened one of them. Sure players jumped up on the rooves to get +1 to hit from height, but this didn't seem all that more varied than any 4e fight with tons of powers being thrown around.
Now, if the powers bore you (which I can see, even if I don't feel that way), what Wyatt said is really key. Put stuff into the encounter that players can use and, if they aren't too creative, point it out to them. I've had people doing acrobatic stunts to do wall-kicks, running over pits, pushing enemies into traps that the player's activated, and using a variety of other "items" in rooms/dungeons/etc to make the battles more interesting. Now, this may sound like I'm houseruling alot, but not by much. Stunts are under Acrobatics, poorly defined, but allow for +1/+2 bonuses here or there.
As for bullrushing/etc. I never saw -anyone- in 3.5 actually attempt it. It seemed harder to use and more difficult to pull off than it is in 4e. We've had a few games where players successfully (and unsuccessfully) pushed enemies off cliffs, towers, houses, into lakes, pits, etc. Of course, this has happened to the players too.
I've DM'd some long 4e combats, but the party escapes by the skin of their teeth, leading the wounded and temporarily incapacitated from the battlefield. There is a lot of sighing and brow-wiping around the table, but smiles too.
Many monsters have powers to limit their foes. This can speed up combats by taking a party member out for a round or two (until they make their save.)
I haven't run more than a handful of dragons in 30 years of RPGing, but any 4e ones I eventually run will deal with the biggest threat first (usually the pesky Striker) whether they've been marked or not. I interpret marking as a form of intimidation, something a humanoid isn't likely to have much success with versus a dragon.
*nodding* It's early in the day, but I'd like to mention that every one of you has given me some super advice on changing the environment or my DMing to address my problems with 4E. I REALLY appreciate that. I expected several comments from people just telling me to get over it, so:
Thanks to PrecociousApprentice, Greywulf, Resurrected Gamer, Wyatt, Dawn Raven, and Anarkeith.
Some of this stuff I've tried before (I make it a rule to create encounters with some kind of interesting features, like breakable columns, crash-throughable walls, pits of lava, etc.). I've never had a chat with my current players about their play style, though, and I've used only a handful of minions before. The advice about halving hit points is pretty interesting, too—I noticed that the average brute in 4E has close to double the HP of our defender(s), which seems excessive.
It seems like many 4E players (at least, those posting here) are making some simple, but broad house rules to adjust their game. While house rules are nothing new, I think it's interesting to note the trend, particularly for the basics like hit point totals.
Great advice, gamers! Keep it coming!
When you say that "many 4E players (at least, those posting here) are making some simple, but broad house rules to adjust their game", I think you are making the information fit your pre-conceived ideas. I count 2 people that make HP changes, and 4 that run RAW, but with more thought put into combat scenery and options. Seems to me like the minority are finding that there is a problem.
Additionally, I would argue that you are dead wrong on the "discouraging tactical positioning". I've never played a version of DnD before this one that even caused players to think about tactical positioning - now you have players actively flanking, marking, hit and running - stuff that was just rarely done before.
Finally, are you willing to consider that you are not playing monsters effectively? Many creatures have powers that let them shift away from marking opponents, tie up strikers to limit their mobility and generally bang up casters. Are you using a mix of creature types? Are you putting thought into the encounter so that there are lots of interesting things to use and tactical challenges to overcome? In short, are you creating interesting combat encounters using monsters that you understand? If you aren't, then I think you should try.
However, I will agree with you on the subject of Solo creatures in 4e. If you don't put them in a dynamic environment, then combat can be... lengthy - and probably not so much fun. Chewing through half a thousand hit points in a straight-up slugfest is not the way I want to spend my gaming evening.
I'll just post my thoughts to the blog post, at the risk of repeating what several have already said, but these are my experiences and opinions:
1. The damage expressions on page 42 for stunts and maneuvers are comparable to at-will and encounter powers, so there is quite an incentive for the players to engage in such tactics, provided that kind of interactive backdrop exists for the fight. My players are always throwing monsters off ledges, pushing them into fires, hurtling braziers at them, knocking things down on them, and I have my monsters do the same thing (which is how I initially encouraged them to start doing these things). In a varied environment, there's almost no end to "extra powers" you can come up with and the DM has the rules on hand to adjudicate them with a glance, so the game doesn't slow down while he has to look up anything. For me, dynamic backgrounds seem to be a big part of why my group doesn't experience the grind some people talk about. Although, combat does take a long time. My groups going rate for both 3e and 4e has been one combat a session, two maybe if we are in a dungeon and its just room to room. I miss the old half hour combats of 1e. I guess, in recollecting, 2e really started this bloat in combat time. I wonder how to scale that back a bit, or maybe more valuable, how to speed up what we got.
2. Marking is meant to be a benefit for the defender, not a reason to let a combat grind to just an exchange of blows from static positions. When I threw a dragon at my group, I kept him moving despite being marked or having other effects. He provoked a lot of OAs at the same time he denied the group a lot of easy power usage because he was often in the air or wouldn't stay in one place and they had to keep chasing him through a difficult battlefield. The battle was long but it was never boring, the PCs were always trying to find better positions and avoid getting grouped, the dragon tried to stay airborne much of the time, one of the PCs tried to damage some cave wall above the dragon at one point to get some rocks to shower down on him. Point is, marking isn't meant to stop movement or target choice, just to make it hurt. And it only works on one enemy at a time, of course.
3 and 4 are related, or at least this suggestion is. I've not tried it myself, but there was a discussion about this at EnWorld and some posters said they've been halving monster HPs and doubling their damage output. If you just halve monster hps, the challenge level of the game goes way down. Monsters only lasting half as long pose half the threat. If you ramp up damage though, monsters do the same damage over the shorter period of time that they last. Seems like it could be a decent way to go. Also, upping hit rates can certainly help. See the must have feat of PHB2 that does just that, Implement/Weapon Mastery.
5. Save or fall off something is pretty age old and players are worse at saving in 4e than in previous editions, since its a flat 55% and not often much higher. Of course you often have to do some work to get them into that position, but many monsters aren't short on the forced movement. I ran a fun encounter which had the PCs fighting orcs mounted on wyverns while they were on a bridge over a chasm. The wyverns bull rushed a lot and knocked a couple of them off, which was delightful. PCs survived the fight with only two standing (of 6) and one needed some serious luck to survive. He was down the chasm, on his second failed death save and the nearest stabilizing PC was 3 rounds away. He chucked a 20 on his next save.
My .02 : )
I reduced the HP of all monsters except the brute class by 30% or so. This made a big difference, while still having a "tank" class of monster for those fights that are supposed to be meatgrinders.
Lots of minions. Minions + Controllers = very scared party : ) Your creature synergies are very important!
Powers...Marking and such is driving me nuts too. I JUST instituted a houserule dropping all marking type effects and such, and allowing the players an additional daily.
I am currently knee-deep in a novel idea, I am trying classless play, with the players being able to choose any powers from any classes, restricted only by power source. Still tuning it up, but it sure SOUNDED cool : ) Of course it all started when the wizard asked if he could have a BIG familiar...
4E is really hit and miss for me so far, I miss some aspects of 3.5, but overall see it as an improvement. It just needs tweaking!
@Donny: classless play huh? sounds interesting but what do you do for starting skills, hit points, defense bonuses, and also the class features?
Oh yea, halving HP that's what I do also though I've been trying to figure out a way to roll for hit points on a monster for a couple of reasons.
Another solution is to increase monster damage. I haven't messed around with this one too much in game but plan on doing so soon. I'm trying to give level 1 characters that sense of danger that seems to be missing. I've experienced a level 1 tpk as an adventurer before but we practically waded into a sea of goblins and were doing great for awhile, in fact I felt almost like my character was invincible through the first 8 or 9 goblins so I thought, hell what's 8 or 9 more.
I haven't got a good method set for increasing monster damage though, something along the lines of increasing the amount of damage die roll based on monster role and adding 1/2 the monsters level to the damage roll.
I think increasing monster damage might also help with the marking problem. A defender still gets the tools to do his job but will think twice before getting in over his head. The monster may have to risk an opp attack if they don't want to be next to the defender but the danger of increased damage evens it out.
I think one of the factors that caused you problem 3 was the way you handled problem 2. You shouldn't avoid getting combat challenge or opportunity attacks. Just roll with the punches, and move on. My combats run fast with normal HP because I'm not afraid of taking damage. The ranged archers and mages of my group are usually attacked (and sometimes got unconscious) this way. This approach made my players much more happy using their abilities, and the combats never drag.
Problem 4 is solved interacting with the environment and traps, like suggested. Problem 5 is very specific, imho. And I don't think that numer 1 is a problem at all, as the basic mechanics can differ quite a bit, specially now that PHB2 is out.
I also want to say that I really like this blog, and I'm happy to see you trying 4e, even loving both editions and your material for both. Cheers!
@ Kaoesdad - I would likely either set a single average, or was toying with having players choose their classes out of the book as more of an archetype, gaining all the crunchy bits associated including power source, THEN allowing them to branch out and free-form their power selection. Meanwhile the "class" is itself discarded in terms of the character role/concept.
With everything balanced to the nth degree, it is quite theoretically possible to have some pretty out-of-the-box character concepts that don't break the system...I think :)
Here are some suggestions I've read about (my group's DM is currently using RAW and, with the exception of one fight that even he admits wasn't dynamic enough, we're enjoying playing 4e so far):
1. As others have suggested, use lots of minions. But when minions aren't appropriate or you want just a couple tough monsters, carefully look at the roles each monster is assigned. For instance, two brutes and a solo monster can make things grind, especially if there is nothing to account for or to use within the environment. In 4e, the party composition of the monsters is as important as the PCs.
2. One of the house rules I've read involves lowering all monsters defenses by 2. They argue that it makes the math work better in that your PCs have a greater chance to hit. This seems to be mesh with the developers have discovered and created the weapon/implement mastery feats to address. Keep in mind that if you use this house rule normally but want to a particular monster to be really tough, you don't modify its defenses at all or only lower them by 1.
3. Have a monster act according to how you think it would act regardless of the mark effect. For instance, a goblin with low hp would likely run away if its hp got low regardless of the OA it would provoke. A dragon would probably ignore any creature who marked it to attack the one most likely to do the most damage to it or to attack as many PCs as possible. A werewolf might furiously attack anyone who damaged him when placing the mark regardless of how tactically disadvantaged it makes him.
4. One last thing, not that it necessarily deals with the grind, but encouraging your players either in-game or out-of-game to continue to on, even when resources are diminished, really makes each encounter feel different from each other. PCs entering into an encounter at full strength act much different than PCs who enter into an encounter with only a handful of healing surges or no dailies left. Trust me, a defender who knows their healer is mostly spent and that he only has 1-2 surges left is going to be really reluctant to go straight up with the fully healthy, damage dealing, bad-ass monster threatening the party.
Hope this helps.
Wow, this post is really timely. At least a few of us must be on the same wavelength because I've been holding off writing a blog post of my own about my growing dissatisfaction with 4E - I'm just holding off until I'm sure it's not just a series of lukewarm sessions.
I find 4E combat and general game style to be getting old pretty quickly. In addition, I'm starting to think that it's a terrible game to bring in MMO players into the roleplaying hobby because they can't separate MMO style play from the roleplaying side of 4E. Of the 6 teenage kids I GM for, 4 play MMOs regularly and none of them have been able to move beyond the "we move from room to room spawning monsters and killing them" style of play despite having played 4E for the past 6-months. They're still regularly making "I click the accept mission" and "where's the next spawn location" kind of comments. The other two players, neither of which is a MMO player, are also finding the game frustrating because of its emphasis on combat - One told me today that "Anything my character can do that is actually cool involves a combat power; the rest of my stuff are just roll modifiers that get used once in a while." It's really sad when a 14-year-old tells you "I can't imagine playing this game every week for a couple years straight" especially since I spent much of my teen years playing red box & AD&D twice a week, 52 weeks a year, and couldn't get enough of it.
Of course that game involves 14-17 year-olds so maybe it's not a representative sample but it's very disappointing. My adult 4E group is better but the game is still pretty heavily dependent on combat encounters to make characters cool.
I'm still waiting to pass judgment on the game since I want another few months of regular play to know for sure. However, I'm thankful that 4E (or D&D in general) is not my normal game of choice these days because my gut tells me that the game doesn't really have a great deal of long-term playability to it.
Ahhh... these kinds of discussions are why I like blogging. :)
To Wickedmurph: You're right, but I think you'll see from many of the new comments that there is some dissatisfaction with 4E. It's hardly important, though. I shouldn't generalize.
I disagree with your disagreement about tactical positioning. ;) I think 4E encourages less thought about where you put character, even if he/she ends up getting moved around as a result of powers (yours, or some other creature's). My real point is that the payoff for tactical positioning seems lessened because of how powers work, but I believe there's a comment further on that may prove that, with a bit of ingenuity, you can (and should) look for ways to harm your enemy outside of the power system.
Oh, and yes, I am definitely open to the idea that I could improve the game by improving my DMing, which is why I posted my experiences.
<B>Thasmodius, thank you! I had never read the example on Page 42 of the DMG before, and it is EXACTLY what I was looking for in terms of incentive for the PCs to explore doing something awesome rather than just standing there using an at-will power, again.
I find that players seldom take advantage of interesting scenery because they're just more effective with their standard abilities. I will work with my players to encourage this kind of play.
Your wyvern/orc encounter sounds like a lot of fun, by the way. I might need to steal it for an upcoming session. :)
Heya Donny, thanks for the advice and rather positive tone, too. Sounds like we're on the same page in a number of ways. With your advice (and of the other commentors here), I'm certain to have a better session next time.
Welcome to U20, Kaeosdad! (At least, I don't believe you've commented before. ;)
I really like your ideas on increasing damage, and the logic to how it would affect markers really appeals. So far it seems the defenders are fearless, and more often than not I've seen them rolling their eyes when I tell them my damage (even with my elites and solos)! If possible, I'd like to address that, and your ideas may do the trick.
Heya Daniel, thanks for the kind praise and welcome to U20!
I hear what you're saying about OAs, and I admit that my play style when gaming is often to preserve. The problem is "rolling with the punches" often means taking an extended deathy siesta... maybe it's just my players, but they seem to be very good at creating deadly PCs, and those OAs are never worth the trouble...
I asked for less draggy combats, though, and you've answered. I can't deny that my critters geting beat wouldn't speed things up. I just hope I'm still able to provide a decent challenge with kamikaze critters. :)
Thanks again, Daniel. I'm really glad that you like U20!
Donny, be sure to let us know how your classless experiment goes!
Hey John, thanks for the comments.
Marking... yes, I really should just play as if the marks aren't there, shouldn't I? It's a difficult decision to make, but it would address my concerns. I'm worried it would raise new ones, but I think any challenge issues can easily be addressed, especially using 4E's XP system.
I've generally kept a close eye on monster roles, but I'll work on that a bit more as I plan my next session.
MJ, welcome back!
Those are some interesting observations about your different aged gaming groups—I'd like to hear more about how they differ and the kinds of things each group prefers. I'm especially surprised to hear that a 14-year-old wants to do stuff outside of combat, but that's just another generalization. :)
4E has been a mixed bag for me, and I've heard few positive things about it from my players. We're still having fun for the most part... maybe with the tweaks and ideas youv'e all provided I can make it fun the entire session.
If you have something to add, please feel free to comment. To those who've already helped out, thanks again for stopping by, and be sure that I'll use your comments to play better 4E sometime soon. I'll let you know how it goes.
MJ Harnish, what is your game of choice, just out of curiosity?
I so want to like 4E, and I do for single adventure play, but it's proving not to be very much fun for most of us here in terms of weekly play. Unless something drastic changes, the PHB2 will be the last book I buy for the system.
I should make it clear - I'm not an old-school grognard and I hated 3rd edition (the whole D20 system drove me out of D&D for years. I started playing D&D 26 years ago, week after week for the first 8 years or so, and 4E (nor 3/3.5) doesn't recapture any of that magic for me. More importantly, it doesn't seem to work for the school age players around here either - it's too much like a MMO (I know that comparison gets old and cliche but geez, they spot the similarlities IMMEDIATELY) and to be honest, I think WoW does that style better for most of them because their attention spans and "what's fun" is very different from what I love about RPGs. Thus I think introducing a less rigidly bound and defined game would work better for introducing kids to the hobby. I've played a Marvel super heroes hack based on FATE with my own 6-year-old and he roleplays a lot more than the older kids. Interestingly enough he's joined us the last two sessions of the 4E game and it's had the same effect on his play: He choose a power each combat round and just does it...no cool descriptions of his action or questios about "can I do this?" - it's just "Careful strike!" I'm a psychologist by training so I find the behavioral change linked to the system choice fascinating...
@ RPG Ike - My game of choice these days depends on the group and what we're after from the game but my favorites are:
Fantasy - Burning Wheel (if you take the time to learn the system it's amazing, at least for my needs).
Lighter fantasy - Mouse Guard RPG
Most others - FATE / Spirit of the Century hacked
Investigation/Mysteries - One of the GUMSHOE games
General system for instant gaming - PDQ
I also play in a M&M campaign (I don't really like the system though).
Aside from the other stuff I've been writing, I'm now working on a game based on red box D&D/Labyrinth Lord to try out with the school kids. Essentially it will be basic D&D but with a bunch of house rules to open up the game system just a bit.
I guess this topic's a good place to pimp my last blog entry: Eldritch Blaaaast!
Basically I suggest erasing/whiting out power names and descriptions and having the player's come up with their own power names and descriptions. Also I suggest calling powers tactics. Hopefully this will encourage more improvisation and use of pg 42.
I have a couple other houserules on my blog you may want to check out.
I'm a bit late to the party, but here's one trick that will work really well once - timed combat. The cavern is flooding, the building is on fire, or the army will return in an hour; either way, you need to get things done fast. Give each player 30 seconds to take their turn, and if they don't use it, they lose it. The last time I did this, I had players yelling and grabbing for the stopwatch and in general panicking and having a great time. The helpful side-affect is once they realize they can take their turn faster, they generally do so from then on, though not at quite that speed.
Maybe this has been said before but
Halve monster AND player HP.
That is all.
Halve player HP? Actually, that's a new one for me... but you know, it might just address most of my issues with the game without having to tweak monster damage or defenses...
Thanks, CaptPoco!