New world campaign

[clockworkjoe]

That's easy for you to say but 4E combat is too complex and crunchy for me to juggle both keep tracking of monster abilities, status conditions, etc and roleplay them at the same time. By paragon tier, PCs can lay down numerous daily and encounter powers that alter what a monster can or can't do and the battlefield itself.  There are no built in stunting mechanics in 4E that I am aware of and keeping track of the base combat rules with a large group takes up too much of my attention as it is. Adding even more rules and mechanics would just add to the complexity. Plus, 4E combat is about efficiency and teamwork -balancing stunting rules so that they weren't overpowered (and thus abused) or underpowered (which no one would use) would take a lot of time to fine tune.   I could create great set piece battles with my own stunting mechanics and shit but that would take at least a few hours to prep for a single battle.  But I don't have that kind of time so I use the default fights as presented in the books. I can run combat just fine (have you even listened to the APs in other systems where I run combat?) but the game mechanics of D&D (3E or 4E) prevent me from being as creative with combat as I could in other systems.

3E combat was bad because some classes had no options (fighter and rogues) while others had too many options (spellcasters). In 4E, all classes have the same number of options but the inherent problems remain - combat is designed as a resource management challenge - reducing enemy HP to 0 while using the bare minimum of assets and resources to do so. Monsters are fine tuned to be a challenge to a specific level of PCs and not to be too challenging or not challenging enough.

The thing that pisses me off most about D&D combat is the assumption that a party of adventurers has to have X number of fights before they can rest. This paradigm tries to handcuff DMs into running dungeon crawl adventures since that's the only way that assumption makes sense. Every adventure has to be written in a way that forces PCs to fight 2 or more battles in the space of a few hours. No other game system uses this assumption for so much of its rules - combat, experience, monster design etc.

I'm sure you've run great battles in 4E that were just incredible cinematic experiences but there is no way you could do that without significant prep time.

[Joven]

Plus, you can go all descriptive and narrate each attack beautifully...but there's like 500 to go after that.  It takes a lot to bring down a lot of stuff in 4e unless they're minions, and if they are a minion then it doesn't matter cause you could have sneezed on them particularly violently and watch them explode.  Trying to come up with great rp and descriptions for every or even some attacks would quickly become tiring, seem forced (cause it would be) and probably no one would care anyway.

In their other AP's there's probably less of a divide because in the systems they use combat is usually more 'brutal' than 4e, so each hit matters more, so they can be emphasized more. Plus theres less rounds, and takes less time. Most combats in 4e take an hour or more, so trying to keep everyone engaged in character during math-time for that long could be pretty hard.

[Kroack]

i can't stand D&D combat if it lasts longer than 5 turns. I listen to the New World combats because oftentimes they are hilarious with the players getting grouchier and angrier as they slog onwards.

Maybe that's why I like ORE or BRP combat better, because it goes so much faster.

[mathey]

First off, thanks for the reply Ross! I apologize if the tone of my own was dickish, but its been bugging me every time I listen to the AP. You guys go from wonderfully imaginative fun dudes in every other situation to (seemingly) bored automatons in the D&D combats - and I don't think it has to be that way. Do I have a magical solution? No, unfortunately, I don't. Should I shut up and let you guys play the way you want to? Yes.

But the internet is not a place for wisdom. Its a place for half-assed theories and bad advice!

To respond to your points, I totally agree that adding more crunch to an already crunchy game system would NOT help. I'm running a Paragon D&D campaign with four players, and three of those players can't remember half of their powers or abilities when we can get together to play. As DM, I try to keep more up to date and accurate - yet even with a lot of prep I regularly make bonehead mistakes when it comes to rules decisions, overlook monster powers, and lose track of all those ever mounting conditions/marks/etc. I certainly can't claim mastery of the rules or house rules that make it run as simply as, say, CoC. That just isn't happening.  

But that's not what I'm suggesting.

What I trying to say is - don't look on action scenes as a chore. Don't present them as one. Your lack of enthusiasm for them as DM sounds like its contagious, and that's a shame given that they are basically another type of Spotlight Time for your party and your shared story. Yes, combat in D&D can be full of rules discussions, page citations, and the panicked realization that you don't know what you're doing by rote. But it also can be a centerpiece of your session on par with Cody's evangelical sermon to Carrington (okay, maybe not THAT awesome, but still...).

The players cue off of your presentation (even if they're making dick jokes at your expense) in everything. If you give them a colorful NPC with a funny accent, they're going to react and want to DO things with/to the guy. If you give them a dramatic description of some awe-inspiring or horrific battle seen from a distance, they'll also react and offer descriptions of what their PCs feel about it. And I'd argue that if you give them a vivid sense of a life-and-death struggle with a bunch of monsters, they'll bounce back at you with reactions and cues you can feed off as well.

It doesn't have to be you announcing "ALWAYS DESCRIBE HOW YOU KILL THE MINION". As Joven points out, there's just only so many times you can talk about swinging an axe before it gets to be a draggity drag. What I'm saying, though, is in the introduction of a combat and at critical points throughout, spicing things up with a little description, dialog or color is a good thing. Its also not something that has to be the sole responsibility of the DM; he's just the guy who initiates it, because he's the guy who provides the cue and context. Once you have a bad guy do something more than "he gets a 25" each round, chances are at least one player will pick up on this as an opening to offer their own spicy magic funny bonus narration.

You'd be surprised how satisfying it is to hear once every couple of rounds that "your scimitar sprays green goblin blood across the wall". Does it directly impact the rules or numerical outcome? Nope. Does it require you to have a ton of notes with prepared gory details? Nope. I've heard you improvise MUCH more elaborate things off the top of your head in AP (take for example Carrington's awesomely overwrought language in the aforementioned scene with Cody making like a preacher). Theoretically, you could have just said "Carrington listens and seems convinced", after all. But what fun is that? The fun IS the detail, a lot of the time, even if its just a little snippet you toss out once in a while.

Anyways, apologies again if I came off as a self-appointed asshole. I just think you and your players could find a lot more enjoyment when bashing heads if there's an occasional flourish and sense of how it looks/feels/smells.

[clockworkjoe]

I know all of this and it's easy to say but much harder to carry out in practice in D&D, this campaign in particular.

1. Only Bill, RJ and Dan ever bothered to really master the rules and character optimization. No one else spent much time trying to figure out how to kill shit or use their character to the best of their ability. Hell, Tom hardly ever remembered to mark his targets. Cody, Jason and Tom never cared much for combat while Bill, Mike, RJ and Dan liked combat. 

Thus, the group was suboptimized for combat. Even a normal and easy fight typically took longer than it should have because some players didn't carry their weight and they never did much to work together as a team. Also, HP bloat for monsters.

2. I did describe parts of battle and I kept the battles varied. There was the battle for Bordertown, various gimmick fights that involved traps or hazards. the battle on the goblin hulk and so forth.

3. "You'd be surprised how satisfying it is to hear once every couple of rounds that "your scimitar sprays green goblin blood across the wall". 

Uh, I do that. Sometimes the players like it and sometimes they just wanted me to move on and didn't give a damn about the flavor text.

4. "And I'd argue that if you give them a vivid sense of a life-and-death struggle with a bunch of monsters, they'll bounce back at you with reactions and cues you can feed off as well. "

Only fights by paragon and higher aren't life or death struggles and the players knew that. PCs have too many HP and ways to heal and monsters couldn't deal enough damage to threaten them. Also remember that half of the players never got into combat that much.

Hell, MOST of the players ignored the battle when it wasn't their turn. They didn't pay attention except when it was time for them to attack. They texted, read game books or talked to each other. You don't get reactions and cues from that.

5. Designing great fights in D&D is very time consuming. I think the battle for Bordertown was pretty good but it took me a while to figure out how to run it.

6. I don't think the combat is as bad as you think it is. Listening to a combat is never going to be as fun or engaging as playing in it but I think you're ignoring the good combat that's taken place so far.

[mathey]

4. "And I'd argue that if you give them a vivid sense of a life-and-death struggle with a bunch of monsters, they'll bounce back at you with reactions and cues you can feed off as well. "

Only fights by paragon and higher aren't life or death struggles and the players knew that. PCs have too many HP and ways to heal and monsters couldn't deal enough damage to threaten them. Also remember that half of the players never got into combat that much.

Hell, MOST of the players ignored the battle when it wasn't their turn. They didn't pay attention except when it was time for them to attack. They texted, read game books or talked to each other. You don't get reactions and cues from that.

Well, clearly, the only solution is to KILL SOME BITCHES. Butcher them like sheep! Yes! Bathe in their virtual blood!

...

Ahem.

You know, I think I may be spoiled by the relatively small size of my group. One of them will do sudoku from time to time, but they still keep alert, use teamwork, and get, I don't know, invested in our little minis skirmishes and how they impact the campaign. They don't erupt into cheering after each small victory, admittedly, but I'm used to more Givin' A Damn.

But...if each turn times out at around 1-5 minutes per player (at best) in my group, I can see how that might turn into something like waiting a half hour for your turn in a group with six or more players.

And, yes, combat by audio is probably going to always sound sparser and less engaging than actually seeing people's reactions, the map, the minis, and rolling dice.

Its just that...you all sound so damn depressed in every fight. Like you're biding your time until the Real Game starts again. It makes me sad.

[joecrak]

Granted, this is all pretty fresh in my mind as i've only gotten into this sites stuff in the past few weeks, but Yea ross can be descriptive in the battles, but its not 100% of the time.  And i'd say listening to the combat or as i refer to it the rules heavy portions of the game is incredibly boring for me, but that is to be expected.

One thing i will say is listening to the new world adventures and these podcasts in general got me back into trying to game.  My first taste with 4e was a Living forgotten realms adventure at a local comic book stop and i truly hated it.  The guy dming had no enthusiasm about him at all and it was as if he had just printed out the adventure that morning.  I had made a lv 8 bard/monk hybrid that was more skill heavy than combat oriented, and when it opened up with some skill challenges all the regulars groaned and they just blew right through them. At the end the other players flat out told me the the LFRA or whatever its called is not meant for roleplaying..so that was a waste of 5 hours.

But this past saturday i played in a game that was a variation of keep on shadowfell, and the DM was excited and incredibly descriptive, he rped back and forth with all of the players, and kept bringing up little things here and there that kept raising questions for our characters in game, needless to say it was a blast!

Now both times i had written up some pretty crazy long backstories for the characters, as i try to do, but this past weekend, the fun DM actually took the time to read it over and is keeping in contact with us about possible hooks to be derived form such.

I will always hate the ridiculously high amount of math involved in D&D (im of the belief that the base ac should be 5, and that basically anything from 18 and up should be a hit or success or whatever, C'est la vie) but im quite happy to say that i will be continuing to play 4e thanks to the enthusiastic group i met. Lucky to cause its incredibly hard to find groups around me!

[rayner23]

Mathey - no one's calling you a dick or anything like that. I think you bring up some great points and they have generated an excellent discussion, so don't worry about pissing anyone off, because you haven't. Ross doesn't go into vivid detail for all of us because we'd be total dicks to him. In fact, there are sessions where I will say, "Set the scene, Ross. Immerse me in this world" basically because I don't want him to say things like, "The moon's rays kiss the clouds and illuminate the camp site as the sounds of the night's cricket's make their cacophony of sound become an orchestra of chirping."

You make excellent points, but it won't work for our group because . . . well . . . we're assholes. We're only concerned with our character story arcs and advancing the plot. Maybe that's why we talk through fights so often. Sure, we could kill a minotaur, but it would just be faster to greet him with, "may you bathe in the blood of orphans," make a few bluff checks and move on to recruit whatever thing we have to fight this week.

[Sriad]

Slow does not effect teleport speed!  It says right in the condition description!  "This speed applies to all your movement modes, but it does not apply to teleportation or to a pull, a push, or a slide."  How did you have "arguments" about it?

Anyway, love the podcast and APs.  In my group we're usually more concerned with broad world building than individual PC plot lines, so I'm very interested in other play styles and group dynamics.  Keep up the good work!

[Ryo]

I don't have a problem with the battles. I find it interesting to see what tactics are used and how the players react to things.

[Mckma]

I think the real strength of combat in 4E is it is robust combat that you can really delve into if you want.  This is also a disadvantage as it is difficult to use it less or blow through combat quickly.  Anyway, while you can do a lot of description and roleplaying during combat, I prefer to do interesting things with combat.  I guess what I'm saying is in a lot of other systems combat is, well boring, it's truly largely roll to hit, then roll damage (with minor exceptions, Savage Worlds, Call of Cthulhu, Mutants and Masterminds (I'm pretty sure), are a few examples that I can pull off the top of my head).  However with the expanded hit points and healing, all of the powers that apply conditions that can be used in conjunction with each other, the multitude of jockeying and positioning powers, and all of the buffs and such, things are just a lot more varied.  Yes I can totally see people getting annoyed and caught up in the math and complexity, but I enjoy it.  The other thing (at least compared to pretty much every system I've played), combat is both long enough and easy enough to set up that you can do a lot of interesting things.  Just looking through the manual, finding a couple monster roles that have "proper experience" (thank goodness they got rid of EL values), reskinning them if necessary, then you can focus on the battlefield or adding a skill challenge or something.  There are at least several examples of interesting combat battlefields on the Penny Arcade blog (from Mike's game), and another one that I've been wanting to try is an icy battle field filled with large rocks or other barriers where characters slide until they hit something, and do somewhat of a puzzle within combat of trying to actually reach the enemies.

So yeah, long story short, you can definitely work in more roleplaying, but I think the strength is, you don't have to (as you might with other systems) to make combat interesting and riveting.  The flip side is, you can't really have quick or simple fights...

[beowuuf]

I think the only way to blow through some lesser combats would be to handle it like a separate skill challenge while also having something else going on. You use your attack actions to generate successes, the DC is of course the defense of the monster, you don't track hit point damage, just successes (number of dice damage and any special effects count as a succcess) and you have something bad happen if the party fail to stop certain monsters before a certain number of failures.

I think usually roleplaying ceatures with less than perfect tactics, sensibilities, or stupid tactics (that suit their drives) can make dragging combats faster. And it doens't have to be a cake walk - if you are playing to lose, throwing everythign at the controller who isn't expecting it can still throw the party into a spin.

I think the skill challenge nature of the final round of combat with brighteyes probably shows how an RPPR 4E game needs to go - the mechanics are there, but damage rolls, etc weren't the point and weren't going to get tracked. It was all about the RP harm.

[Dom]

I’d like to point out a great resource for making combat more interesting: Stalker0's Guide to Anti-Grind
The main facts are:

1. Higher level creatures- Higher hit points and higher defenses means that they take longer to hit. Instead of adding two high-level creatures, add several lower level creatures.

2. Soldiers and Controllers can lead to grind. Soldiers generally have higher defenses and that means PCs are likely to miss more, which is never fun. Use brutes instead of soldiers, since they have less defense but higher HP. Be careful with Controllers using dazing effects, since it effectively makes PCs useless. Also, make sure to spread attacks to several PCs with controllers, not pick on a single one (A player whose character is dazed round after round is likely to not have much fun).

3. Minions are great, since they go down easily. Also, instead of attacking, occasionally have them provide flanking and use Aid Another to give a +4 attack bonus to more dangerous enemies.

4. Use terrain a lot! It gets boring to fight in an 8x8 grid all the time, and D&D provides lots of great terrain features to use. Traps that can be sprung by PCs or the enemy (or even controlled by PCs!) difficult terrain, skill challenges  during combat, obstacles that can provide cover, elevated areas to push people from,  damaging tiles like lava pits and burning structures, holy sites that provide bonuses or evil areas that provide penalties. Combat becomes much less predictable and a lot more fun.

I really recommend reading the guide and applying some of those ideas to spice up combat. I also recommend checking out the Building Encounters chapters on the DMG 1 and 2 since they provide some good advice on making combat more interesting.

[mathey]

Cody: you are right. I was wrong. Ross's combats don't suck. His players suck!

Here is my fantasy about how combat color would improve the game:

Ross: A minotaur is guarding the entrance, accompanied by a group of gnolls.

Players: We offer to give the minotaur dead babies.

Ross: The baleful minotaur raises his massive greataxe and charges! The gnolls let out a horrible cackle as they draw their cruel short swords from their sheaths, joining the cloven beast in its attack upon your persons!

Players: shit on tits etc.

Ross: OKAY FINE! ORCUS APPEARS AND EATS YOUR FACES!

Players: Oh dear!

Ross: (Insert Amazing Description of Orcus Eating PC's Faces)

Players: Wow! We have been playing this wrong! Now we will be team players and help Ross make combat more flavorful for our amazing listeners! Especially Mathey!

I can dream.

[Dom]

...

Ross: A minotaur is guarding the entrance, accompanied by a group of gnolls.

...

Players: Wow! We have been playing this wrong! Now we will be team players and help Ross make combat more flavorful for our amazing listeners! Especially Mathey!

But then  listeners would be pissed since Minotaurs would never fight alongside Gnolls since Baphomet and Yeenoghu are enemies.

/Completely-Missing-the-Point