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While the increasing length of combats is certainly a big reason for P and E mods taking longer, I also hope that the non-combat part of P and E mods will be designed to take much longer than during H.

Uncovering the conspiracy to replace the current sultan of the city of Brass should not done in the same time than saving the dirt farmer's wive from the nearby ogre tribe.

Jan 23, 2010 -- 6:31PM, Elder_basilisk wrote:

Jan 23, 2010 -- 5:25PM, Matt_James wrote:

Comparing previous editions will show how quickly and efficiently games run at this level in 4e.  And don't get me wrong- I still LOVE 2.x and 3.x games and the cool aspects of those levels.  But man, it took FOREVER it seemed.

Hmmm. I seem to recall running APL 12-18 mods in 4 hours on a regular basis back in LG. And I never had one go overtime by more than an hour or so. On the other hand, every paragon mod I have played has taken at least six hours and that's only level 11. If that's the comparison we're using, it seemed to take forever then. It actually does take forever now.

I've played nearly every paragon mod available, and I've never had one go for longer than 3.5 hours as a player. High-APL LG mods were the same thing. I think it's certainly doable to get 3 paragon tier combats into a 4-hour mod, but players need to learn to speed up their turns a bit.

Jan 24, 2010 -- 10:47AM, bgibbons wrote:

The character sheet generated by the CB (which is effectively the campaign-standard character sheet) is ill-suited for managing the number of options a paragon character has.  It's not even particularly well-suited for managing a heroic character.  If a player doesn't have a good handle on what their PC can do, they end up flipping aimlessly through their cards trying to figure out what their next move is and whether they've forgotten the perfect power for dealing with the situation.

Truth be told, even before power cards this was a problem with players.  With power cards it seems to be exacerbated, but what it really points to is a lack of planning on the player.  Personally, I have played in many heroic tier games (haven't hit paragon yet) where player turns last forever then it gets to my turn, I'm done in 15-30 seconds, then it's back to a bunch of long turns.  The same issue: players digging through powers while deciding what to do.

Part of this is not having a firm grasp on what their characters can do but, IMO, a big part of it is lack of player attention.  When it's not your turn you should be thinking of what you want to do on your next turn as well as other possibilities in case your original plan goes awry (because your intended target gets curb stomped by the barbarian or an ally moves into your planned area attack, etc.).  Maybe I played to much chess as a kid so I am used to planning ahead, but this is my observation.  Too often the DM calls someone's turn and they turn away from their buddy or their iPhone to finally look at the board, then look at their powers and try to figure out what to do, sometimes askign questions about what's happened.

I see it when I DM, but as I've only DM'd heroic and it hasn't caused anythign to run long (yet) I generally keep my mouth shut.  If I DM any Paragon mods and I see this happen I woudl definitely tell the table that people don't pay attention and plan between turns they may not finish the mod and not bat an eye if they come up short.  It's their time, they can do with it as they will after all.

EDIT: I should try what I used to do in LG when DMing.  I used to have a set of rules I gave the table when I sat down to DM:
1. In combat, when I call your turn if you don't give me your actions within a reasonable amount of time (within a minute, that might need to be adjusted for 4e since it's beyond "I swing my sword at this guy") I will delay you and move on, checkign back with you when the next turn is done.
2. No time travel.  When you have rolled your attack(s) and totalled damage I will ask you if you have added all bonuses.  Once I move on to another turn there's no going back with "Oh, I should have added this," or "I should have rolled another XdY."  And this cuts both ways, and believe me, I have forgotten or messed up a few doozies in my day that seriously benefitted the players.

Both of those sound a lot more harsh than they are.  When I tell the players up front this is to keep things moving they were always appreciative and usually did what I mentioned above: planned ahead between turns so when their turn came up they were ready.