The average encounter lasts five to seven rounds in Fourth Edition. I don't know where you're getting this idea of "Takes too long from" other than you're way too used to "One round and dones"
Not true actually. Ever see what happens when a guard drake has an adjacent ally? 19 damage to the face.
Standard Rules in 3e, A CR X is supposedly worth four party members of a given level (we all knew and still know that isn't true but just pointing that out)
No you're not encountering a lot of four digit hp at that point. Most monsters at high level have around 110 (there abouts at level 14) which is -nothing- for a level 14 character, or group. Level 20 elite brutes have around 360 (ball park plus or minus 10 or so) 4 digit Hps don't happen until you get to Solo monsters which are meant to be ganged up on anyway, just like the big number hp monsters were supposed to be in 3e. And Solos are not supposed to be "common dime a dozen monsters" either. If they are, you should slap your Dm.
You're doing cross edition comparisons and measuring "Walking gods that destroy reality and balance" to a fun to play Rpg. Of course next to a 3e character a 4e character looks bad. But then again, nothing in Third Edition was RIGHT to start with so that's not a bad thing in the least. Especially since the system takes that into account.
Also, three encounters, and two at wills later, is usually how my high level fights End. Usually -everyone- uses their 3 encounters, maybe an at will once or twice and it's over with a more numerous in monsters fight lasting one to two rounds after that. Meaning, there's no "endless spamming"
Usually Solo Fights end with the following, 3 encounters, 1-2 Dailies, 2 at wills or so.
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Actually, I'm used to 3 rounds or less. Typically 2 or 3. Sometimes 1. 1 happens a lot more with optimization, but you don't get more than 3 unless you made a very mean and/or annoying encounter. So 5-7... yeah, it's dragging. Even if every round is faster there are more rounds, so the fight lasts as long or longer with less of a feel of progress.
Standard rule of 3rd edition = a monster of CR x, where x is the party level is meant to be a routine encounter. Routine was defined as handles 4 a day, spending about 20% resources on each. Which means they were deliberately meant to be pushovers only dangerous via attrition aka the 4th, and maybe the 3rd encounter of the day. If you wanted a challenge, you had to go higher. How is 4th different from that again, if standards are 'way too easy'?
3.x is borked. But don't try to tell me 4.0 isn't. They didn't even think their math through.
See, if you're supposed to have a 50% chance of succeeding at x task, and the difficulty of that task (monster stats) is increasing by 1 a level but your ability to meet that difficulty (your stats) is increasing by 1 per 2 levels that puts you progressively further behind. Up to 15 points in fact. There's also an enhancement bonus of up to +6 in there which lowers that to max 9, but still. 9 points, where every point is 5% means if you do not overcome that gap somehow, where the game specifically tries to prevent you from doing so means you now have a 5% chance of affecting the enemy with anything (50% - 45%) and they have a 95% chance of affecting you with anything (50% + 45%).
Cool. So the gap between optimized and not is even wider. After all before you could at least get your low damage hits to connect if you didn't know your stuff. Don't get me started on skill challenges.
In summary, both editions are borked, and making it out so that only one is, and the other is perfect is simply false. This one is more borked because they screwed up basic concepts.
You see 2-3 rounds for most people is way too short. Five to six is about right.
Standards in fourth, even a standard encounter has the possiblity of killing a party if handled correctly. (aka it's an actual tax on resources not just "Oh I wasted a spell slot")
Actually they did, *thwaps* Your stat's -do- keep up and end up working out just fine. Even against monsters with higher acs (soldiers and solos) you end up hitting fifty percent of the time, (or more) Your stats don't have to equal the monsters, due to the fact you've got items and they don't. You have better powers, you have surges. On average a monster has a fifty percent chance of affecting you. How you can say the math doesn't work out without actually doing any comparisons is beyond my understanding. Given how very little experience you have with the system. You're again stuck in 3e mode of "Everything should be auto succeed" rather than, taking into effect a fifty percent failure rate. Which is actually the real reason encounters last more than three rounds now.
I could waste everyone's time by posting a monster to character comparison but right now quite frankly I'm feeling too lazy to do so. (at Epic, Paragon and Heroic respectively)
Actually the gap between an optimized character and a non optimized character is considerably smaller.
Skill Challenges actually function, even under the standard rules for them the problem is that some Dms think "everything is a hard or moderate DC" without taking into account that multiple checks increases the chances of failure. Skill Challenges only fail when the Dm is stuck in 3e mode.
4th edition has it's problems. Combat and encounters not working, is not one of them.
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Actually, I'm used to 3 rounds or less. Typically 2 or 3. Sometimes 1. 1 happens a lot more with optimization, but you don't get more than 3 unless you made a very mean and/or annoying encounter. So 5-7... yeah, it's dragging. Even if every round is faster there are more rounds, so the fight lasts as long or longer with less of a feel of progress.
I'm sorry, but I really like this change. If combat is built on the theory of a character using their favorite at-will half the time, then a seven round combat means the at-will is only done about four times. Perhaps the second/third at-will once, there's still an action point to use, second wind, racial power, and class encounters/dailies.
But if combat had that paradigm, and only lasted three rounds, then past maybe 11th level, you'd never use all your encounter powers in a combat. I'm not sure that's a good thing.
D&D 4E Herald and M:tG Rules Advisor I expect posters to follow the Code of Conduct, use Basic Etiquette, and avoid Poor Logic. If you don't follow these guidelines, I consider you to be disrespectful to everyone on these forums. If you respond to me without following these guidelines, I consider it a personal attack. I grew up in a bilingual household, which means I am familiar with the difficulties in adopting a different vocabulary and grammar. That doesn't bother me. Persistent use of bad capitalization, affirming the consequent, and flaming bother me a great deal.
204.1b Some effects change an object’s card type, supertype, or subtype but specify that the object retains a prior card type, supertype, or subtype. In such cases, all the object’s prior card types, supertypes, and subtypes are retained. This rule applies to effects that use the phrase “in addition to its types” or that state that something is “still a [card type].” Some effects state that an object becomes an “artifact creature”; these effects also allow the object to retain all of its prior card types and subtypes.
"Eight Edition Rules Update" We eventually decided not to change this template, because players are used to “becomes an artifact creature,” and like it much better.
Players were used to Combat on the Stack, but you got rid of that because it was unintuitive. The only phrase needed is "in addition to its types"; the others are misleading and unintuitive.
Oh, I dunno. I've contacted roughly 100-150 players about it. Around... I believe it was 70% or 75% start getting bored after 3 rounds, and most of the rest are definitely bored at 7. These guys are all over the board from CO guys that know their stuff more than me to living embodiments of the Stormwind Fallacy.
You need to come up with the +9 differential in other areas just to keep it in coin toss mode. If I were arguing auto success I'd have said +18, now wouldn't I? *thwaps* back at ya!
Skill Challenges fail because you have to push the chance of success off the RNG entirely, or very close to it or you have a very low to nonexistent chance of success. Except that you aren't supposed to leave the RNG in 4.0. Oops. Oh and don't even bother participating if you don't have at least a 70% success rate, otherwise you are a liability.
If you never used all your encounters you'd have variety. Before, 3.5 Fighters are the auto attackers for 1-3 rounds. You could circumvent the auto attack issue by playing something else. Now, everyone is an auto attacker for 1-3 rounds (potentially more). No avoiding it by playing a Warblade, or a caster, or anyone else who can do more than the same thing over and over and over.
Where are you getting your math from? Once all the variables are taken into account you have a better than fifty fifty shot at hitting. Which is far better than either "You never hit" or "You always hit" 3e was -terrible- in that the result of a d20 often didn't matter at all unless it was a 1 or a 20. You don't have that scenario happening in fourth edition. People from the OP board don't count as people when it comes to how long combat should last. They're all cheese gamers anyway. The only thing Op boards are good for is breaking the game. Not judging at how good a game is. Especially if it doesn't cater to auto win munchinkism.
Funny, my group has yet to fail at a skill challenge. (using the default challenges no less) Again I think this is more of a Dm's failure than a system failure.
I hate to break this to you, but a character being good for fifty percent of a time doesn't make them worthless in fourth edition. You'll have what amounts to an easy check for those -good- at the skill, and a moderate to hard check for those that are not trained in the skill. (which really for the most part skill challenges are designed for an entire party so everyone has a check that they can make)
Most of my encounters don't end up running the full use of all of a party's encounter powers. Occassionally we do, (if it's a hard encounter) but most of the standard ones are done by the time we get around to a second encounter power.
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It amuses me greatly you repeatedly mock the CO boards even though WotC specifically called on them and not these 'people' CO members including myself apparently do not qualify as to playtest 4.0.
Also, you're wrong. The CO take on combat length is 1 round. Sometimes 2, if they resist every I win button the first go around. I say 2-3, 1 for more optimized to account for this as 2-3 is the normal to weak group time. Hell, I have a game where there's only one actual caster (Psion) and the rest are like Rogue with 8 Con, Fighter/Barb, Ninja (think Rogue, but worse), Dragonfire Adept (nice little support class, not that great otherwise) and Swashbuckler. As in more than 3 levels of Swashbuckler. Weak party still 2-3 rounds their encounters. Optimized? Hardly. One look will tell you that. Swashbuckler died to a Fireball sorcerer of all things. His next character was a Duskblade. Duskblades are average overall, which means he probably just became the strongest guy in the party.
I am through with this discussion as it will simply go back and forth without actually accomplishing anything.
1) I happen to like having the CO boards to go to, as a player and a DM. As a player, it gives me ideas on how to make the character stronger. As a DM, it gives me a way to discover the broken bits of the game, hopefully before my players, and be able to keep an eye on things in my groups. I doubt I come under the heading of 'cheese gamer'
2) I'm coming from a Savage Worlds game, instead of directly from 3rd. As a gunslinger (not a caster), I was able to do 2, maybe three things in one round. Combats rarely lasted even one round. One player got consistantly bad luck, and only got to act once every other combat. Part of the problem might have been that the group was too large, but without combat going several rounds, he couldn't do anything. Part of what the 4th edition change seemed to be about is more, but faster, rounds. Do one-two things in a round, do 5-10 different things in a combat.
3) I think there's some double-talk going on, I'm talking about 4ed combat length, but AntiTroll has 3ed classes listed.
D&D 4E Herald and M:tG Rules Advisor I expect posters to follow the Code of Conduct, use Basic Etiquette, and avoid Poor Logic. If you don't follow these guidelines, I consider you to be disrespectful to everyone on these forums. If you respond to me without following these guidelines, I consider it a personal attack. I grew up in a bilingual household, which means I am familiar with the difficulties in adopting a different vocabulary and grammar. That doesn't bother me. Persistent use of bad capitalization, affirming the consequent, and flaming bother me a great deal.
204.1b Some effects change an object’s card type, supertype, or subtype but specify that the object retains a prior card type, supertype, or subtype. In such cases, all the object’s prior card types, supertypes, and subtypes are retained. This rule applies to effects that use the phrase “in addition to its types” or that state that something is “still a [card type].” Some effects state that an object becomes an “artifact creature”; these effects also allow the object to retain all of its prior card types and subtypes.
"Eight Edition Rules Update" We eventually decided not to change this template, because players are used to “becomes an artifact creature,” and like it much better.
Players were used to Combat on the Stack, but you got rid of that because it was unintuitive. The only phrase needed is "in addition to its types"; the others are misleading and unintuitive.
Of the two approaches to hobby games today, one is best defined as the realism-simulation school and the other as the game school. AD&D is assuredly an adherent of the latter school. It does not stress any realism (in the author's opinon an absurd effort at best considering the topic!).
It does little to attempt to simulate anything either. (AD&D) is first and foremost a game for the fun and enjoyment of those who seek the use of imagination and creativity....
In all cases, however, the reader should understand that AD&D is designed to be an amusing and diverting pastime, something which an fill a few hours or consume endless days, as the participants desire, but in no case something to be taken too seriously.
For fun, excitement and captivating fantasy, AD&D is unsurpassed.As a realistic simulation of things from the realm of make-believe or even as a reflection of midieval or ancient warfare or culture or society, it can be deemed only a dismal failure. Readers who seek the later must search elsewhere. - Gary Gygax. 1e DMG.
