|
6 months ago ::
Dec 19, 2012 - 9:05AM
#1
|
Date Joined:
Jun 21, 2012
|
So what is the optimal duration of combat? It's kind of a vague question but something a couple of folks have mentioned is that the current martial bonus is primarily there to speed up combat. Two things spring to mind: If I need to up player damage to speed up combat, then probably the combat in question isn't worth taking the time to do in the first place. If the combat is significant enough, then it's worth the time. I know we hit an extreme in previous editions and we should expect combat to be shorter, but all the same I want my fights to matter or I don't want to bother fighting. If the numbers are fixed such that combat is almost always 2-3 rounds (as it's been stated in a few places), that creates a treadmill feeling far more ingrained in the game than freely scaling numbers-by-level ever did. That means that no matter where my character is, what level they are or what they're fighting, a given combat will last 2-3 rounds. I could be fighting a pack of goblins or a pit lord and it makes absolutely no difference whatever. Being certain that a fight will be quick is just as bad as being certain the fight will be lengthy. I would love to see more variety in the beastiary and a removal of some of the really weird system patching going on to force combat into this duration.
|
|
|
|
6 months ago ::
Dec 19, 2012 - 9:06AM
#2
|
Date Joined:
Jun 17, 2010
|
There is no one optimal duration of combat.
D&D Next = D&D: Quantum Edition
|
|
|
|
6 months ago ::
Dec 19, 2012 - 10:07AM
#3
|
Date Joined:
Sep 25, 2009
|
While mand12 is right that there is no one optimal duration for al combats, if I'm stuck with all combats being one duration I'd rather that duration be more like 5-6 rounds than the 2-3 we've got now. I'm with the OP that a 2-3 round combat may as well not be a combat. There's just no time for tactical play, no room for in-combat decision making (although I'll grant plenty for pre-combat planning if you're so inclined). And if there's no room for that, why bother with the enormous math exercise and the silly blow by blow? This half-way option of "fast combat" seems to my taste to be keeping everything that's bad about combat and dropping everything that's good.
ATM, we can't actually have long fights except with a party of fighters. Only the fighter can survive more than 3 rounds of an at-level monster's DPR (and by at-level, I actually mean a monster with an XP value sufficient to be at least an average challenge for an at-level hero, not a mook designed to outnumber you 2:1), and that only because parry desperately needs fixing. Personally, I think DPR/HP ratios should be set for a combat of more like 5-6 rounds. Then you can extend it a bit with some healing, and you can have short fights any time you like by just not planning on challenging a full strength party. That being the point of HP as a daily resource (albeit one you can achieve in other ways with less collateral damage, but that's another thread), that you can have short fights that are still meaningful. But you can't easily adjust fights upward. So yeah, 4e's problem was that you couldn't have a short fight that was anything but a waste of time. 5e's problem is that you can't have a long fight that is anything but a TPK, and I like having my BBEGs survive more than two rounds. How about a system where you can have both?
|
|
|
|
6 months ago ::
Dec 19, 2012 - 10:26AM
#4
|
Date Joined:
Aug 31, 2007
|
So what is the optimal duration of combat? It's kind of a vague question but something a couple of folks have mentioned is that the current martial bonus is primarily there to speed up combat.
There are two types of duration that matter here. Real time for the players and the number of combat rounds the PCs go through. There is no single optimal number because it depends on too many things, but probably the single biggest one is how important the fight is.
Minor: less then 10 minutes and 2-4 combat rounds. This sort of fight is never a threat to the characters unless they are already near dead, but might wear them down a bit could get out of hand if they don't fight effectively. The guards might get a chance to alert the base, the target might escape, or some other plot related matter.
Average 15-30 minutes and 5-8 combat rounds. This is a fight that the party will win unless they are already in bad shape or do very badly, but could wear the party down a lot. This is going to use some daily level resources, a few spells and a few HD and possibly something else, but not a huge amount.
Tough 20-60 minutes 6-20 rounds. This is a big fight, one that either threatens to kill the party or is important to the plot of the adventure. This could take a long time with a few number of rounds if very complex or it could take a lot of fairly simple rounds if it turns into a chase.
Both 3e and 4e had problems with big fights, but they where very different problems. In 3e the big fights often reduced to who got the first action, as everybody let rip with their big daily powers. These fights where often insanely complex but over in 2 or 3 rounds. In 4e the would eventually turn into slog fests where everybody was hitting with at-will powers, but it still wouldn't be fast because many of the characters where doing trivial damage and trying to load up as many little side effects and conditions as they could.
|
|
|
|
6 months ago ::
Dec 19, 2012 - 10:35AM
#5
|
Date Joined:
Aug 22, 2007
|
4-10 rounds for a real fight
PCs should be hitting with 60-75% accuracy and dealing (15-25/X)% of the total HP in damage of the enemy where X is the number of PCs and a few rounds on non-attacks because of tactics.
Orzel, Halfelven son of Zel, Mystic Ranger, Bane to Dragons, Death to Undeath, Killer of Abyssals, King of the Wilds.
Constitution Based Class for Next!
|
|
|
|
6 months ago ::
Dec 19, 2012 - 10:47AM
#6
|
Date Joined:
May 24, 2012
|
I think the important thing is not how long combat lasts, but whether the combat is fun. Obviously that is going to vary greatly based on the people playing and the situation. But for me, the question is this: is it a long combat because it is a knock-down, drag-out fight, full of excitment and tension, where both sides are evenly matched? Or is it a long fight because we have to stop and re-calculate to-hit rolls and damage each round, or look up complex maneuvers and conditions and spell effects, or wait for players to decide exactly which square they need to be on to be in optimal position for flanking and opportunity attacks, and blah blah blah...
So I guess what I'm saying is that when the tactical options are simplified and easy assess quickly, and when the round-to-round math can be done quickly and intuitively, and when the effects of conditions and spells and so on are simple and quickly applied... then the combat can last all night and still be fun because it's an epic battle. But when any or all of those things are not simple and quickly resolved, thus forcing a combat to take a long time, then that's not fun, because it's just a slog.
Personal opinion, of course.
|
|
|
|
6 months ago ::
Dec 19, 2012 - 10:49AM
#7
|
Date Joined:
Mar 23, 2007
|
So what is the optimal duration of combat? It's kind of a vague question but something a couple of folks have mentioned is that the current martial bonus is primarily there to speed up combat.
There are two types of duration that matter here. Real time for the players and the number of combat rounds the PCs go through. There is no single optimal number because it depends on too many things, but probably the single biggest one is how important the fight is.
Minor: less then 10 minutes and 2-4 combat rounds. This sort of fight is never a threat to the characters unless they are already near dead, but might wear them down a bit could get out of hand if they don't fight effectively. The guards might get a chance to alert the base, the target might escape, or some other plot related matter.
Average 15-30 minutes and 5-8 combat rounds. This is a fight that the party will win unless they are already in bad shape or do very badly, but could wear the party down a lot. This is going to use some daily level resources, a few spells and a few HD and possibly something else, but not a huge amount.
Tough 20-60 minutes 6-20 rounds. This is a big fight, one that either threatens to kill the party or is important to the plot of the adventure. This could take a long time with a few number of rounds if very complex or it could take a lot of fairly simple rounds if it turns into a chase.
Both 3e and 4e had problems with big fights, but they where very different problems. In 3e the big fights often reduced to who got the first action, as everybody let rip with their big daily powers. These fights where often insanely complex but over in 2 or 3 rounds. In 4e the would eventually turn into slog fests where everybody was hitting with at-will powers, but it still wouldn't be fast because many of the characters where doing trivial damage and trying to load up as many little side effects and conditions as they could.
I agree with this approach. This is exactly how I would prefer designers to approach combat, with these numbers in mind.
For those who think that shorter fights shouldn't be fights I disagree. My feeling is that I'm trying to create a believable world here and frankly having the PCs waltz into to the heavily fortified base, spend 20 minutes to an hour fighting one group of guards and then another hour fighting the king's retinue doesn't always capture what I'm looking for. How does he not have more guards? How come they are all in one place?
Look, sometimes that's what I want but sometimes I want the PCs to wade through smaller groups of easily dispatched enemies. In fact most of the time it's better because it creates a real sense that the PCs are accomplishing a lot and that the game is moving fast. Slogging through the same battle for an hour doesn't capture that feeling.
As for there not being enough time to think tactically in shorter fights, well that's what I thought too but my recent playtest with 5e did not bear that out. We had a bunch of short fights but the PCs were able to think tactically and really surprised me. Maybe that's a fluke but it at least shows it's possible.
My real concern right now is that the only duration the game seems to support is the short one but then I havent' done enough playtesting to know for sure.
|
|
|
|
6 months ago ::
Dec 19, 2012 - 2:41PM
#8
|
|
|
I like fights to feel like they have a little bit of back and forth, so I prefer for the number of rounds to be a little bit higher. A two-round fight is nearly always too short. (Nearly).
It's generally important to me that a fight is long enough for the monster to get to show off its stuff a little bit. Most of the most interesting things monsters can do are offensive. That's a good thing, because offensive powers are better for the game than defensive powers. But a creature that dies before it can do anything doesn't really get to show off what made it interesting. I want creatures to last at least that long.
Really what would be perfectly ideal would be to take the excitement of the first couple of rounds, stretch that out, and eliminate the mop-up phase entirely. The idea of eliminating the mop-up phase isn't new, but to the best of my knowledge it's never been something the system has really been built around. It might be interesting to really have the game embrace the idea that at a certain point you're not so much fighting things as just kind of killing them, and just "call" the combat there. If this requires a bunch of math and rolling and tracking and players making intimidate checks and stuff then it's not worth it, so complex morale systems are out, but I wouldn't mind seeing monsters actually designed around the idea that it's a core rule that when the DM judges that there's no chance that the players are going to lose and that it's unlikely that the rest of the fight is going to drain a meaningful quantity of resources from the players that the fight switches over to a purely narrative mode. Obviously in fights where the drama is best-served by this not happening it doesn't have to, but it can be the default.
That gives us the freedom to design monsters that can make for some exciting back-and-forths without having to deal with all of the time commitment that that can entail.
Dwarves invented beer so they could toast to their axes. Dwarves invented axes to kill people and take their beer.
Swanmay Syndrome: Despite the percentages given in the Monster Manual, in reality 100% of groups of swans contain a Swanmay, because otherwise the DM would not have put any swans in the game.
|
|
|
|
6 months ago ::
Dec 19, 2012 - 2:43PM
#9
|
|
|
I'm ok with 5-6 round, so long as they are quick rounds. Length of combat cannot always be measured in rounds. A 3 round combat in 4e was still much longer than a 3 round combat in 2e. It's about the individual length of a players turn more than it is about rounds :P
My two copper.
|
|
|
|
6 months ago ::
Dec 19, 2012 - 2:57PM
#10
|
Date Joined:
Sep 25, 2009
|
It's worth noting when I say I'm not a big fan of short fights - and I think many others who have said the same would agree with this - I'm not so much saying that short fights against small groups of enemies shouldn't exist, but that they shouldn't necessarily be handled with all the same mechanical complexity of the knock-down drag out fights. By all means wade through a couple of pairs of weakling guards on your way to the more serious fight. But we could handle it with a few skill checks, some narrative, and "everybody loses 0-15 HP and maybe the alarm is raised depending on how well those checks went and how good your ideas on how to approach it was" instead of breaking out stat blocks and summing up all those damage dice for what's destined to be an easy fight. It would be a lot faster, and I don't think we'd be losing anything important. You'd still have as much room for tactics in a narrative sense (and you've got no room for tactics in a mechanical sense as it is), I for one don't get anything out of the blow by blow when the conclusion is inevitable, and I think a bit more of a freeform narrative would actually help make it more interesting than the mechanically complex but shallow experience we have now.
Negflar:
Could you describe what you meant by your players showing a lot of tactical thinking? Tactical can mean different things to different people, which is often getting in the way of the debate over whether 5e is actually capable of tactical play, and I'm curious whether your experience is actually different or we just have different definitions of the term.
|
|
|
