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Yeah, it sounds like there's definitely a problem with too much time being spent discussing optimal tactics amongst your group, but tactical discussion itself isn't necessarily an issue.pookel posted:And then the monk leaps into the room on his next turn and uses his action point to be able to get to the fight which he shouldn't even have been aware was happening. gradenko_2000 posted:The two warning flags (not even red flags) I see in your story are:
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Apr 18, 2016 19:43
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Kaynorr, check out some of the later designs for Dragons. I think by the level we're at, solos that can just drop or slough off status effects. At least auto-save. I say as I am the defender in said group...
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Apr 18, 2016 21:53
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Mecha Gojira posted:Kaynorr, check out some of the later designs for Dragons. I think by the level we're at, solos that can just drop or slough off status effects. At least auto-save. Sadly, I did not dump the entire MM3/Monster Vault contents the last time I had a DDI subscription. So I'm kind of in the dark as to what the state of the art in monster design was when 4E was put out to pasture. I don't want to do hard counters (immunities or autosaves) because it would be good if throwing out those daze/dominate effects still mattered, just not so much that they form the absolute backbone of the strategy.
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Apr 18, 2016 22:01
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Yeah, just looking at three random level 19 solos from the Monster Vault shows a +5 to saving throws and either an auto save (at the end of its turn, so still good for throwing them off for a single turn or even round) or something like the Purple Worms' Ponderous, which allows them to still make immediate actions. Then, you know, give it a really cool immediate like Thrash (enemy hits you, make an attack, damage, push 6 squares on hit). Beholder Eye Tyrant has a No Action trigger, which by itself sidesteps a whole lot of issues.
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Apr 18, 2016 22:37
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kaynorr posted:I don't want to do hard counters (immunities or autosaves) because it would be good if throwing out those daze/dominate effects still mattered, just not so much that they form the absolute backbone of the strategy. I don't know if this is in the book or a specific innovation of the DM I had that used it, but one mechanic I saw a lot with solos in the last high-level campaign I was in was the ability to shrug off daze/dominates and if they WEREN'T shrugging off a daze/dominate, to use a particularly nasty special attack. So they still got full actions on turns they were dominated or dazed or stunned, but there was still incentive to try to apply those statuses because on turns they weren't dominated or dazed or stunned they got full actions AND a special attack.
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Apr 18, 2016 22:39
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fatherdog posted:I don't know if this is in the book or a specific innovation of the DM I had that used it, but one mechanic I saw a lot with solos in the last high-level campaign I was in was the ability to shrug off daze/dominates and if they WEREN'T shrugging off a daze/dominate, to use a particularly nasty special attack. So they still got full actions on turns they were dominated or dazed or stunned, but there was still incentive to try to apply those statuses because on turns they weren't dominated or dazed or stunned they got full actions AND a special attack. "So get this guys...it can ignore your status effects, but if you don't use your now-neutered powers on it, it gets a free extra strong attack!" *everyone wonders what they did to make Gary this upset*
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Apr 18, 2016 23:16
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A monster I made once had Stuns turn into dazes, dazes slow and give a -2 to attacks, and dominates daze and give the -2. She didn't have a charge thing, but she had an extra move action that still happened while dazed. Basically it cut into her mobility hard which is sort of bad for a skirmisher.
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Apr 18, 2016 23:24
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pookel posted:Might be my grognard showing, but where I get stuck is how unrealistic all this is. "In a real fight you're not all telepathic! You can't see the future! You don't get the luxury of asking everyone else if your idea is a good idea before you do it!" I mean, yeah, if a player is trying something new or needs rules help, sure. But when every round (really, every round) has people asking stuff like "would you like me to come over there and set up flanking for you?" it doesn't seem right to me. It's not so much "my immersion!" as it is that it makes combat so drat boring, and removes most of the opportunities for people to surprise the rest of the party by coming up with something cool on the spur of the moment. Your party members are living with each other twenty-four hours a day, talking and training together. You're looking at it from the perspective of a five-minute slice of their life, but the characters should understand each others abilities far better than the players who probably get together only once a week and level up for new abilities every few sessions. The discussion is just as much about getting the players up to speed with character abilities as it is about combat planning. Sometimes you do have players who understand every character and that's how you get the well-oiled machines that breeze through epic-level fights in an hour, but those are far from the norm. If it's overplanning you're annoyed by, that's a problem that will solve itself as players learn what they 'should' be doing, though everyone learns at their own speed. Having monster turns interspersed more frequently between player turns also tends to discourage overplanning by simply forcing new variables more frequently.
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Apr 18, 2016 23:44
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isndl posted:Your party members are living with each other twenty-four hours a day, talking and training together. You're looking at it from the perspective of a five-minute slice of their life, but the characters should understand each others abilities far better than the players who probably get together only once a week and level up for new abilities every few sessions. The discussion is just as much about getting the players up to speed with character abilities as it is about combat planning. Sometimes you do have players who understand every character and that's how you get the well-oiled machines that breeze through epic-level fights in an hour, but those are far from the norm. When I was a teenager I was in a defence family, and at another kids birthday party we did paintball vs the parents. It was fun, but what was really interesting that the army guys (who didn't actually serve together and only sort of knew each other, but had all infantry training) had really good group coordination and quickly shook out into a tactical system that I would bet money was 'army circa 20 years ago when these guys did their training' based on maybe 2 minutes of discussion about who was doing what and the odd shouted command during each round. I know this is a bit 'well I wrapped a mouse cord around my wrist', but I'm pretty sure that actual trained combat veterans who'd lived with each other and fought together through impossible odds would have vastly superior coordination. quote:If it's overplanning you're annoyed by, that's a problem that will solve itself as players learn what they 'should' be doing, though everyone learns at their own speed. Having monster turns interspersed more frequently between player turns also tends to discourage overplanning by simply forcing new variables more frequently. You can also soft discourage people from selecting out of turn actions as these slow the game down a lot more.
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Apr 19, 2016 01:03
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pookel posted:Well, it turned out that we finished that book (I wish I knew the name of the campaign, but we haven't talked about it much - I can tell you that at around level 8 we were in the Pyramid of Shadows, and at level 13 we just finished this whole storyline involving a troll king who was using a magic cauldron to resurrect himself repeatedly) and one of our other guys is going to DM the next time, so whew. This particular guy has never been seen to get pissy about, well, anything, and he's very good at the number crunching, so I expect less drama at the least.
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Apr 19, 2016 01:30
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:That sounds like it would be fun to play against for about half of one fight, and like DM-punching agony to face multiple times. No, he said it gets a full attack on any turn when it removes one of those status effects from itself, but TWO attacks on turns when it had been unhampered. So action-denial is still useful, just 50% or so.
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Apr 19, 2016 01:39
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It sounds like Pookel would be better off playing Dungeon World. I'd also say that leader characters require a certain amount of quarterbacking, either from the leader player or from one of the players being led. If the leader player never pipes up, "Hey, if I give you a free action you could go here and do this" or one of the other players never says "Can I get a free action so I can do this?" then the powers that grant free actions are never going to be used and a major part of the leader character concept is lost. You don't really see many players going, "OK, I hit this guy and Bob can have a free action to do whatever with".
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Apr 19, 2016 04:19
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If you want to see any of these solo ideas in action, my 4E game has an opening (preferably for a defender). We play Mondays at 7 PM Pacific, read all about the adventures of the Stormbreakers here!
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Apr 19, 2016 15:58
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I have an irrational attachment to D&D, though. I've never really played anything else. I'm considering lobbying them to try 5th edition, which I haven't tried but have been reading about. It really doesn't sound bad the way you guys are talking about coordinating strategies, but I think you'd find it frustrating to sit in on our sessions, too. The simplest fight can take hours because of the endless discussion and micromanagement. We've played together for a year and a half and I think people are getting worse rather than better (as we level up and everything gets more complicated). I don't think we've ever done more than three encounters in a night, and I'm talking 8-hour gaming sessions. Two fights in eight hours is normal. Every few sessions, we get to roleplay for 20 minutes or so, but that's kind of rare. It's reasonable to me to say someone yells "hey, I need healing!" in the middle of combat and then we take a couple minutes to work out how that happens, but this is every. drat. turn. (I just went back and looked at my original posts in the thread. One was at 9:46 and one was at 10:12. I made both those posts during the same round of combat, while waiting for the same turn to come around. This is typical.) Once in a while we get a skill challenge. Which this DM announces to us is a skill challenge, and tells us which skills we can use, and how many successes we need to win and how many failures will make us fail it. Then we go around the table rolling our highest applicable skill, and see if we succeed. I feel like that is not quite how skill challenges are supposed to work. Like, maybe they're supposed to include some roleplaying, and not just "okay, you need to roll a 25 on an insight check twice, who has the highest insight in the party?"
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Apr 19, 2016 16:27
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Well, your DM had a point about the monsters in the Trollfell Warrens or whatever that's called. They were useless and the fights weren't worth running. It stinks, but he needed to upgrade those monsters really, really badly to the new math - and probably go even further than that.
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Apr 19, 2016 16:35
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It sounds like you just need to manage expectations at the table. Try just saying you feel like combat takes too long, and ask if the others want to try strategizing less in favor of faster, more improvised play. As for the skill challenges, they never worked right as written. They kinda serve as a rule of thumb for the DM to adjudicate whether they should throw more complications in the way of the party, but definitely they should never explicitly declare which skills to use. Just state the situation and leave the PCs to develop a plausible plan.
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Apr 19, 2016 16:36
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1. I empathize with your issues with how much time is eaten up by having the players mull over every small detail. There are ways to manage it as a DM, mostly based around asking them for specific actions they want to take so that pre-planning isn't traditionally possible, but as a player you can really only just voice out your concerns and hope you can come to a good alternative. My current rate of combat is something like once an hour, but the players are fairly well-versed with 4e. You can try cutting off the ability to coordinate and backseat-strategize, but as I said that can feel punishing and comes with its own caveats unless everyone is on-board with giving it a shot. Definitely something like "saying stuff costs a Minor Action" I would never do because it spills back to having mechanical effects. 2. The way you've described skill challenges is how the game itself says is how it's supposed to work, but you're correct that it doesn't work well even when done by the book because of how awkward it is. I generally run skill checks the way every other RPG does them: there is a problem, the player proposes a solution, and a single skill check is done to overcome the problem, or to perform one step in the overall process to overcome the problem.
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Apr 19, 2016 16:50
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pookel posted:I have an irrational attachment to D&D, though. I've never really played anything else. I'm considering lobbying them to try 5th edition, which I haven't tried but have been reading about. You have a bad DM and are playing the wrong D&D for the kind of game you want to play. You probably do want 5e or Dungeon World. Dungeon World is a better game (by far) and has an awkward crush on D&D, but your irrational attachment to D&D will lead you to 5e. 5e is a worse game than 4e, but still much closer to the playstyle you very clearly want, and therefore better for your purposes.
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Apr 19, 2016 17:19
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I don't think anyone was taking issue with your frustration about long combats, mostly just the language you couched your complaints in. It's perfectly reasonable to be frustrated with analysis paralysis and over planning. There are a few things you can suggest to the group that might help, bot none of them is a silver bullet (some of which has been mentioned previously): The +1 to hit for knowing what you want to do when your turn comes up is a good one. Encouraging everyone to roll attack and damage at the same time is another. You could also keep close watch on the initiative tracker/list and let everyone know who's "on deck" each turn, which hopefully should encourage people to start thinking about their turns ahead of time. 5e could help a little bit, but in my experience combats are only noticeably shorter than 4e for the first few levels, and only because martial characters are massively simplified (and boring as sin IMO). Spellcasters' turns can still involve all the planning and resolution time as 4e characters. More sometimes, because the natural language of spells isn't always as clear and needs to be interpreted by the DM.
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Apr 19, 2016 17:29
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See, when I hear people recommending things that are more "freeform" or "focus on roleplaying," I get nervous, because I don't actually like a playstyle that focuses heavily on roleplaying. I like to hack and slash, with banter in between, and every once in a while some plotlines that involve intrigue or politics rather than just combat. But I prefer rolling dice and declaring actions to acting. I worry about recommendations for other systems, because my experience with people who play other systems is that they're looking for more of an interactive storytelling experience than a game, and I'm really, really not into that. I just want *fun* game, with monsters and loot and dungeons, that runs fairly quickly and easily so it can be played while drunk and tired. Tbh, I'd still play 2nd if it had any internal logic whatsoever, and if the leveling system got fixed. ETA: We cross-posted, thanks for the suggestions on things to speed up the game. That might help quite a bit if I can get the next DM to implement them. pookel fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Apr 19, 2016 |
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Apr 19, 2016 17:32
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pookel posted:I have an irrational attachment to D&D, though. I've never really played anything else. I'm considering lobbying them to try 5th edition, which I haven't tried but have been reading about. 5e is a badly-designed game and you should not play it. 4E is designed to work in specific ways, and complex tactical combat which takes a long time is one of those ways. Unfortunately, this doesn't really significantly improve unless everyone at the table is very familiar with the system. Also unfortunately, it sounds like your DM isn't the most experienced DM - WotC's published adventures are notoriously pure poo poo with very few exceptions, and running skill challenges RAW is a common pitfall for new 4E DMs. From the sound of things though, your problem with the game isn't the long combat so much as it's people interacting with the mechanics of the game. You could raise some of your points with your group and attempt to get the GM to obfuscate the system more, but it sounds like everyone else in the group is perfectly happy playing a combat-heavy campaign with lots of exposed mechanics. It honestly just sounds like 4E isn't for you, and you should try to play something else. People recommend Dungeon World because it's a rules-light-er game focused on dungeon crawling. It will specifically cater to your desire to just fight monsters and get loot, assuming the DM is capable of dealing with the fact that the game has some different assumptions from 4E. You should also try Dungeon World because playing games that aren't D&D and broadening your RPG horizons is good for you. e; please don't inflict Pathfinder on yourself, either. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Apr 19, 2016 |
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Apr 19, 2016 17:47
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pookel posted:I have an irrational attachment to D&D, though. I've never really played anything else. I'm considering lobbying them to try 5th edition, which I haven't tried but have been reading about. I've played that D&D. It can be a pain in the rear end, if you let it, but it doesn't have to be. But you're probably not helping it by loving around on your phone mid-game, just sayin'...
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Apr 19, 2016 17:50
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pookel posted:See, when I hear people recommending things that are more "freeform" or "focus on roleplaying," I get nervous, because I don't actually like a playstyle that focuses heavily on roleplaying. I like to hack and slash, with banter in between, and every once in a while some plotlines that involve intrigue or politics rather than just combat. But I prefer rolling dice and declaring actions to acting. I worry about recommendations for other systems, because my experience with people who play other systems is that they're looking for more of an interactive storytelling experience than a game, and I'm really, really not into that. I just want *fun* game, with monsters and loot and dungeons, that runs fairly quickly and easily so it can be played while drunk and tired. You won't like Dungeon World, then. Try Pathfinder over 5e, it's better and it's D&D in all but name.
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Apr 19, 2016 17:50
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pookel posted:See, when I hear people recommending things that are more "freeform" or "focus on roleplaying," I get nervous, because I don't actually like a playstyle that focuses heavily on roleplaying. I like to hack and slash, with banter in between, and every once in a while some plotlines that involve intrigue or politics rather than just combat. But I prefer rolling dice and declaring actions to acting. I worry about recommendations for other systems, because my experience with people who play other systems is that they're looking for more of an interactive storytelling experience than a game, and I'm really, really not into that. I just want *fun* game, with monsters and loot and dungeons, that runs fairly quickly and easily so it can be played while drunk and tired. It almost soiunds like you'd rather be playing a dungeon crawl board game. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/172220/dungeons-dragons-temple-elemental-evil-board-game
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Apr 19, 2016 18:01
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pookel posted:I like to hack and slash, with banter in between, and every once in a while some plotlines that involve intrigue or politics rather than just combat. But I prefer rolling dice and declaring actions to acting. I worry about recommendations for other systems, because my experience with people who play other systems is that they're looking for more of an interactive storytelling experience than a game, and I'm really, really not into that. I just want *fun* game, with monsters and loot and dungeons, that runs fairly quickly and easily so it can be played while drunk and tired. Basic?
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Apr 19, 2016 18:05
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Really Pants posted:Basic? Or, yes, if you're going to stubbornly cling to D&D, at least run the one other good D&D edition.  (Darker Dungeons is a good BECMI retroclone that is completely free.)
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Apr 19, 2016 18:07
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I wouldn't necessarily recommend a different game system because "we need to figure out how everyone's turn is going to happen, in sequence" is not a problem that's going to be solved by switching over to Pathfinder. Or even Basic D&D, especially once they're clued in on how potentially lethal that game is. Pookel's problem seems to be a behavioral one, and the only mechanic that comes to find as far as solving it (outside of something like a direct mechanical incentive to hurry things along) is something like Blades in the Dark, where the players are not allowed to pre-plan the heist forever. The GM just asks for a single detail about the heist and throws them into the middle of it. That could even work for skill checks, but you couldn't do it to D&D's combat rules without significantly taking away from control from the player.
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Apr 19, 2016 18:25
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Lemon-Lime posted:From the sound of things though, your problem with the game isn't the long combat so much as it's people interacting with the mechanics of the game. You could raise some of your points with your group and attempt to get the GM to obfuscate the system more, but it sounds like everyone else in the group is perfectly happy playing a combat-heavy campaign with lots of exposed mechanics. Really Pants posted:Basic?  I've played Basic. NEVER AGAIN
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Apr 19, 2016 18:26
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pookel posted:7 people at the table It also explains why you guys were trouncing the module as written. E: Not saying it's impossible to play with that many, but it's extra super important that everyone is loving on the ball when their turn comes up. That stuff I recommended is basically mandatory now.
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Apr 19, 2016 18:30
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pookel posted:I think what we need, mostly, is a more skilled DM who can roll out the mechanics more smoothly and speed the turns along. I think you're right on this one - for any sort of sufficiently crunchy game, a GM who can speed through the mechanics correctly can mean the difference between fun and no-fun. (If you're just blowing past or skipping mechanics, you might as well cut them out completely or play something simpler). I played a fair amount of Shadowrun (3rd edition, which is pretty much as complex as it got) in college and while it was always fun, we had similar problems that you do with drag, overplanning, and fights taking forever. Then I played in a Shadowrun game at GenCon with a very experienced GM who could go do all the modifier math in his head and the various steps for ranged combat, sorcery, summoning, rigging, etc. extremely quickly. It was hugely satisfying because I finally felt that I was getting the crunchy experience I wanted without it feeling like a huge chore. Here in the 21st century I'd say that automating all this stuff with computers is the way to go, but that's something of a non-starter in the world of no-money RPGs.
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Apr 19, 2016 18:32
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7 players total or 7 players plus GM? Either way that's a shitton, 4e runs best with 4 or 5, 6 is pushing it especially at high levels.
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Apr 19, 2016 18:32
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It's a table/table talk problem; a more skilled or authoritarian DM isn't gonna magically fix it. If most of the table recognizes that the table talk & constant planning is taking too long and is boring...why is everyone still doing it?
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Apr 19, 2016 18:34
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pookel posted:No, everyone else is unhappy and frustrated too, but mostly they're at a loss as to how to fix it. Okay, then definitely suggest the group change to Dungeon World to try it out, then. The unfortunate downside of 4E's mechanical complexity is fights take ages unless everyone is already an expert at 4E combat, and no amount of tips and tricks will really address that issue.
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Apr 19, 2016 18:43
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Seven includes the DM, and that's if everyone is present at once, which isn't usually possible due to scheduling. Come to think of it, that must have been part of the problem on Saturday - we had all 6 players where usually we'd only have 4-5 because someone was working or out of town or whatever. There are also four children in the house (mine are older, but the DM has a 5yo and a baby) and people keep getting distracted for external reasons. Plus sometimes we have extra people ... girlfriends/wives/boyfriends/siblings/whatever hanging around and chatting. Maybe we need a DM who enforces a "no loving around" rule. (Seriously, I don't gently caress around on my phone as a rule. I only pull it out when my course of action is very clear and everyone else is taking forever. As a healer with a big stick, my course of action tends to be simple: move to a strategic location, whack something with a battle cleric power, and heal whoever's bleeding the most.)
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Apr 19, 2016 18:45
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Y'all might just have too much going on to commit hours at a time to elfgames.
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Apr 19, 2016 18:51
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ImpactVector posted:Problem found. 5 players is pushing the high end on 4e even though that's technically what's recommended. 6 is brutal. IIRC, it also has some Cyclopses which are in the running for worst-designed MM1 monsters.
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Apr 19, 2016 18:53
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Generic Octopus posted:Y'all might just have too much going on to commit hours at a time to elfgames. It's either elfgames or Magic, and trust me, if you think 7 people at a table is too many for elfgames, you don't want to see a 7-player EDH game.
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Apr 19, 2016 18:53
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Might still want to consider a more casual elfgame that's more tolerant towards getting distracted.
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Apr 19, 2016 19:00
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pookel posted:It's either elfgames or Magic, and trust me, if you think 7 people at a table is too many for elfgames, you don't want to see a 7-player EDH game. Nah I've played that clusterfuck (though it was fun to watch multiple $900 decks get beat by a $60 Niv Mizzet loop); just saying, it's probably easier to explore/pick up some board games that are lighter than an RPG (or lighter rpgs) since everything seems varying degrees of busy/chaotic. It's what me & mine have had to do when life gets too busy.
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Apr 19, 2016 19:04
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My Lovely Horse posted:Might still want to consider a more casual elfgame that's more tolerant towards getting distracted. Or, you know, two simultaneous elfgames.
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Apr 19, 2016 19:18
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