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So I did some math on how AD&D-through-3e compares with 4e. A useful assumption for that study is that 4e Levels vs AD&D HD relate as L/2 + 3 = HD (ignoring elite and solo types all through). Turns out there's only a couple of major differences in 4e from there.
- 1: 4e monsters have four times too many hit points, and PCs recover their limited mojo like hit points and spells about four times too fast to compensate for that.
- 2: All 4e characters are like E6 characters for 3e, only starting at level 6 and fighting the same bloated monsters forever. The math never really changes, they just get slightly more junk to track all the time. It's like every 5000xp your +1 swords stop working and you have to find a new one so you can keep fighting the same monsters. There's certainly no high level spells.
Now, to fix that up, all one has to do is reverse it.
- A: Use quarter monster hit points (round as you will, half bloodied and round up looks fine). This cuts fights down to about 3 or 4 rounds, slightly more as you progress. Monster healing and regeneration effects can be 2 per 5 normal. Monsters get their "Bloodied" status with any wound.
- B: Use only 20% normal experience awards for monsters, though full amount (or even double) for the quest bonus. Do not add monsters to compensate. If you have to fill out a 4e-style module, repeat some of the encounters, just with swapped up monsters, whatever makes sense.
- C: "Encounter" powers, second wind, etc, recover with a long rest, and that's where you get your free healing surge spend too. "Daily" powers, healing surges, etc, recover with a week of R&R, basically once per adventure.
- D: You can't change the math without fixing the damage expressions, nor give high level characters back their AD&D-style awesome without rewriting the whole game, so screw that. E6 isn't that bad of a game anyway, 4e just cuts out all the flavour of it with a bonus treadmill.
The effects here are as follows.
- I: You can do a day of adventuring in one session, several fights at ~15-20 minutes each, and leave the party much more time to do some exploring and social bullshit. Classic modules and dungeon-delving adventures become playable because the recovery cycle for PCs is very similar to classic D&D.
- II: Because fights are short and individual monsters weak, the issues around great stacks of penalties and conditions building up fade away; fight's already over, monster's already dead.
- III: The game becomes more about your strategic limits, what you can finish today. That adds a player-controlled difficulty dial back into the game. Awesomesauce.
- IV: Monsters mostly have enough variety to do something different every round, though they have to focus fire to achieve much with it in their short little lives. Characters who are losing too many healing surges need to sit back for a bit.
- V: The crappy default Dwarf Fighter can damn near one-shot Irontooth with his "Daily" power. A striker with advantage can do it in two. It's vital to take every advantage you can in such short and brutal battles, making things like marking and combat advantage shine in relation to their complexity.
- VI: After four or five fights and a night's rest, you're back where 4e puts you after one fight and a short rest, in the same time. Actual progress made though.
This isn't necessarily true.
3E monsters, in particular, could have hit points well out of proportion with their stated CR (because their HD scaled up far faster than their CR did). 3.5E reined that in somewhat, but not completely.
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I'm not sure how well the rest of it would actually work out. There seems to be an underlying assumption that "per day" and "per week" are inherently better than "per encounter" and "per day", respectively, but no reason given as to why.
If you're quartering monsters' HP though, you're probably better off just using minions - they'll both go splat in one hit.
However, 1/4 does seem a little bit extreme. How about 1/2, and you multiply their damage by 1.5? High stakes, buffs/debuffs still count, but combat time is reduced.
(Ugh. Sooooo tired of 2 1/2 hour long fights...)
You're probably better off looking for ways to jettison or reduce creature abilities that result in action denial (stunned is downgraded to dazed, dazed is downgraded to Grants Combat Advantage, etc) and/or damage loss ("+2 to defenses while bloodied" becomes "+2 to attack rolls while bloodied").
Namely, you've made one-shotting monsters fairly trivial. Say a level 11 standard soldier normally has 112 HP, now it has 28. So the build goal this is for you level 11 striker to hit for 28 on an at-will. Executioner|Blackguard (fury) hybrid with Virtuous Strike and 22 Cha, +2 magic rapier and heroic bracers of mighty striking hits for 3d8+10 with his MBA, +8 more with CA. So averge roll is 31.5 damage w/ CA, so each hit with CA is typically a kill. I haven't even factored in light blade expertise, or weapon focus, and it won't take long to pick up paragon tier equipment that adds several more damage. When you're missing CA you can use Dread Smite and/or Assassin's Strike to make up the difference.
I'm not even saying this is the best or anything, I'm sure charop can do much better, just grabbing a char I use in LFR that would be stupidly good in this situation.
And the thing is, anyone who doesn't push DPR like this instead runs into basically taking two hits to kill someone and having only a tiny sliver of time to have any penalties effect the target who could have been simply dead instead. At the same time the encounter-long bonuses that are a cool aspect of dailies become severely downgraded because encounters are so short.
Part I
1. Use lots of minions that are at most 2 levels higher -- but usually 1 level lower -- than the PCs.
2. Ignore the default player-to-minion ratio. Set it at 4 + 1/tier # of minions, not 3 + 1/tier # of minions
3. Raise the damage like hell.
My minion damage formula goes like this: 8 + Level + if(Minion=Brute, Level/3, else: 0)
A less deadly version: 2 + 2 per tier + level + if(Minion=Brute, Level/3, else: 0)
[ In the more lethal version, that makes a level 3 minion do 11 damage, 12 if brute minion. Add in the 5 minions/PC, and we're talking about minions that can dish out as much as 60 damage against one player; even if that player has anti-group capabilities, one hit can be excruciatingly painful, making minions a definite threat, especially when handled in groups. ]
4. Make sure the minions have a nasty surprise at hand, ranging from exploding minions, to orcish minions (free MBA before dying), to minions with ranged and area attacks
Part II
1. If there are monsters of special note, use artillery and brutes, at least of the same level as the PCs (if using soldiers, make them 2 levels lower than the PCs).
[ Optimized groups will negate soldier AC advantage easily, and unoptimized groups will find soldier AC unfun, and while whittling down hit points can be a chore for people, at least each round the players and monsters are in a deadly give-or-take situation, wherein it's assumed that monsters would eventually die ANYWAY, might as well make sure they leave a lasting impression in the one to three rounds they'll last ]
2. When a creature is insubstantial, half its actual hit points (so you have the feeling of insubstantial foes without doubling your killing speed), even if it's a solo.
3. Solo != alone. Always have minions support solos unless the story or situation demands the absence of allies.
I think this is awesome for the most part.
However, 1/4 does seem a little bit extreme. How about 1/2, and you multiply their damage by 1.5? High stakes, buffs/debuffs still count, but combat time is reduced.
(Ugh. Sooooo tired of 2 1/2 hour long fights...)
I've been using a formula similar to that. I basically keep damage and hp of monsters at default at level 1 then increase hp at only half rate and damage goes up by an average of 1.5 per level. (25% more for brutes, and 50% more for recharge powers, 90% more for brute recharge powers) This causes a lot of upfront damage but the players in my group can handle it casulty rate isn't any higher then other groups I've played and most importantly I'm DMing mid paragon right now and fights only last more then an hour when i want them to. (Although that also may be because my players are all experienced enough not to agonize forever over their power choices).
For encounters with regular monsters, instead of minions I use the regular monster, for example 40 HPs kobolds, and make them 10 HPs, very similar with the technique you sugest here. IT usualy takes 1-2 blows for a level 1 party fo finish one guy. Combat flows very fast and it[´s very rewarding.
I think all these sugestions for increasing combat speed are great and should be noted by the designers for 5E.
Usually the encounter you find on adventures are a bit long, specially if you don’t´ have strikers. In some cases you end up getting used to long combats, for example in D&D encounters I played most tables are having combats at least 1 hour long, and seem to have fun, but its much better when it is faster and furious. You feel the urgency of battle, and end up having more time for Roleplay. As a side note, we played Slaying Stones without a decent striker, and with minimum adjustment most of the encounters felt just all right, what is a good thing.
Isn't it just easier to have encounters in which the players don't have to kill everyone before they surrender/ flee without coming back? With a statement from the DM, that if you let an enemy flee, they will not find extra help for at least a day, with some small exceptions for BBEGs and their dragons (the trope type).
Nice in theory. Not always nice in actual games.
When this happened to our LFR group, with the BBEG dragon fleeing, the air in the group could be summarized as, "dang, he got away. Oh well, at least we beat him". Somewhat disappointing really.
In my Eberron group, the enemy surrendering was very climactic in the end, and everybody enjoyed that moment when the enemies were captured and the party was effectively dancing over their enemies' corpses.
Point is, while surrender and fleeing could be considered options to shorten combat, their use as an alternative to ending combat quickly isn't always the best choice (either story-wise or game-wise).
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5 standards and 5 PCs don't always result in long fights; as a DM you can always tweak the numbers, winning conditions, and other factors to help with the pacing. I use minions a lot since not only do they remove my need to bookkeep, the very fact that they can die in one shot makes for pretty short encounters especially if the group has lots of anti-group capabilities. I use brutes and artillery a lot because they hit hard and die fast
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Now I know suggesting brutes in a thread that calls for reducing HP seems ridiculous since they're easily the most bloated in terms of HP, but note that they're also the easiest to hit and they often encourage players to use their encounter and daily powers because of the fact that they HURT.
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I'm thinking that the main culprit in HP bloat isn't the monsters per se (because at least in my group, even high HP monsters don't take more than a few turns to die), it's because of HP bloat + monsters getting increasingly difficult to hit + elites and solos. I mean think about it: if you hit a 400-HP monster with attacks that dish out 30 ~ 60 damage, focus firing reduces it to pulp in 2-3 rounds (which, on a highly optimized [actions-wise] group, can happen in as little as 10 minutes per enemy)... but when you need a 12 or better to hit, that's just delaying the inevitable, resulting in a slugfest that quickly dullens.
I believe there even was an article in the D&D website (or was it a forum thread?) comparing brutes and soldiers, and soldiers were worse than brutes because even if the HP difference was small, the attack rolls needed to hit them could completely negate huge amounts of damage over a period of time, making soldiers tougher than brutes.
- Not give solos and elites +2 to ac and one NAD
- Reduce the AC of soldiers
- Reduce the HP formulas for most monsters (my group likes the encounters, mostly, but shortening them 20-40% doesn't sound bad)
- Make sure that in the time that my monters are alive, they can hurt the PCs so they won't feel like nothing is a threat
- Make minions hit super-hard, and use them more often.
- Any or all of the above?