# Stalker0's Guide to Anti-Grind



## Stalker0

*Stalker0’s Guide to Anti-grind*

A common complaint of 4e is the notion of “grind”. From the majority of discussions, grind seems to be widely defined as the point in combat where the party has effectively “won”, but have not yet beaten the monsters. Bereft of encounter powers, the players begin beating the remaining creatures down with an endless series of at will powers while the monsters continue to attacks. The monsters at this point have little chance of harming the party past anything a short rest can’t fix. In other words, it’s combat with no purpose.

I have now played and dmed in a party from 3rd to 11th, and I have seen a lot of what causes grind, and what leads to exciting combats. Here are my findings for those who are interested.

Note: My group has always had one striker. Further, we have not yet played past 11th level. If you feel your grind is due to no strikers or to very high level play, this guide may not be as much help to you.


*Higher level Monsters – The Source of Grind*

In some ways, 4e combat works exactly the opposite way of 3rd edition. In 3rd edition, when you threw high level encounters at your party, you often risked the chance of quickly killing some or all of your party (offense scaled quicker than defense). Such combats were often the source of great drama and excitement coupled with poignant loss and sometimes outright anger when a character was defeated.

 In 4e, it works the opposite way (defense scales faster than offense). In 4e, fighting high level monsters usually doesn’t kill your party quickly as their damage doesn’t scale that fast. But the monsters have very high defenses and hit points making them hard to hit and very hard to kill…which leads to the concept of grind.

So my first piece of advice….*focus your combat designs at the same level as your party*. Use monsters of the party’s level (and scale other monsters into that range to accomplish the same). Your goal is to generate as much challenge to your party as you can with a standard monster group, and the rest of the guide is designed to help you do that.

Also, you may find some other pleasant side effects to sticking with standard monster encounters. My group has been steadily changing their opinion on maximizing their attack stats and damage, because the reality is 4e combats are decently quick when they are put at the party’s level, and you don’t have to be optimized to fight such encounters.

*Know thy Monsters*

The first tool in the DMs toolbox is his large variety of monsters and monster types. Knowing how to utilize these types can go a long way towards helping you create fun and challenging encounters…right at the party’s level.

1)	*Artillery* – Artillery is my favorite monster type from an anti-grind perspective. They combine high attack bonuses and damage with weak defense, the perfect way to challenge your party without them having to go through hell and back to kill the creature. 
a.	Lower level Artillery – Artillery is the best monster type for monsters that are lower than your party’s level. Their attack bonuses are high and they often hit defenses other than AC. I often use artillery 2 levels lower than my party and they still back a punch!
b.	Use focus fire with Artillery – If you think your party seems nearly invincible at times, show them fear with focused fired artillery. Two or three artillery monsters hitting the same party member can drain them quickly. Also switch targets to bloodied creatures to create a sense of excitement and fear in your players.
c.	Protect your Artillery! – Artillery is frail, so give them some front line support or terrain to cover them. I find artillery so effective, that often my players will take OAs and use skills to cross terrain to take out the artillery first. It creates a great sense of accomplishment and helps to shake up the standard routine of some combats.

2)	*Brutes* – Even though they have exceptional amounts of hitpoints, brutes have low defenses, and so often aren’t as grindy as soldiers.
a.	Check your errata – The Monster Manual’s errata increased the damage of many of the brutes. Make sure you are giving your brutes their correct damage.
b.	Combine with minions – Brutes have good damage but often suffer from low attack bonuses. Use minions to aid another and flank, providing +4 to your attack rolls!
c.	Combine with auto damage and auras – Brutes excel in areas where everyone is taking autodamage. They can take the pain far long than anything else. Use terrain that hurts everyone to give brutes an edge and to speed up combats.

3)	*Controllers* – Controllers can be a tricky monster type to use properly, but are very good at taking a low level group of monsters and making them more effective against the party. Anti-grind requires using control, without using too much control.
a.	Watch your action denying effects – Controllers with action denying effects (daze, stun, immobilize, slow) can be fun to use and help to challenge a party, but used too often and they can create boredom at the table. (try using a well protected gibbering mouther and watch the grind begin!) Rarely use two controllers that deny actions together.
b.	Spread the control around. Players might hate getting controlled once, but you can really make a player bored by controlling him the entire fight. Feel free when possible to spread your heinous effects to the rest of your party, sharing is caring after all
c.	Use terrain. Controllers, more than other monster types, tend to benefit a lot from terrain. Using terrain can help make a controller effective, but also provide your party a way to use the terrain against them.

4)	*Lurkers* – I have found lurkers to be a quirky monster types, with a lot of grab bag abilities. I don’t recommend them as a common monster, but they can be useful for their surprise factor.
a.	Lurkers are mid combat fighters – There’s always an urge to get all of your monsters out on the table as quickly as possible, but many lurkers have the ability to remain undetected for large portions of the fight. Use that to surprise your players.
b.	Cull the weak – Lurkers are excellent foes to take an unsuspecting party member down quickly. Wait for a player to get down to bloodied or below, and right before his cleric buddy can give him that heal, your lurker comes out and hits him hard. This can be great for shaking up a fight that the party sees as completely in their favor, and suddenly bring the drama right back to the combat.
c.	Get in, and get gone. Lurkers are masters of retreat and often shouldn’t be “killed”. Use them to provide surprise damage, but don’t require your players to kill them to move on. Have them retreat, perhaps to be used again later.

5)	*Skirmishers* – These are probably your mainstay in most fights. They have decent but not high defenses, and can provide solid damage when used properly.
a.	Use other monsters to gain combat advantage – A lot of skirmishers gain their big damages from combat advantage. Combine skirmishers with minions to set up flanks, or use brutes to really provide some damage focus. Many controllers are also good at providing combat advantage.
b.	Know when to fold them – Skirmishers are designed for hit and run attacks, so hit….and then run! If the fight is going badly, feel free to have skirmishers start escaping….only to join up with another encounter and fight again! This prevents the late combat grind people complain about, and hey it makes sense…skirmishers are cowards!

6)	*Soldiers* – Soldiers are the most grindy monster type. They have exceptionally high defenses and hitpoints, and don’t have that much offense. In short….grind city. While the occasional solider is good to take hits of your brute or to protect your artillery, don’t use soldiers on mass or the fight will end in a slug fest.

7)	*Minions* – Some love minions, others hate them, but they can be used to great effect to increase the challenge of your combats without really increasing the grind.
a.	Sprinkle to taste – As many have noted on the boards, once you’re near paragon level 4 minions doesn’t normally offer the same challenge as a monster. With that in mind, feel free to just throw in some minions to a fight to bump up the challenge a bit.
b.	Use flanking, and aid another to increase offense. This is my golden rule of minions…never actually attack with them. Why attack for 6-8 damage when I can flank, and then use aid another (which quickly becomes nearly automatic around level 5) to give my awesome brute a +4 to attack? If you have never appreciated the offensive power of minions…try this out, you’ll be amazed what a difference it makes.
c.	Spread your minions out – Minions bunched together is just asking to get killed quickly. Attack from multiple sides and spread your minions out to keep them alive long enough to do some good (or evil as the case may be).
d.	Charge the back line. Minions can often get past the party’s front line defenders more easily than a single big monster. Use that to start aiding your ranged attacks against the party’s backline.

8)	*Elites* – Elites do get some cries of grind but generally I find them a solid monster type if you don’t overuse them.
a.	1 Elite with Party vs 2 Elites – 2 Elites often feel more grindy to a party than 1 elite with a group of monsters because it takes so long for the first bloodied and dead condition to hit the combat. 1 Elite is good as a corner piece of a group of monsters that the party can kill more easily. I often love to use brutish elites wading into the front of combat with artillery backing it up. If you are going to use 2 elites, I recommend one frontline and one ranged (artillery) type as it balances greater offensive with weaker defense. Two solider or brute elites can take a long time to beat up.
b.	Save your AP for the finishing move – An elite often doesn’t have the offense of two regular monsters which can give the players a sense of security and lead to feelings of grind. Use action points to change this mindset. Instead of using your action point at the beginning of the combat (where the party’s leader can easily fix the damage), use it right after the attack that just bloodied a party member to try and knock him out. 4e characters can usually take the heat, but it emphasizes how strong an elite can be and that the party should never be too comfortable fighting one even as the fight draws to a close.

9)	*Solos* – This creature is the hallmark of the “4e is grindy” movement. Everyone seems to have a story about the solo combat that took 4 hours and was less fun than watching grass grow (and yes, I’ve got one too). Solos more than any other monster require special handling to avoid grind, but they can be a very memorable fight when used well.
a.	Never use a solo higher level than the party – This may seem like blasphemy but I think it is the greatest cause of solo grind that people experience. As I mentioned in the start of the article, higher level monsters gain a lot of defense and only a little offense. For the solo, that’s even more so. You’ll actually be amazed how quick (without being too quick) and fun a solo fight can be with a solo of your party’s level.
b.	Solos don’t have to be solo. These guys are often your heinous bad guys, its okay to give them minions and other things to bump up the challenge of the combat for that epic fight.
c.	Terrain and Gimmicks – Think about this, how often in fantasy when the hero encounters the final bad guy do they stand on a flat plain and just hammer away for 2 minutes? Solo fights really benefit from good use of terrain. Often your solo will have a lair, use it! Have terrain that changes as the combat goes on to keep it fresh. Also, feel free to use a few gimmicks... a ritual that the party must stop, a skill challenge that will help the party against the solo that they can perform during the combat, etc.
d.	Monologue/Roleplay – It doesn’t work with all solos, but many of them are intelligent, an important plot piece, and utterly arrogant (I mean if you could take on 5 other people of your same power level wouldn’t you be?). If you don’t do it commonly, solo fights are a great time to have the villain start talking and roleplay with the party. Even if the combat lasts a long time, for the party its tempered because they are fighting and roleplaying at the same time and that can really make the fight memorable.
e.	Use your AP for true destruction, or to get away – Just like elites, solos shouldn’t just blow their AP, as at the start of the fight the party has plenty of resources to take care of things. It’s at the moment when one of your players is at its weakest that using an AP can drive home a solos power. However, consider an alternate use for a solo fight that is not intended to be the last. I call this the “Recurring Villain” power. Save both AP until the solo is bloodied, and then do a full run with 2 AP worth of extra movement to leave the fight. The solo fight lasts only lasts half as long as normal, and the party now has a hated foe to finish later. This is probably the best method of avoiding grind with solos that are a higher level than the party. You can have the solo run to avoid massive grind, and eventually when its time for the final fight the party can face the solo, now having gained enough levels to be his equal.


*Using Terrain and Events*

There are times when I wish WOTC had put terrain as an entry in the monster’s manual. In 4e, where you fight is just as important as what you fight that if you aren’t using terrain you are cutting off one of the major tools in the DM’s arsenal. For anti-grind purposes, terrain is absolutely wonderful because it doesn’t have hitpoints. Terrain can be as heinous as you want, but its effects tend to die down the second the monsters are defeated. I could go on and on about terrain, but since this is a guide for avoiding grind and not for terrain, I will focus on effects you can use to avoid grind in your combats.

_Increasing Damage_
One way to avoid grind is to have things die faster, through a terrain or event effect that either boosts offense or just does damage. This category is for boosters that players (and monsters) can take some measure of control over. Some examples:
1)	Square of Doom – Whether it’s a pit, a black crystal plant that attacks people and immobilizes them, or a house on fire, basically if a monster or player goes into the square, they take damage.
2)	Damaging Aura – An altar giving off necrotic energy, a combat near lava, swimming in scalding water, etc. Make part or all of the combat in the aura to increase damage done. Use energy types your monsters or your players have resistance to to give one of the sides an edge.
3)	Attack bonuses/Defense Penalty: A holy site that gives attack bonuses to powers with the radiant keyword, a damning curse that gives all fey creatures a -2 to defenses, or simply a +1 attack bonus to ranged attacks for higher ground.
_
Increasing Unpredictability_
Another option is to add some surprise to your combat, so that even as the fight rounds add up, the players are always on their toes for that next effect. Or you add effects harsh enough that no one can assume the combat is over until it’s over. Once again, it’s generally useful to use damaging effects as that speed up combat.

1)	Random terrain effect – A geyser that goes off every random number of rounds, lava that bubbles up in random place, a broken artifact that pulses with power and damages all around it.
2)	Increase the power of crits – A black mist that does 5 necrotic damage per round, but when it infects a deep wound (person took a crit) the person starts taking 15 damage per round. Or a powerful site of heroes, crits add +2d6 extra damage.

_Adding a Clock_
The ticking clock can add a sense of suspense and drama to a combat, and forces players to think of ways to end fights quick.
1)	The longer we fight, the more we die – A large scale damaging aura that affects the whole fight, a monster that gets stronger that longer the fight continues (offense of course, not defense)
2)	Nasty effect in three, two, one… - A pit that will unleash damned souls in 10 rounds, a guardian statue that is animating and will attack.
3)	We must stop the ritual! – A dark ritual will be completed in 5 rounds, a strong demon beast is being summoned and must be stopped.

*Tactics to Avoid Grind*
In many cases, you don’t need to change what you put in combats, but how you have your monsters act can reduce grind.

_Focus Fire, even if it kills you_
Characters in 4e are pretty tough, but even the most stalwart fighter can be taken down when everyone starts concentrating on him. Now its easy to do with ranged characters, but feel free to have your monsters move in to swarm a character….even provoking OA’s. It both kills your monsters faster, and puts more pressure on the party. Also, it lets defenders use some of their marking tricks. Just don’t do it to the same character every time!

_Trade OA’s for Flanking_ 
By a similar token, don’t be afraid to have a monster take an OA once in a while in order to get into flanking. That +2 makes a difference, and it helps grind. Of course, choose monsters that this makes sense for. Its unlikely that kobolds would be so reckless, but a bloodthirsty orc might.

_Allies and Enemies – Kill them all!_
When you have area effect users, let them attack their own comrades if it means getting more pain on the party.

_Master is dead! I surrender!_
In many cases, some of the monsters may work for or be slaves of the other monsters. If the party kills the leader, have the other monsters surrender.

_Whoa we are getting slaughtered, I’m outta here!_
Unless your monsters are set up to fight until killed (ie many undead), it’s very reasonable to have them get out of the fight if things are going badly for them.

*Putting it Together*

Using the guide, the goal is to create standard level encounters that are unique and challenging to the party through use of monsters and terrain. As you get better at this, you will need less and less higher level effects to hurt your party, and I have found once you get to that point grind starts magically disappearing.

I hope the guide was of use, good luck in your games!


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## MichaelSomething

Yet another great article from you!  This is full of useful information!  

You should have submitted it to a magazine


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## Piratecat

That's superb advice.


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## amysrevenge

Many of these tips are going into immediate use for me.  Awesomesauce


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## Skallgrim

Really good article.  I'd like to offer a few ideas which are compatible with yours, but rather different in emphasis.

The grind seems to be widely defined as the point in combat where the party has effectively “won”, but have not yet beaten the monsters.

One way of "avoiding the grind" is not to avoid this point, but to reveal, at this point, that the party is WRONG.  What the party had previously thought to be "the grind" is actually the "intermission".

This can be accomplished in several ways.  One of the easiest is the "wave".  Simply introduce more opposition at this point.  Of course, it is best if this opposition makes sense (enemy reserves, monsters attracted to the commotion).  It is also important to factor these enemies into the overall encounter level.  Don't add so many monsters that the encounter becomes impossibly hard for the party.  

Two good options (at least) exist here.  You can add Minions, which do not add substantial challenge or XP to the encounter, but can certainly spice up what had seemed to be a boring grind.  This is a very good option for enemy reserves and the like.  In addition, minions are a good opposition for parties which have already spend many of their encounter or daily powers, and are reduced to basic attacks and at-will powers.  

The other option is the "Godzilla" theme.  Add a powerful monster which attacks the party and the opposition indiscriminately.  This can allow you to remove pesky "straggler" monsters more quickly (and also prevent the party from interrogating them) and lets you show off the damage potential of the elite (or solo) without wiping a party member.  This is a better option when the party has husbanded their resources, and still has a substantial amount of daily and encounter powers to work with.  Envision, if you will, a battle in a dank, subterranean cavern. The party has defeated the troglodytes, and is engaged in "cleaning up" the last few of the opposition.  Suddenly, a giant lizard (cave drake, purple worm, whatever) crashes through a cavern wall, and devours a trodlodyte whole, pushing its bulk through the opening.


Another option, distinct from the "wave" in many ways, is the "power-up".  Perhaps the last bandit is succumbing to Lycanthropy, and "wolfs out" under pressure.  Perhaps the cultist has bound a demon into his own body.  Perhaps the ritual the adventurers interrupted simply needed ANY sacrifices, and the slain enemies are just as good as the rescued hostages.  This is similar to the "Godzilla" idea, but ideally, it should be possible for the adventurers to either avert the threat, or, at least, have some foreshadowing of the threat, so that they can see it coming and possibly postion themselves for it, or reserve some powers to deal with it.  Ideally, this should basically be a much more challenging encounter than it originally appeared to the adventurers, but should still be more of a "culmination" encounter than the suprise value of a Godzilla encounter.  I can just hear the party saying "Hey, this fight against the Evil High Priest is going pretty well.....Aaaaaaaaah!".

I realize this is much less intelligently written, and much less elegantly structured than your very nice article, but I do think that "re-imagining" the grind can also be a valid tactic too.


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## weem

Awesome, thanks Stalker, just in time


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## alleynbard

Fantastic, thank you. There were some things in there that I hadn't thought about (using creatures at or near level with the PCs, for instance).

I am printing this and placing it in with the materials I use to plan encounters.


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## Starfox

Good article. My problem isn't as much grind as described here as simply overlong combats - anything over 1.5 hours kills our fun. Thus we house rule. Still, the tips here work just as well with house rules as without.


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## CapnZapp

Stalker0 said:


> 6)	*Soldiers* –  don’t use soldiers on mass or the fight will end in a slug fest.



So true! If only the DMG could have been so brutally honest in its advice!

(Soldiers are best considered to be "mini elites" imo)



Stalker0 said:


> b.	Use flanking, and aid another to increase offense. This is my golden rule of minions…never actually attack with them. Why attack for 6-8 damage when I can flank, and then use aid another (which quickly becomes nearly automatic around level 5) to give my awesome brute a +4 to attack? If you have never appreciated the offensive power of minions…try this out, you’ll be amazed what a difference it makes.



Well, "never" is a strong word... I'd use this shift in strategy to play up differences between minions of disciplined races and... thugs, basically. (The latter kind of minion would just attack for minimal effect and then die. Which is of course the root of the minion's reputation for being "free XP". For this latter kind of stupid minion, you might want to use the advice given in another thread discussing minion power: multiply its damage by its tier, that is x2 for Paragon and x3 for Epic)

I'd point out what I believe many players easily miss: that you can aid another that you aren't adjacent to. (Otherwise you'd have to have two minions, one to flank and one to AA). It might be helpful too to note how the AA bonus is untyped and thus stacks, so if the defender is swarmed by seven minions and one brute that brute could get +10 to attacks and +6 to defenses thanks to this rule alone (at least, until the Defender's Controller buddy tires and fireballs them all)... 





Stalker0 said:


> a.	Never use a solo higher level than the party – This may seem like blasphemy but I think it is the greatest cause of solo grind that people experience. As I mentioned in the start of the article, higher level monsters gain a lot of defense and only a little offense. For the solo, that’s even more so. You’ll actually be amazed how quick (without being too quick) and fun a solo fight can be with a solo of your party’s level.
> b.	Solos don’t have to be solo. These guys are often your heinous bad guys, its okay to give them minions and other things to bump up the challenge of the combat for that epic fight.



Excellent advice! Thanks for putting this in print. 

I think the name "Solo" was misguided, thinking of how that name implies to DMs to use these monsters alone.

I would make it a point of connecting these two pieces of advice, in that lowering the level of the Solo _is precisely what allows you to spice up the encounter_ by adding some underlings and minions to the fight (thanks to how the lowe-levelled Solo being much cheaper in your XP budget)!



Stalker0 said:


> e.	Use your AP for true destruction, or to get away – Just like elites, solos shouldn’t just blow their AP, as at the start of the fight the party has plenty of resources to take care of things. It’s at the moment when one of your players is at its weakest that using an AP can drive home a solos power.



Yeah. 4E PCs are amazingly resilient, so there's seldom any real cause why you should hesitate being "unfair"...

While I can kind of understand how WotC wouldn't dare to give the advice "_be evil_ with your APs" (considering how evil a 14-year old DM can be ) for the average twenty- or thirty-something reader it would have been a very good addition! 



Stalker0 said:


> *Using Terrain and Events*
> 
> There are times when I wish WOTC had put terrain as an entry in the monster’s manual.



Yeah. And hazards!


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## Hellzon

Yoinked for great justice. Throw me a line if you mind, but I wanted it in a place I'd remember to check again some time. 

Stuff like this gets you XP, yes it does.


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## Quickleaf

Great article, thanks Stalker! Could I put this together into a nice looking pdf for you? I think with a little editing you should submit this to Dragon! 

A couple questions...

Are you suggesting doing away with encounters of higher level than the PCs entirely? For example, the "average adventure" according to the DMG is made up of 8 encounters (L-1, L, L, L, L+1, L+1, L+1, L+3). How would you suggest increasing an encounter's difficulty, more terrain or something else?

Do you think there is a problem with core maths? Your monster & terrain advice implies grind comes from the DM, while your "tactics to avoid grind" implies it's the core math that creates grind.


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## blargney the second

Great article, Stalker0!

You kind of got me thinking about a related subject: I wonder if there's a correlation between grind and DMs that discourage powergaming.
-blarg


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## Nightson

Quickleaf said:


> Great article, thanks Stalker! Could I put this together into a nice looking pdf for you? I think with a little editing you should submit this to Dragon!
> 
> A couple questions...
> 
> Are you suggesting doing away with encounters of higher level than the PCs entirely? For example, the "average adventure" according to the DMG is made up of 8 encounters (L-1, L, L, L, L+1, L+1, L+1, L+3). How would you suggest increasing an encounter's difficulty, more terrain or something else?
> 
> Do you think there is a problem with core maths? Your monster & terrain advice implies grind comes from the DM, while your "tactics to avoid grind" implies it's the core math that creates grind.




Just use more monsters of the party level to increase the challenge up to L+1-3


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## Mottokrosh

Excellent article with very sound advice!

A method that I've used a couple of times to throw in fast and dangerous fights is to halve the monsters' hitpoints and increase their damage output by 50% or more. It's "breaking" the core rules, yes, but used in moderation can make for a quick and exciting fight.


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## AllisterH

Nightson said:


> Just use more monsters of the party level to increase the challenge up to L+1-3




Yeah, this is the trick I noticed after a while.

A fight at L+3 is much more satisfying using a L-1 Solo and making up the difference with other L-1 to L+1 creatures than simply using a single L+3 Solo monster....


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## Harlekin

voice220 said:


> Excellent article with very sound advice!
> 
> A method that I've used a couple of times to throw in fast and dangerous fights is to halve the monsters' hitpoints and increase their damage output by 50% or more. It's "breaking" the core rules, yes, but used in moderation can make for a quick and exciting fight.




I'm shaving 25% of the monster's HP and add 1/3 to their damage.

An other thing that reduces grind is removing some of the fiddly bits from the monsters. NPC abilities should be few but meaningful. 

Bad example: Whether a monster gets +1 to hit if it is bloodied is normally not going to matter, as the monster will only get ~4 more attack rolls after being bloodied and the probability of the +1 changing their outcome is 0.2 At the same time, remembering that +1 is a pain in the neck for the GM. Finally, unless the GM goes out of the way to describe how much more precise the monster becomes, now that it's bloodied, the players are not going to notice a difference. 

Good example: The Monster's damage goes from 1d10+5 to 2d10+5 if bloodied. This will be less fiddly to remember, and be noticeable to the players if it kicks in.  

Other culprits here are monsters that do extra damage on a crit. IMG, I remove that ability and replace it with a flat +1 to damage.


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## Nurgle84

Great Stuff, bookmarked!

Another little thing I might add about Solo Monsters:

These guys are most of the time, big tough monsters. I once had a remade Troll (Giant Troll, Huge Size) and the battle was kinda boring. The Troll had to get up a ramp to destroy a portal into a castle, so that his Gnoll Masters could invade. A well placed Flaming Sphere made that quickly impossible. 

Then it struck me: Why should a monster with a size like a tower play by the rules of normal sized human. Our ranger was hiding in a building next to the ramp, thinking himself unreachable. Well, the Troll didn´t think so, toppled the house to build himself a make-shift ramp. My players hesitated a second and were like  especially the Ranger of course. The Troll spent an AP to run up next to the mage hiding atop the the ramp. (Trampling the Ranger by the way) and in a second the combat was interesting again.

Conclusion: Sometimes doing the unexpected, especially if for a second looking through the eyes of a huge monster can lead to interesting situation.


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## Drkfathr1

Fantastic article. I think many would find this far more informative than the chapter in the DM's guide. 

This combinded with your Skill Challenge system shows some really top-end design work. 

Hear that WoTC? You should hire this guy as a freelancer.


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## Nifft

Nice stuff. It jibes well with my experiences.

The one trick I'd add is:

*Turn a Solo into an Elite* - Take a Solo monster 2 (or more) levels below the party. Cut its hit points in half, but otherwise leave it unchanged. Price it as an Elite of its level +2. Add minions & regular monsters to taste.

Cheers, -- N


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## Jack99

Overall, an awesome collection of good, sound advice. A few comments.



Stalker0 said:


> *Stalker0’s Guide to Anti-grind*6) Soldiers – Soldiers are the most grindy monster type. They have exceptionally high defenses and hitpoints, and don’t have that much offense. In short….grind city. While the occasional solider is good to take hits of your brute or to protect your artillery, don’t use soldiers on mass or the fight will end in a slug fest.



It's _en masse_ 



Stalker0 said:


> *Stalker0’s Guide to Anti-grind*b. Save your AP for the finishing move – An elite often doesn’t have the offense of two regular monsters which can give the players a sense of security and lead to feelings of grind. Use action points to change this mindset. Instead of using your action point at the beginning of the combat (where the party’s leader can easily fix the damage), use it right after the attack that just bloodied a party member to try and knock him out. 4e characters can usually take the heat, but it emphasizes how strong an elite can be and that the party should never be too comfortable fighting one even as the fight draws to a close.



This can not be stressed enough. I practise this a lot, and have been more or less from the get-go. The best combination is usually when a character is bloodied (preferably by another monster than the elite), then do the double attack routine (which elites usually have) and then (if both attacks hit) you use the AP and (hopefully) send the character into negatives.



Stalker0 said:


> *Stalker0’s Guide to Anti-grind*a. Never use a solo higher level than the party – This may seem like blasphemy but I think it is the greatest cause of solo grind that people experience. As I mentioned in the start of the article, higher level monsters gain a lot of defense and only a little offense. For the solo, that’s even more so. You’ll actually be amazed how quick (without being too quick) and fun a solo fight can be with a solo of your party’s level.



This is perhaps the only point of yours where I am not in total agreement. As long as you stay far far away from solo soldiers, it is not an issue I believe, although solo controllers can cause the same issues at times.

One point that could do with mentioning, is to avoid using elites and solos that heal too much or have the insubstantial ability. Or god forbid, both.


----------



## samursus

Very nice guide.... appears extremely well thought out and useful.  Thank you for your effort.


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## Nameless1

Nice advice. Always quality stuff from you.


----------



## Felon

Jack99 said:


> This is perhaps the only point of yours where I am not in total agreement. As long as you stay far far away from solo soldiers, it is not an issue I believe, although solo controllers can cause the same issues at times.



The ability to stay far, far away from a monster is a lot to take for granted. Dungeons can be small, monsters can move, and many classes simply have no worthwhile ranged capabilities so playing keep away means doing nothing (and doing nothing leads right into grind).


----------



## MadLordOfMilk

Felon said:


> The ability to stay far, far away from a monster is a lot to take for granted. Dungeons can be small, monsters can move, and many classes simply have no worthwhile ranged capabilities so playing keep away means doing nothing (and doing nothing leads right into grind).



I don't think it was a literal "far, far away" in the distance and game sense. I believe it was in the "don't use them" sense.


----------



## Jack99

Felon said:


> The ability to stay far, far away from a monster is a lot to take for granted. Dungeons can be small, monsters can move, and many classes simply have no worthwhile ranged capabilities so playing keep away means doing nothing (and doing nothing leads right into grind).






MadLordOfMilk said:


> I don't think it was a literal "far, far away" in the distance and game sense. I believe it was in the "don't use them" sense.




Indeed.


----------



## Felon

Stalker0 said:


> *I hope the guide was of use, good luck in your games!*



*
I think you did a fine job. A couple of thing I wnat to comment on:

1) Brutes vs. Soldiers: The guide mentions that soldiers have high defenses and brutes have low defenses. I think it's more like soldiers have high AC's while brutes have low AC's, with their non-AC defenses staying more or less in line with creatures of that type and level. 

2) Minions: Man, the only thing to love about minions is the free XP shower. There is an overproliferation of multi-target auto-damaging attacks (rain of steel, armor of agathys, flaming sphere, consecrated ground, etc.) that will auto-kill minions while simultaneously damaging other threats that accompany (typically, brutes, soldiers, and some skirmishers fall into the same front lines as the minions). So, the minion doesn't even cost the player the action it took to kill it--and ithat's supposedly the entire point of minions, to divert actions. As a result, they don't seem to affect grind one way or the other.*


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## Nifft

Felon said:


> There is an overproliferation of multi-target auto-damaging attacks (rain of steel, armor of agathys, flaming sphere, consecrated ground, etc.) that will auto-kill minions while simultaneously damaging other threats that accompany (typically, brutes, soldiers, and some skirmishers fall into the same front lines as the minions). So, the minion doesn't even cost the player the action it took to kill it--and ithat's supposedly the entire point of minions, to divert actions. As a result, they don't seem to affect grind one way or the other.



 The effects you mention are all Daily powers. So yeah, if Daily powers are free, so are dead minions.

Minions eat resources. Actions or Daily powers.

Cheers, -- N


----------



## Felon

Nifft said:


> The effects you mention are all Daily powers. So yeah, if Daily powers are free, so are dead minions.
> 
> Minions eat resources. Actions or Daily powers.



Everything eats resources. You don't take down many monsters just using at-wills, but you have an easier time doing so with four minions than one standard monster. And more to the point, you can kill the minions with the same attack you're using to damage other creatures, so the minions don't accomplish anything in terms of consuming actions or resources. 

It doesn't have to be dailies by any means. My group's radiant servant blows up with Solar Wrath. He hits everything in a 17x17" area, targeting Will (not a minion's strongest suit). The party barbarian unleashes Blade Sweep. He kills the odd minion that got missed by the cleric, and damages some other critter in the process. In such a scenario, the minions were just gravy, and that's using encounter powers.


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## mach1.9pants

Great guide thanks, I have been lopping off 15% of HP ('cos I am running modules) and am going to try minions are 2 hit kills tonight (1 to bloodied then dead) cos minions have been less than effective against my party... but I like the aid another idea. Never even thought of it d'oh 

have some XP, if I have any!


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## Monkey King

Great article, thanks! Have you considered writing for a magazine?


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## Radiating Gnome

Excellent article -- I've been thinking along some of the same lines, but of course you've said it better.  

I think an important part of the sensation of grind is a lack of mobility. It feels like grinding when the combatants are just standing toe to toe and trading blows.

So, I would suggest a stronger emphasis on the non-monster elements of a combat to help reduce the sensation of grind in combat.  It has been my experience that interesting, dangerous, and tactically usable terrain goes a long way to help make combat interesting.  If there is an area of high ground, a few holes you can drop enemies into, magic circles or other environmental effects that add combat potency -- those all help give the players an additional thing to concentrate on other that trading blows.  You've mentioned it, of course, but it has been my experience that the worst encounters I've written either had nothing at all to make the battlefield interesting, or had terrain and environmental effects designed to eliminate the PCs ability to maneuver.  

For instance, I had a battle take place on the deck of a ship in a storm -- because of the rain and heaving ship, every square was difficult terrain.  This one environmental effect turned the entire battle into a grind, because no one could move. Instead of swashbuckling, they were wading in mud.  

-j


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## Parlan

Great post, thanks!


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## Mottokrosh

mach1.9pants said:


> am going to try minions are 2 hit kills tonight (1 to bloodied then dead)




I actually just did this in my game last week. There was an encounter that needed lots of enemies that would swarm the PCs. Since there were so many monsters, the PCs pretty much assumed they were minions and weren't very scared of them. Until they didn't go down with one hit, that was! Suddenly they changed their mind and ran!

I call them Elite Minions. Two hits to kill unless a single attack does more than X damage (in this case I put X at 25 points of damage, for Level 10 Elite Minions).

Again, it's not something I plan on using very often, but it really fit the encounter.


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## Gort

Maybe two hits to kill unless they get criticalled (in which case they instantly die) would be a good rule also.


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## orangefruitbat

In my game, if you beat a minion's AC by 4+, it's killed. If you beat it by 1-3, it's bloodied. Two hits kills any minion.




Gort said:


> Maybe two hits to kill unless they get criticalled (in which case they instantly die) would be a good rule also.


----------



## Stalker0

Quickleaf said:


> Great article, thanks Stalker! Could I put this together into a nice looking pdf for you? I think with a little editing you should submit this to Dragon!
> 
> A couple questions...
> 
> Are you suggesting doing away with encounters of higher level than the PCs entirely? For example, the "average adventure" according to the DMG is made up of 8 encounters (L-1, L, L, L, L+1, L+1, L+1, L+3). How would you suggest increasing an encounter's difficulty, more terrain or something else?




I have no problems with pdfs for my work, feel free!

In general, I do not recommend encounters more than 1 level than the party based on monsters alone (I've done 2 at the outside for big fights), and the vast majority of mine are right at the party's level. However, I will often use terrain and other factors to bump up the challenge. With terrain, once the monsters are defeated, normally the fight is over. You get added effects with no hitpoints to grind through.

Now that doesn't mean I never use high level monsters vs my players, but I only do it one monster at a time and I factor in that it will be tough for my party to beat. For example, one time I threw my 10th level party against a 14th level kuo-tua as a test (that's high level and a solider, two sins against my guide!).

However, to compensate for the big challenge, I gave him some 8th level sahuagin priests as slaves. The kuo-tua was a tough cookie, but the second they beat him the sahuagin ran (their slaves after all, no reason to defend a dead master). So for the party's perspective, the fight was 5 on 1, with some huge bonus damage from the slaves.

That fight actually ended pretty quickly, but the party felt epic and great at defeating such a monster, with no experience of grind. But if I had put 2 of them in their, it would have likely been a different story as the party ran out of resources very quickly beating the first one.

Its the same with elites, I would never recommend a high level elite or solo against the party, the magnification of more defenses and lots more hitpoints just ramps up the grind meter.


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## Stalker0

Monkey King said:


> Great article, thanks! Have you considered writing for a magazine?




I have started to get the itch for it, anyone have a good idea on how to break the seal on getting in to the biz?


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## Piratecat

Radiating Gnome said:


> This one environmental effect turned the entire battle into a grind, because no one could move. Instead of swashbuckling, they were wading in mud.



I made the same mistake by having my group fight in knee-deep water against a swamp monster. The DMG even cautions against it, and I won't be making that mistake again.

Interestingly, I routinely craft fights 2-3 levels higher than my PCs, and there's no grind. That's because they're striker-heavy, with 3 strikers in a 5 man group. With no leaders they're screwed against foes that impose status conditions, but they've gotten good at fast takedowns to help compensate. Even fighting solos is a fast, fun joy.


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## mudbunny

I would submit this to Dungeon Magazine.


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## Jack99

Stalker0 said:


> I have started to get the itch for it, anyone have a good idea on how to break the seal on getting in to the biz?




I think you missed a hint as big as a barn. Check out Monkey King's sig


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## Hadrian the Builder

Posts like this one are the reason I come here. This was well done and I am going to try these tips in my own game.


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## Felon

Piratecat said:


> I made the same mistake by having my group fight in knee-deep water against a swamp monster. The DMG even cautions against it, and I won't be making that mistake again.



For me, it was a fight staged within a tangle of underbrush. I too learned the hard way that a little goes a long way with DT. 



> Interestingly, I routinely craft fights 2-3 levels higher than my PCs, and there's no grind. That's because they're striker-heavy, with 3 strikers in a 5 man group. With no leaders they're screwed against foes that impose status conditions, but they've gotten good at fast takedowns to help compensate. Even fighting solos is a fast, fun joy.



Well, I have a five-man group of three strikers and two defenders and we grind routinely. In fact, two owl bears was a near TPK for our party of 5-6th level characters. It's just too easy to shoot the ol' wad and then have to wear down two or three hundred HP (depending on the hit/miss ratio) with at-wills. 

I really feel like more encounter powers are needed. Also, many daillies don't yield meaningful dividends on a miss. My warlock, for instance, only gets to throw 5 pts of ongoing fire damage when he misses with a daily. 

There's too much micro-damage in powers. Powers like cleave that deal piddling damage to a creature that has three-figure HP. That's one of those "what-were-they-thinking" elements of 4e. Nickel-and-diming a monster feels very grindy, perhaps even moreso than missing it.


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## Squire James

I allow weapon and feat bonuses to increase damage effects on powers like Cleave and Reaping Strike.  Generally this means the extra damage is equal to the damage bonus on a hit (the damage dice "rolled zero").  While 3 or 4 damage to the other guy is not much, at decent levels this is more like 10 to 12 damage, which can be noticeable even to bigger creatures.

My minions are normal critters with 1/5 normal HP (I don't have trouble tracking HP for large groups).  They are always "bloodied" or "not bloodied", whichever state is less advantageous to them.  Their damage is fixed, as if they rolled a 2 on all their damage dice, and any bonus effects are made milder or removed (stunned becomes dazed, immobilized becomes slowed, ongoing damage halved, etc.).  Low level guys will be pretty close to the game's normal minions (6 HP goblins won't last long), but high level ones might be somewhat of a threat even without Aid Another.


----------



## AngryMojo

I've also noticed that multiple creatures that cause the weakened condition can drag a fight on a very long time.  Wratihs are really bad about this, and I'll never use more than one at a time again.


----------



## Kinneus

Great guide, as others have said. I love the monster roles; at first I thought they were superfluous fluff, but after I staged a fight comprised solely of soldiers, I realized role matters. Role matters a lot.

My favorite roles:
1. Brute. Before I select a soldier, I'll always look for a brute of the same level, and use that instead. My group is four players with two of them playing strikers, so the bloated HP doesn't contribute to grind as much. Good use of brutes can make combat exciting, in a very 4e kind of way. Players will be thrilled that all their cool powers are hitting the brute's crappy defenses, but they'll still be threatened by their high damage and staying power. I do wish their damage was a bit higher though.

2. Artillery, for basically the reasons Stalker0 has already laid out. My only complaint; I wish there were more archery-types, and less magic-types. It's hard to justify using a Kobold Wyrmpriest in every fight... after the party kills the ninth or tenth necromancer in the temple, necromancy suddenly doesn't feel all that scary. That's clearly a pet peeve, though. Artillery are clealy very well-designed.

3. Skirmishers. These guys just mix well with everything. Sometimes they feel a little fiddly with all their shifting and immediate reactions and such, but for the most part, any encounter can be improved with a clever skirmisher or two in there to shake things up. Due to their mobility, skirmishers are especially nice because they can do stuff other than whack the PCs yet again. They can provide flanking for the brutes, dash off to activate the trap, run away to warn the leader. They're plot-tastic.

Minions I'm fond of, but don't use much, as my group lacks a controller (although maybe this a good reason to use them more... they might actually seem threatening!). If you need help on making minions actually scary, I find giving them a decent ranged attack can make them frightening well into high heroic tier. Your defender has to decide: can I really take seven crossbow bolts to the chest in order to charge them?Soldiers I avoid like the plague. Lurkers are hit-and-miss; they generally do terrifying amounts of damage in all-too-specific circumstances, so I feel like you really have to design the whole encounter around them if you want to use them.


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## Saracenus

Radiating Gnome said:


> For instance, I had a battle take place on the deck of a ship in a storm -- because of the rain and heaving ship, every square was difficult terrain.  This one environmental effect turned the entire battle into a grind, because no one could move. Instead of swashbuckling, they were wading in mud.




J,

I think you missed an opportunity here. Instead of making the heaving deck static difficult terrain you could have put the deck in the init order and had it heave on its turn. 

Have everyone make Acrobatics or Athletics checks to see if they can control the "shift" that the heaving deck imparts. Suddenly everyone is moving, some under their own control, others not so much. Think of this as a mass shuffle <G>.

Give bonuses for players that think of ways to use their environment to their advantage (e.g. using a rope on the deck to swing and trip a group of enemies in the path).

Just my two cents...


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## Al'Kelhar

I'll chip in with another "excellent post", Stalker0!

The one thing I'd add to your comment that "terrain should've been included in the D&D 4E Monster Manual" is that terrain is a *controller*.  Your caution about over-using controllers applies equally to terrain.  While _judicious use_ of terrain and environmental effects can make a combat stand out, they can also have the exact opposite effect: they can make a fight grindy and can annoy players.

If you want to see rampant over-use of environmental effects to nix the characters and annoy the players, play through _Pyramid of Shadows_.

Cheers, Al'Kelhar.


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## MadLordOfMilk

As far as submitting this to Dungeon/Dragon, as some have suggested...


> *Simultaneous Submissions* We do not accept any submissions previously published by or simultaneously submitted to another magazine, website, or d20™ publisher. Likewise, we don’t accept plagiarized materials.





However, if anyone IS interested in submitting material to Dungeon/Dragon, it's pretty easy. Just read this page.


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## lordseussmd

*Excellent Post*

I must say, your post is well thought out, organized, and thorough. I see and agree with several of your points, however, I do disagree on a few points, and of course, this is mostly from My own experiences and may not reflect every other person's games.

1.  I love your breakdown of roles, however, I think that every role should be utilized, and as often as possible. I find that group encounters that include many, if not all the different basic monster roles (excluding Elite and Solo) make for much more interesting encounters. Yes, soldiers can slow down some parts of a battle, but overall, if you have a balanced party, sending them vs balanced monster parties makes for more epic conflicts.
2.  I almost always use monsters 2-5 levels higher than My party level. Obviously, when trying to do balanced encounters (L-1 to L+1) I use less of these than there are numbers of PCs, but generally fill out the numbers if need be with minions to compensate. I do think for the most part, you should never have encounters (excluding Solo/Elite, and minion rush) that have too few monsters compared to the party, or too many (Say, #ofPCs +/- 2 as a range)
3.  I also use Solos of higher level than My party on many occassions with great effect. They find the challenge exciting, and I just about never get that grind feeling in any of My games. Sending My 1st level group against a Young White Dragon works well, one or two of the characters my have leveled before said encounter, but generally it's still a nice boss type event, and yes, I do give the Young White Dragon some underlings to help out.

Now, I do have to point out, I run rather larger groups than other people as well. I run generally a minimum of 6 PCs and have run as many as 15 on a given night on more than one occassion. I scale My encounters via both #'s of foes and XP budgetting, and also happen to run most encounters in under an hr, to right around an hour and a helf (really big encounters with 15 players and upwards of 17 opponents) so My experiences are by and large not going to be typical for everyone.

Still, like the general concensus is, an excellent, well thought out article and I commend your efforts and I'm sure they will be of use to the majority of DMs out there.

Seuss


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## CharlesRyan

Very good advice. I learned a few things, and I'll pass this on to both of my current GMs for their edification as well!


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## 0-hr

This is great advice for removing the "Grind" (slugging it out after the fun part of the fight is done) but is there any consensus on how to reduce the combat time (as in number of rounds) for the system in general?

We're only getting one or two fight done each session, which doesn't lead to much plot advancement. I saw someone mention reducing creature hp by 25% and increasing their damage by 33%. Is that a good place to start if we want shorter fights, but with the same challenge?

We're using a premade adventure, so a simple conversion formula like this will work out better than trying to redesign the encounters completely.


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## hailstop

I've dropped hp to 75% and upped monster damage by 1/2 per level.  I'm not sure that's high enough though.


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## AngryMojo

Ki Ryn said:


> This is great advice for removing the "Grind" (slugging it out after the fun part of the fight is done) but is there any consensus on how to reduce the combat time (as in number of rounds) for the system in general?




Speeding up stuff in 4e isn't particularly difficult, you just need to make sure that both you and your players are properly prepared.

For players: If everyone knows their character and has proper cards printed up with to hit and damage numbers, I consider the players properly prepared.
For DM: I print out all my encounters on separate paper before the session so I have no flipping in books to do during encounters.  As long as I get that right, I consider myself properly prepared.

In addition, my group has gotten into the habit of language.  When I roll an attack, I say "20 vs. AC."  The response is "hit" or "miss, and then I'll say "8 necrotic damage" and allow them to apply resistances and vulnerabilities as appropriate.  We also have markers for Bloodied and all the other major condition, so I don't really have to ask many questions about the status of the fight and neither do my players.  You'd be amazed how much time is saved by playing efficiently.  I've made it through four hard encounters in one three-hour session before.


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## amysrevenge

AngryMojo said:


> When I roll an attack, I say "20 vs. AC."




[sarcasm]

I can't see how that is any faster than "OK, I rolled a 9.  Let's see...  my Strength mod is +9.  Wait, does that already include half my level?  Oh, yeah, it does.  Umm...  it's a +2 weapon, and the proficiency is +3.  I'm flanking, so that's +2.  Do I get another +2 because he's prone?  No?  Ok.  Did I count the proficiency bonus yet?  Yes?  Ok.  So, that's 22.  What do you mean, it's 25?  I just added it up!"

[/sarcasm]


----------



## AngryMojo

amysrevenge said:


> [sarcasm]Yadda yadda yadda [/sarcasm]



You joke, but you'd be amazed how many people insist "It can't save that much time!"


----------



## amysrevenge

Also, nothing drives me quite as bonkers as someone looking up in the PH, at the table, on their turn, the power they are currently using.  Exception:  I'll let it pass for a level 1 PC, or a PC who has just gained a level and doesn't have the very newest power written out or on a card yet. 

Maybe it's because I take so much joy in preparing my characters ahead of time, that I fail to recognize that some people out there might look at that level of preparation as a chore rather than a treat.


----------



## 0-hr

The individual turns are going fast enough. Our problem is that there are just SO MANY of them. The sheer number of rounds it takes to complete a fight is keeping us from progressing the story much, even given a 5 hour stint at the gaming table. My guess is that some combination of decreased enemy hit point would work - but it needs to be balanced by increased enemy output in order to keep things equally challenging. If others have been through the same thing, I'd like to benefit from their experience.


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## MichaelK

I don't play 4th edition, but I'm bookmarking this in case I ever do and to recommend to friends.

That is some very thorough advice and from what little I know of 4th edition it looks very solid and accurate.

Thankyou for this great resource.


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## Nibelung

Ki Ryn said:


> The individual turns are going fast enough. Our problem is that there are just SO MANY of them.




How many rounds your group is rolling, most of time?

On my table, the feared level+4 fights likely take 9~11 rounds. But since this is a "boss fight", we understand that this should be long and excitant on descriptions. Sometimes less, because we go nova on the boss. 

Our normal level or level+1 fights usually take 5~8 rounds, tops. We waste all encounters, and then maybe one to 3 rounds of at-wills to finish. Sometimes, we start with at-wills, so on final rounds at least one or two of us is still using encounters. 

If your level and level+1 fights are taking more than 10 rounds to finish, maybe your DM is overdoing his work on "interesting terrain" and "well hidden placed artillery".


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## Mathew_Freeman

Ki Ryn said:


> The individual turns are going fast enough. Our problem is that there are just SO MANY of them. The sheer number of rounds it takes to complete a fight is keeping us from progressing the story much, even given a 5 hour stint at the gaming table. My guess is that some combination of decreased enemy hit point would work - but it needs to be balanced by increased enemy output in order to keep things equally challenging. If others have been through the same thing, I'd like to benefit from their experience.




I appreciate that this can be a problem. I'd suggest that one thing you can do to make this better is to make sure you're doing focus-fire on the monsters.

Target one, take it down, then move on to the next. If every player is fighting a monster one-on-one, you'll find that combat is very, very slow.


----------



## vagabundo

I think there are two dials that you use in encounter planning that will speed up play:

- Following the excellent OP when designing encounters using standard creatures from MM or NPCs.
- Create a house rule for dialing down HP and increasing damage.

I think the response to this will vary from group to group, depending on how tactically minded they are, their class/role mix and how optimised their characters are for damage or how synergistic their power mix is with the other characters.

This stuff should be cover more in the DMG - hopefully DMG II will have some good advice for tailoring combats to your party.

It is important to teach some tactics to your players after an encounter, esp for novices and the more casual players. 

*Thread bookmarked.


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## 0-hr

I think that our tactics and organizational skills are ok because things move along well in our other games (which includes a lot of 3.5 and Star Wars Saga recently). I'll start tracking rounds and looking for areas to increase efficiency, but my gut feeling is that it critters just have a ton of hit points relative to the damage being put out by the PCs.


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## Nebulous

Drkfathr1 said:


> Fantastic article. I think many would find this far more informative than the chapter in the DM's guide.
> 
> This combinded with your Skill Challenge system shows some really top-end design work.
> 
> Hear that WoTC? You should hire this guy as a freelancer.




Yeah, he should be a 4e game designer.  Both the Obsidian and the Monster advice deserve to be in the DMG2 (or 3).


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## Scholar & Brutalman

Having just run a particular fight in The Temple Between module in the Scales of War AP, I'll add:

Avoid three-way battles with 16 monsters, none of whom are minions. Running a battle with yourself just slows things down while turning the players into an audience for more of each turn.

Avoid having a lot of monsters with powers that require book-keeping, such as regeneration or recharge powers. Everything that slows down the DM adds to grind.

Avoid monsters with powers that include the combination "at-will + daze + save-ends". You can replace daze with immobilize or any of the other crippling status effects. Recharge + crippling + save-ends is almost as bad.

Avoid really big encounter areas that take up nearly all of a battlemat. They take ages to draw, and give monsters too much room to avoid being in AoE attacks.

Damn fight took four hours.


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## S'mon

After running 2 sessions of 4e (adapted 3e Vault of Larin Karr), I have had a good number of fights (9 by my count), only 1 was dull.

They were:

Session #1

1. PCs vs hobgoblins in market square:
Hobgoblins: 6 minions, 1 archer, 1 soldier
A fairly easy introductory skirmish.  Minions died easy.  The archer escaped while the soldier held off the PCs, who chased him to: 

2. PCs vs hobgoblins trying to break into a mill house:
Hobgoblins: 1 archer (from fight #1), 1 commander, 1 warcaster, 8 minions
4 minions formed a battle line and were immediately wiped out by the Invoker PC.
However the Warcaster's magic KO'd several PCs and they were only saved by the arrival of the town guard, most of the hobgoblins escaped. 

3. PCs vs a 'Cloaker' under the town inn:
Improvised stats, kinda wonky

4. PCs vs a ghost in the tunnels:
Not too grindy despite the 1/2 damage from incorporeal

Session #2

PCs rested in the dungeon then pressed on

1. PCs ambushed by 3 giant weasels - reskinned wolves w 1/2 hp
I found this a fun little skirmish

2. PCs vs goblin hexer, 2 hobgoblin minions, 2 giant weasels
OK, not too challenging

3. PCs came up into the hobgoblin fort feast hall...

Initially there were sitting around the table:

4 hobgoblin grunts lv 3 minions
1 hobgoblin soldier lv 3
1 hobgoblin archer lv 3

Subsequent reinforcements were:

1 hobgoblin commander lv 5
1 hobgoblin archer lv 3
6 hobgoblin grunts lv 3 minion

Because the minions were slaughtered by Invoker attacks that didn't target AC their Phalanx Soldier ability didn't come up for them. The archers don't have it, so it was really just the soldier and the commander. 1 attack missed the commander due to Phalanx Soldier.

This was probably the highlight.

The second archer and commander when they were the last survivors failed a morale check (2d6 B/X style) and ran for it; the archer escaped but the commander was hunted down and evebntually killed in fight no. 4.

5. After that the PCs searched the fort, opened the sealed-up stable block, and met the Gelatinous Cube (level 5 elite brute) sealed up there.  That was when things got grindy.  The Cube's constant grabbing of PCs followed by their escapes took a lot of time, and prevented the PCs focusing damage on it.  It turned out to be a very boring, grindy monster.  Luckily a PC eventually dumped a sack of salt on it, killing it instantly!


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## Nebulous

Scholar & Brutalman said:


> Avoid really big encounter areas that take up nearly all of a battlemat. They take ages to draw, and give monsters too much room to avoid being in AoE attacks.
> 
> Damn fight took four hours.




In general i would agree, but i ran a really big 5th level fight with 6 PCs and probably 30+ monsters.  It got split up over two sessions and the whole thing took at least 5 hours.  I wouldn't want to do that normally, but it was a good climax to the adventure. And i had the battlemap made up prior to the game, so there was no need to draw anything. Otherwise, yeah, that can be a time-suck.


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## kitsune9

Stalker0 said:


> *Stalker0’s Guide to Anti-grind*
> 
> 
> I hope the guide was of use, good luck in your games!




Thanks Stalker for the article. I heard that grind was a big hassle for 4e, so should I pick it up to play, I'll bear this article as my notes for the campaign.


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## Obryn

Ki Ryn said:


> I think that our tactics and organizational skills are ok because things move along well in our other games (which includes a lot of 3.5 and Star Wars Saga recently). I'll start tracking rounds and looking for areas to increase efficiency, but my gut feeling is that it critters just have a ton of hit points relative to the damage being put out by the PCs.



The truth is that they do have a large number of HPs, relative to average damage, but not everyone running 4e more or less BTB runs into the grind issues you've noted.

I think Stalker0's notes are pretty excellent, and well-taken.  It's good, solid advice to keep combats challenging without a major rules overhaul.

I don't think you need to change HPs or damage to make combat fast...  A lot of it is, as noted above, player and DM preparedness.  A lot is having competent (not min-maxed, but competent) PCs.  A lot is using your encounter powers every fight.  A lot is not being stingy with your daily powers - blow them in medium-difficulty fights; don't save them for a potential disaster that might not materialize.  A lot is switching your tactics to account for party synergies - set up combat advantage for your rogue, set up big AoEs for the Wizard, knock people into the fighter so he can lock them down, etc.  A lot is just giving attack bonuses to everyone - put your leaders to work giving everyone else boosts!

All of these can make fights go pretty darn quickly.  Soldier and solo fights (and particularly elite soldier and solo soldier) fights can still grind.  If you have smart tactics, know your capabilities, and keep things moving, you might find the grind disappears.

I'm not saying it's not a problem - it absolutely can be.  But this guide is a good starting point, as are the other pieces of advice dropped here.  If nothing ends up working, using a -HP/+Dmg houserule might be what you have to do - but I haven't found the need so far.

-O


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## Novem5er

Agreed - great article!

While I've applied several of the tactics in the OP to my game, I've unfortunately had to go a step further. We've reduced monster HP by 50%  and I add bonus damage to each monster attack equal to 1/2 level + 1.

We've run it this way for 3 sessions now and my players love it! The combats go much quicker, feel more fluid, and we get more out of each session. The only problem I have with it as a DM is that it screws some monsters out of (save ends) affects or special attacks that are intended to use several times a fight. Since the combats last half as long, monsters (and PCs to a point) have half as many rounds to hit.

The bonus damage helps keep things pretty deadly. Our level 6 monsters are doing +4 damage with each hit. It doesn't look like a lot on paper, but when a Brute hits you for 2d6 + 11 with a Basic attack, the players take notice... _especially_ when a character is double-tapped in a single round.

I'm of the opinion that 4e combat _as written_ is just fine... when you have 5 dedicated players who've memorized their powers, think tactically, and are engaged during everyone else's turn (AKA paying attention!). For my group, though (with 5-7 players per week!) normal combat rules meant that half the group was "done" with the battle 30-45 minutes before it was really over.

Mostly, my players kept getting pissed that they could Crit with an Encounter power and not even _bloody_ a dang Gnoll. We went from _that, _to one-hit killing Wereboar when the dice are with us... and when half the party is down 2-4 healing surges at the end of it, it feels right.


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## Iron Sky

Nifft said:


> Nice stuff. It jibes well with my experiences.
> 
> The one trick I'd add is:
> 
> *Turn a Solo into an Elite* - Take a Solo monster 2 (or more) levels below the party. Cut its hit points in half, but otherwise leave it unchanged. Price it as an Elite of its level +2. Add minions & regular monsters to taste.
> 
> Cheers, -- N




There is some danger with turning solos into elites straight-up... as I found out in my game last week.  I took some creatures I'd made as solos and just turned them into elites.  Suddenly their powers I'd designed to be balanced with them as solos made them overpowered elites (which proceeded to _kill_ 80% of my PCs, to death).

I would probably trim a power or two from most solos if I turned them into elites...


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## Mustrum_Ridcully

I am not sure how much this was discussed about already in this thread, but my suggestion for paragon and epic play is to be careful with conditions. Avoid "action denying" conditions like immobilized/dazed/stunned/dominated. They can exist, but usually more as encounter powers and not as power from every monster. 

Other conditions tend to work better - combat advantage, vulnerabilites, losing resistance, marked, ongoing damage. And they also hasten the demise of the PCs without prolonging the battle. 

It's easy to feel loss of control over your actions, which changes the perception of the passed time _and_ it also actually limits how fast opponents can be taken down, since you can't use all your abilities. It's better if the opponent deals twice as much damage then the PCs deal only half their regular damage.


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## ExploderWizard

Iron Sky said:


> There is some danger with turning solos into elites straight-up... as I found out in my game last week. I took some creatures I'd made as solos and just turned them into elites. Suddenly their powers I'd designed to be balanced with them as solos made them overpowered elites (which proceeded to _kill_ 80% of my PCs, to death).
> 
> I would probably trim a power or two from most solos if I turned them into elites...




Killed to _death_, you say? My that is harsh. Most folks try and leave the PC's somewhat alive when killing them.


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## keterys

ExploderWizard said:


> Killed to _death_, you say? My that is harsh. Most folks try and leave the PC's somewhat alive when killing them.




You say that, but it is actually my goal to get people Dying so that whether they live or die is in their hands, but almost never to get them actually Dead on my own merit 

Ie, give them their 3 failed saves, their chance to stabilize, save vs. ongoing, what have you, but not to hit them so hard they go straight past 0 to -bloodied or have no ability to respond to someone getting knocked into Dying because of stun or aura damage or whatever.


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## eriktheguy

The only problem with your article is that you didn't put up a pdf.


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## ggroy

Here's a few other things I've done to speed up 4E combat encounters.

The times I felt an encounter was dragging on "too long", I ended up "minionizing" the generic monsters/badguys once they became bloodied. One more hit and a "minionized" monster/badguy was dead.

Another way of shortening encounters in mid-battle, I had some of the backline monsters retreat, such as an archer running out of arrows, or a monster's weapon breaking (such as from a critical failure) and subsequently running away from battle.

Sometimes I'll do a fake "morale" check and have the monsters retreat on a d20 roll of less than 5, 10 or 15, depending on the type of monsters.

If a particular monster has resistance to a particular type of damage (ie. fire, etc ...), or regenerates hit points every round, sometimes I'll drop the resistance/regeneration once they're bloodied to speed things up.

Another thing I've done which speeds up encounters slightly in my experience is to use group initiative, alternating between the player group and badguy group. Usually I allow the players to have the initiative, unless they've been surprised.  In practice in my 4E games using group initiative, typically the player group first has the wizard (or another spellcaster) doing a ranged area or blast attack on the badguys, before the melee players go in and fight. I try to arrange the badguys such that the players can't easily gang up all at once on one particular badguy and killing it in one round.


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## Trevalon Moonleirion

This is absolutely suburb advice I wish I'd had at my disposal a few weeks ago when planning a 19th level one-shot for a gameday.  This may have shortened the initial combat by a significant amount! (It was 3 hours...)

BUMP x 1000.  Everyone DMing 4e needs to read this, immediately


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## Herschel

voice220 said:


> Excellent article with very sound advice!
> 
> A method that I've used a couple of times to throw in fast and dangerous fights is to halve the monsters' hitpoints and increase their damage output by 50% or more. It's "breaking" the core rules, yes, but used in moderation can make for a quick and exciting fight.




Unless there's a Shaman in the party. Then I'd NEVER use this because it usually hoses him mightily.


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## Pelenor

Excellent article shows that grind can be minimized easily with good encounter design.


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## Jarrod

We hit the grind last night. Looking back, it was entirely due to my rushed preparation. 

Short version: too many status effects, too little damage. 

The fight was 17th level against 13th level PCs. A double handful of minions (5 damage each - so too low), three skirmishers (who did decent damage), three artillery (who did daze/weaken and low damage), a leader skirmisher (low damage), and a controller (two-target daze). If I'd written that up at any point before running the combat I'd have been running away. As it was, the PCs never felt threatened, even though they were all at low HP by the end of the fight.

Lessons learned: monsters need to be able to deal out damage. Status effects are nice, but not when they can effectively be applied every round. Daze is potent, but "I move over here - and that's my round" is not a fun thing to be able to do.


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## Osric_of_O

*Kill Grind with roleplaying*

I recently had an encounter (Brugg the Enforcer in H2) where the players started getting creative after their attack had failed to take down the Brute, and wanting to use a Free Action to get an Intimidate on him.  I was indignant about anyone wanting a freebie fight-winner like that and flatly refused...  And no one wanted to forego an actual attack to do a proper Standard Action Intimidate.

Analyzing it afterwards I realized that what had _really_ been going on was that the fight was won, no one was having any fun grinding to the end, and though they didn't realize it consciously, _that_ was what was making the players look for other ways to end it.

To reiterate Slayer0's point: if it's a grind, it needs to be brought to a satisfying conclusion as soon as possible (apart from when the drain on the party is important to the strength they might be able to bring to subsequent encounters).  A standalone battle, like mine was, definitely needs to be ended gracefully.

So in situations like that, you need to signal to your players that the Intimidate needn't be a wasted action.  Even for Brutes, the majority that are sentient are unlikely to want to fight to the death if that can't possibly achieve anything, so roleplay the monsters with a bit of intelligence and allow them to yield for the sake of a better game.
   They could just surrender.  But letting a PC action achieve the victory is surely more satisfying.


Roleplay only as much as will be engaging or fun for your players.  Don't lead them to expect that you'll make their lives difficult with the need to babysit prisoners or with surrendered enemies suddenly going back on the offensive.  It's realistic for beaten foes to be properly daunted by the PCs and/or honourable about their defeat.
The Rules-As-Written don't offer any black and white situational modifiers for Intimidate, except that in combat it can only work on Bloodied targets -- fair enough! -- and versus hostile targets is an attack at -10 vs their Will defence.
Maybe offer situational +2s (1) for being cornered, and (2) for every attacker currently pounding on them.  Offer a situational +5 if the total DPS is likely to put them down within a round and they don't even have a Bloodied target worth attriting on.
If a Minor Action can net you a Perception roll, let it allow an Insight roll too, to allow a PC to read whether an Intimidate is likely to be successful.  
Heck, if things are bad enough, you might eventually be able to give them it via Passive Insight!
Cheers!
*--Os.*


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## Matrix Sorcica

I'm ressurrecting this thread to hear if the advice from Stalker0 and others is the same post MM3?

Also, I would _very_ much like to hear if Essentials has reduced combat time, in your opinion, and why.

Thanks.


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## GenLang

Thanks for the guide, I've bookmarked this!


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## S'mon

Re Intimidate - I've allowed both Free Action and Minor Action intimidate checks.  Free if you're right in the face of the target, Minor if you're yelling from across the battlefield.

Depending on circumstance and the nature of the target, the DC to make them surrender may vary from Will+10 to as low as base Will.


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## jodyjohnson

Matrix Sorcica said:


> I'm ressurrecting this thread to hear if the advice from Stalker0 and others is the same post MM3?
> 
> Also, I would _very_ much like to hear if Essentials has reduced combat time, in your opinion, and why.




Since 2009 (the 10 month mark for 4e) we've had improved accuracy from PCs (the expertise fix, superior implements, and Essentials builds that focus on accuracy), reduced defenses of elites, solos, and increased damage for creatures (MM3 math) and increased PC damage in feat and item options.  There have been changes to monster design away from stacking damage reduction (weakness plus incorporeal) or soldier types with additional defensive abilities.

In our current game, the leading cause of grind is cold dice and that was true in every edition (1st edition was notorious for low level wiff-fests but at least stuff died when you hit them).

Other than n+ elites and solos I think the leading causes of most experience with grind was the design of Kobolds (shifty, slightly high defenses vs. reflex spells), Goblins (high defenses by current math), Hobgoblins (the notorious too high AC soldiers), and the wraiths of slog (weakness plus incorporeal).  All redesigned in Monster Vault while featuring strongly in the H1-H2 series.

I think the other factor is the promise of 4e encounter design -- only playing out the center-piece battles, and the practice where you fight a lot of dross encounters aren't heroic or story advancing.  Trash fights had a lot more traction in the player base and with the adventure designers than the top-view edition plan allowed for.  I like trash fights, I just don't like spending an hour or two on each of them.


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