Take for example, Burning Hands. On the surface, not much creativity there. Fan of flame, bat guano and sulpher, yadda yadda. It’s quite possibly the most overused Wizard spell out there, ever since first edition. But! In 4e, mechanics are completely separate from story and flavor. This allows you to reflavor things without affecting game balance. After all, Burning Hands is just a Int vs Ref; Close blast 5; 2d6+ INT mod encounter power. The blast can be anything. Cone of cold, poison nova, gust of wind, corpse explosion, etc etc. In my games, the title and flavor text of powers are just guidelines, there to get the creative juices flowing. After all, a PC reading his powers from the PH is like a DM reading his encounters from the module: Boring!

Monsters retreating when bloodied is a good idea, especially with intelligent monsters. However, it is also useful to remind players that the Intimidate skill can be used to scare off bloodied monsters. Encourage players to take advantage of this, and you’ve shortened your combat without changing any rules.

In my mind, stopwatches make the game a little *too* tense. I roleplay to relax, not to be put in the hotseat. That said, I’m sure some players will enjoy the added tension a stopwatch can bring.

This rule was born because combat where you allow players to um and ah and consult runs like TREACLE.

Once it was introduced, it brought back a delicious edge of panic and the chance of making serious errors – especially if the characters are ambushed, it was great.

When I’m a player, a stop watch would be gauche, and I just try to set a good example.

Anyway, that’s my recommendation: a bit of pressure during the combat not only rushes it to conclusion, but also makes it more dramatic and fun.

ICE has a good web site (ironcrown.com) with a good active forum. Again – love the system – far more than any version of D&D (especially 4). I like a game where roleplaying is more emphasised with a good touch of realism.

First off, I’m starting to have monsters & NPCs run away a lot more. Usually when they become bloodied. Also, I’m putting more obstacles into the encounter; poor lighting/darkness, deep snow, stairs, etc. One of the last encounters we ran, I had a log over a slimy creek. Lots of Acrobatics checks and falls into the water while fighting.

And in between combats I usually try to put in non-combat encounters; traps, puzzles, role-playing encounters. I think we’ve finally mastered skill challenges. It took awhile, but these make for very interesting encounters and I highly recommend them. In fact I’ve had combats turn into skill challenges and vice versa.

In the past, when we played 3.5 edition, we would take breaks and try different games/systems to break up the monotony (because combats in 3rd edition also dragged on). That’s always good. However, with 4th edition, my group wants to soldier on — despite the sometimes lengthy combats. I think this is because I decided to award twice the xp. They get really excited when they advance a level and get cool new powers and feats

We’re a bunch of older gamers who have either been away from gaming for a long time or are completely new to D&D.

Not really keen or able to spend many hours figuring out complicated rules.

The biggest surprise for me so far came after looking over my newly purchased ‘Castles and Crusaders’ materiel: it WAS simpler, and it looked like it was going to be a lot less fun.

We all enjoy 3.5, maybe I’ll have a chat with the group and see if they want me to ‘wing it’ a bit more with the rules. I already allow lots of leeway, (for example straight lines when charging, running)
Thanks

Monte Cook apparently intended 3.0 to be runnable without miniatures if a group wanted. His advice on how to adapt D&D to gridless play is here: http://www.montecook.com/arch_dmonly21.html

I haven’t tried it myself, but it’s the sort of thing that I would need to do if I ever returned to 3e.

d7´s last blog post..Burning Wheel initial impressions

I’m DMng a group through the Shackled City Adventure Path (6 players, 3.5).

We all like fun feats, and we don’t see how to preserve them while removing the battlemat.

For a number of reasons, we have chosen not to switch to 4E. For this discussion, the main reason is it doesn’t solve any of the combat issues (too slow).

Last Christmas a couple of us bought a starter back from Troll Lord Games. And we were bitterly disappointed. Despite the crowing on the Troll Lords Site, the materials turned out to be shoddy.

Good to hear about other options for combat systems.

Has anyone ‘experimented’ with 3.5 battlemat rules (maybe changing/removing feats tied to tactical movement)?

This issue isn’t going to end our game, and it might just be a function of our group being older…but combat takes up so much of our time.

I believe ‘fluff’ is the game and ‘crunch’ is not as important, hope you know what I mean

But how do you do magic vs tactical tricks vs attacks? You just hit different defences as the dcs, and then get to grant bonuses to the people doing the hitting.

There’s probably much more you can do that is interesting, but that’s a very rough outline.

Definitely in the minority, I suppose.

I switched to 1st edition AD&D to get back to my roots and it’s fun. I do miss a sane skill system, though I enjoy how it expect the player to think about and interact with their character’s environment rather than just say, “Do I Spot anything?” Combat is still a pain, though for different reasons. It’s hard to challenge the players without accidentally killing them.

For fast yet crunchy combat that puts a lot of choice in the players’ hands I’m currently demoing Savage World for my group. I think it’s going to satisfy what I want from a system, and I’m currently working up material to use it as the engine for a non-D&D Forgotten Realms campaign.

(The anti-spam captcha for this comment was “D6″. Apropos.)

d7´s last blog post..Savage Worlds actual play