Lessons From Thursday's Delve

[alexandraerin]

The first fight is winding down, doesn't seem like we'll get to the second one with the whole group. It's gone slower than I had hoped but I think I've learned what I need to make it go faster.

• Give players the initiative list up front so that they know when they're going and can better plan their first move (and start writing in advance, if they're verbose.)
  
• Use the "quick combat" trick - make monsters more deadly and halve their HPs. This makes combat take fewer rounds to get through, makes player actions feel more decisive, but keeps the menace level about the same. This would be the big thing, I think.
  
• Clarify while laying out the scene how obstacles like the poker table affect movement. This way players will know what they can and can't do.
  
• Emphasize more often who's within reach/move - the most important aspect of the distance rules.
  

Other than that, I'm very happy with how things went. My dynamic monsters weren't quite as dynamic as they could have been, but that's because I forgot some of the capabilities that I gave them. Having their statblocks crowded on a screen is not idea. I need a different way to view them. And maybe give myself tactics notes reminding what to open with.

Comments

[cpip.livejournal.com]

Tactics notes are great. I try and write a few scribbles myself, and I know when I don't is when I'm less happy about the result of a combat scene.

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

My thought was, "I just finished making these guys less than 24 hours ago, I'm not going to forget what they can do and when they should do it."

You'd think I'd never met myself...

[gamingdragon.livejournal.com]

I'm working on a prepost list in note pad that has my info for my attacks i think it will help things go faster on my side so I can just copy paste some things

[josol.livejournal.com]

I liked what I saw, actually. The fact that two of them were "partners" really struck me. I'll remember those two for a while.

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that you like that, because there are going to be more like that... some as symmetrical as the acrobats were, some less so.

It's basically the concept of an Elite in reverse: two monsters that act as one.

[downeymb.livejournal.com]

I like the quick combat trick idea a lot. So to make them more deadly do you just bump their attacks up by say +2 and their damage by +4/additional dice? Or is that not enough?

Obviously you don't upgrade their defenses, as that would defeat the whole purpose of speeding combat up.

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

To get them to do the same amount of damage in half the time, it's easiest to just double it. The formula I've seen is to literally double their damage on each, but I don't like that as it makes combat "swingier"... more hinges on a single hit or miss.

What I would rather do is give them double attacks. This not only makes things less random but it spreads the damage they do out in a pattern that's more like what it would be under normal combat.

Also, if you favor interesting monsters, the two attacks can be using different modes. For instance, I had a Goblin Magician in this fight who flung cards as his basic ranged attack and as a recharge power could pull something out of his hat. For the revamp version of this, I'm going to tweak both those powers to make them more comparable, and allow him to do both every round.