What’s Wrong with D&D 4E Combat? How Does Enhanced 4E make it Better?

Combat in D&D 4E is Just Too Slow

So in Enhanced 4E we make DnD 4E combat faster. In our testing, the Combat in Motion ruleset increased the number of melee attacks per round by nearly 50%, meaning more opportunities to strike and do damage, and faster resolution of melee confrontations. Ranged attackers were also able to fire in circumstances where they would not have had opportunity to do so under the standard D&D 4E rules alone, making the shots they could take more effective.

Other actions documented in Combat in Motion empower entire forces to act at once. Multiple actions can be made in rapid succession on a single turn.

However, the rules of Combat in Motion have an even greater impact upon the perception of game speed. Much of player frustration in combat can be attributed to the impotence players feel while other players or monsters are taking turns. Even when a player is attacked directly in standard 4E, that player can do nothing. Each player simply waits passively (and too-often, inattentively) while time slowly drags on---until that brief moment arrives once again when he or she can take another turn.

Combat in Motion empowers all players to act at almost any time on any turn---not by adding any more immediate or opportunity actions to the game---but by giving players the flexibility to choose when to take the actions they already have.

When players are involved in the entire combat round, they perceive themselves as active participants at all times---no longer passively waiting through most of the game for their turns to arrive. The time between turns matters far less.

Enhanced4E: Combat in Motion for 4th Edition D&D---patience is no longer required.

Enhanced 4E: Combat in Motion is available in print and eBook formats from Enhanced4E.com and is now also available from DriveThruRPG.

The Enhanced DnD4E Difference: Entry 3

Chases and Races in standard DnD4E vs. Enhanced DnD4E: Part III

The Scenario: A reminder

We began this essay series by examining a scene from the film, Jurassic Park, where the jeep in which Jeff Goldblum rides as a passenger is nearly swallowed by a running T-Rex. The dinosaur gives chase and threatens the jeep until the faster vehicle ultimately accelerates away. It was argued that this scene could not be reproduced in the DnD4E game world using the standard rules.

In Part I and Part II we learned that this is true. DnD4E, in its core form, lacks the tools needed to model this encounter (as we will learn in subsequent commentaries, this is only one of many classic, dramatic combat scenarios that will not work in standard DnD4E).

We have seen also that the Enhanced DnD4E toolset succeeds in this scenario in every place where the standard rules fail. The mechanics detailed in the book Combat in Motion were created for this very purpose: To model combat encounters where combatants do not stand still, and this includes races and chases.

However, we haven’t yet seen the original scene reproduced. One element remains missing: The vehicle.

Let’s put the vehicle into the scene.

Let’s restart the chase again on both the standard DnD4E table and on the Enhanced DnD4E table. This time, let’s make our Elf a driver of a wagon. We will then place the wagon on each the tables for our Ogre to chase.

The Recreation in Enhanced DnD4E

Let’s first have a look at how this chase sequence plays out on the Enhanced DnD4E game table.

Let’s position the Ogre---speed 6---just 12 squares away from our wagon. Dangerously close! And let’s do one thing more. Let’s go ahead and give the initiative to the Ogre. Our wagon---speed 10---sits at a stand-still.

What happens next?

The Ogre begins with a sprint toward the stationary wagon. It moves 8 squares---bringing its token or miniature within 4 squares of the wagon’s token or miniature when the first action of the Ogre’s turn completes. With another standard action, the Ogre will charge the still motionless vehicle before it even begins to move away.

But this doesn't happen.

Enhanced DnD4E empowers the Elf driver to act on the Ogre’s turn at precisely this point. She is able to borrow an action from her upcoming turn to move the wagon forward right as the Ogre’s charge commences.

The wagon has a top-speed of 10 but, in Enhanced DnD4E, vehicles do not reach their top speed on their first move action. Vehicles begin all movement slowed. The Elf can manage to move the wagon just 2 squares. However, she is able to complete this action with the wagon in motion and this makes a significant difference when, moments later, the Ogre’s charge slams into the rear of the cart. The Ogre makes this attack now at a -4 penalty (the Ogre receives a +1 for its charge but, in Enhanced DnD4E, attacks to the rear of a moving target are penalized with a -5 to the die roll).

The Ogre’s turn ends. The Elf’s turn begins.

The Elf has used one move action already. She now has just one move action or one standard action remaining on her turn and she must use this action to move the wagon. She is able now to accelerate the vehicle to a crawl: Half the wagon’s movement. She moves the wagon 5 squares. She ends her turn still in motion.

The first round has ended.

It is now the top of the second round. The Ogre is due to take its turn. However, in Enhanced DnD4E, creatures in motion may challenge one another for the opportunity to go first, and the Elf opts to challenge for the top position. If she can take the initiative, she just might escape.

Both the Elf and the Ogre roll a d20 and each adds the appropriate dexterity bonus.

The Elf loses. The Ogre will go first once more.

To avoid attacking its moving target from the rear, the Ogre sprints its full 8 squares and completes the action running alongside the speeding wagon. With a standard action, the Ogre readies an attack. The Elf, accelerating alongside the Ogre glances to her left and sees the monster raise its enormous club.

As the Elf’s turn arrives, she is finally able to move the wagon its full speed of 10. The wagon token or miniature must enter first the square directly ahead as it moves past the Ogre’s token or miniature. This triggers the Ogre’s readied action.

The massive club slams into the side of the vehicle, rocking it back and forth on its axels. (The attack from the side is not penalized by the wagon’s motion but is still subject to a -2 penalty for the Ogre’s motion.)

Speeding onward, the wagon token or miniature is positioned 8 squares ahead of the Ogre when the Elf completes the first action of her turn. Once again, before she can take the second move of her turn, Enhanced DnD4E empowers the Ogre to move right along with her.

With a sprint action, the Ogre is able to sprint 9 squares, losing just a single square in relation to the vehicle. However this loss will prove just enough to allow the wagon to sprint away as the Elf completes the final move of her turn.

The Recreation in Standard DnD4E

On the standard DnD4E table, the Ogre, having won the initiative roll, advances 6 squares then charges another 6 to hit the stationary wagon with a +1 to its attack roll. The Elf now takes her turn and moves the wagon away from the Ogre (vehicles in DnD4E never trigger opportunity attacks for exiting squares adjacent to attackers). The vehicle “runs” 24 squares---well beyond any hope the Ogre might have of catching it.

The “chase” is over.

Sheer excitement.


Enhanced 4E: Combat in Motion is available in print and eBook formats from Enhanced4E.com and is now also available from DriveThruRPG.

The Enhanced DnD4E Difference: Entry 1

Chases and Races in standard DnD4E vs. Enhanced DnD4E: Part I

The Scenario

There is a scene in the film, Jurassic Park, where the jeep in which Jeff Goldblum rides as a passenger is nearly swallowed by a running T-Rex. The dinosaur snaps at the jeep, giving chase until the faster vehicle finally accelerates away.

That sequence is impossible to model with the combat rules of standard DnD4E.

To see why, let’s recreate the sequence on the battle-map using both the standard DnD4E and Enhanced DnD4E rules.

For the T-Rex we will substitute a more thematically appropriate Ogre. For the jeep, we might place a wagon but the Enhanced DnD4E rules for vehicles add another interesting dimension to the scenario best considered separately. For now, let’s keep the Ogre but have it chase an Elf.

Our Ogre has a top speed of 6. Our fleet-footed Elf has a speed of 7. Our scene begins with both creatures at a stand-still and separated by 4 squares.

Running the Chase

In both the standard DnD4E game and the Enhanced DnD4E game, the Ogre and Elf roll for initiative with the winner taking the first action in the first round. In both games there will be no chase if the Ogre wins, as it will immediately close the 4 square gap to engage the Elf.

Yet in the standard DnD4E game, there will be no chase regardless of who wins the initiative roll. For if the Elf wins the initiative roll, she will immediately escape; she will run 18 squares across the board, ending her turn 22 squares distant, and the Ogre, when its turn arrives, will see it has no hope of catching her.

But over in our Enhanced DnD4E game, things look very different.

Here, the Elf has won the initiative roll and, at the end of the first round (after 6 seconds of game time), she and the Ogre have raced across the battle-grid, averaging 18 squares between them, with the Ogre now 6 squares behind. The Elf is still getting away but the Ogre is in hot pursuit. Why has the Ogre even bothered to chase the Elf when, even in the Enhanced 4E game, the Elf clearly moves faster?

The reason is this; at the top of each round, Enhanced 4E grants the Ogre the chance to turn the tables. Each running creature may make an opposed Dexterity check (much like the initiative roll) with the winner going first.

As the second round begins, the Ogre challenges the Elf for the top spot in the turn order.

Because the 6 square gap between the two creatures exactly matches the Ogre’s movement rate, the Ogre will be able to strike the Elf with a charge action should it win the opposed Dexterity check. Should the Elf win the opposed check, the chase will continue – and it will continue until the distance between the two creatures is so wide that it exceeds the Ogre’s maximum sprinting speed of nine squares. Only then will the faster Elf have truly managed to escape.

Enhanced 4E is available in print and eBook formats from Enhanced4E.com.

1 New D&D 4E Motion State

A Revolutionary Concept in Miniature/Token-Based Tabletop War-Gaming

Combat in Motion for D&D 4E is a book chock full of innovation. One feature stands out as perhaps the most revolutionary concept the book contains: The mechanisms for modeling the uninterrupted movement of creatures through multiple turns using only stationary miniatures.

In table-top, melee combat games, miniatures or tokens mark the locations of creatures in combat. Generally speaking, each creature moves in space only when its token is physically moved by a player. The constraints of turn order would appear to make it impossible to model seamless, uninterrupted motion. Instead, each creature may move from one spot to another on its turn---stop there while other creatures take their turns---and then move again if the player so chooses when its next turn arrives. Each move begins at a stop and ends at a stop.

Now it is true that players may still imagine a creature represented by a motionless token to be moving furiously toward some farther destination; rules are no limitation on the imaginations of players. However, absent rules to model its movement, this imagined motion has no impact on the creature. It may as well be standing still.

Now some tabletop games are explicitly dedicated to modeling constant motion. In a game like Wings of War, the miniatures always represent moving aircraft engaged in swirling three dimensional dogfights, even when these miniatures are apparently stationary.

However, Enhanced 4E is unique in that its stationary miniatures or tokens sometimes represent creatures that are motionless and sometimes represent creatures that are still moving. Creatures alternate between these motion states depending on circumstance. When a creature’s motion state changes from motionless to in-motion, the way in which the creature interacts with its surroundings also changes.

In Enhanced 4E, a miniature “in-motion” marks the approximate location of the corresponding creature, as that creature moves rapidly toward an intended destination. Enemy’s giving chase find that target more difficult to hit with close and melee attacks and the creature also may escape the explosive effects of area attacks positioned to its rear. Most attacks made by the creature itself are far less accurate.

Most interesting, the creature is subject to momentum that carries over from one action into another and from one turn into the next. A creature completing an action in motion begins its next action in the same state, subject to the same penalties and the same benefits (including increased potential speed). The effect, however, is to blur the lines between turns. Chases and races can be much more easily and intuitively simulated with pursuers following hot on the heels of fleeing adventurers, or adversaries racing furiously to grab the golden idol.

To purchase your copy of Enhanced 4E: Combat in Motion, visit Enhanced4E.com. Available in both print and eBook editions!