As we all know a lot of folk find combat slow in 4th edition. Or let me rephrase, what they find slow seems to be once both sides have used their ‘specials’ then combat comes down to using the same attack over and over again (which for melee classes is the same as it ever was in earlier editions).
So there have been a HUGE number of options and theorycrafting put forth on how to make it faster.
But what these all really do is increase the relative worth of the offense aka strikers versus all the other classes. Because monsters last less time they get less time to do damage, reducing the worth of defenders, because monsters do less damage that reduces the worth of healers, etc.
The latest that I’ve come across that seem relevant and on the surface (all of them really come down to reducing the hit points of the monsters) different from those that have gone before are as such:
Double Damage against bloodied opponents (most say only against monsters not PC’s).
That one is the same thing has halving half their hit points to start with so it’s really not new at all.
The next one is fairly new in its concept but in the end it’s merely reducing the monters hit point pool but some fractional amount which would be based on the number of hits required at average damage to kill the monster and then adding 5 to the average damage and reducing the number of hits.
A power courtesy of Stalker0 that can be used by PC’s (not against them) -
Bloodied Strike: Once per round when making an attack against a bloodied target, a PC can choose to have that attack deal an extra 5 damage. This damage increases to 10 at paragon, and 15 at epic.
So if a monster had 200 hit points, your do an average of 20 damage then 10 hits will typically kill it. Adding 5 damage once it’s bloodied will reduce the number of hits required by 1. The bonus only kicks in at bloodied so you only have 5 hits to work with so you end up with 25 damage per or 125 damage which means you’ll ‘overkill’ the monster by 5 damage and take 4 rounds instead.
Obviously on creatures with fewer health or attacks with smaller averages +5 will have a proportionately larger impact.
And one by Asmor below. This one merely lets you maximize your dice once a monster is bloodied so instead of rolling you’ll be doing a fixed amount of damage. That takes away the mystery certainly other than if you’re going to hit or not. This also rewards characters using bigger dice. A fighter wielding a greatsword gains more than a rogue throwing shurieken using this system.
What about having attacks against bloodied opponents do full damage?
It’s actually significantly worse than double damage. (in response to someone say it was the same as double damage)
e.g.
Let’s say you do 1d8+5 damage (longsword, +3 str, +2 weapon focus). That’s an average of 9.5 damage. Doubled you’re averaging 19 damage. Maximized, you’re doing 13 damage, about a third less than doubling.
Worth noting that the benefits change depending on what proportion of the roll is static vs. based on a die roll. The more variable damage relative to static damage, the lower the decrease in damage. Regardless, though, even if you’re doing 100% damage, there’s still a bit less damage than simply doubling. For example, 1d6: 6 damage vs. 7. This difference increases as the number of dice increases, e.g. 6d6: 36 vs. 42.
In general, if you’re rolling X dice (sizes of the dice are irrelevant) and adding Y, maximizing will result in you doing (X + Y) less than doubling.
There are two other benefits to this, though, over doubling.
1. The damage remains within “expected” ranges. Just as WotC made crits maximize damage because of the funky results that could happen when you multiply damage, this has the same effect.
2. No rolling means a bit less time spent adding stuff up. I’d imagine this saved time adds up over the course of a combat…
