Know Thy Enemy: The Grind

The Grind, The Slog, Sammich combat - its been called many things, but they all refer to the very same enemy. Fourth edition brought us many new ways to play the game, and it's combat system was one of the biggest changes. But along with those changes came an unwanted side effect. The Grind happens at the end of combat, after all the players have used their encounters and are either out of dailies or sitting on them for the next encounter, and the Artillery have been delt with, the enemy controller is dead, and the PC's Striker/Defender is at-will mopping up the hard to hit, low damage output Soldier monsters. The end of the encounter is a hand, the PC's have won - but there are still over two hundred hp to finish up with on the board. This state of affairs is what I will refer to as "The Grind."

After the jump we will identify the Enemey and then learn some Combat skills to fight it!



Identifying The Enemy

Sometimes it can be hard to identify this enemy, because he rears his ugly head after the intensity of combat. And as an added complication, there are two different degrees of The Grind. Usually, the DM will feel the Grind set in first, due to the fact that the DM can see all the numbers on the board, and can feel when the combat is over. For the Players, the Grind can set in much later, because usually they have just taken down the biggest baddest thing on the field and now they turn their eyes to the minions (not litterally those should be dead by now). To them, sometimes it can feel like the combat is theirs, but they only have to swing a few more well placed hits to finish off the remaining 3 monsters! The scenario becomes the Grind two to three rounds later, when the PC's realize that these remaining enemies are not trouble enough to warrent using their "interesting" powers on (ie Dailies, and magic items) and so they just throw down at-wills and slowly grind the remaining monsters to dust. This is the definition of "The Grind".

Alleviating The Grind As DM:

There are many different ways to alleviate The Grind as a DM. One of the easiest tricks to have in your back pocket as the DM is to have the enemies run away from the PC's. I personally like this meathod because it doesn't break the flow of combat - and it makes sense in the narrative of the story. But as I have found, having every encounter end with the enemies fleeing will leave a bad taste in your players mouths, and will be very unsatisfying in the end.

The Grind usually starts as a flaw in the encounter design, so we as DM's need to look out for it as we are putting together our encounters. One of the easiest ways to create DM Grind is having only a single monster on the grid that has intersting and threatening powers. Try to avoid an instance where the "boss monster" has 3 encounter powers that are all really cool and scary but his 4 cohort monsters are just brutes that have a single, low hit, high damage attack. Because in the end, if the boss monster goes out in the fourth round, you now have a bunch of uninteresting brutes to slog through the next hour to an hour and a half with. So in other words, dont put all your eggs in one basket. Also, make sure you use a good mix of monsters to start with, I perfer using Artillery over almost any type of enemy because their damage output is so much higher on average then normal monsters, but their defenses and hit points tend to be lower. So in the end Artillery monsters are threatening, and pull a whole lot of agro from the Players, but dont take too long to slog through once the PC's get to them. I try my best to aviod Soliders without marking ability - and if I do use a Solider without the ability to mark, I usually add that ability in some way. To me, a non-marking Solider is the worst thing you can do for Grind, because they tend to have a boat load of HP and really high defences but usually they dont have very many interesting attacks or even attacks that are more then annoying to PC's. So in my experience they become the "Mop up" fodder at the end of the encounter because the PC's usually see the Artillery and Controllers as the real problems. Now, if the Soldier can mark, and punish those that ignore the mark, then we have an interesting monster, because these guys can make sure that the PC's keep off of their more intersting allies, which stops the PC's from having to slog through the Soldiers at the end, and keeps your more intersting monsters on the board longer for you to play with.

Another way that I have heard of a whole bunch on the internet lately for how to alleviate grind is to just finish the combat narratively after you know its over. The issue I have with this is that even in those last few boreing rounds of combat, the PC's have a good chance of loosing some of their resources, be it HP or surges or whatever. So another set of DM's out there have suggested having the PC's pay a "Grind Tax" as it were, soemthing like spending a healing surge and then ending the combat narratively, or perhaps having everyone take 2d6 damage and then just ending. I thought this to be a great idea, until I presented it to my players - who looked like I had somehow violate them! I as the DM, saw another 20-30 minutes of Grind in the near future and offered the PC's a way out of it, but to the Players they had this in the bag and wanted to finish! Plus, most of them saw the battle grid and knew that if they slogged through the next few minutes, there was a good chance they wouldn't take any damage or loose anything at all, their tactical positions were too good, and the monsters didnt have the right stuff to really threaten them - so all they would need to do is throw down the damage! So be warry of this "narrative ending" way of alleviateing grind, I know I probably wont use it again.

Aleviating The Grind As a Player:

So while most of the Grind responsabilty is placed on the DM there are a few things that the Players can do to make it easier for the DM where this is concerned. First of all, have a candid attatude about the whole thing, and remember that your DM is playing this game just like you are. If the DM decides to try a narrative ending, or has the monsters break rank and flee try to see if for what it is: the DM is telling you that he foresee's a section of the game that he is not going to enjoy and likely you wont either. Again, it's really not fair to ask your DM to slog through a boring set of attack-hit-attack-hit rounds because you cant stand to have the encounter end when you feel your on top. You should be able to trust your DM to not do this every time - but when this does happen, try to see it from his perspective!

Another thing you can try doing if you find your group runs into a whole bunch of Grind is to space out your powers. The Grind for players usually happens when all the PC's blow off their encounter powers right at the beginning of combat and there are still enemies standing when the dust settles. So instead of jumpping into the battle with all the force you can muster to try and deal the most damage as possible in the shortest time possible, try spacing them out. Try to look at the battle with a bit of a narrative eye too, use At-wills to "set up" your larger attacks narratively. Instead of your rounds looking like this: Encounter, Encounter, Daily, At-will, At-will, At-will. Try to spread that out a bit, Encounter, At-will, At-will, Encounter, Encounter, At-will, Daily. The same amount of damage is being delt, its just that it's now happening over the course of combat instead of a super intense damage orgy up front and then a bunch of slow grind at the end! Sure this means you may not use all your encounters in every fight, but if the fight was fun who really cares right?

That's it for now about The Grind, but as I do combat with this beast myself I am sure that more and more information will begin cropping up!