Combats and Ressources (again...) - How to condense Adventures

Hello all you nice people of Enworld,

I know, there have been some discussions about how to change different parameters of combat in 4E to accomplish different things (like having more smaller fights withot braking the balance). But here is a question that I somehow didn't really find an answer for. Maybe there is some thread I missed - feel free to post a link!

I wanted to run Orcs of Stonefang pass for my 5th level party of 5 (Fighter, Paladin, Cleric, Ranger, Wizard). The module has about 10 full-fledged combat encounters which I find mostly interessting and engaging. Now my party likes combat and smashing their foes in team effort - but on the other side they (and myself too) like it if the combats are meaningful and if they don't appear too often. I wanted therefore to compress the adventure to about 5 combat encounters. We usually play 3 hours every two weeks which gives us enough time for a fight, some exploration, roleplaying, and group banter. With our playstyle the whole adventure would last for 10 sessions, which is too much for what the party wants and what I want.

How can I reduce the amount of encounters to about 5 without destroying the ressource balance? I wouldn't want to make it too easy by simply cutting half of the encounters - the group will have too many HS left at the end of an adventuring day. Should I restrict long rests? Or should I houserule that they only heal a lower number of HS?

Tl;dr: I want to press more adventuring into fewer combats without making it too easy for my party too survive. How does one do this?

I'd probably just try to restrict total number of long rests to 1 instead of probably 2? I'd also drain some surges/daily powers/APs for skipping over combats to make that 1 long rest really necessary.

I'd expect only one long rest amongst 10 encounters, just make it a single-day adventure.

You really shouldn't need to "make" it, though: 5 encounters shouldn't have them desperate to rest. 5 is actually particularly nice because of the second milestone, so guaranteed AP for the finale.

The most important thing is that, they just cannot know when they’ll rest. Ever. This creates tension and makes them play more carefully with daily resources.
With that granted… Yes, I would just cut some/many encounters to make the adventure shorter. Perhaps with a Skill Challenge of just some XP for role-play to keep up the fun – and not getting too few XP.

Tony Vargas said:

I'd expect only one long rest amongst 10 encounters, just make it a single-day adventure.

You really shouldn't need to "make" it, though: 5 encounters shouldn't have them desperate to rest. 5 is actually particularly nice because of the second milestone, so guaranteed AP for the finale.

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Okay, started to write a reply for about four times now because I'm not quite sure whether my question really is something complicated or just extremely trivial and I shouldn't bother about it. I'll try to explain anyway.

My group doesn't meet very often (roughly 3 times in 2 months) and also just for about 3 hours or so every session. In order to finish an adventure like Orcs of Stonefang Pass we would need approx. 8 sessions and that means about 6 months. But I don't want my players hanging around the dwarven ruins for half a year. It is quite a slog and I want them to explore the Nentir Vale much more before our group will eventually dissolve in about a year and a half (because work, life and so on).
So I want to pack more adventure into what time we have left as a group. My answer was using published adventures but trying to drop some combats in order to give the party the conclusion of their adventuring quicker. The narrative progress should be the same but the combats should be reduced by about 40-50%
Now the problem is, when I cut out combats suddenly the party is much less in danger of being wiped. They have more ressources left and the whole ressource management part of the game and worrying about how they survive the boss battle will be gone. That I want to avoid. The story should progress quicker but I don't want to lower the game to easy mode.

Maybe that explains the situation and my motivation a bit better.

Igwilly said:

The most important thing is that, they just cannot know when they’ll rest. Ever. This creates tension and makes them play more carefully with daily resources.
With that granted… Yes, I would just cut some/many encounters to make the adventure shorter. Perhaps with a Skill Challenge of just some XP for role-play to keep up the fun – and not getting too few XP.

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Yes, that's good advice to make resting not so easily available.

About XP: We don't play with them. The party levels up at an appropriate time, e.g. if they solve a big quest, or roughly after about 5 combat encounters.

I think what [MENTION=12749]MwaO[/MENTION] and [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] are both basically saying is, once you cut out half the encounters, so its now a 5 combat encounter module, you'll be able to to present it as a one character day adventure, and it will be just as challenging as it was intended to be.

Now, this might require re-arranging some of the plot somehow. I don't know, I actually never got around to reading or running the module myself, so I just don't know. If there's some travel involved and it was originally 5 encounters, travel for a day, 5 more encounters, then maybe you need to do something a bit more creative. Maybe its easy enough to make the travel just a minor thing that takes a couple hours and not a day. Or you can eliminate all the encounters in one of the areas (or maybe turn them into a very trivial minion kind of single encounter maybe just for plot purposes).

AbdulAlhazred said:

I think what [MENTION=12749]MwaO[/MENTION] and [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] are both basically saying is, once you cut out half the encounters, so its now a 5 combat encounter module, you'll be able to to present it as a one character day adventure, and it will be just as challenging as it was intended to be.

Now, this might require re-arranging some of the plot somehow. I don't know, I actually never got around to reading or running the module myself, so I just don't know. If there's some travel involved and it was originally 5 encounters, travel for a day, 5 more encounters, then maybe you need to do something a bit more creative. Maybe its easy enough to make the travel just a minor thing that takes a couple hours and not a day. Or you can eliminate all the encounters in one of the areas (or maybe turn them into a very trivial minion kind of single encounter maybe just for plot purposes).

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Yes, the solution proposed by Tony Vargas and MwaO is totally fine. I get it that you can just reduce the adventure to one day with 5 encounters and balance is kept. Rearrange the story and everything is good.

But there is just a thing that keeps me thinking. I would like to keep the scope of the adventure which roughly covers two (or maybe even three) days. It just feels more "natural" for my sense of story progression that the party roams through the mountain pass, finds a cult of morally ambigous dwarves, helps them to collect the relics of an unchained elemental titan, slay the orc raiders and finally confront the titan and banish him into the depths of the underdark.
Looking at the adventure structure that would be something like:

- 5 encounters: roaming the tunnels, defending against orc raiders and travelling about 15 miles
- the party is mostly drained of ressources
- end of the day and long rest
- 5 encounters: freeing dwarven cultists from orcs, storming the orc's base, going back and binding the stone titan
- the party is mostly drained of ressources
- end of the day and long rest

I would like to have smth like:

- 2-3 encounters: roaming the tunnels, defending against orcs
- party is drained
- end of the day and long rest
- 2-3 encounters: cultists, orcs base, stone titan
- party is drained

Why am I eager to stick to the two-day solution? Because if think that it gives the whole endevour a bit more grandness. Its not only a modest tunnel pass that can be crossed in two hours but a dwarven ruin of quite a scale.
I think that if I plan the adventure to be over in a day, the narrative will seem too rushed. It will be something like: "Yo guys, so there are those orcs you have to throw out of the pass, then there are some weird Torog worshipping dwarves that need your help and finally have I told you about the nasty elemental force that needs to be put out asap? You have one day, let's go!" The adventure pacing would feel crammed (imo).

I would like to present the party with the first threat, the orcs and the dangers of the tunnel, on the first day. Then day get a feeling for the tunnels, can make a campsite snuggled up against some dusty bones. On the second day they see that the orcs aren't the only (and not even the worst) threat and could decide to help against the stone titan. This partitioning of the story and its elements is important to me in order to let the adventurers and the players breathe a bit.

I don't have anything against one day adventures. Delves are cool and give me and my players the feeling of quick progress and isntant adventur. But this time I want to do an adventure on a larger scale - but without having to play 10 encounters to get to its conclusion.

Well, this is at least what I wanted to accomplish. Hope that I could make myself clear. (And I also appreciate the previous input.)

Why not, then, convert some of the encounters to Skill Challenges? This would retain the timescale you desire (assuming several hours of fictional time per SC) but reduce the gameplay time considerably (IME, SCs usually take anywhere from five to thirty minutes or so instead of the 90 minutes for a full combat). Failures accrued during SCs could deplete resources (Dailies, Healing Suges) in a way to replicate combat attition.

Have you thought about reducing the hp of the monsters and including more minions to reduce the lengths of fights? This also enables situation where you modulate combats organically, where an encounter can cascade into the next one if the combat is not concluded quickly or relatively silently.