Adding a time limit to encounters

[Quicken]

One thing I find myself pushing to do is introduce more reasons for players to rush. This is partly due to it being 4th edition DnD but I'm not interested in a game/edition debate. I am interested in your ideas. What have you done to introduce a sense of urgency to a combat or dungeon crawl? So far I've used:

* A ritual the players need to try and interrupt
* A McGuffin the villain is trying to escape with
* Constant waves of adds (didn't really like this one)
* A lava flow they needed to divert in time
* Constant waves of adds with a switch to stop them
* A 2nd group of adventurers they are trying to beat (on a second path)
* A friend being sacrificed in a ritual

Any more ideas?

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[fba827]

Based on your examples, I am presuming that you mean "in story reasons to make the encounters speed up" (rather than meta gaming making the encounters take less real time).

A couple off the top of my head ...

Per encounter:
* The location has a trap or magical protection that will close the room off 10 rounds after the idol is removed (it just doesn't slam shut on round 10, but it is basically a stone slab that lowers a little more each round until round 10 when it completely seals off)
* One of the people they are rescuing has some strange poison/disease that needs to be treated "out of combat" and if not tended to soon will kill him/her
* The area is soaked in necrotic/diseased energy. Every round you stay there has a cumulative penalty (or damage) as the life is drained out of you.

Per adventure:
* The benefactor that asked the PCs to go on the 'mission' has a deadline ("I need the artifact back at the shrine before the full moon next week or else the werewolves will attack")
* The benefactor that asked the PCs to go on the 'mission' offers a substantial bonus if it's done by a certain time limit ("I am supposed to take the artifact to the prince as a wedding present and the caravan leaves tomorrow morning; if you get it back to me by then, I will double your reward. Else, I'll just have to go late and I'll still give you the initial reward I promised...")
* The area of the adventure is magical and is only accessible during some unique circumstance ("The door to the moon goddess temple that you will be infiltrating is only accessible during the Blue moon so if you do not get in and get out before the moon sets tonight, you will be stuck inside until the next Blue Moon without food ..." ) or less extreme "the portal i am making to send you on my quest will only last X hours -- hurry back or else you'll be stuck clear across the globe/planes/etc and need to get back on foot yourself...

 

[MarauderX]

Add random traps... every 5 minutes, a random trap springs. Don't time it, as otherwise the group will just figure they can soak up some trap damage and have more time to decide or think of something.

If possible, add opponents as an alarm is raised. It makes them harder to elude, prolongs the fight, which costs them surges. Add them only when a player takes tooooo loooong to decide what they are going to do.

Increase the DC of skill challenges. Keeping the Duke waiting while you figure out how to flatter him is not polite and dousing a growing fire doesn't get easier if you wait.

 

[Quicken]

I think I'll soon try and enrage mechanic. Especially if I use a solo. Something like:

Monster does a 'soul drain' on a random player (save ends).
The 'soul drain' heals the monster 5hp and grants +1 damage bonus to all damage for the rest of the encounter.
The +1 damage bonus stacks and remains even if the player saves.

I'll just start him off on a damage penalty so it can nicely build up during the encounter.

 

[GnomeWorks]

I think I'll soon try and enrage mechanic. Especially if I use a solo.

So, something like this?

 

[Nork]

If you want to reduce the time at the table spent on an encounter because they are taking too much real time, then you can try this:

When its a players turn, if their power and appropriate dice are not already selected *before* their turn starts, allowing them to act immediately, their turn gets skipped.

It sounds draconian, but it really is not. There is plenty of time while it isn't their turn to figure out what to do. Even if they make a sub-optimal decision, it doesn't really matter very much.

The benefits of playing encounters faster should be sufficient and sufficiently obvious that reasonable players will see the benefits of sucking it up and 'using it or losing it' over sitting there and turning each turn into a doctoral thesis on the things they could do.

 

[Quicken]

So, something like this?

Yeah

I don't mind stealing ideas from other games. They've done some nice 'soft enrages' in recent content.

Also I'm not interested in reducing real world time combat takes. That may happen as a side effect but that's not my goal.

I'm making the combat challenging because speed (in game) becomes important. Otherwise good leaders and defenders can drag out most encounters to win. Plus it gets everyone much more involved, much more interested in what's happing during the rounds.

 

[unan oranis]

the easiest way to speed things up (in real life) is to shoot a warning to whichever player is coming up... and declare them "holding" their action if they aren't ready to actually take it on their turn.


ps. a little confused as to your actual request; are you just talking about in-game time crunches?

- dungeon slowly/not-so-slowly flooding

 

[Hand of Evil]

Speed dating - use a 30 second timer, start it and have the player state what they are doing, move to next player, repeat. You never let the players know how long they have, they just feel the rush.

Descriptive phrases and words. Break an event down into three segments, think about how to present them, then use adjectives to build the event up, each segment building the scene.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, just the sound of a timer willl cause players to feel the need and panic of a rush.

The damn white rabbit...a NPC that pops into and out of scene, saying they are late and better hurry up.