Faster Combats in official Adventures

[S'mon]

4) Ensure that my players get less XP, i.e. only 1/5 less XP than normal. If I achieve this over a 4 PC Group or a Group of 5 Players that get less XP or lesser combats should be the same.

I'm completely OK with 1) to 3) but what about 4)? Does this really work? What about my actual group which is at the end of Thunderspire Labyrinth and is level6. I cannot steal their levels. But this should stable over the next levels if I give them lesser XP.

Personally I halve monster hit points, award full monster XP, and typically run adventures for my group within a level or two of recommended level. I don't really do (4) - if anything I give bonus XP. My group are not super-optimised powergamers, though. If yours are, you may find that giving full XP for half-hp monsters makes things too easy, in which case you can try 2/3 XP. But cutting out boring fights while giving full XP for the battles they do fight is a better approach, I think.

 

[Ferghis]

To me it looks like a lot of work and doesnt fit very well with the pregenerated encounters.

This is the problem with being a DM. You have to figure out the balance between minimizing your own extra work with making the game fun. If you don't do enough work, and the game sucks, it's on you.

Picking a good adventure will go a long way towards minimizing the work.

 

[plancktum]

Personally I halve monster hit points, award full monster XP, and typically run adventures for my group within a level or two of recommended level. I don't really do (4) - if anything I give bonus XP. My group are not super-optimised powergamers, though. If yours are, you may find that giving full XP for half-hp monsters makes things too easy, in which case you can try 2/3 XP. But cutting out boring fights while giving full XP for the battles they do fight is a better approach, I think.

OK. So I give them full XP, but only for battles they actually fight.
And if my Group consists only of 4 Players (instead of 5) then I gave them only 4/5 the XP without making the combat easier (besides the half XP, but I don't remove any creatures).
Due to the more damage the half HP should make it not too easy.

Thank you for your help. I will try it this way.

 

[Saagael]

What's been said here is good advice, so I'll second most of it. I'd also like to add a few things that I've found really helps me out when making quick battles, or dealing with battles I want to end quickly:

1) If using the "halve hit points, double damage" shortcut, I find it works well to also add in about half the original number in (so a fight with 4 monsters gets half of four added in, for a total of 6). I then make sure that enemies flee when they're reduced to to low numbers (about 1/3 monsters left).

This makes fights much more deadly up front, but they end more quickly as enemies flee and you can handwave "You trail the hobgoblin and kill it" without it being played out in combat. This works extra well if the enemies are lower level than the players (preferably 1 or 2 levels lower).

2) Use minions. Seriously, they're thematic, simple, and can be a good refresher for a "quick battle". For 4 players, a standard monster and 12 minions will be fast and furious, but should still use up some character resources.

3) As battles drag on, I stop calculating hit points on paper, and just eyeball it in favor of the players. For example, if a player does 13 damage, I might round that up to 15, or 20. If a monster takes damage and is at 56 hit points, I just round down to 50. Not only does the monster go down faster (from taking more damage), but it also frees up the time I usually spend on doing mental math.

4) Another option for ending battles quickly is to stop tracking hit points altogether, and just decide how you want the monsters to die. If a player does something awesome and describes it well and/or rolls well, just have that attack kill the monster. Ending battles on high notes is much better for fun than long battles.

Also, don't run the Pyramid of Shadow. Whatever you do, do not run it. So, so bad. Make up something, anything, it'll be better than that waste of paper. You might find the Scales of War adventure path to your liking. I've run it and its not too bad.

 

[Goonalan]

All good advice here, particularly those that keep saying don't run the Pyramid, I have been through the H series three times (and doing a 4th run at the moment), all three of my previous games have floundered in the Pyramid. To date-

Run 1 played RAW floundered on the second/third level of the pyramid, half the group swore they would never play 4e again.

Run 2 cut down encounters and emptied some of the areas, otherwise RAW, group gave up and reverted to Goodman Games modules, just couldn't stand the endless nasty room follows nasty room in the pyramid-zoo.

Run 3 cut it right down, did lots of work to make the entire pyramid part of the overall campaign arc. Did all of the above with damage et al, lots of RP moments- well, a few. Factions on the lower levels trying to get out or up the pyramid. The guys got through it started P1 and two weeks said no more- they'd just had enough of less than dynamic 'dungeons', even though I tried my hardest to make it work.

So we're just finishing Thunderspire (my fourth time, the players first- obviously). I intend to make a much-much smaller pyramid (for the last five or so encounters, as the climax). The rest I'm going to run as a series of Delves, or Skill Challenge/RP encounters as the PCs chase around the globe leaping from portal to portal to get to the pyramid climax. Or at least that's what I think I'm going to do...

The Pyramid is a funsucker, avoid, or else butcher and make great.

Happy hunting-

PS my present (and last) trawl through the H series (with changes) is recounted here-

http://www.enworld.org/forum/story-...-wizards-coast-core-modules-now-pictures.html

Although we're only just at the start.

Happy Hunting.

 

[Unwise]

EDIT: By the way, next week we're starting with H3: Pyramid of Shadows

Have a very good look over this adventure first mate. In my experience, it's only redeeming feature is that it reminds me of the comically bad 80s Fighting Fantasy books, where each room holds another random completely unrelated monster.

It could seriously lead to players losing interest in D&D, it is that bad. My advice, if you do play it, don't do so sober.

P.S. You can always tell the forum members from non-english speaking countries. They are the ones that spell correctly

 

[GreyICE]

The pyramid of shadows looks EXACTLY like what happens if you build a Dungeon using all those old AD&D tables (you know, the random encounter ones that didn't care where you were), rolled on some bizarro realm table to determine dungeon flavor for EACH ROOM and then tried to string a coherent plot together out of it.

Run, like, anything else. The Dungeon Magazine Giants encounters are amazing and like 100x better.