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Yet another Solos fix: "Solo actions"
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7057870" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>Well, there were many people who didn't, at least consistently, find all 4e fights to be excellent and super entertaining. PERSONALLY I was pretty OK with a percentage that were just straight up hackathons, as long as they weren't TOO constrained (IE you had some terrain that created a couple tactical options or at least presented a wrinkle, and/or some interesting interactions between foes, etc. This level of encounter IS quite easy, you can almost just follow the templates in DMG1 and mix in a bit of terrain.</p><p></p><p>However, these things can be longer than many want to spend on purely tactical considerations. If the GM is proactive and the players are on top of things, then a combat can take 1/2 hour, or 40 minutes. If not, then things can start to drag and you get into a spiral with loss of interest by players that just want to get back to exploring or whatever. </p><p></p><p>So, I found that the game attained added depth when I focused on plotting encounters and really adding some more detail to them and being very selective about their plot significance. </p><p></p><p>I recall the first adventure where I really entirely brought all the tools together in their mature form. The party was around 5th level IIRC. I invented a story arc where some ancient ghostly shifter-like lycanthropes showed up, which I totally implemented as reskinned wargs and whatnot. There were a couple bigger elites that were something else reskinned, and a final boss that was a reskinned white dragon.</p><p></p><p>ALL of that took what, 30 minutes to come up with? I mean I just went through the compendium and scanned through roughly similar monsters of the levels I wanted, grabbed them, made a couple notes on appearance and flavoring powers, and that was it. Whole story arc lasted 5 or 6 sessions (I think there was a bit of a side thing at one point that took up one session). It ended with a huge climactic battle, there was a short dungeon crawl at one point, etc. I spent all my time, maybe 4 or 5 hours total, drawing up a few sketch maps, making notes on terrain, and plotting out a level's worth of encounters. I think we ended up having a few extra on-the-fly encounters too, and a couple quests got invented, along with a few added NPCs that addressed some player interests at one or another point.</p><p></p><p>I think that was awesome. The encounters were mostly reasonably well plotted. There were a few that were probably kinda just routine, but most of them I still can remember fairly well. It was a good adventure. If I'd played through a pre-written module I'd have gotten more raw material probably, but it would have required equal time and likely delivered less interesting results. </p><p></p><p>Surely if I contrast this with my old 2e games, the time needed for basic encounter nuts-n-bolts was so much more back then that I never got to consider a lot of crazy stuff or minor plot points, etc. So I relish the idea of plotting out an encounter, it is much more fun for me than creating a spell list for yet another 2e caster.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 7057870, member: 82106"] Well, there were many people who didn't, at least consistently, find all 4e fights to be excellent and super entertaining. PERSONALLY I was pretty OK with a percentage that were just straight up hackathons, as long as they weren't TOO constrained (IE you had some terrain that created a couple tactical options or at least presented a wrinkle, and/or some interesting interactions between foes, etc. This level of encounter IS quite easy, you can almost just follow the templates in DMG1 and mix in a bit of terrain. However, these things can be longer than many want to spend on purely tactical considerations. If the GM is proactive and the players are on top of things, then a combat can take 1/2 hour, or 40 minutes. If not, then things can start to drag and you get into a spiral with loss of interest by players that just want to get back to exploring or whatever. So, I found that the game attained added depth when I focused on plotting encounters and really adding some more detail to them and being very selective about their plot significance. I recall the first adventure where I really entirely brought all the tools together in their mature form. The party was around 5th level IIRC. I invented a story arc where some ancient ghostly shifter-like lycanthropes showed up, which I totally implemented as reskinned wargs and whatnot. There were a couple bigger elites that were something else reskinned, and a final boss that was a reskinned white dragon. ALL of that took what, 30 minutes to come up with? I mean I just went through the compendium and scanned through roughly similar monsters of the levels I wanted, grabbed them, made a couple notes on appearance and flavoring powers, and that was it. Whole story arc lasted 5 or 6 sessions (I think there was a bit of a side thing at one point that took up one session). It ended with a huge climactic battle, there was a short dungeon crawl at one point, etc. I spent all my time, maybe 4 or 5 hours total, drawing up a few sketch maps, making notes on terrain, and plotting out a level's worth of encounters. I think we ended up having a few extra on-the-fly encounters too, and a couple quests got invented, along with a few added NPCs that addressed some player interests at one or another point. I think that was awesome. The encounters were mostly reasonably well plotted. There were a few that were probably kinda just routine, but most of them I still can remember fairly well. It was a good adventure. If I'd played through a pre-written module I'd have gotten more raw material probably, but it would have required equal time and likely delivered less interesting results. Surely if I contrast this with my old 2e games, the time needed for basic encounter nuts-n-bolts was so much more back then that I never got to consider a lot of crazy stuff or minor plot points, etc. So I relish the idea of plotting out an encounter, it is much more fun for me than creating a spell list for yet another 2e caster. [/QUOTE]
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