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Message: <blockquote data-quote="keterys" data-source="post: 5774849" data-attributes="member: 43019">Errm - I've been writing adventures for LFR and playtesting them with several groups each, and a 3 round combat is usually the maximum. To the extent that I started to encode that maximum into the design of many of the encounters, so that they wrap up then one way or another.Let's see, recently I threw an EL 25 against an EL 24 group that managed to finish it off before my monsters acted. Granted, they got a little lucky with crits, but it went something like:Party wins initiative. At some point they used some powers that let folks move around to get into position off-turn, but I don't remember what.1st person acts - bloodies the elite, which reacts with an attack that crits one PC, the warlord reacts to that attack by striking and crits (1 in 20, here's the real luck) which gives everyone a basic attack (legendary sovereign) which dropped the elite and let the swordmage/warlock eldritch strike to slide the 2nd elite into position. 2nd person acts - warlord - death from two sides on the 2nd elite, bloodying it.3rd person acts - avenger - oaths, attacks a couple times, critting once.4th person acts - warlock - kills the standard and does something that triggers another attack from the avenger, finishing off that elite. The trap in the encounter requires the two elite dragons to live, so turns off.I might be misremembering, and it might have actually hit the monster's turn then it got interrupted to death. Fair chance of that, actually. But still.I sat at a level 22 table that wanted to fight Lolth. They won init and killed her before she got to act. Granted, that _was_ a truly optimized table who planned around every contingency for how to kill Lolth, whereas the other one was just a bit lucky and had no knowledge of what was going on in the combat, but... yeah, my experience for 4e in general is that encounters over 3 rounds are rare unless there are other objectives. And truly optimized tables are done with 2 rounds, tops.</blockquote>

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