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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Traveon Wyvernspur" data-source="post: 5443719" data-attributes="member: 73201">Wow only 1 combat? I run a 3-4 hour session and can squeeze up to 3 combats into that with role playing as well. Guess it also depends on what level your PCs are and how many NPCs/Creatures you are throwing at them.1) As far as combining RP with combat, that's a tough one because that's on your players more so than yourself as the DM. Not much role-playing you can do with creatures that may or may not speak the languages that your PCs do or may not be so inclined to speak to them anyhow. The way I do that is allowing PCs to capture or do non-lethal damage to subdue an NPC especially if they have reason to believe the NPC knows some valuable information which they need/want.2) Skill challenges without combat are fun as well, just do some role playing and devise something to go along with your campaign storyline. Not everything has to be resolved with a sword, put your PCs in situations where they know they'd lose if they got into a fight, but they could use diplomacy, etc to talk their way out of it or garner helpful information from someone or something. An example I'll use is them talking to a lord of a city who has a few bigger badder guards than the PCs in terms of level and they are trying to buy, bargain, or talk this lord into something.3) This one is tough, because so much in 4E is battle map related! Pushing, moving, bursts, etc etc. I'm not sure how I'd be able to do that and still follow 4E rules in combat. I remember back in the day when I played 2E and this wasn't a problem whatsoever because everything was in your head and battle maps with 1inch grids were not necessary for combat.4) I'd need a bit more information about how you run your combat encounters, what level your PCs are, are you using minions or just a ton of brutes for example? What I do personally is use a free program on my computer to keep track of the initiatives, damage, conditions, etc for me. I have a designated "assistant DM" who looks up rules for us if we need to during combat which leaves it open for me to keep track of everything else. I let my players know ahead of time who is upcoming as far as their turns go (i.e. Dave your turn, next it's Bob, then Gary). This gets the other two thinking about what they want to do ahead of time and speeds up combat considerably as well. Hope that helps, if you have other specific questions I'll do my best to answer them and I'm sure the other DM's here will pipe in their opinions as well.Trav</blockquote>

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