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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Camelot" data-source="post: 5293842" data-attributes="member: 82617">If you want to run every combat all the way through, only have 2-3 encounters per level, and make them difficult, memorable, and important to the story. What I do, though, is let my players skip through combat encounters that don't have much story implication.  They can spend healing surges and daily powers to represent their effort spent during the encounter, but they then can roleplay the battle however they want.  This method hasn't gotten any playtesting yet, though, so I'm not sure if the numbers are balanced.  Right now, I say that spending one healing surge can defeat one standard monster of your level, and spending a daily power defeats two. This method lets me have as many combats as I would in a normal game, but gives the players the choice of which encounters they want to go through in detail.  They are only forced to go through the really important encounters that have huge story implications. When you do start a combat, let the players know as much as they need to about their opponents.  I tell them exactly how many monsters there are, what each of their hit points are, and all their defenses.  This way, players can know if they hit, bloody, or kill monsters right away, instead of requiring confirmation from the DM.  When the monsters' turns come around, tell everyone how much HP they have remaining, what conditions the monster is suffering, etc., so they don't have to go back through the thread and figure it out for themselves. Hope this helps, and if you need a player for your game, I'd love to join!  I'm getting the Dark Sun Campaign Setting book some time this week!</blockquote>

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