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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DrSpunj" data-source="post: 4653886" data-attributes="member: 994">And I can say pretty easily now that I don't expect it to ever be much more than that.I don't want to take time preparing a combat encounter, laying it out at the table and playing through it if it isn't challenging. Now I understand that's a loosely defined term that is going to be different for just about every player & DM so I'll clarify a bit how I interpret it.If there isn't much threat to the party that one or more characters could drop (by going unconscious & dying or getting kidnapped by a large beastie) or there isn't something about this battle that might or will affect the next in a series (typically in a single day) then I don't think the party is all that challenged, and I don't think my players find it all that fun. I know I don't want to spend any of our precious time (we try to meet once every 2 weeks for 4 hrs) grinding through lower level mobs & minions in a 3e-skewed attempt to whittle away at Daily Powers, Healing Surges & Action Points.Again, referring to the Grindspace thread <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4th-edition-rules/247249-how-build-encounters-d-d-4th-edition-aka-only-you-can-prevent-grindspace.html" target="_blank">here</a>, I usually put together combats that are at or above the party's level tending to go with more mobs close to the party's level rather than fewer higher level mobs.This encounter was designed as a "this is the only encounter you'll have today so feel free to pull out all the stops" scenario. I laid that out at the beginning of the session when the mission was "find a way to the ruins and report back ASAP, don't enter then ruins, you'll do that later when the NPC is free to accompany you" and the players agreed to leave 2 PCs behind since their players couldn't make the session.Last night I asked for feedback and most everyone expressed a lot of happiness with the "our back frequently seems to be up against the wall, the battle could go either way" tenseness that we've had with the last several combat encounters (especially since they've pulled through essentially every time which I'm sure helps <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ). I'm very happy to hear that and feel comfortable with planning future encounters in a similar manner. Likely 1 or 2 "hard" encounters in a day where the XP budget is 3 or 4 levels above the party or 2-3 "moderate" encounters in a day where the XP budget is at party level or 1-2 levels above. In these situations the party can't typically easily "go nova" unless they're positive they're safe to do so, and I'm generally not that helpful about telling them "it's okay to nova, go ahead" so they've really been working hard to get the job done and not waste those resources like APs, Dailies, etc.So, FWIW and to bring this back to relevance (hopefully), I don't how much that type of DM style affects the BRV build pushing it towards more or less overall power. Again, the party just hit 3rd level so as more temporary HP stacking powers or feats come into play I could change my opinion. I think it's also worth noting again Nail is a Human Fighter, not a Dwarf or Dragonborn enjoying a higher Con bonus or access to some BRV-happy feats.Thanks</blockquote>

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