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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Myrhdraak" data-source="post: 7016843" data-attributes="member: 6694190">DOUBLE EncounterSo if we instead take away the Daily Power damage and give our half of the encounter powers in each of the double encounters, we find another distributionLength: The battle is not any shorter than the Single Encounter. It will last for 3 rounds at first level, and 5 rounds at 5th, 15th and 25th level (see below). HP: It is going to be a simple fight with roughly 55% of the HP remaining after the battle (excluding any healing done during the battle). Powers: Here resources run low and the PC will at level 5 and above have to use 2 encounter powers and 3 at-will powers to defeat the monsters.[ATTACH]80876[/ATTACH]So what have we actually achieved in this Double Encounter scenario? We have turned one 5 rounds 4th Edition battle into 2 battles, both lasting 5 rounds against more simple foes, but forcing the players into using At-Will powers rather than cool encounter powers. Conclusion: Not a very good design. We have turned a two hour battle into 2 two hour battles - not very effective. Is there any instance where this could be useful? Hard to find any example, were the benefits would outperfom the extra time needed. The PCs would have a hard time spotting the difference between a M+1 vs. M-2 level challenge, so it would be hard for them to judge if they should save their encounter powers or not. The risk is that you end up with a first encounter where the players use all their encounter powers, and then have to run a second encounter with only at-will powers. Not very fun game play. It might work better in the scenario where you use three monster of M+0 level, as it at least will be faster to run on the DM side of things. If you still want to use it, I think it is important that the PC’s realize that there is a second threat looming, and if they fail to achieve something in the first encounter, the second group will arrive and prolong the battle - the “wave” concept Pemerton talked about - but it is going to be a very long battle.If we introduce the mechanism of paying 1 HS to get an Encounter Power back, it would be very tempting (from a Player point of view) to buy back Encounter Powers, just for the purpose of finishing the battle faster, rather than being stuck only using At-Will Powers.</blockquote>

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