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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5650513" data-attributes="member: 82106">What I don't remember is having 20-40 MEANINGFUL enemies... In AD&D you could have many 'mooks' (usually low level humanoids like orcs or somesuch). Now, try running 40 minions in 4e. It actually isn't all that hard. Make say 4 different groups of 10, roll init for each group so you can mostly just have them all move and attack at once. It actually works fine, and isn't much trouble at all. Certainly no more than 1e where you had to do basically the same amount of work (IE make a save or a to-hit roll for/against each one as appropriate basically). 1e didn't explicitly have 1 hit point minions or fixed damage output minions either, though I'd call that a trivial simplification and most DMs were well aware of how to do that.And just to clarify, I've run encounters with 40 figures on the bad guy side. Turns actually didn't take appreciably longer than normal. Using Maptool helped a lot as it greatly streamlines tracking various things, but with them all being minions there really isn't much to track, they're either up and going or deaders.My experience with AD&D was always that risky fights and high level fights often were quite long and drawn out. More trivial fights were generally a good bit faster. Things could be pretty variable. If you started running into more complex effects and/or had higher level casters running around making creative use of the more powerful spells then things could get slow quite fast. I clearly remember many all-night 1e fights. Really IMHO what 4e needs most is an easy spelled out way to resolve moderate difficulty fights that are not really plot important. The best thing right now is to just avoid having them. There are various options, but none of them are spelled out in the rules. I'm not sure sacking most of the tactical fun of the interesting fights is worth it just to get "4 orcs in a guardroom" to play out fast.</blockquote>

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