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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DonTadow" data-source="post: 2775979" data-attributes="member: 22622">Trust me, I know what you're mean.  The trick is to make he fight seem important, maybe even move an pc's personal background along or provide the pcs something interesting in the range of a new npc.   YOu also have to orechstrate the fights a bit.  Make sure they don't last more than 3 rounds.  (for instance after 3 rounds they run away, surrender, kill themselves ect).  Because time is precious, every fight I set a mental time limit of how long i want it to end.  After a certain time, i put a win/lose condition in my head that should be achieved within minutes. Previous reasons I've used these encounters and the outcome::The party visits a rough and tough pirate island bar for some r and r.  Later that night, several of the pirates whom noticed hte pcs spreading loot around decided to pay attention to the inn and steal their women folk. They go there and the women pcs are rolling much better than the men pcs.  So I use the opporunity to play up on how fearless the women pcs party members are compared to the mail counterparts (whom were basically support characters).  After thep irates fall, the pcs find some bar tabs with the name Mr. Smith on it.  Mr. Smith would go on to be one of the party's foes.  When i formally introduced him, there wasa cool "oh crap moment".:: When the pcs enter a new realm, such as the far plane, I like to throw a collage of the different beasts at them to set the tone of the environement.  During one such event, the pcs wiped out the beings and found some wierd prestigious armor inside one of the beasts.  Later on in the campaign the pcs discovered that this armor was very ancient, allowing the pcs to remember the battle and set an age of how old those monsters were they fought.  That was importnat because the pcs needed to know when the monsters began to show up.  :: Bandits attacked the party on the way to a new village.  After the party wiped them out, they got their their names to see if there was a reward.  2 months later in another village the pcs come across a young man looking for his brother and a hefty reward if he's found.  The brother was one ofteh bandits from ways away.  :: Low level mephits should be easy and aw alk in the park, but not when one of the party members has a dire fear of fire.  the party needed some light hearted antics so i through some mephits at the party and watched as they quickly slaughtered them, but the one pc ran around the battlefield frantic.  It was a good lead in to make the party member feel more like apart of the party as he told them why he fears fire and how it wiped out hiswhole village.  Helped mesh the group a bit more.  ::The farplane was driving the pcs crazy and bunch of rabid squirrells attacked them.  cr 1s to a tenth level party.  However, the pcs all saw different things and made for a comical fight as they played out their crazyness thinkthey were being attacked by golems, dragons, and mountains.  This battle, though irrelenant to the plot , established how badly the party nneeded to figure out a way out of the area and to play on their worst fears, which again brought the party closer.</blockquote>

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