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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5349687" data-attributes="member: 82106">Welcome back! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I don't think the main thrust of Essentials is to really change the nature of combat all that much. If you want to discuss the factors that make encounters in 4e boggy that is really beyond this thread, so I won't really comment on it except to say that it has a lot to do with monster design (which has improved vastly since MM1, presumably the Monster Vault will feature monsters that work well vs a lot of MM1 monsters that don't). The other factor is the complexity of tracking power effects. Here I think Essentials really is intended to help at least some. There are still a lot of effects and conditions being thrown around, but they've removed quite a few common cases where you need to track stuff, like marks, HQ, curses, shrouds, etc. and replaced them with mechanics that are just "if situation X exists, then Y" like the Knight's defender aura. I suspect (though I haven't run anything using Essentials) that at least at lower levels combat should go faster with better monsters and somewhat less tracking. It is never going to be down to the simplicity of low level AD&D fights, but the two systems use encounters in different ways. A 4e encounter is just always going to be more of a big deal than a 2e encounter was. Each one is dramatic and fun and filled with opportunities to do cool stuff (if designed correctly). You'll never have the old "it's 4 orcs, we just stomp them in a round, oops the fighter needs a CLW" of old. You can use SCs and lightweight minion only type encounters for the few cases where you want the party to run into a couple trivial gate guards or whatever but you really don't need to play those out with the full combat system, just narrate it and maybe give each minion one swing if you want there to be a chance of someone taking a scratch. Again I don't see anywhere in Essentials that is really talking about doing that or promoting that kind of approach though.</blockquote>

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