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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5181574" data-attributes="member: 82106">I think solos should be quite rare. In fact I have trouble remembering using them. I think in 9 levels of play in the current campaign I'm running the PCs have run into a White Dragon, a custom solo demon, and maybe one other solo. I consider them to be the super significant plot monsters that you defeat at the end of a major story arc. Elites OTOH I'll use fairly often and players are likely to encounter one every couple of fights or at least once per adventuring day on average. Most plot significant NPCs tend to be elites for instance.I agree with you KD, stun (save ends) is not wonderful. It can be OK once in a while as an encounter effect, but it definitely isn't something you want on your average monster or with a recharge rate. Obviously whoever wrote up the Runescribed Dracolich didn't get that...As for the whole durations/tracking/effects thing I still think you underplay how totally tedious and annoying and complicated it could easily be in older editions. I think its also considerably less of an issue in 4e than some people make it out to be. It definitely adds book keeping and no argument it slows the game down, but lots of things slowed down the game in the past as well. There were plenty of 1e and 2e spells that could take half an eternity to figure out what the heck they did in any given situation, etc. My solution for conditions in 4e is pretty simple. I make up a 3x5 index card for each one. That takes 30 seconds to do before the game and once you've done a few they don't change much and you just end up reusing them game after game. When someone gets a condition on them I just drop the card on their character sheet, now they know they have 'ongoing 5 damage and weakened (save ends).' and that's the end of the problem for PCs. The same works for the monsters pretty much. It would be nice if CB would print out condition cards. Given that 95% of conditions are either 'until end of your next turn' or 'save ends' it really isn't that complex in practice. The fact that conditions don't change any core math and have well defined rules that everyone knows by heart after a couple sessions means we hardly even notice tracking them.The win button thing I don't miss. In fact there are still pretty easy ways to do it. Some of the higher level consumables definitely work. Honestly there are plenty of daily powers that work if the players are willing to use a resource. I mean at this point plain old level 1 daily Brute Strike that the GWF dwarf with the huge axe has will one-shot equal level monsters. Heck the other day that dwarf was holding off an elite controller, hit it once with some encounter power and then killed it outright with Brute Strike on the second round, did some incredible amount of damage. Admittedly a lot of dailies won't END a fight instantly, but most of the better ones will ensure that you WILL win if used at all cleverly.What I've found is that a lot of the DMs that complain highly about grind also hate minions and won't use them, etc. I think its an issue that arises primarily when people just ignore the way the game was designed and go off in other directions or take a certain element to a great extreme like healing. Its not illegitimate to point it out as a potential flaw in the system but its a lot less of one than the problems we had in 1e and 2e. At this point in fact I would say our 4e encounters are averaging about the same speed as 2e encounters did. I think 1e was a bit faster at low levels but then again low level 1e was Russian roulette every combat.</blockquote>

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