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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 5181683" data-attributes="member: 2011">No doubt. Confusion for example. Grapple could take a heck of a lot of time in 3E, but then again, a player who wanted to do it a lot learned it and players who didn't, avoided it.I'll have to try the Index card for the adverse effects on PCs thing out. It should be faster for them than what we are using.How do you handle the monsters though so that all of the players know what is going on at all times?In our 16th level game, we easily have 2 to 4 or more adverse effects / conditions / statuses of some sort on every single monster most rounds.Without using a single Daily power, the following adverse "take up most of a round, so it has to be remembered or have bookkeeping" effects against the monsters can occur in an Encounter in our game:Hunter's Quarry, Oath of Emnity, multiple Marks from multiple PCs with multiple different effects if the foe ignores the mark, Bloodied, Combat Advantage (in so many ways with different durations or situations in which it does or does not occur that I won't even bother to count them), target cannot benefit from invisibility or concealment (TENT), the target takes 10 damage the first time it uses an attack other than a basic attack (TENT), multiple Dazed (TSNT), multiple Slowed (TENT), use Fire Hawk attack (TSNT), Stun (TENT), Immobilized (TENT), -2 to all defenses (TENT), first time ally hits foe, ally can spend a healing surge (TENT), next PC who hits target can make it a critical (TENT), -3 AC (TENT), -5 AC (TENT), takes 1d6+1 damage if foe moves away (till end of foe's next turn).There are also about two dozen effects or more (mostly buffs) that this group has that help a given PC for a round (and sometimes longer than a round). This, of course, can be handled by PC to PC 3x5 cards, but it still adds to the list.There are also about 20 more of these hinder enemies or help PC effects if we throw in the Dailies (including items).These are all different effects, conditions, and/or statuses that can and many of which do happen in every encounter in our current game that the players need to be aware of at a glance without asking "What exactly does Dire Wolf #3 have on it again?".Then there are the PC conditional specials. For example, just one of our 6 PCs has:+2 bonus to damage rolls against your oath of enmity target for each ally adjacent to that target+5 damage against a bloodied foe that grants combat advantagewhen an ally hits your oath of enmity target, you gain temporary hit points equal to 3 + 3 per ally adjacent to that targetwhen you spend an action point to use an at-will attack power, that attack deals 2d10 extra damagewhen you miss your oath of enmity target with an encounter attack power, the attack deals damage to the target equal to your Dexterity modifierwhen you miss your oath of enmity target with an at-will attack power, the attack deals damage to the target equal to your Dexterity modifierSure, the player is supposed to help with this, but I do have players with a boatload of conditional specials where they can forget. Every single player has at least 3 of these. It's doubly hard if a player cannot make the session and someone else is running his or her PC. And it's not just conditional specials for the PCs, there is a lot for each player to keep track of.This is not as simple to keep track of as some people claim.There are tons of things to keep track of here. Sure, the players help with this, but it is not as easy as some people make it out to be.There are literally dozens of things to keep track of, all at the same time, and all of them have to be observable with a glance by both the DM and the players so that they can make informed decisions.Maybe you have a bunch of Kim Peeks playing in your game, but we don't. We remember the ones that happen a lot, but nobody has them all memorized.I'd like to see some numbers on this. This doesn't make sense.I think you have to back this up with some data.For example, do you seriously use Minions in more than one fight in four or five? If not, then you are only mitigating the grind by using them < 25% of the time.And is using Minions a lot of fun for your players? The novelty of it was fun the first few times for our group, but cardboard cutout foes got real old real quick. If foes aren't a challenge at all, they're really not worth our game time.This is especially true at higher levels when a single large burst area effect can one shot half or more of the minions. They're just too easy to overcome for it to be fun. YMMV, but meh. Minions are boring. They're like dog poop on your shoe. You have to scrap it off, but you don't want to bother wasting the effort. Practically everything else in the game system is more exciting than minions. My players would rather enter water (the bane of fantasy roleplaying) than fight minions. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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