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<blockquote data-quote="nnms" data-source="post: 5283519" data-attributes="member: 83293">The cause of the grind wasn't an error in delevelling, but in role and type of the monster combined with it's level.An ettin is an elite soldier.&nbsp; That means high defenses and good HP.&nbsp; You brought him down from level 10 so he wouldn't murderize the party, but he's still an elite soldier.&nbsp; Elite Soldiers are made of grind.&nbsp; Especially when they're a higher level than the party.This is the cause of the grind, not them encountering a too powerful enemy and insisting on fighting it out for three hours.&nbsp; There are lots of ways to handle that without causing grind.&nbsp; Elite soldiers of higher level than the party are a pretty sure fire way to produce a slog.I've improv-DMed entire tiers.&nbsp; Assigning PC appropriate threats has never been easier than in 4E.&nbsp; You could pull it off to a degree with OD&amp;D and AD&amp;D, but it was more a matter of intuition than any sort of level based encounter design system.&nbsp; If you went with &quot;number appearing&quot; you had huge swings from way too weak to horribly difficult just by weight of numbers.My recommendation for any edition is to print yourself off a list of monsters by Level (or Hit Dice).&nbsp; Get their stats nice and prepared so you can pull out what you need at a moment's notice.There are enough monsters of every level (or hit die) in any version of the game that you can grab something that does what you need it to do for the story purposes of a given encounter and simply reskin it.&nbsp; Describe it as what you need it to be.&nbsp; I don't know how many times I've use the Human Rabble minions to be all sorts of low quality mooks, regardless of race.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="nnms, post: 5283519, member: 83293"] The cause of the grind wasn't an error in delevelling, but in role and type of the monster [I]combined [/I]with it's level. An ettin is an elite soldier. That means high defenses and good HP. You brought him down from level 10 so he wouldn't murderize the party, but he's still an elite soldier. Elite Soldiers are made of grind. Especially when they're a higher level than the party. This is the cause of the grind, not them encountering a too powerful enemy and insisting on fighting it out for three hours. There are lots of ways to handle that without causing grind. Elite soldiers of higher level than the party are a pretty sure fire way to produce a slog. I've improv-DMed entire tiers. Assigning PC appropriate threats has never been easier than in 4E. You could pull it off to a degree with OD&D and AD&D, but it was more a matter of intuition than any sort of level based encounter design system. If you went with "number appearing" you had huge swings from way too weak to horribly difficult just by weight of numbers. My recommendation for any edition is to print yourself off a list of monsters by Level (or Hit Dice). Get their stats nice and prepared so you can pull out what you need at a moment's notice. There are enough monsters of every level (or hit die) in any version of the game that you can grab something that does what you need it to do for the story purposes of a given encounter and simply reskin it. Describe it as what you need it to be. I don't know how many times I've use the Human Rabble minions to be all sorts of low quality mooks, regardless of race. [/QUOTE]

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