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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Harlekin" data-source="post: 5886516" data-attributes="member: 18615">It seems to be pretty well accepted that 4ed rules allow for gripping and balanced fights at the price of extending combat length. I consider this a fair trade for major battles that have a serious chance of killing the group or that significantly advance the parties goals.However, this does not describe all fights; in many situations, the PCs may face inferior foes. In that case, the outcome of the fight is almost a foregone conclusion, but going through the motions can still end up a significant amount of game time. Such fights may be avoided by adventure design or hand-waved by assigning some damage to the group without rolling the actual fight, but both of these solutions may be unsatisfying.So in this thread I am trying to brainstorm how to modify easy fights (encounters at the level of the group or lower) to make them faster while also making them more exciting.Here are some suggestions that i would like some feedback on:1. Double Damage: Monsters deal double damage while having half the hit points. Advantage: This obviously speeds up the fight, but it also makes the fight more random. While in a typical level-1 encounter, it is very hard to imagine putting a PC in jeopardy, with double damage, every player will feel threatened after being hit once or twice.Disadvantage: The fight gets swingier which makes PC death more likely. I am hoping this will be ameliorated by using this only on easy encounters.2. Loose the map.Advantage: Save time for setup and during combat.Disadvantage: Many powers with forced movement work less well. Area effect powers are less well defined. Ganging up is even easier than before.Am I overlooking any other simplification?What could I do to reduce the disadvantages of loosing the map?</blockquote>

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