Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 5886555" data-attributes="member: 150">I don't think making the minor encounters more difficult is the right approach -- if they're minor encounters, let them be minor encounters.  The bigger problem you will need to deal with is the power economy. Your players may or may not be able to take short rests after these encounters, but you certainly don't want to count them towards milestones, etc.  If you're trying to create a truly minor encounter -- dealing with a small handful of guards, make them all minions.  Let the players blow through them in the first round, you'll be done and onto the next encounter in seconds.  After all, the important thing to think about is WHY you're trying to include these minor encounters.  To my way of thinking, the best reason to include these sorts of minor speed bumps is to flesh out the environment around those awesome set-piece encounters.  That has always been a sort of side effect of the big cinematic encounters -- the connective tissue between them has been, in many cases, lost. We explain to the players "you continue down the passage, make a few turns through empty chambers, then you come across this room" and you jump into the next encounter.  I've done a few things in past games to try to counter that.  I'm making plans to try some other stunts, too.  Here would be my toolkit (and I'd recommend trying all of them -- different situations will always require different solutions). 1. Minions, as I said. Just turn your minor encounter in to a minion encounter.  A party can cut through a half-dozen minions in no time flat, but the point of the encounter should not be whether the party can kill the minions or not (that's not really in question) -- it's whether they can kill the minions before one of them sounds the alarm, or triggers the deadfall that seals that door, and so on.  Good times to use it: Guards, pickets, sentries, opponents that don't stand much chance of putting up a fight. Make sure there's something at stake (like not raising the alarm), even if the combat will be short. 2. Skill Challenges, rather than actual encounters.  I've posted about this before:<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4th-edition-discussion/319916-fast-abstracted-combat-minor-encounters.html#post5856009" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4th-edition-discussion/319916-fast-abstracted-combat-minor-encounters.html#post5856009</a>The basic idea is to create a sort of combat-based skill challenge, abstracting combat. Give PCs special abilities based on party role, and use it to deplete some resources -- but make sure that your system preserves some choices for them to make -- picking one passage over another should have consequences, etc.  Good Times to use it: mass combat with minor opponents, etc.3. Skip it entirely:Not just lose the map, but lose the whole thing. Tell them they had a few minor skirmishes along the way and move on.  When to use it: When nothing is at stake, when there are no interesting choices to make.</blockquote>

Verification