Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 5889917" data-attributes="member: 996">It's not really a price.  A climactic battle that ended in the first round would be, well, anti-climactic.  An interesting tactical engagement or a major battle for high stakes, in order to be dramatic, needs to take a little longer.  That's not a price, it's part of the point.For trivial fights, use minions.  A good example is the 'sound the alarm' scenario.  There are a small number of minions but they can summon much more dangerous foes if they aren't all taken down very quickly.  Combine the minions with a skill challenge to sneak up on them or keep them from sounding the alarm long enough to kill them - or a more difficult one to bluff your way out of or evade the re-enforcement if you don't kill 'em quick enough.Sort of a 'bloodied rage?'  Works fine, actually.  It'll encourage the players to really pull out the stops and finish a monster once it's bloodied.Not particularly helpful unless you want to mostly hand-wave the combat.  You'll lose more time in explaining and re-explaining and correcting mistakes in positioning and settling arguments over who can attack whom and who was in what AE than you'll save in setting up and striking a map and minis.It's really a matter of talent.  If you're one of those DMs who can keep a complicated fight 'in his head,' or, like me, convincingly fake it, you can ditch the map for less significant combats and 'story mode' through movement and positioning, using mechanics to resolve attacks and damage and the like.  You might also not keep track of exact hps and other stats for monsters, just have the monsters start dropping when you've gotten what you want out of the fight.Keep the monsters simple.  At-level fights vs only standard monsters can go pretty quickly, especially if you don't fall into the standard focus-fire tactic, but instead use AEs and multiple attacks and save the 'finishing moves' for the last round of combat.  Otherwise, the usual burn 'em down one at a time tactic can leave the last couple of enemies feeling clearly over-matched, but fresh enough to survive making a run for it.  Avoid Solos, Elites, monsters with many different powers, recharging powers, and the like.  Definitely avoid monsters with weaken, stun, insubstantial and other tricks that'll slow the party down.  They're great for 'tough' fights but merely frustrating for at-level or underleveled ones.</blockquote>

Verification