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<blockquote data-quote="Ismaul" data-source="post: 4665613" data-attributes="member: 22035">I've GMed a 5 PCs party up to lvl3, and up til now our fights average 2.5 hours, sometimes more. Way too much for me.I plan for long combats, most of the times my players and I prefer to have one challenging fight per session than a couple of speed-bumps, so our encounters are often lvl+3. I expect our fights to last an hour, but not a couple.Party composition is pretty balanced, I've got a Swordmage, Taclord, Rogue, Ranger and Wizard. One or two are under-optimized, especially the Ranger, so if we fix that we should win some time. Also, my players are starting to get the hang of the synergies between their characters and how to use them, so I expect our times to be chopped by a good hour.Combat organisation isn't really the problem, I've been playing with these guys for years. We got power cards and all that good stuff too. Might need some better way to track conditions than a whiteboard.Otherwise, a constant that has been plaguing my players is their bad luck. Every damn game, the dice says they fail by a large margin, over and over, while I can't help but roll high. I've started to even this out by switching to rolled PC defenses and static monster attacks, but that ain't enough. I'm thinking of introducing a house rule to counter their bad luck, bonuses on failures, maybe 3 rerolls per combat, ain't sure yet.Next game, I'm cutting in the HP fat, slicing 2 per level for monsters and 1 per level for PCs. That should take care of final grind to shave off the last remaining HPs with at-wills. I'm also going for static average monster damage, which will both speed up monsters and make 'em a bit more reliable, deadly and challenging.I will.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ismaul, post: 4665613, member: 22035"] I've GMed a 5 PCs party up to lvl3, and up til now our fights average 2.5 hours, sometimes more. Way too much for me. I plan for long combats, most of the times my players and I prefer to have one challenging fight per session than a couple of speed-bumps, so our encounters are often lvl+3. I expect our fights to last an hour, but not a couple. Party composition is pretty balanced, I've got a Swordmage, Taclord, Rogue, Ranger and Wizard. One or two are under-optimized, especially the Ranger, so if we fix that we should win some time. Also, my players are starting to get the hang of the synergies between their characters and how to use them, so I expect our times to be chopped by a good hour. Combat organisation isn't really the problem, I've been playing with these guys for years. We got power cards and all that good stuff too. Might need some better way to track conditions than a whiteboard. Otherwise, a constant that has been plaguing my players is their bad luck. Every damn game, the dice says they fail by a large margin, over and over, while I can't help but roll high. I've started to even this out by switching to rolled PC defenses and static monster attacks, but that ain't enough. I'm thinking of introducing a house rule to counter their bad luck, bonuses on failures, maybe 3 rerolls per combat, ain't sure yet. Next game, I'm cutting in the HP fat, slicing 2 per level for monsters and 1 per level for PCs. That should take care of final grind to shave off the last remaining HPs with at-wills. I'm also going for static average monster damage, which will both speed up monsters and make 'em a bit more reliable, deadly and challenging. I will. [/QUOTE]

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