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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mengu" data-source="post: 4666106" data-attributes="member: 65726">Our combats last from 35 minutes to 6 hours, depending on the encounter and group we 're playing with. I don't hesitate to throw encounters at the group that are level-1 or level-2. The fastest non-trivial combat encounter I ran was between a group of 6 PC's, and 2 artillary monsters making use of a trap. It lasted about 35 minutes, but I was resolving the trap and 2 monsters very quickly on their turns since their tactics were pre-determined and fast to run. The group just had to figure out how to get to the monsters without taking too much damage, and once in melee I was sure they could take them out. The group ignored the part about not taking damage, and bulldozed their way through the encounter. Not an effecient way to do it, but it was certainly fast. The encounter ran one of the players down to 1 healing surge, and he died in the next encounter. The 6 hour combat we had was against a trap, 8 or 9 standard creatures (not all at once), and wave after wave of minions. Our objective was to disable/destroy the "trap" (which put an end to the waves of minions). It took as about 6 hours to accomplish that task, no idea how many rounds. To add insult to injury, the encounter didn't even end there. We immediately entered a skill challenge to avoid reinforcements and sneak away to safety. There is a lot the DM can do to make encounters fast or slow simply through encounter design, and there is nothing wrong necessarily with long epic encounters, though I'd suggest that they don't become the norm. Also sometimes encounters just start out bad, or luck of the dice can drastically increase the number fo a rounds a combat takes. I really like the idea of giving some sort of bonus if the enemies are taken down under a certain amount of time (or certain number of rounds). I might give a bonus action point, or have them heal up a healing surge at the end of the encounter without spending surges. I might even come up with a par concept where I expect an encounter to be X rounds. If they complete it under par, they get the bonus.</blockquote>

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