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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 4668461" data-attributes="member: 99">Well I'm very embarassed to say that I'm just now seeing this thread despite my remarks having helped to spark it.  Sorry about that and I'll do my best to make a worthwhile contribution.I've only just recently started my first 4e campaign and we're only two sessions in.  This means that my data set isn't terribly huge but it does mean that I can recall specific encounters pretty well.  We start playing at 7:30 on Monday nights and finish up by around midnight so we're playing about 4.5 hours in a session.  Our first session ran a bit long at 5 hours and our second stopped right at 4 hours.Our first session kicked off with a lengthy bit of roleplaying that assembled the party and eventually had three combat encounters and a pretty involved Skill Challenge.  The second session (that I referenced in the quote in the OP) had four combat encounters and a good bit of roleplay and skill rolls but no actual Skill Challenge per se.What was interesting to me was that I wanted to examine my encounters before I posted them in this thread.  So I plugged them into the encounter builder tool and was rather shocked to see that of the seven combat encounters I've run thus far two were "Hard" and all the rest were "Easy" according to its calculations.  You should ask my players if THEY thought these were easy encounters.I don't really want to bore you with precise details (if you want them then you can read my "Running Commentary on Rel's Campaign" thread in the General Forum).  I will say that I've managed to make relatively easy foes very challenging and I think this is contributing to the game being fun but also the fights not dragging on.For example during a skill challenge wherein the PC's were being swept down a river, I had them get attacked by a some "Dire Pirhanas".  This was just a Needlefang Drake Swarm that I'd filed the serial numbers off of.  By virtue of the positioning of the PC's it effectively only attacked two of them (the Warlock and Ranger).  The Paladin and Cleric had to swim in order to get close enough to use their powers in that battle and by the time they got there the other two PC's were nearly dead (as in unconscious, failing Death Saves and about to drown).  Terrain was a HUGE factor in that little encounter (which again was considered "Easy" by the Encounter Builder).A later fight had them battling a Wraith in a descecrated temple.  Here again the Encounter Builder said that this fight would be Easy.  I tweaked the Wraith just a bit by giving him one Encounter Power that did a Close Burst 2 for 1d6 Necrotic Damage and pushed all the targets it hit back 2 squares.  This was so it could protect the dead body on the altar with a sacrificial dagger stuck in its chest.  If the PC's could remove that dagger then it lost its Regeneration 5.  The other factor was that there was a balcony it could retreat to thanks to its flight.  Again, this was a tough fight for the PC's as they kept trying to wear it down with attacks that it was mostly recovering from (thanks to Insubstantial + Regeneration).  They finally managed to get the dagger free and then they finished it off.  Fun, tough fight but not a grind.  I think the entire thing lasted about an hour and was maybe 8 or 9 rounds.One other fight that the EB told me was Easy was the pair of Clay Scout Homunculi that guarded the inner sanctum of this temple.  The combo of their mind blast that Dazed the PC it hit plus being Invisible to Dazed creatures was brutally effectively.  Combine that with their power to redirect melee attacks to another target adjacent to them and those little bastards were really tough.I guess what I'm saying is that one way to keep fights shorter is to use foes that aren't higher level but who have abilities that combined with their surroundings and fellow bad guys can make it a challenging battle.  It certainly hasn't seemed like a cakewalk to the PC's.  (Also I find it amusing that the Hard encounters according to the EB were not really all that tough for the PC's compared to some of the others.)One other thing that might be helping me out is that my group is slightly smaller with only 4 players.  In terms of other external factors in making things go quickly, I haven't had to draw any maps because I've used my very favorite gaming accessory:  Snap together dungeon tiles from my Descent boardgame.  They are awesome.We play again tomorrow night and we're going to be getting to some tougher encounters so I'm interested to see if this trend of 1-hour battles holds.  I know of at least one encounter that I'm guessing will go at least an hour and a half but it's a pretty involved set-piece in an interesting location.  I don't think anybody will mind the extra time for that one.One final thing I should note is that since I'm not tracking XP it doesn't matter that these encounters are falling on the Easy end of the XP spectrum.  I can see that being an issue if running a game by the RAW if you're trying to keep a certain pace of advancement.</blockquote>

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