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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hambot" data-source="post: 4600926" data-attributes="member: 61484">I've avoided grinding by giving level appropriate challenges or those level -1 or -2.  Nothing turns a fight into a grind like introducing a party level + 3 soldier.  Yawn!  It goes on for ages.  My players like to feel awesome.  Then when they start to get confident they have a real level +1 or level +2 fight.  Variation is exciting for them - figuring out how deadly the bad guys are.Also, my 2 players have a monster hireling that helps shore up their lack of a defender.  Letting small groups have much better starting stats works too - they are far more versatile as people can still have a very good primary stat, but other multiclassing options are open.  I got them to roll for ability scores 36 times (4d6 drop lowest) and put the roll results into a grid.  They then picked the best row, column or diagonal to use.  The sheer number of rolls takes away the randomness and ends up like 5d6 drop 2 (that method can still randomly screw a PC).At first I thought this would cause me problems, but it absolutely hasn't - 4E is at most a tri stat dependant system, so having them good at other stats just allows them to be a little more versatile at untrained skills and willing to give other things a go.The ultimate lack of grinding was when they stupidly got themselves poisoned and lost all their gear, then tried taking on level +3 encounter rather than escaping easily.  Hp flew down to zero and they learned a lot about how they should be a team, not separate heros trying to best each other.  Now I'm trying to figure out how to get a bit more treasure back into their hands as they have really lost all their gear and they are level 5 now.  This makes encounters more deadly and exciting, as they are effectively level +1 without gears.  Still, I've discovered the designers goal of making magic items less important has worked beautifully - they're back to 90% effectiveness after fighting lots of normal NPC's like human guards and escaping the city, all the while stealing mundane gear off their opponents.The most important thing to avoid grinding is keeping the stuff that propels the story forward, and cutting chaff unless it is a way to get mundane gear into their silly PC hands.  Giving players control over their destiny ensures they don't get bored - my PC's have a map of the world and they point to where they are going to next AND the way they are going to take.  As they talk to townsfolk the map gets names and places added to it (magical obv) but that allows them to choose their future, so that they can sway encounter balance by sailing around the coast rather than going through the swamp, or going via the haunted forest rather than the greenskin hills.  Having seen players react so well to a visual aid I am never doing a game without a map again.</blockquote>

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