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<blockquote data-quote="DND_Reborn" data-source="post: 8487027" data-attributes="member: 6987520">1. Make the fights more even. IME the only quick battles are the ones were the PCs easily overpower the opponents. If you remove (or just narrate) easy and medium encounters, only using hard and deadly, there is greater risk to the PCs. Whether that is greater &quot;drama&quot; is up to you? I occasionally toss a medium encounter at our group still, but the distribution is maybe 5% easy, 15 % moderate, 60 % hard, 20 % deadly.2. Get rid of the standard initiative system. My group has been using the Cinematic Initiative Variant (CIV) I created for over a year now and none of us would ever want to go back to playing with normal initiative. CIV makes players pay attention more to what is going on, breaks up the action, and with the extra moves we've added/improved, make the game more tactical. It is a bit more bookkeeping at first, but once you get the hang of it it goes very quickly IMO.3. Don't be a nice DM. Have monsters gang-up on individuals, hit them when they are down, and force characters to be more cautious and watch out for each other more.4. Make BBEG custom instead of off-the-rack. Honestly, I would say only about 25% of our battles are resolved in less than 4 rounds. Most take 6-10 rounds. This is also because my BBEG and sub-bosses are custom. PCs can deal out insane damage sometimes, so with solo BBEG I take the HP and/or AC up a notch or two.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="DND_Reborn, post: 8487027, member: 6987520"] 1. Make the fights more even. IME the only quick battles are the ones were the PCs easily overpower the opponents. If you remove (or just narrate) easy and medium encounters, only using hard and deadly, there is greater risk to the PCs. Whether that is greater "drama" is up to you? I occasionally toss a medium encounter at our group still, but the distribution is maybe 5% easy, 15 % moderate, 60 % hard, 20 % deadly. 2. Get rid of the standard initiative system. My group has been using the Cinematic Initiative Variant (CIV) I created for over a year now and none of us would [I]ever[/I] want to go back to playing with normal initiative. CIV makes players pay attention more to what is going on, breaks up the action, and with the extra moves we've added/improved, make the game more tactical. It is a bit more bookkeeping at first, but once you get the hang of it it goes very quickly IMO. 3. Don't be a nice DM. Have monsters gang-up on individuals, hit them when they are down, and force characters to be more cautious and watch out for each other more. 4. Make BBEG custom instead of off-the-rack. Honestly, I would say only about 25% of our battles are resolved in less than 4 rounds. Most take 6-10 rounds. This is also because my BBEG and sub-bosses are custom. PCs can deal out insane damage sometimes, so with solo BBEG I take the HP and/or AC up a notch or two. [/QUOTE]

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