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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pentius" data-source="post: 5646454" data-attributes="member: 6676736"><p>Depending on how much work you put in to map drawing, adding in hazards and obstacles doesn't take long.  You could pretty easily add them on the fly.  If you're really having trouble with it, though, I'd recommend making and holding onto some 'preset' maps.  Make a couple different ones in varying locales, then if something comes up, you've probably got something that'll work.  Switch them out as need to make sure things don't get stale. With relative ease.  4e combat is much less swingy, and the encounter budget system is a much more accurate gauge of difficulty than the CR system.  Specifically what I like to do is have a few basic monsters around the party's level pulled out and printed up, and stuck to the inside of my DM screen.  Say, a Soldier, an Artillery, a Leader, and a Lurker.  When I need to run an unplanned combat, I just grab them, reskin them as whatever is appropriate and possibly do an on the fly power tweak or two.  For example, say the party unexpectedly gets into a fight with some kobolds.  I'll grab a Soldier or two, some Lurkers, and a Leader add the kobolds' Shifty power to them and change the Leader's spell ability(which he has, for this example) to whatever energy type his dragon liege uses.  With the power tweaks, the reskin and changing the composition the party generally never realizes I'm doing this.  Replace the list as needed. Well, I keep the combat stuff AA mentioned in mind, but the main difference is that in 4e, I rarely consider the rules when planning campaign stuff.  I use them for encounter stuff, but I find the rules tend to get out my way during planning, and are easily adaptable to whatever I do come up with. The Parcel System in the DMG works fairly well.  I try to de-emphasize the looting of fallen foes in favor of other ways of getting stuff, such as rewards from NPCs or discovering forgotten treasures.  I've been experimenting with using the Fixed Enhancement Bonus rules that are in the DMG2(and again in the Dark Sun book) and a series of boons, but this is more personal preference than anything.</p></blockquote><p></p>

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