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<blockquote data-quote="Tormyr" data-source="post: 6395383" data-attributes="member: 6776887">While I would agree that the encounter building guidelines are really useful for eyeballing how difficult the encounter should be, I disagree that you should always be shooting for medium encounters.&nbsp; Some should be easy; some should be hard; and some should be deadly.&nbsp; Variety is going to make things much more interesting for the players, and even an easy encounter with interesting special stuff like a trap or a confined space for a fireball can be a lot of fun. In the adventure path we are running, there are encounter level guidelines for each encounter.&nbsp; I use those to gauge how difficult the encounter should be.As an example, The party was level 5. The cap for a moderate encounter for a 7-person 5th-level party is 3500XP. They were supposed to have an EL8 encounter (this is a 3.5 conversion).&nbsp; The cap for a moderate encounter for a 7-person 8th-level party is 6300XP.&nbsp; So this would potentially be a deadly encounter for the party.&nbsp; After that there was an EL4 encounter (1750XP) which was an easy encounter for the party.Encounters are still quite fun.&nbsp; Combat still goes faster than 4e partially because everyone is not stuck fighting for combat advantage and adding up a bunch of numbers.&nbsp; But 7 players will take about twice as long as 4 players.&nbsp; Instead of 6 encounters in a session you might get 2. The desire to speed things up may help your players to think about ways of avoiding combat as well. The bottom line is, if the encounter is fun, the players will have fun.&nbsp; This generally means that you are mixing things up so that each encounter is not a repeat of the next.&nbsp; Each encounter (even random encounters) should fit into the story or ecology of the campaign or be a potential plot hook of its own.We have a small whiteboard with dry erase magnets on it that we use to keep track of initiative.&nbsp; Each player has a magnet, and there are some blank magnets for writing names of monsters.&nbsp; I have one of the players at the other end of the table take the initiative at the beginning of an encounter.&nbsp; He writes down everyone's initiative on their magnet and rearranges the magnets in order.&nbsp; Everyone can then see when their turn is coming up.Aside from that lots of the usual means of saving time apply.&nbsp; Roll damage with the attack roll.&nbsp; Have a cheat sheet for your spells so you don't have to look them up. Let the player who is &quot;on deck&quot; know they are up next.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tormyr, post: 6395383, member: 6776887"] While I would agree that the encounter building guidelines are really useful for eyeballing how difficult the encounter should be, I disagree that you should always be shooting for medium encounters. Some should be easy; some should be hard; and some should be deadly. Variety is going to make things much more interesting for the players, and even an easy encounter with interesting special stuff like a trap or a confined space for a fireball can be a lot of fun. In the adventure path we are running, there are encounter level guidelines for each encounter. I use those to gauge how difficult the encounter should be. As an example, The party was level 5. The cap for a moderate encounter for a 7-person 5th-level party is 3500XP. They were supposed to have an EL8 encounter (this is a 3.5 conversion). The cap for a moderate encounter for a 7-person 8th-level party is 6300XP. So this would potentially be a deadly encounter for the party. After that there was an EL4 encounter (1750XP) which was an easy encounter for the party. Encounters are still quite fun. Combat still goes faster than 4e partially because everyone is not stuck fighting for combat advantage and adding up a bunch of numbers. But 7 players will take about twice as long as 4 players. Instead of 6 encounters in a session you might get 2. The desire to speed things up may help your players to think about ways of avoiding combat as well. The bottom line is, if the encounter is fun, the players will have fun. This generally means that you are mixing things up so that each encounter is not a repeat of the next. Each encounter (even random encounters) should fit into the story or ecology of the campaign or be a potential plot hook of its own. We have a small whiteboard with dry erase magnets on it that we use to keep track of initiative. Each player has a magnet, and there are some blank magnets for writing names of monsters. I have one of the players at the other end of the table take the initiative at the beginning of an encounter. He writes down everyone's initiative on their magnet and rearranges the magnets in order. Everyone can then see when their turn is coming up. Aside from that lots of the usual means of saving time apply. Roll damage with the attack roll. Have a cheat sheet for your spells so you don't have to look them up. Let the player who is "on deck" know they are up next. [/QUOTE]

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