NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cerebral Paladin" data-source="post: 5314040" data-attributes="member: 3448">Reynard--even in a sandbox/hexploration game, I can usually tell what the "bigger" fights are.  My rule of thumb would be:  if the fight is one where the PCs are low on resources, or is a fight with a monster/set of monsters that are tougher than average, or is with a monster that the PCs have deliberately targeted, or is with the chieftain of a group of monsters, that's a big fight, and worth playing out in detail.  If it's with weak monsters, relative to the norm for the area/for what the PCs are taking on, and the PCs are high on resources, that's a good candidate for a faster, streamlined approach.  Ultimately, switching back and forth between combat resolution systems is inherently based on judgments about pacing, drama, and story, whether the story is a carefully plotted in advance or whether it's emergent from how the PCs interact with the setting.   "This is a fun time for a full fight" necessarily involves metagame considerations.  But it can still be done in a sandbox/simulationist/exploration game.Could you say more about why you would choose to fastforward through a big tough fight but focus on a less dangerous fight?  Typically, that seems like it would be a mistake to me, although I could see focusing on a particularly interesting small fight.  You mentioned an analogy to the sequence in the Mines of Moria, but (leaving aside the fact that a book/movie isn't the same as an RPG), I would analyze that in terms of who the PCs are.  The protagonists (i.e. the PCs) in the Lord of the Rings are the members of the Fellowship of the Ring, and maybe even just the hobbits.  The reason that the Tomb of Balin is a focus of attention is because the hobbits are in the thick of it.  The reason that the fight with the Balrog is scary but short is because two major mythic forces are battling while the protagonists try to escape.</blockquote>

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