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Message: <blockquote data-quote="IronWolf" data-source="post: 5195861" data-attributes="member: 21076">As others have mentioned, at the lower levels the length of encounters isn't so bad.  PCs and critters have fewer attacks, fewer special abilities, etc.  Use these early encounters to help form good habits that will help the mid to higher level encounters run a bit more smoothly.  Such as rolling your attack and damage dice at the same time, players having their idea for actions ready to go as their turn comes up (use a timer if you need to to help), suggest having their spells descriptions readily available and from the DM side make sure you are familiar with the NPC creatures you will be running and their attacks and such to reduce time the DM spends figuring out how to run a critter at the table.First level can be a bit tricky gauging the difficulty of the encounter.  The DM getting on a hot streak with his dice rolls can make things go south for a character quite quickly.  One house rule is to allow characters to go to negative CON score before dying.  My DM has been doing that for years and it does add just a bit more survivability to a character - in fact that house rule saved my 8th level character just last week!Beyond that, perhaps the person or organization encouraging the exploration of the monastery grants the party a few cure light wound potions as their way of providing assistance.</blockquote>