Number of monsters and length of combat?

[ArcaneSpringboard]

Been doing a lot of thinking lately about ways to speed up combat. Currently, one of the aspects I'm thinking about is the paradigm that each combat must be challenging to the PCs.

Realistically, the PCs are going to win any combat that is equal to their level, yet that combat still is going to take somewhere around 60 minutes at the Paragon levels.

What occured to me today was to wonder about the effects of dropping one monster from the combat.

This in effect is a Level - 1 encounter, assuming all of the monsters were equal to the party's level. Having equal or more monsters than the party's number, yet lower levels, isn't necessarily a good thing since it reduces the to-hit bonus of those monsters. We want the PCs to at least use some healing surges and possibly a Daily in this combat. I would think that going with fewer PC level (or even just fewer PC level +1 or +2) monsters could possibly provide enough challenge to use up some resources, yet should speed things up a bit.

Any thoughts?

 

[ArcaneSpringboard]

Double post, please delete.

 

[S'mon]

Contrary to my expectation I find that the PCs plough through large numbers of monsters just fine, where they are of equal or lower level to the party. Grind does not occur from using too many monsters, it occurs from using Solos and higher level elites.

My suspicion is therefore that reducing monster numbers will just make for a trivial, boring fight. If you use higher level monsters, it becomes a grindy boring fight. I'd stick with the DMG 2 advice - "Use more monsters". If you want the fight to go quick but still feel challenging, lots of lower level monsters beats a small number of high level monsters, IME.

 

[Ketjak]

This.

 

[Truth Seeker]

Last campaign I did, four or five years ago +. A total of ten monsters groups for a 2 year game.