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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KidSnide" data-source="post: 5682808" data-attributes="member: 54710">My campaign often features single-encounter days, so I have some experience in these types of encounters.There are lots of ways that you can have a single "spike" encounter that challenges the PCs and is a ton of fun (many mentioned in this thread), but I'm not sure there are any easy ways to do that without taking longer than a usual encounter.  As a general matter, adding in tons of new monsters take longer to kill.That said, there are a few ways to get something closer to what you want.  You could stage an on-going fight in a zone where everyone takes damage.  With monsters and PCs both exposed to damage in regular waves, that will speed up combat.  Plus, such a combat would presumably have particularly dangerous zones where monsters (and PCs!) could be pushed.I also had success with fast-dangerous single-day encounters was with what I think of as a 3/4 solo.  It's essentially a solo creature with only 3/4rds of the total hit points and not quite the full power set.  It feels like fighting a solo, but the monster doesn't have quite the same endurance.  Pair it with a pack of minions, and you get a nice light-weight boss fight.  I wouldn't use it as the climax of a major adventure, but it still feels more significant than a regular fight.A helpful houserule for extended combats is to allow the PCs a mini-short rest between waves in which they can spend a single healing surge and recharge a single encounter power.  That kind of structure allows the characters with tons of healing surges to take some advantage of their endurance and reduces the tendency to fall into an at-will-only grind.  This won't really help speed up combat, but it can make a long combat more fun.I should also add that higher level characters perform much better than low level characters at this sort of encounter.  The "spike" power of having several daily powers and a full complement of magic items is significant.Lastly, my game became a little more fun when I realized that my single-encounter days didn't have to push the PCs to their limits.  Sometimes the PCs blast through an encounter, and that's fun too.-KS</blockquote>

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