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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5683387" data-attributes="member: 2067">Man, it's never a 15 minute adventuring day anymore. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> From what [MENTION=65726]Mengu[/MENTION] said, it'd be a 3 hour adventuring day -- which is plennnnnnty long. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Even in my home games, combats regularly clock in at an hour +, and honestly that's about enough combat in one 3-4 hour timeframe for me. To head from there right into another hour-long combat is exhausting. The main reason I want the party to feel like they can't press on is because I would like to drive home the fact that things were trying to kill them, and that it took all of their resources, and some luck, and some skill, to survive long enough to kill the other guys instead. This kind of tension is desirable. The emotional reaction is potent -- human beings process risk aversion very strongly, so forcing them to take on more risk, to take losses, is an effective way to drive the excitement of the encounter up. I also like the fact that it zooms out the tactics of the game a little bit. Instead of being simply about combat optimization, the strategy of the game becomes also about when to fight, about the risk of pushing forward, about how to rest, about the dangers of wandering monsters...this is all great stuff that I want to get with my game. It's easy to go forward confidently with a short rest and all (or almost all) of your powers back. It's harder -- scarier -- when you are down to your last drop. Especially if you know your next encounter might be one of those encounters that drains you to your last drop.This combos with the DM-side tension-raiser I have going of giving a cost to every extended rest nicely. Since I don't always get in the 3-4 encounters advised in a day, I'm used to parties never using up their resources, and that's not something I'm prepared to have happen for long. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> At the same time, of course, I don't want to give up the occasional dungeon slog, so a broad rule like "take away healing surges" isn't the best idea for my purposes. I think that solution is really savvy, actually. That takes care of BOTH the "must deplete healing surges" and "must restore encounter powers" problems. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I might link it to the slaying of an elite or something, too (or just add in that additionally). Hmmm....True, there's nothing wrong with it if everyone's having fun and it's a good occasional diversion.But I'd like to use these more than occasionally, and since I get bored of having my whole session eaten up with combat pretty quickly, I'd also like to not have to take that amount of time.It looks like it's mostly dailies throwing a wrench into this. Because of them, I clearly need more than a single encounters' worth of enemies (they can deal a lot of damage, and ensure a PC's survivability), but I clearly don't need the absurd level of HP such baggage would bring. Maybe there's an idea to be found in the minion mechanics, since they are attacks without much HP behind them. "Monsters Appropriate To Level" + double that in minions? Minions soak up the dailies? Hmm.....Hmmm...while I don't want to futz with the dailies so much, this is reminding me a lot of the idea of "surges" being things other than healing. Surges become a kind of Power Point or Mana Point pool with which to power daily powers. That's interesting on its own, even if it's not exactly what I'm looking for this time around, and it puts some interesting ideas about how to get them to spend extra surges in my mind...("Upgrade your Encounter Power! Spend a Surge!")Naah, it's cool. Even the ones talking about campaign-level alterations give me a clue as to where I'll need to make the most adjustments.It's sounding like right now I need to peg the "quantity/quality of monsters" a little better. There's some awesome ideas for getting PC's to spend extra healing surges and for recharging them that I can use here (and keep more comin' if you got 'em!), but it looks like the monster ratio might need to be futzed with, since I don't want to take more than an hour or so (I guess about 5-7 rounds, given Mengu's rough math) for a combat like this, but I'll clearly need more than a "standard encounter" in order to provoke the use of dailies and encounter powers. Perhaps minions would be key? They add extra damage (a full monster's worth each!), but, at 1 hp, they generally don't stick around like a full monster might. Perhaps just adding raw damage? But then, what of PC dailies that deal big HP damage themselves, shouldn't the monsters have more HP to suck those up, so that they still last 5-7 rounds?</blockquote>

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