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<blockquote data-quote="timASW" data-source="post: 6128721" data-attributes="member: 6698787"><p>Put your monsters on an excel spreadsheet. Especially the humanoid ones as such; Fast warrior, 2 weapon warrior, sword and board warrior, great weapon warrior, back stab rogue, stealth rogue, talking rogue, ranged rogue, etc etc. </p><p></p><p>Make them about level 4 if your starting a campaign out at 1st or 2nd level. Then you can very easily adjust on the fly. </p><p></p><p>If lower level monters are called for you reduce HP and BAB by so much and take out a couple of feats*, learn your feat chains so that you know how far a 1st level great weapon fighter has gotten along this power attack chain, etc, etc. </p><p></p><p>Make all their equipment bog standard. If better baddies are called for its very easy to add a few small bonuses to numbers on the fly. </p><p></p><p>I started doing this towards the middle of the 3X cycle and it sped my game up so much its hard to describe, and it let me have a huge list of potential allies and enemies to improvise into in any situation. All you really have to do to make it work is what I did. You spend about an hour before each game session filling out your excel with specific foes you expect them to encounter because of how you've written it up. After a few weeks you'll find yourself adding at most a half dozen special individuals (give them their own spreadsheet so you dont clog up your quick sheet) and your prep time just goes down and down from there. </p><p></p><p>When the campaign hits a certain point you copy and paste your baddies to a new sheet, spend a little time adding a few levels to them and call the sheet "mid level baddies" then in a few levels "high level baddies" yadda yadda. </p><p></p><p>At this point I never spend more then a half hour prepping actual enemies. I might labor over a map or a story but thats because i want to, not because I have to. </p><p></p><p>Try it, between that and a program called combat manager my prep time and combats are flying by.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="timASW, post: 6128721, member: 6698787"] Put your monsters on an excel spreadsheet. Especially the humanoid ones as such; Fast warrior, 2 weapon warrior, sword and board warrior, great weapon warrior, back stab rogue, stealth rogue, talking rogue, ranged rogue, etc etc. Make them about level 4 if your starting a campaign out at 1st or 2nd level. Then you can very easily adjust on the fly. If lower level monters are called for you reduce HP and BAB by so much and take out a couple of feats*, learn your feat chains so that you know how far a 1st level great weapon fighter has gotten along this power attack chain, etc, etc. Make all their equipment bog standard. If better baddies are called for its very easy to add a few small bonuses to numbers on the fly. I started doing this towards the middle of the 3X cycle and it sped my game up so much its hard to describe, and it let me have a huge list of potential allies and enemies to improvise into in any situation. All you really have to do to make it work is what I did. You spend about an hour before each game session filling out your excel with specific foes you expect them to encounter because of how you've written it up. After a few weeks you'll find yourself adding at most a half dozen special individuals (give them their own spreadsheet so you dont clog up your quick sheet) and your prep time just goes down and down from there. When the campaign hits a certain point you copy and paste your baddies to a new sheet, spend a little time adding a few levels to them and call the sheet "mid level baddies" then in a few levels "high level baddies" yadda yadda. At this point I never spend more then a half hour prepping actual enemies. I might labor over a map or a story but thats because i want to, not because I have to. Try it, between that and a program called combat manager my prep time and combats are flying by. [/QUOTE]
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