Speeding up combat

[thundershot]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we are NOT using a battlemat since in our experience, it almost doubles the combat time.

I think at least two, if not all three, plan to take Leadership at 7th level to help bolster the ranks (though since they don't care for followers, I'm letting them use the "sidekick" feat which is just a cohort at one level less instead of two).

There will also be animal companions when they hit the right levels (even the Cleric who has the Animal domain). So in a few levels they'll have a pretty big team.

My question is if I want to continue doing what I'm doing, what is a good scale to raise the bonus that the enemies have so they continue to be a challenge? +1 every 4 levels? +2 every 5?

Thanks!
Chris

 

[Kaisoku]

The Leadership feat can be quite powerful. If you go from the players having a deficit in the expected action economy, to having practically double the action economy (9 character actions per round), you might find that things will start dying fast enough to no longer need the reduction in hitpoints.

This can become especially true once the casters can start reliably getting into the "bypass hitpoint" stage of the game.

Not sure otherwise. I'd always taken the route of giving additional aid, or boosting the individual characters, instead of weakening the combatants. And even then, it was to give the characters a sort of half-gestalt ability to cover the missing bases (arcane magic, or melee combat ability, etc).

 

[thundershot]

The Leadership feat can be quite powerful. If you go from the players having a deficit in the expected action economy, to having practically double the action economy (9 character actions per round), you might find that things will start dying fast enough to no longer need the reduction in hitpoints.

Oh, absolutely. I'll be monitoring the situation, definitely. Since I'm doing things on my end, I don't have to worry about taking something away from the characters later if it starts shifting the other direction.