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<blockquote data-quote="ggroy" data-source="post: 5060928" data-attributes="member: 83805">Here's a few other things I've done to speed up 4E combat encounters.The times I felt an encounter was dragging on &quot;too long&quot;, I ended up &quot;minionizing&quot; the generic monsters/badguys once they became bloodied. One more hit and a &quot;minionized&quot; monster/badguy was dead.&nbsp;Another way of shortening encounters in mid-battle, I had some of the backline monsters retreat, such as an archer running out of arrows, or a monster's weapon breaking (such as from a critical failure) and subsequently running away from battle.&nbsp;Sometimes I'll do a fake &quot;morale&quot; check and have the monsters retreat on a d20 roll of less than 5, 10 or 15, depending on the type of monsters.&nbsp;If a particular monster has resistance to a particular type of damage (ie. fire, etc ...), or regenerates hit points every round, sometimes I'll drop the resistance/regeneration once they're bloodied to speed things up.Another thing I've done which speeds up encounters slightly in my experience is to use group initiative, alternating between the player group and badguy group. Usually I allow the players to have the initiative, unless they've been surprised.&nbsp; In practice in my 4E games using group initiative, typically the player group first has the wizard (or another spellcaster) doing a ranged area or blast attack on the badguys, before the melee players go in and fight. I try to arrange the badguys such that the players can't easily gang up all at once on one particular badguy and killing it in one round.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="ggroy, post: 5060928, member: 83805"] Here's a few other things I've done to speed up 4E combat encounters. The times I felt an encounter was dragging on "too long", I ended up "minionizing" the generic monsters/badguys once they became bloodied. One more hit and a "minionized" monster/badguy was dead. Another way of shortening encounters in mid-battle, I had some of the backline monsters retreat, such as an archer running out of arrows, or a monster's weapon breaking (such as from a critical failure) and subsequently running away from battle. Sometimes I'll do a fake "morale" check and have the monsters retreat on a d20 roll of less than 5, 10 or 15, depending on the type of monsters. If a particular monster has resistance to a particular type of damage (ie. fire, etc ...), or regenerates hit points every round, sometimes I'll drop the resistance/regeneration once they're bloodied to speed things up. Another thing I've done which speeds up encounters slightly in my experience is to use group initiative, alternating between the player group and badguy group. Usually I allow the players to have the initiative, unless they've been surprised. In practice in my 4E games using group initiative, typically the player group first has the wizard (or another spellcaster) doing a ranged area or blast attack on the badguys, before the melee players go in and fight. I try to arrange the badguys such that the players can't easily gang up all at once on one particular badguy and killing it in one round. [/QUOTE]

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