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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mattdm" data-source="post: 4272677" data-attributes="member: 15382">Okay, so, DM confessions time: I like to think I'm a reasonably smart person. I can do tactics to some degree. When I used to play Magic the Gathering in college, I did all right, although I'd get attached to a concept and end up losing a lot when it didn't work out to be as cool as I thought.And I think I've done pretty okay with our 3.5E game, which is currently reaching where I'd planned for it to end at around 14th level — just in time to start up with 4E, which has a lot of things I like. We've had some memorable moments, good battles and defining non-combat RP experiences. Okay then.What I don't have is a lot of spare time for gaming. My wife and I used to play Settlers of Catan and the like, but now with two young kids, well, there's a lot of life to juggle, so gaming night is twice-monthly and it's D&D.Which is a roundabout way of saying that while I've been interested in D&D minis (not to mention <a href="http://www.brikwars.com/" target="_blank">Brikwars</a>!), I haven't even touched it. And I'm concerned that combat in 4E is going to require a lot more thinking out of me of the kind that suddenly makes that experience relevant. I mean, I've tried to vary combat in 3.5, with monsters with interesting abilities and side-effects and movement and so on, but it seems like the 4E combat system is designed around that in a way 3/3.5 just hints at.So what I want is twofold: First, I want to be able to present a challenging and interesting combat to my players every encounter. The "tactics" lines in the monster manual seem to be good starting points, but I'm concerned that where to go from there won't come naturally enough to me. Simultaneously, though, I don't want the whole game to devolve into a tactical minis game, so I'm pulled towards not putting much effort into that aspect. Does that make any sense at all? I want it to all go so fluidly that the system becomes invisible, yet I want to use that system in a way that makes it fun for the players to show off their cool new abilities (and to be wowed at the clever tricks the enemies pull on them). And I want to do that with the minimal  time I have, and without needing to become a tactical mastermind.Advice, anyone? <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=":)" /></blockquote>

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