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<blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 4886068" data-attributes="member: 710">Interesting idea...Things you might change in encounter design:You might use more Minions.You might build &quot;larger encounters&quot; that span themselves over an entire day of exploration or travelling. Essentially, where you might have put 4 regular encounters with 5 monsters each, you might now have 4 &quot;segments&quot; of one encounter with 1 or 2 regular monsters and a few minions.You might find more opportunities to define &quot;Milestones&quot;. You will have the equivalent of a fully fledged encounter only happening every two days, which might coincide more with important &quot;story progressions&quot;.You might have a better &quot;encounter to story&quot; ratio. A short dungeon for example would usually consist of 3-6 encounters in a day, and yet still would probably resolve only one major plot point (get the McGuffin, stop the ritual, whatever). You probably wouldn't want the same dungeon to turn into a weeklong activity, so you'd cut down the actual encounters. If you actually use the idea of splitting an encounter in multiple steps or groups, individual combats might feel faster flowing. In a way it's a &quot;lie&quot; - the actual encounter would take longer, but since the players would perceive them as several short skirmishes with lots of exploration in between, the illusion would be that the combat is shorter.You might have more opportunities to mix skill challenges with combat encounters. Again, the idea is splitting the encounters.For example, in an urban chase scenario, you could add some _short_ combat scenes instead of fully fledged encounters, and you'd still have a strong resource management component to it. A failed Stealth Check could lead to a skirmish with a single guard without feeling &quot;meaningless&quot; if it's the only fight during the challenge - the encounter isn't over yet, and the hit points and healing words lost in that morning will still mean something in the afternoon. One could experiment with this idea in an adventure - create some kind of fantastic terrain the party has to get through that makes it impossible to take shorts rest.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mustrum_Ridcully, post: 4886068, member: 710"] Interesting idea... Things you might change in encounter design: You might use more Minions. You might build "larger encounters" that span themselves over an entire day of exploration or travelling. Essentially, where you might have put 4 regular encounters with 5 monsters each, you might now have 4 "segments" of one encounter with 1 or 2 regular monsters and a few minions. You might find more opportunities to define "Milestones". You will have the equivalent of a fully fledged encounter only happening every two days, which might coincide more with important "story progressions". You might have a better "encounter to story" ratio. A short dungeon for example would usually consist of 3-6 encounters in a day, and yet still would probably resolve only one major plot point (get the McGuffin, stop the ritual, whatever). You probably wouldn't want the same dungeon to turn into a weeklong activity, so you'd cut down the actual encounters. If you actually use the idea of splitting an encounter in multiple steps or groups, individual combats might feel faster flowing. In a way it's a "lie" - the actual encounter would take longer, but since the players would perceive them as several short skirmishes with lots of exploration in between, the illusion would be that the combat is shorter. You might have more opportunities to mix skill challenges with combat encounters. Again, the idea is splitting the encounters. For example, in an urban chase scenario, you could add some _short_ combat scenes instead of fully fledged encounters, and you'd still have a strong resource management component to it. A failed Stealth Check could lead to a skirmish with a single guard without feeling "meaningless" if it's the only fight during the challenge - the encounter isn't over yet, and the hit points and healing words lost in that morning will still mean something in the afternoon. One could experiment with this idea in an adventure - create some kind of fantastic terrain the party has to get through that makes it impossible to take shorts rest. [/QUOTE]

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