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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5415986" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, OK, but the question stated in the OP remains...I agree with you that all the extra fancy book keeping type solutions don't really excite me personally. 4e seems to already be rather heavy in the book keeping department. Adding more layers seems like going in the wrong direction.So, we are left with building better encounters. That really IMHO IS the solution. Some good ideas have already been put forward in this thread. Don't play all your cards on round 1 is a great technique for instance. There are others though.Build the increasing tension into the encounter environment. Make the environment dynamic and inherently ratchet up the tension. Terrain elements can become more dangerous as the encounter progresses for instance. The encounter area can be unstable, pushing the PCs to act quickly say. While this might seem to make the encounter even more front-loaded this can work. Maybe the platform the artillery monsters are on can be collapsed but it takes several rounds to do it. Maybe the PCs can SEE reinforcements coming, so they will have to hold back some at the start. A variation of that would be the PCs can stop the reinforcements by doing something like caving in a side passage or something. There are other tried and true techniques.I've just found that vanilla encounters really have little place in 4e. Once in a while they're OK to set a mood or establish some facts on the ground, but really EVERY encounter should be fitting into a narrative and building the story. Monsters should be an active force working to thwart the PCs. Provide intermediate objectives in the adventure that let the PCs rebuild their resources somewhat too. If the players feel like unleashing in an encounter so they can move on quickly toward the real objective is great.  The whole situation should be like a roller-coaster ride with constant ups and downs. Or like an escalating disaster, or an unfolding mystery. Keep the focus off the task of cutting through hit points and on being big heroes.</blockquote>

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