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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Harr" data-source="post: 4583337" data-attributes="member: 47190">I have encountered, again and again, the grind problem. One particularly bad session we barely got through two combats in 5 five hours of play, and at the end we were so burnt out from it we didn't even bother with treasure or XP or anything, we just stopped.It's totally true what you (OP) say: If the dice generally go the player's way, the combat is usually fast and exciting and over quickly, while if the dice turn and generally go in the monsters' favor, you can usually expect a long drawn-out grind and mop-up afterwards.Also, when you try to really *challenge* your players - that is when you try to make a combat that would make them go 'wow, that was dangerous we barely survived it!' What you usually end up with is an excruciating battle of attrition as the players' resources are VERY gradually wound down before they ever feel any kind of pressure, and they are more likely to end up saying 'good god is it over yet?!' than anything else.I tried switching to flat max damage for everybody which worked out fantastically well at first, but it does bring with it the side effect that you can no longer pick from as many different monsters for your encounters (lower-level monsters tend to turn into minions while higher-level monsters tend to turn the PCs into minions). We are now trying flat-average damage, but I fully expect the grind to still be there.I think in the end the only way to solve this is by encounter design, mainly terrain, liabilities and assets that the PCs and monsters can use to enhance their effectiveness. That fireplace you can push people into, that pit trap you could fall into if you're not careful, those spikes against the wall waiting for someone to be bullrushed into them, that trap that will spring at you just when you take a swing at the orc, those used to be nice but trivial additions to an encounter in 3e, but now they're actually required and expected by the system in order to function. In general I've come to decide that for any one encounter, if there isn't a lot of running, shifting, pushing, pulling and sliding going on, and if there's isn't a respectable amount of 'terrain and hazards' type damage being dealt almost every round, then something needs improving.</blockquote>

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