(edit: Enworld, I love you so much. Particularly the way things unpredicably do the "you're editing in full html and I'll kill all whitespace" thing; that one's awesome)
The consumable item abuse is consumable item abuse. Enforce the rarity rules, or stop the player form spending gold he/she doesn't have, or enforce the consumable plussed item rules (eg, that you only get a +1 from a +1 arrow even when firing from a +2 bow) and all should be well. The static, boring combats issue is dealable with by the usual solutions -- which can be summarized as:
1. Give players a reason to move around the battlefield.
2. Give players a reason -not- to stay in the same place for the entire combat.
3. Make battles different one another, so the optimal tactics are different and players have to make judgements and think in order to have good results. (edit: Enworld, I love you so much. Particularly the way things unpredicably do the "you're editing in full html and I'll kill all whitespace" thing; that one's awesome)<br>
For 1, this means giving them goals that make standing in the doorway of whatever room the encounter takes place obviously not the right thing to do. The simplest thing to hang this on, naturally, are the core rpg goals of "kill the monsters" and "get the treasure". For instance, if the encounter area is a bunch of twisty corridors that block LOE and LOS, the strikers in the doorway won't be able to reach the snipers pelting the defenders in the center of the room -- nor will they be able to provide support once the defenders chase down the snipers. And if feels really dopey to stand in the doorway frightened of the scary monsters while they're happily shooting from full cover (and untargetable). To hang things on treasure, you can make some of the treasure obvious, accessible, and endangered -- so if they want that treasure, they're going to have to take some risks before it gets swallowed by a pool of acid or whatnot. However, you can also put extra goals into an encounter to tempt your players with. For instance, you can have zones in the area that provide a bonus to those standing next to them -- like bloodstone (creatures crit on 19-20 when next to it), which the players will want to force the monsters away from and stand next to themselves. Similarly, you can have natural wells of energy that can be drawn on once by adjacent characters for bonuses, healing, extra surges, action points, or recharged encounter/daily powers. Or you can have encounter goals beyond "kill the monsters, take their stuff". If, to pick a particularly memorable example, the encounter features a birthing mother who has been taken captive, the players will have to decide who is going to prevent the mother from dying while the rest of the group fights the monsters, possibly switching off who is playing midwife -- and it's not that hard to come up with other mid-encounter goals that necessitate taking the group out of their comfort zone.
That brings me to 2 -- giving them a reason -not- to stay in the same place. This is different than #1 because it comprises ways to punish the players for using this tactic; things you can do to them if they do it that will make them think twice about using it in any given encounter, rather than mindlessly using it every time. I'd caution you, however, to be cautious in using this, and use tactic #1 more often. After all, sometimes it's fine for the players to turtle up -- and if you use this tactic too often, it will be always right for the players to go rushing into danger, which isn't that much better than always hanging back. There are a lot of ways to punish players for using this kind of "doorway" configuration, but here are a few:
a. Move the battlefield. The enemy can keep moving, forcing the players to run to catch up or lose by default, or the battlefield could start in an exapanding danger zone where players cannot are dazed at the beginning of their turn (or just an expanding zone of darkness) and players have to keep moving to stay out of it.
b. Rear attack. Works every time -- until the players start posting a rear guard, anyway. You can do this with hidden enemies that uncloak to attack the party's rear, or a second enemy group that is summoned or accidentally enters the are in time to engage the party's rear, but the simplest approach here is to have the encounter area have more than one exit. After all, you shouldn't generally show the party the parts of the map they can't see! While the party is engaged with one part of the enemy, some of them can exit through the second door, and circle around; likely surprising the rear section of the party who didn't realize that there was another exit they at approached them from the same room.
c. Opposing controllers. Classic. The party wants to bunch up in the doorway? Fine; the enemy should sometimes have a controller to who can drop bursts and zones in those nice close areas the party's rear guard seems to like so much. Watch them think more carefully about staying in "fireball formation" in the future.
c. Doors. Seriously, people tend to ignore all that flavor text about the terrain, don't they? So burn them for it, and maybe they'l pay better attention. The classic trick here is that when the party decides to have the defenders charge through the door and the ranged strikers hang back and shoot through the doorway, have some of the enemy go over to the door, close, and bar it -- then start having a party with the defenders. Alternatively, they can go through the door before closing it (though the defenders have better odds of getting the door open in time to avoid their friends getting too scared) and start making the ranged characters' lives miserable. Either way, letting a door or similar obstacle is a great way for a party to find itself split and punished, and a great way for you to scare the life out of them (though it's -best- if they don't die from any of these tactics; if they do and that's the campaign rules, that's the breaks, though).
3. Obviously, the point is to make every battle different. So this means using different tactics to force the players to think -- and sometimes using none of them and see if they notice! That way they're treating each fight as its own puzzle rather than deploying the same boring tactics every time.(edit: Enworld, I love you so much. Particularly the way things unpredicably do the "you're editing in full html and I'll kill all whitespace" thing; that one's awesome)<br>
