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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Recidivism" data-source="post: 5613532" data-attributes="member: 51740">Wow, that's a lot of responses. Apologies for not getting back to this thread sooner, I've been reading and doing prepwork for my campaign. We did our latest session this Monday and thanks to the advice seen here I think it went better than the last couple have gone.One of the main things I did was simply to expand the map area some more. This week's session featured the largest dungeon tile map I've ever built. That took a little bit of work beforehand but I think it worked out well. By turning the map into a tool for exploration and not just a tactical map the players were a little less cautious about moving around.(All the players of ranged characters in this group are extremely timid and cautious about putting themselves in any kind of danger... But when I enticed them with a secret treasure horde discovered by the Dwarf's dungeoneering, they decided they wouldn't want to pass that up.)I also used the extra space in the map to set up part of the encounter, which was a wave of additional attackers that showed up on round 2 to attack the back line. That worked out well as a distraction, forcing the ranged characters to actually get a little messy.The terrain in this encounter was pretty favorable toward the enemies as well (although it did backfire a little bit on my monsters at one point when a flying enemy was knocked prone from where he was drifting over a ledge - Not that I'm complaining, the fight as a whole was more interesting due to the terrain).There are a couple of things you guys mentioned that I'd like to get back on specifically.-Thanks for pointing out the surprise bolts cost. I don't generally like to nitpick, but I told my player that if he was going to be using magical ammunition with major effects he'd have to keep track of that from now on. There's also some other rules issues I've been reading about here that I may discuss with players if they come up in play (No immediate reactions on your turn for one - The Ranger has run into that once or twice).-Almost all of the monsters I've been using are from Monster Manual 1, which probably explains a little bit about why they haven't been nearly as exciting as I would hope. Just last week I was lamenting my use of a particular Skirmisher creature in an encounter because their ability to shift relied on hitting - Which meant they were stuck in the combat not shifting around like I'd wanted.I've also been doing a bit of browsing on the boards reading up about some of the changes MM3 introduces to monsters like improving Brute attack rolls and tweaks to damage scaling. Although a lot of this doesn't seem to apply to my particular situation, it does shed some light on some things I'd noticed (e.g. don't bother using Brute monsters since they can barely connect with PC's ACs, MM1 creatures don't get role-effects on misses, monster damage in general being on the low end).-I haven't gotten a chance to utilize the aid-another with minion trick yet but I'll definitely put this one to good use. I like to utilize minions pretty frequently as with 6 players on the board I need to be tossing in bodies to prevent them from focus-firing hard. A +2 bonus can be nice to offset any number of conditions the PCs have undoubtedly slung on one of my monsters.Next week is a big encounter (storywise) so I'm really thinking hard about how to make it interesting and enjoyable. This is going to be a fight with a solo big bad, so I've got some work cut out for me to make sure it's not just the players standing in one place slugging it out with my baddie.</blockquote>

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