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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Harr" data-source="post: 4785893" data-attributes="member: 47190">Hm, just because you got my wheels turning on the topic of long combats and cutting them short... I mentioned making combats about something OTHER than just killing the monsters. But maybe you're thinking 'how'.Ok. Have you watched the movie "The Gamers"?If you haven't, then do <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Watching that movie and then thinking "Why does that game feel so incredibly awesome and mine doesn't...?" Was what first alerted me to coming up with the "narrative out" for combats which I almost always use nowadays for the "big" fights.I won't spoil anything, but basically "The Gamers" follows a party of PCs through a campaign. The interesting thing here is how they resolve the combats. There are definitely several combats that are taken on just by hacking and slashing through them... But the really interesting ones, the really big ones are all resolved not by cutting up the enemies, but by one of the PCs making that one leap of logic that lets them take that one crucial decisive action that will decisively win the day. Seriously watch it and you'll see what I mean <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />*** SPOILERS FOR KOTS IN AN EXAMPLE ***As an example, when I re-ran Keep on the Shadowfell, instead of the objective being just "Kill Kalarel", what I had was four black candles set up around Kalarel. The candles had pretty high AC to hit to but any kind of damaging hit would knock them down. Anybody making an attack to knock down a candle would receive a free Opportunity attack from Kalarel (even at range).The way it worked was if even ONE candle was knocked down at any time in the fight, the ritual was ruined. When Kalarel saw this he would immediately try to escape via another teleporting ritual. If all FOUR candles were knocked down, Kalarel would lose all the arcane power he had to the sucking vortex. - If after 40 minutes of play all candles are still standing (extremely unlikely), the ritual is complete, the PCs black out and awaken in a desolate blackened ruin. - If after 40 minutes of play at least one candle but not all are knocked down, Kalarel succeeds in teleporting himself out and escaping, but the party has succeeded in ruining the ritual. - If before 40 minutes are up the party knocks all the 4 candles down, then the portal closes, Kalarel is stripped of his powers and despairs, starts crying and begs the PCs for mercy.What does this do? It sets up a very easy and very fast way for the PCs to succeed at their objective that doesn't involve whittling the big bad down to 0. They can still do that if they want, but if they take too long, they can fail.In the actual game they were not able to knock the four candles down; the combat was 20 minutes in before they knocked down the first one, and only three were down before the time was up. They saved Winterhaven but Kalarel got away.Now, the point is that this is the kind of thing that 1) is SO easy and fast to set up, 2) is well within the rules and scope of 4e, and 3) is fun and makes the players feel oh-so-clever (even though it's so obvious... but it being obvious is the whole idea, you WANT them to know, so they can take action and wrap it up fast).This may not be your cup of tea of course. But it's what I do... And no I don't consider any of this "roleplaying" LOL <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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