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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zinovia" data-source="post: 5090231" data-attributes="member: 57373">Great ideas!For my game, I am pleased with the banning of Expertise and Paragon Defenses, and giving the characters +1 to attack at levels 5/15/25, along with +1 to NADs at the same levels.  I call it the "Math Expertise" feat, and everyone gets it for free.  On top of that, I let them raise 3 stats at the 4/8 levels, in order to shore up the weakest defense a bit.  Thanks for this thread.  It gives me some feedback on several things I have been considering changing in my game.  I have noticed issues with grind when the dice were running a bit cold for the PC's, especially in the last session.  It was a bad session altogether. Aside from the grind, the complete lack of involvement of one of the players in combat just sucked.  She was utterly tuning out when it wasn't her turn, and was doing nothing but casting Eyebite every turn, not even using her other at-will, despite Eldritch Blast having a higher damage potential.  I made some mistakes in not involving the ranged people enough - I should have attacked them with something, or shut the darn door they were shooting through in order to force them to do something different.   After the session I was flat out told by that player's husband that she hates combats, and that my husband's old game was better because he had more roleplaying.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" />I have *lots* of roleplaying (and my husband's game had hours-long combats too - but they have forgotten that), but just not this past session, which happens to be a dungeon crawl.  They were *supposed* to do 2 fights, then talk to the prisoners and gain plot details, along with the chance to do some negotiating with a group of bad guys.  Unfortunately combats are going too slowly and boring this one player.  So we barely finished the second fight and they packed it up.  I gave out a handout that had a riddle clue on it, using some of the fonts posted here, and the player didn't even look at it.  She and her husband just left after telling me how much the session bored her to death.  I will lose my other players if I don't have some good fights.  They get bored with the shopping expeditions and extended bargaining sessions that are dominated by the warlock's player.  My group has incompatible playstyles in some ways.  It's very frustrating for everyone.   We play so infrequently that a good chunk of the session is taken up by socializing among the players (we're all good friends), and we aren't progressing at anything like the pace I would like to.  I hadn't considered running combats without using by the book initiative, but the more I think about it, the more I think it will keep people more engaged in what is going on, and allow them to better coordinate their actions.  It's certainly worth a shot.  I can still let the warlord's initiative trick work - it can just give the other person another turn as opposed to switching their place in initiative order.  The other ideas I have been considering for awhile are using some kind of aspect and fate system, and reducing the grind by giving mobs 3/4 hp and upping the damage (by 1/2 level, or do you just add what seems appropriate?).  I am trying to introduce more interesting terrain, but the base module I'm using doesn't have as much as I'd like, so I need to do it myself. When I'm rushing my prep, it doesn't happen, and so combats are falling flat a bit.  Aspects could be fun, so long as I can get everyone to use them and be involved.  The fate point rewards should hopefully do that, and I like the suggestions of allowing fate points to add to die rolls and perhaps recharging powers.  The recharge ability seems powerful, but not out of line with the idea I posted in another thread about making encounter and daily powers reliable.  I would do fate points instead of that, which eliminates some of the potential rules issues.   In any case, the ultimatum I received on Saturday means I need to change or drop those players from my group altogether due to incompatibility.  I really don't want to do that, so some kind of real change is in order.</blockquote>

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