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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6173144" data-attributes="member: 6696971">@<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?305-Storminator" target="_blank">Storminator</a> Thanks.  Its much more clear what you're trying to accomplish.  Personally, I would run this as a Skill Challenge with complications, surge loss, and ultimate outcome contingent upon the stakes and precisely what the PCs are trying to accomplish; success probably equaling the carnage they were seeking and failure equaling a lot of death and the carnage being blamed on them.However, you're looking for that climactic fight here and are Skill Challenged out so I think a few techniques can facilitate what you're looking for:1)  Talk to your players before the session and request that they each scribe a free action encounter power that grants them outright authorial rights and has a mechanical impact on both sides of the combat; eg A townsfolk NPC picks up a rock and throws it at a Silver Flame minion (or swarm - causing of-level, medium damage expression to the swarm), braining him.  As a result, one of the 4 powerful Silver Flame NPCs (or swarm if you're using them that way) lets loose a crossbow bolt and kills the rock-throwing town-folk minion (or swarm - causing of-level, medium damage expression to the swarm).  Basically a minion trade-off or damage trade-off but narration of the fiction toward the end they are seeking (deadly conflict between the Silver Flame and townfolk).2)  Create a stock, of-level minion for each of the PCs to control in the ensuing combat (on the PCs initiative).  Offset those PC controlled minions by upping your encounter budget by the same xp budget as the aggregate of the PC controlled minion budget.  You can just narrate the rest of the conflict.3)  Complexity 1 or 2 Skill Challenge during combat to exhort/inspire/provoke the townsfolk toward the PCs end; a riot that ends in mortal combat, and massacre, with the Silver Flame.  You're certainly well within your rights to just make the action a minor but, given you have 7 PCs and you want it to be climactic, you might want to make the action economy 1/round; Move Action.  Whatever you do with the action economy of the Skill Challenge, it needs to be transparently communicated to the players.  Victory might mean access to the encounter powers in 1 above, or control of a minion and their suite of powers as in 2 above (except you wouldn't adjust the encounter budget - the tangible reward for success in the Skill Challenge)4)  Regardless, I would still probably go with 4 elite (level n - 1 or n depending on how you want to budget) swarms (one for each of the powerful NPCs and several Silver Flame minions) that break out as an Elite standard on Bloodied (representing all of those minions being slain and the powerful NPC the only one left standing) and an elite Inquisitor Dorn (level n or n + 1 depending on how you want to budget) with leader subtype who serves as force multiplier.5)  I would find a way to bring a collapsing steeple into play (perhaps its loose and hanging - let the PCs know about it so they try to p42 some use of it).  If the PCs don't trigger it, then just find an opportune moment when either PCs or a swarm of NPCs are adjacent to the church or on the steps; someone is pushed into the wall and the precarious steeple tumbles over, burst 2, L + 3 vs Reflex, medium damage expression + immobilized (save ends); difficult terrain on stone steps until the end of battle.  Miss = half damage and shift outside of the burst to a square of the target's choosing.  Perhaps there are some other gothic features to the yard - sharp hedges, spiked-iron gates/fence - that the PCs can take advantage of forcing the enemy into?</blockquote>

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