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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6094858" data-attributes="member: 82106">There are 2 aspects of this IME, one is that while 4e has excellent mechanical encounter building guidelines DMG1 doesn't REALLY tell you to make it exciting. I mean, it should be OBVIOUS "make your game exciting" of course, but the ACTUAL way you do that isn't explained. DMG2, as usual, got closer, but of course nobody read that. The other aspect is clearly that it is not that hard for a DM to make the sort of encounter you describe, and the fastest way to do it is to just clone some encounter from a previous edition. Previous editions basically hid the crappiness of most encounters because dice always could drop you dead in almost any round of most any fight, and the more boring fights were usually mercifully pretty short.Now imagine that your typical 4e encounter was sliding down a log flume on top of a log, dropping into a mill, meleeing a giant were-creature, rescuing a young maiden from being cut in half by the saw, and then escaping before 100's were-things closed in on the mill. That's a combat encounter. That's worthy of being a combat encounter. That's worthy of Steven Spielberg (OK, its a bit camp, but still). Ain't no boring fiddly melee rounds in there, just wow action, amazing I can use my blah power to leap over the saw! Yup, you knock him back on his haunches with a mighty blow that would have decapitated a warhorse, and he gets right back up and leaps at you with a might howl! Don't have time to get boring. That fight took a good solid hour to play, but nobody even looked at the clock or stood up to go get a snack, they were riveted to the table, lol. I don't think 4e is at all close to perfect in this sense, it is hardish to make a fast encounter that does substantial attrition (as straight combat anyway, a one-use trap or simple SC can do it). I think they overused off-turn attacks and other similar mechanics, and should have limited buff/debuff to fewer more significant instances. Actually DDN has some FINE answers for those problems, advantage/disadvantage is a GREAT streamliner. Couple it with a slightly faster paced attrition, just a SLIGHT bit more chance, shave half a round off each combat and give every player an easy option they can use quickly or combine with improv and give out a bit less numbers of powers, you can cut the time spent easily back down into AD&D range, which IME was still consistently 20 mins plus a couple minutes per round minimum, and at high levels was basically about as fast as 4e. I'm sure you won't fix it so every combat is a dream, but you can pep it up some, keep the focus more on the table and less on the character sheet. I can SEE it, but why am I getting 5e instead? lol. sigh.</blockquote>

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