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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 5173274" data-attributes="member: 2011">Dude. It's a game. I used the word "most", not "all". Sorry, but if you don't play games to socialize and have fun, you're an outlier.And by socialization, I'm not talking about "telling stories about how the week went". I'm talking about a group of people getting together "to take part in social activities". In other words, have fun together in a group.Rude? Over Maptools? You need to take a breath there. It's a game dude. The entire purpose of playing over Maptools besides long distance gaming is to sit there and crack jokes about the situation. Otherwise, talk about grind. zzzzzzzzz <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" />No, but people tell jokes, especially about the game, all of the time. That is a type of socialization. If you sit like a rock at a game and only speak in character and heaven forbid, never talk when a friend of yours wants to talk, more power to you. Unusual, but everyone enjoys the game differently.Dude. Chill out. You need to learn how to socialize and have fun on the web pages. By exploring side tangents of topics, that's how people here can synergize their discusions and learn more.You will actually get a better feel for grind and how to avoid it if you just let people talk about it in their own way, even if it is a side topic.You need to laugh more dude and "stay focused on combat and topics" less. Yikes! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":eek:" title="Eek!    :eek:"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":eek:" />No multiple lower level foes will not work, but having people actually enjoy the game by socializing and telling jokes will help with the grind. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Say you have 7 slightly lower level NPCs on 5 PCs. That's 12 turns that have to be adjudicated instead of the 10 of 5 on 5. On round one, that means that the x minutes it take to run an entire turn will jump up to 1.2 x minutes. It will actually slow the game down, until the last few rounds during mopup.Can that still be fun? Yup. But, the actual solution is to slightly increase the level of foes and slightly decrease the number of them while having fewer total hit points with the lesser number.As an example:Seven first level foes might have 27 hit points each and AC 15 (your suggestion)Five second level foes might have 38 hit points each and AC 16 (standard).Four third level foes might have 45 hit points each and AC 17 (my suggestion).With 5 PCs in a typical encounter, the +1 AC and other defenses of 3rd level foes means that one or possibly two attacks on average will not hit in an encounter that would have hit otherwise. The -1 AC and other defenses of 1st level foes means that one or possibly two attacks on average will hit in an encounter that would not have hit otherwise7 * 27 hit points = 189 hit points with the first level foes.5 * 38 hit points = 190 hit points with the second level foes.4 * 45 hit points = 180 hit points with the third level foes.In your scenario, the NPCs get 7 attacks in per round. In mine, the NPCs only get 4 attacks in per round instead of the standard 5. So, 9 PC or NPC turns per round instead of 12, plus although the NPCs will average slightly more damage per attack, there are a lot fewer NPCs to do this.Your solution with 12 turns per round increases grind. My solution with 9 turns per round decreases grind.At second level, using fewer higher level foes is mostly a wash offensively (a significant advantage defensively). But at higher levels, it starts becoming easier to wipe through the "one fewer, one level higher" foes because although their defenses increase by 1 and their hit points increase by 10 or so, it's much easier to overload hit points (i.e. do too much hit point damage) when the PCs are throwing out 20+ points (and eventually 30+, 40+, and even more) per successful hit.The solution for when you want to run a lot of foes is to have 3 or 4 slightly higher level standard foes, but add a bunch of minions to make it seem more overwhelming. The minions will only last the first 2 or 3 rounds for the most part and it's then goes back to a situation where the PCs more or less outnumber the foes. The increased action economy helps with the grind.Adding fewer lower level foes like you suggest can backfire. If the DM's dice get hot and the PC's dice get cold, the action economy will be in favor of the NPCs. Sure, the foes won't be doing as much damage per successful hit, but they might be putting more conditions like slow or daze or whatever on the PCs. This can even result in a death spiral or a TPK if one or two PCs fall to the overwhelming numbers and the rest do not have enough actions per round to overturn that.</blockquote>

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