Random thought about 4E
I was thinking about our D&D 4E game last night, and something occurred to me. I've been frustrated with how long it takes to resolve combat, especially when you're talking about the 3 or 4 minor encounters in a row that no one's really that invested in between major, interesting set pieces. I think those encounters need to be there to help keep the pacing - if every encounter was hugely important and dramatic, it would get a little old. On the other hand, it means that it takes something like 8-10 hours of play per level, most of which is spent playing out the details of encounters no one's really paying much attention to.
This might be mentioned somewhere in the core books, but why not set up a skill challenge that's based around combat skills, perception, dungeoneering, etc. and which plays out several minor encounters in the scope of a single set of rolls? Seems like this would require some thinking to make sure that people feel like they're getting some benefit out of their powers, and unless you also changed the XP mechanic for this, it wouldn't really get through a level's worth of XP any faster. However, it would lend itself to telling more story in a session, while retaining the drama of having the PCs hack their way through a small army of grunts before they get to the big bad.
I'm thinking you'd probably play out 2-3 minor encounters and the associated exploration in the course of one fairly complex skill challenge, and then give some time for resting and dealing with things outside the scope of that system. Burning through healing surges as a consequence of failures is a natural fit here, too.
So has anyone else tried something like this? Is this mentioned in the core books, and I failed to notice?
This might be mentioned somewhere in the core books, but why not set up a skill challenge that's based around combat skills, perception, dungeoneering, etc. and which plays out several minor encounters in the scope of a single set of rolls? Seems like this would require some thinking to make sure that people feel like they're getting some benefit out of their powers, and unless you also changed the XP mechanic for this, it wouldn't really get through a level's worth of XP any faster. However, it would lend itself to telling more story in a session, while retaining the drama of having the PCs hack their way through a small army of grunts before they get to the big bad.
I'm thinking you'd probably play out 2-3 minor encounters and the associated exploration in the course of one fairly complex skill challenge, and then give some time for resting and dealing with things outside the scope of that system. Burning through healing surges as a consequence of failures is a natural fit here, too.
So has anyone else tried something like this? Is this mentioned in the core books, and I failed to notice?