Clogged Combats

[Wyrmcrest]

Here's my advice:

1) Have your group play Shadowrun 3rd Edition for several sessions.
2) Then start playing D&D again.

Suddenly D&D combat will seem lightning quick.

 

[Xath]

Ick. I don't like it [Xath's system], because it completely futzes with the 3E initiative system, house-ruling it back to 2nd Ed. This is a step backwards. I can't honestly think of anything I like about it (especially the spell targetting rules).

The only way you are going to get really useful advice in this thread is if you can more closely identify what you think is slowing combat down. Is it players talking to each other? Is people looking up rules?

I don't usually play with these rules. They're just the fastest that I have played with. I just remember times where one person's turn would take 30 minutes because they had so many attacks. It makes combat really slow, and detracts from other peoples' interest.

One of my favorite "fast" combat systems is in unisystem. The NPC's and Monsters have set stats, so there's minimal rolling involving them. That leaves all of the combat time to be focused on the players. The only way I could think to equate this to D&D would be to just roll out a sheet's worth of D20s and just go down your list during combat.

 

[Child of Hypnos]

Drop the critical hit rules.

surely this would slow it down more? - it means that the opponents take longer to kill than ever.

in answer to Paltryn's Q. not usually - my players arent big on rules really, and the only conversation is usually when someone rolls a Crit.threat - along the lines of 'come on be a Hit!'

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

This looks pretty good, if it delivers what it promises. I hate the fact that D&D is now "wargaming lite", and this will do if I can convince my GM to try it. The problem is that d20 is now so complex, with so many feats and stats to keep track of, that it's not just combat that slows down.

I received a complimentary copy of this last night. On first pass it seems...confusing. I need to take more time to go through it carefully and really understand how this type of combat works, but I can say with some confidence that it is so far from standard combat that it is not easy to learn. Don't show up with this on Saturday, tell your players you are going to use this system for combat during the session, and expect it to really speed things up. I think it will take some time to master.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

In answer to Paltryn's Q. not usually - my players arent big on rules really, and the only conversation is usually when someone rolls a Crit.threat - along the lines of 'come on be a Hit!'

So, what is slowing things down? Do your players just take a long time to announce their actions?

If so, the quick and easy fix is "You've got 10 seconds to tell me what you're doing. Otherwise, you delay, and I'll come back to you."

 

[Elocin]

What my group does to help speed things up is at the beginning of combat the DM will tell the "Players" the AC's of the bad guys. Then everyone starts figuring out what they are going to do and we continue to play through combat in initiative order (rolling of course). some of my group are REALLY good at this and when I call their name they "act/play/tell" out what their character will be doing.

Example: ok my fighter moves to this spot and hits once doing x amount of damage.

So all the dice rolling gets done while another character is telling me what he is doing. Obviously for the first round things are slow as combat just started but then it speeds up as people have the time to figure out what they are doing and roll all the dice. I tell them the AC in advance so if they do roll a cirt they know ahead of time and can roll all the extra damage.

This works really well as long as the players do not meta-game (much) and realize that their characters do now know this information.

 

[Child of Hypnos]

that's partly it - combined with the fact that their low level and don't do a lot of damage.

 

[Rykion]

Here's my advice:

1) Have your group play Shadowrun 3rd Edition for several sessions.
2) Then start playing D&D again.

Suddenly D&D combat will seem lightning quick.

Shadowrun 3rd Edition runs fast and smooth. It was 1st Edition SR that took hours to play through a fight between 3 or 4 people on both sides. SR also usually has far less combat encounters than most D&D games.

I recommend that you have players write their most common combat actions on index cards with the rules for performing them. That should help speed up their decisions and prevent having to look up rules frequently.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Here are my suggestions:

From the DM's perspective:

• Keep things moving: I call out the next person in line to take an action ("Barick is up, Marcus will be next!"). That way they know to start finalizing their actions.
• Watch the dice as they roll. Most of the time I have a very good idea of what the PC's attack bonuses are, and when I see the dice stop on "12" I can just say "you hit" and move on to damage. That way they're not digging through their stuff to figure out exactly what their total is when its not vital.
• I keep initiative on a simple Excel Spreadsheet. Anytime it changes, I change a number hit a button, and a macro resorts the order. It's very fast. When I don;t have my laptop I use index cards - color coded for bad guys and good guys.

From the Player's perspective:

• Roll your damage dice along with your to hit dice. Color-code your dice so that you know the red 20, red eight sider and red six sider apply to your flaming longsword and different colors correspond to either iterative attacks or off-hand weapons.
• Keep book open to the spell you're going to use, or have the FULL text of the spell available. As DM, I'm likely to ask you what the range is, or the duration. You should be able to answer quickly, not after 30 seconds of digging.

I'm sure there are others things you can do, but these are my tricks.

 

[LostSoul]

In my experience, long combats are caused when the thousands upon thousands of combat rules are brought into play.

Thousands of rules, you say? Consider that each spell and feat is a different rule that somehow affects the d20 + mods vs. DC standard of d20.

The best way to speed up combat is to make sure each player knows all the rules that apply to his or her character - spell durations, saving throw or not, SR or not, area of effect, mechanics of a feat, etc.

When the DM has many NPC combatants, he could consider letting the players roll for some of them, while he rolls for others. The players can easily figure out what happens with simple attacks, so why not let them take some of the load off, instead of having them sit there and watch the DM while he rolls over and over again?