The 30 Minute Skirmish

[Noctos]

i dont know maybe i did something wrong but most battles in my games ended in les than 30 minutes unless it was the major one i planed every few weeks. even a few of the major battle would be over in like 40 minutes with an eight person party.
but my party didn't mess around spells would be casting as they knocked down the door. they had enchantments in place to boost stats and increase actions.

 

[Nytmare]

What about a sneak attack at-will?

Yeah, anything that pumped up the normal damage knocked another HP off. Crits are the only other one that are jumping to mind.

 

[S'mon]

Re minion hit points, I'm going to be using minion hp = CON (1/2 if small, 1.5 if large, etc), which for most minions at low level is similar to hp=Fort. I'm doing it primarily for versimilitude and so I can use PC-allied minions fighting enemy minions; but it also lets me use mostly-minion battles and have them be decently challenging.

 

[eriktheguy]

Just a warning that our group tried "sit in initiative order" with a flat initiative, and no one liked it. This was with a modified 3E. Actually, the players hated it with the heat of a thousand suns. For them, it was very much crossing a line. If it takes longer to play, but they can sit where they want, then that is a price that will be paid.

For the record, were you actually running a 30 minute skirmish when you tried this, or did you try imposing this rule on the group for regular combat? Because this thread is about the 30 minute skirmishes.

Some things that I do to shorten combat in general:

• Players defenses written on a whiteboard
• Don't roll damage for monsters, just pick a number close to the avg in my head
• When many minions attack, don't roll to hit. Instead, compare the attack bonus to the defense and pick a number of hits.

 

[Tymophil]

Most answers I see about the "too long" combat scenes try to cut down on the hp side of things. I think that the problem would be elegantly solved if everyone, PCs (and maybe monsters) hit much more often and harder.

Here is something I intend to test on friday...

Celerity points

Everytime a player does his/her full turn in less than a minute, the PC gets a Celerity Point (I throw a green poker token to the player).
Those points can be spend to modify the attack d20 result.
1 point +2 / 2 points +5 / 3 points +10
It means that if you spend 1 such point, any roll of 18+ is a "natural" 20. So if you spend 3 such points, any 10+ is a critical.

The aim is to have the player speeding up their decisions to get those points. Once they have such points, they spend them to hit more often and harder.
I plan on restricting their use to only one situation to avoid adding another time-consuming option.

 

[eriktheguy]

Most answers I see about the "too long" combat scenes try to cut down on the hp side of things. I think that the problem would be elegantly solved if everyone, PCs (and maybe monsters) hit much more often and harder.

Here is something I intend to test on friday...

Celerity points

Everytime a player does his/her full turn in less than a minute, the PC gets a Celerity Point (I throw a green poker token to the player).
Those points can be spend to modify the attack d20 result.
1 point +2 / 2 points +5 / 3 points +10
It means that if you spend 1 such point, any roll of 18+ is a "natural" 20. So if you spend 3 such points, any 10+ is a critical.

The aim is to have the player speeding up their decisions to get those points. Once they have such points, they spend them to hit more often and harder.
I plan on restricting their use to only one situation to avoid adding another time-consuming option.

These are cool. They seem powerful, especially the part about critical hits, but they would definitely be fun and speed up combat. Do you require them to spend the chips before or after the attack?

Also I suggest giving them some slack occasionally. A player who uses a daily attack gets an extra minute to resolve it. A player who heals an ally, uses a minor action attacked or triggered action, or uses an attack with more than 2 targets gets an extra 30 seconds. The point is to penalize players for taking to long to decide who to target and which attack to use, not for attacking too much!