Would this solve the "grind" issue?

[CovertOps]

I have had some really slow combats at my table. And just to be clear I mean a L+3 encounter taking 4-5 hours. I have taken steps to reduce this at my table, but I think my biggest problem is how my players optimize their PCs and the sheer quantity of time some of my players take to take their turn.

Let me start with my table composition - noting that not every player shows up each week, but I'll put an * by those that show most often.

Fighter*
Fighter*
Warlord*
Bard*
Sorcerer*
Ranger (bow)*
Paladin
Assassin
Wizard

Among my 6 common players I have:
2 Defenders
2 Leaders
2 Strikers
Among the rest I have:
1 Defender
1 Striker
1 Controller

I have a player at my table who was bound and determined to get a really high AC and he did....at the cost of all the extra damage he could have been doing each round and the bonuses to hit he could have had. He started with an Avenger and spent several feats on raising his AC as high as he could get it. He did less damage than other strikers and didn't hit as often in exchange for higher defenses. When they nerfed AoF so that you couldn't wear leather armor anymore he switched to a fighter where his AC and damage didn't change appreciably.

Just writing this response makes me realize that part of our "grind" issue is party composition. With 6 players at my table I only have 2 strikers, but I feel like we need 4. I've multiplied all monster HPs at my table by 7/10 (30% reduction) and their damage by 10/7 (about a 42% increase). This has worked for my table acceptably, but combats are still longer than I'd like.

I still think the biggest drag on combat time is players who take forever (so it seems) to take their turn. I could have 5 or 10 monsters and even though this would double my dice rolling time going from 1 minute to 2 minutes doing my turn (as DM) just doesn't take that long. My players socialize substantially and this drags things out quite a bit.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'd say you're probably right about the party composition, especially if you have some players that have gone turtle. Having 2 leaders can also shift things a lot, in either direction depending on the type of leader. A party with a healing optimized cleric in it will almost inevitably extend combats. OTOH a party with a taclord in it will probably experience a quickened pace. Leaders are the most tactically complex characters to run too, so with 2 of them that probably lengthens the average player turn a bit.

I'd say ideally you'd want more like say a fighter, a paladin, a taclord, and 3 strikers. A party with that composition should have adequate healing and a good amount of damage output. Your 'classic' 5 character party seems to be built around having 2 strikers and MOST players seem to build near striker level damage output fighters too. The main party I DM for is like that, the fighter actually dishes out as much damage as the rogue or the starlock (but they aren't the ultimate damage output strikers either). Even the STR cleric can mix it up pretty well.

@KD, I don't know. I don't find it that much harder for the party to focus fire with multiple targets (at least within reason). There will be a good bit more opportunities for effective use of AoEs too. I don't disagree that at low levels larger numbers of weaker monsters may be more deadly, but for equal XP budgets I think they're within the same ballpark. It also seems like as you go up to higher levels a level - 1 monster for example becomes less and less of a threat. I'm finding that at low paragon tier the weaker monsters often get crisped just by spillover fire or players just whack them with multi-target attacks. It does depend a lot more though on what the monsters are and how they synergize with each other too at higher levels. A weak monster CAN be quite deadly in the right situation, but a higher level monster can also be quite ineffective.

 

[Hussar]

I still think the biggest drag on combat time is players who take forever (so it seems) to take their turn. I could have 5 or 10 monsters and even though this would double my dice rolling time going from 1 minute to 2 minutes doing my turn (as DM) just doesn't take that long. My players socialize substantially and this drags things out quite a bit.

This, THIS right here is the bane of my existence. It drives me right around the twist. Did so in 3e and will likely do so forever.

My advice, or at least how I broke my group of this, during your next session, keep track of the time each player takes each round. Don't tell them what you're doing, just note it. Do it again in the next session.

In the third session, show the players the results. Tally it up. Show in black and white that Bob is taking three times as long as everyone else. I actually had one player who was taking more time than the rest of the group, DM included, COMBINED. Once I could present this in black and white, there was a 180 turnaround. People realized that the reason combat was slow as molasses was THEIR fault.

Don't be a dick about it, but, just present the facts. People probably don't realize how much they're dragging the game until you can show it to them. Once they realize, most people will make the effort to get their butts in gear.