8 minutes/turn - is that very slow? slow? average?

[Hussar]

Explosive dice? Fail to make a roll in 90 seconds and kapow!? lol Keep it light, its entertainment.

Oh, man, would I buy several sets of those in a second. Anything to stop people from dice fapping. If you shake it more than twice, you're just playing with yourself.

And that wingnut who figures that he's at the craps table and rolls that nearly spherical D20 like he's just bet the load on a hard eight. Dice and minis go flying everywhere! We actually had to get a rolling box for this guy so that he could roll without every third try resulting in a five minute search under the couch and desk for the missing dice.

But, if you think that Elementalist is bad, the one that takes the biscuit for me is the 3e 4th level dwarf fighter with an axe taking over ten minutes to take his turn. Repeatedly. Unfreakingbelievable. It was an online game, and if someone would invent a way to stab someone in the eye over the internet, I'd give him a kidney.

 

[wedgeski]

Apologies, I haven't read the entire thread, but one interesting thing I've found in my 4E games is that no matter how over-complicated and slow the game becomes, my players are almost unanimously resistant to any change.

This came as quite a shock, to be honest. The first time I drafted up a set of six or seven ideas for speeding up combat, all but one of my players told me they were quite happy with the pace of the game and that I was trying to fix a problem that didn't exist, and the outlier showed some enthusiasm for the tiniest and least impactful of the changes, but nothing else.

It reinforced to me how different the game can feel from the other side of the screen. The players are clearly enjoying flexing their characters and setting up multi-round strategies, while I'm stressing that the entire session is being consumed by one tactical encounter I dreamed up based on a throw-away comment at the end of the last game.

Interesting, odd.

 

[Quickleaf]

Apologies, I haven't read the entire thread, but one interesting thing I've found in my 4E games is that no matter how over-complicated and slow the game becomes, my players are almost unanimously resistant to any change.

This came as quite a shock, to be honest. The first time I drafted up a set of six or seven ideas for speeding up combat, all but one of my players told me they were quite happy with the pace of the game and that I was trying to fix a problem that didn't exist, and the outlier showed some enthusiasm for the tiniest and least impactful of the changes, but nothing else.

It reinforced to me how different the game can feel from the other side of the screen. The players are clearly enjoying flexing their characters and setting up multi-round strategies, while I'm stressing that the entire session is being consumed by one tactical encounter I dreamed up based on a throw-away comment at the end of the last game.

Interesting, odd.

Yeah, it depends on the group. Some people can stay engaged thru 8 minute turns per player, but many cannot. While my group, like yours, loves tactical combat, they also want to feel a sense of accomplishing something besides 1 fight per night. When folks are leaving the table and getting distracted there's a problem.

Funnily, the Elementalist player has wryly commented a few times "And that three hour battle really only took 18 seconds..."

I think getting down to 1 hour fights is a reasonable goal, based on others' feedback.

 

[skotothalamos]

I think getting down to 1 hour fights is a reasonable goal, based on others' feedback.

A lot of that will come with player commitment to it. There was a rogue in my recent group who was a very casual gamer. Unfortunately, her boyfriend had "helped" build her character with a bunch of conditional combos and cool but tricky effects. After being frustrated by all the things she had to sort out, she asked me to help her re-train into a more direct build where one feat caused combat advantage and everything else was triggered from combat advantage. Suddenly all of her turns were 30 seconds of, "That guy's isolated; move up and Sly Flourish him. Oh, I rolled a 3 and hit for 50," and she seemed to be having a lot more fun.

Combats went faster, but it was because she wanted it.

 

[silverblade56]

You have a large party, parents with a newborn, and an English as a second language speaker gaming with you. You will not have quick fights with this setup. The fact that you are using possibly the slowest running (as far as combat is concerned) version of D&D in existance isn't helping things. You should be gratefule, you get anything done at all gamingwise.

 

[Morrus]

I haven't read the thread, but I'm used to 45 minutes per turn (for the whole table). If you have it down to 8 minutes, I'm jealous!

 

[Warbringer]

[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] ... 8 min per player

Interesting thread necro

 

[Morrus]

[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] ... 8 min per player

Interesting thread necro

Hah! I didn't notice it was necro'd. 8 mins per player x average 5 players is 40 mins - so about what I'm used to.

 

[Hussar]

Yeesh, 45 minutes per turn? Yikes.

We play 4e and generally have 45 minutes per FIGHT. Might get over an hour for a big one, but, by and large, it's about ten minutes per round. And we have 7 players.

What the heck is taking your players so long?

 

[MerricB]

What the heck is taking your players so long?

I wish I was a better artist, because I'm thinking of several situations that could explain it, but would be best explained through a series of comic panels.

The phrases "feather dusters" and "method acting" may be attacked to those situations.

Cheers!