D&D 5E Speeding Up Combat

[Celtavian]

I'm looking for mechanical options that might speed up the time it takes to get through combats. The issue is not how long the players take on their turns. The issue is not looking up rules. The issue is not the battlefield grid we use or the miniatures and how they move. The issue is not tracking initiative. The issue is not the number of combats per game session. I have received lots of advice about these issues. As I stated previously, it's all great advice but doesn't help, as these are all things that have already been streamlined.

I think the issue is that the party (made up of an evocation wizard, a cleric of war, a gnomish warlock and a paladin of vengeance) could be falling behind in their damage dealing somehow. They don't hold back their big attacks, so I know it's not a matter of them only poking enemies with cantrips (though the warlock does use cantrips frequently, but I think that's to be expected). There are plenty of evocation spells flying about, smites going off and the cleric of war splitting his time between cleaving things with his sword and inflicting wounds upon enemies.

A recent battle had them squaring off against two shambling mounds (around 136 hit points apiece) and a cleric of Moander (who had about 70 hit points). This battle somehow took around an hour. This isn't even a big boss battle or anything (the group is attempting to fight their way into the Pit of Moander in the Ruins of Yulash in the Forgotten Realms). And it wasn't due to the fire resistance of the shambling mounds, as the evocation wizard has the ability to bypass it completely. So, I'm just confused.

The battles don't always take forever, though. I threw lower level enemies at them prior to them entering Yulash. They obliterated the opposition in the first round before the enemies even went. Combat over in less than five minutes. So, it's quite jarring to go from five to ten minute combats to things that can take over an hour due to hit point inflation.

I mean, I expect there to be some increase in time, but not that much. So, any mechanical advice on how I can keep things up to speed while still keeping the dangerous enemies deadly?

That seems really long for that fight.

Paladin of Vengeance should be using Hunter's Mark for his standard attacks at 13th level or possibly haste and his smites. If his strength is 18 or 20, he should be averaging with a longsword 12 to 13 damage a hit plus smite damage with two attacks per round.

The evoker should be doing one fire bolt cantrip minimum for an average of 21 fire damage or maybe a chill touch for 18 necrotic damage per hit. He should spike this use of spell slots.

Your warlock with hex should be firing 3 eldritch blast beams for an average of 13 to 14 per hit and up to 39 to 40 per round.

The cleric of war should be casting bless to ensure the others hit and adding a sacred flame or meleeing some for 10 to 15 points per hit.

The party's damage potential per round is:
Paladin 26.
Warlock: 30 to 40
Evoker: 20 to 30.
Cleric: 10 to 20.

You're looking at about 86 points per round without blowing off their big stuff. Against 342 hit points, that's about 4 rounds of combat. Is it taking a lot longer than 4 rounds against something like two shambling mounds and a cleric of moander? Maybe the cleric is doing some healing? Your party isn't using chill touch to eliminate healing.

There are certain things party should do to optimize for combat. If an opponent has healing or regeneration, you absolutely need chill touch to slow healing down. You can still win, but it will slow the fight down if the opponent can regenerate or heal.

The cleric bolstering the party with bless is often better than casting spiritual guardians. He should be hitting with his main weapon and bonus action in big fights. Or casting something like spiritual weapon to add damage while he is doing other stuff. A 4th level spiritual weapon does 2d8+wisdom modifier damage using a bonus action. So if he's hitting with his weapon with bless boosting everyone. He can do with a one handed weapon 2d8+str or dex and 2d8+wis for decent damage while healing and such.

Seems your group should be able carve through that many hit points in 4 or 5 rounds if using optimal tactics.

 

[ProphetSword]

The forum ate my reply to the above message, so I'll just throw down a quick reply here:

I think the weak link might be the Warlock. He mostly uses Fire Bolt, and when he hits (which is infrequent), he only does about 20 points of damage. However, I've seen him miss nearly every round in some combats, effectively giving him a damage output of 0. You've listed him as the person who should be doing the most damage, so I'll look and see if I can help correct that. That's a big clue to what might be going on.

 

[Celtavian]

The forum ate my reply to the above message, so I'll just throw down a quick reply here:

I think the weak link might be the Warlock. He mostly uses Fire Bolt, and when he hits (which is infrequent), he only does about 20 points of damage. However, I've seen him miss nearly every round in some combats, effectively giving him a damage output of 0. You've listed him as the person who should be doing the most damage, so I'll look and see if I can help correct that. That's a big clue to what might be going on.

I think you found your problem. Warlocks have the best attack cantrip in the game: eldritch blast. They have invocations that allow them to add their charisma modifier to the damage of each beam. The cantrip does force damage, so almost nothing is resistant or immune. He gets to add damage per hit from his ability and hex. He can even cast it up to 300 feet with an invocation and knock people back with another invocation. So your warlock is holding you back big time if he is using fire bolt. That's understandable for the evoker because that is his best damage attack though he should have a chill touch or something else for resistant or immune creatures. But wow, warlock using fire bolt. That's really gimping the class for a style choice.

 

[BoldItalic]

The wizard might be acting sub-optimally too. If he put his mind to it, he could take down a shambling mound on his own in about three rounds just by plugging away with simple magic missiles. It's force damage, so the mounds have no resistance or immunity, it's automatic hits and he gets to add his Int modifier to damage because of his Empowered Evocation feature. Three attacks with 4th/5th level slots stands a fair chance of taking out a mound, while the other PCs concentrate on the second mound and the enemy cleric.

(edit - added analysis)

Assuming the wizard has an Int modifier of +5, if he concentrates on a single target (so a single damage roll per attack, times the number of missiles) his damage roll will be d4+1+5 = 7..10. If he uses a 4th level slot for his first-round attack he gets 6 missiles, for a total of 42..60 damage. Likewise for his second round attack. The mound is now down to between 16 and 52 hp, depending on how lucky the wizard was with his two d4 rolls. If he's rolled low twice, he should go for a 5th level slot for his final attack whereas if he has rolled high twice, he could use a 1st level slot and be certain of a kill.

 

[Dausuul]

I think the weak link might be the Warlock. He mostly uses Fire Bolt, and when he hits (which is infrequent), he only does about 20 points of damage. However, I've seen him miss nearly every round in some combats, effectively giving him a damage output of 0. You've listed him as the person who should be doing the most damage, so I'll look and see if I can help correct that. That's a big clue to what might be going on.

For non-bladelocks who want to be effective in combat, eldritch blast and the Agonizing Blast invocation are absolutely required. If you fail to pick up either of those, you will be severely crippled. (If you ask me, they ought to be class features, or else AB should be modified to work with other attack cantrips.)

If the rest of the party is similarly un-optimized or using poor tactics, that would explain why combats take so long. However, I'm not convinced that pushing your players to rebuild their characters is a good solution. Why not just do what other people have suggested on this thread, and crank up monster damage while scaling back monster hit points?

 

[ProphetSword]

Why not just do what other people have suggested on this thread, and crank up monster damage while scaling back monster hit points?

Actually, that's exactly what I suggested in the original message. I haven't heard any other mechanical suggestions at this point.

While I think the party might not be optimally built, it really shouldn't matter. I thought 5th Edition was built on the idea that you didn't have to have specialized builds to be competitive?

 

[Celtavian]

Actually, that's exactly what I suggested in the original message. I haven't heard any other mechanical suggestions at this point.

While I think the party might not be optimally built, it really shouldn't matter. I thought 5th Edition was built on the idea that you didn't have to have specialized builds to be competitive?

You don't have to have specialized builds to win, but there are optimal builds that far outdamage suboptimal builds. Just like there are optimal spells that make things a lot easier like bless. My players are natural optimizers, they've been finding tons of optimal combos far better than picking suboptimal options. Min-maxing is still very much a part of 5E.

 

[Dausuul]

Actually, that's exactly what I suggested in the original message. I haven't heard any other mechanical suggestions at this point.

Oh, sorry - I missed that. Anyway, yeah, I think that's your best option.

While I think the party might not be optimally built, it really shouldn't matter. I thought 5th Edition was built on the idea that you didn't have to have specialized builds to be competitive?

5E does not support the kind of hyper-optimization we saw in 3E, but there is definitely room to make choices that will result in less than optimal combat performance. If you play a fighter and wield a dagger in one hand and nothing in the other, you will not be as effective as your greatsword-swinging buddy. Furthermore, if the players' choices result in sub-optimal offense but reasonably optimal defense, the result will be what you've got: Long, grindy combats. This has always been true, even in 4E.

And even optimized builds can result in grindiness. I'm starting a campaign set in a world overrun with zombies, and the party paladin has chosen to go sword-and-board with Heavy Armor Mastery and the Protection fighting style. We ran a quick test combat against a bunch of zombies to see how it played out, and it was a grindfest; the paladin moved to engage the zombies, who were too slow and dumb to go past him and engage the squishier PCs. They could barely hit him and did a mere 1 damage when they did. Very effective, an excellent build for a zombie campaign, but holy cow, was it a boring fight.

(I've come up with some plans to keep future combats from bogging down like this - part of my prep for the campaign was cooking up a bunch of nasty zombie variants - and the paladin's durability will be very useful in keeping a low-level party alive. But I'm very glad we did that trial combat so I know what I'm dealing with.)

 

[BoldItalic]

Actually, that's exactly what I suggested in the original message. I haven't heard any other mechanical suggestions at this point.

While I think the party might not be optimally built, it really shouldn't matter. I thought 5th Edition was built on the idea that you didn't have to have specialized builds to be competitive?

It doesn't matter. You don't have to be an optimised evoker to have magic missile. But you do have to play intelligently to realise when it's a good idea to use it. All role-playing games are built on the assumption that the players will act intelligently, even if their characters are dumb. And Wizards aren't supposed to be dumb

 

[NotActuallyTim]

They are winning the fights, so I'd say they're competitive at fighting monsters at least.

Also, I did suggest letting them have a magic item to increase damage. A Maul with 2d4 psychic damage or something.