Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
While these are good ideas, my worries aren't really about at-the-table logistics, but adventure design in general. My party of mostly-spellcaster 19th level PC's has reached the point where they can pretty much do anything they want at any time, so it takes increasingly long to design adventures that can't be trivially short-circuited in any number of ways.I can recommend a couple of things real quick (but knowing Sagiro, he's on to these tricks already):
PREP WORK/DM SIDE
1) Skill points for NPCs don't matter.
To be more precise, the skill ranges for NPCs exist to provide a challenge for the PCs-- so just put them where they need to be to serve that function. For most monsters, the DCs of all their natural abilities (eg, poison DC) are set at 10 + 1/2 HD + ability mod. I recommend the same for monster/NPC skills.
2) Use the new statblock format. I get a lot of mileage from this site:
http://mikael.borjesson.net/dnd/monster-list.asp
Pick a monster-- any monster-- and print a sample page. You should get the new format on the top half of the page, leaving you a whole half a sheet for notes. My game prep consists of about 5 minutes of printing out those statblocks (one for every monster that might possibly make an appearance), and maybe 10 minutes of making notes for anything that deviates from the raw statblock.
(Most of my game prep is spent making maps for my projector, which is a much more fun way to spend my prep time.)
AT THE TABLE/PLAYER SIDE
3) Ignore attacks of opportunity caused by moving into melee. I want my players in combat. My players want to be in combat. I remove obstacles that cause them to hem and haw about how to move to get into combat. Basically, if you start your turn in a non-threatened square, you can do anything you want that turn without provoking an Attack of Opportunity, including moving into/through threatened squares.
4) Use my "fix" for iterative attacks.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-rules-discussion/248004-iterative-attacks.html
That fix allows for batch rolling all attacks at once.
If Sagiro has anything else specifically that I can help with, let me know.
I know it can be done, since I watched Piratecat do it successfully for several years (heck, mine was the PC with miracle), but it's not really my strength as a DM. I don't want my players to start feeling that I'm placing arbitrary restrictions on their ability to flex their near-epic-level muscles, but I also need to keep them challenged.
I feel like the sweet spot is shrinking with every level.