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Message: <blockquote data-quote="War Golem" data-source="post: 284700" data-attributes="member: 142">Put me firmly in Uller's camp. This almost exactly describes my attitude towards running combats. Not that it was ever something I sat down and made a conscious decision about, but just the way my style has evolved over the years.I recognize that part of this is because I tend not to bother with a lot of smaller, soften-them-up combats and usually just plan in one or two big battles per session, with the odd environmental factors thrown in as much as possible. With the bigger battles, there are nearly always a mix of monster types, all with their own special abilities (this is especially magnified at higher levels) to keep track of. Also, I frequently have NPCs involved, and they always take a fair amount of mental effort to play intelligently in combat.Trying to keep all of that straight (which I can usually do pretty well) AND trying to keep combat moving (which does not seem to happen) leaves me little mental energy for cinematically describing every sword blow and claw attack. I try to do it when I remember, but I often forget, and honestly, I'm never too sure how much my players really care anyway. They don't ever describe what they're doing much; they seem pretty satisfied with:PC: "I cast fireball... here.. for 38pts of damage!"DM: "Ok, two creatures make their saves and are smoking, but still up. These three all failed and are toast." (removes figures from battlemat)PC: "Great. Somebody hurry up and wipe out those other two."Comment: I remember back in the early days of 3e when my group was playtesting the Realms, and there was so much chatter on the net about how much faster combat was in 3e, it was practically revolutionary. Well, combat was slow for us then, but we figured, ok, we're still learning the rules. Well, it's a couple years later, I know the rules pretty well by now, and combat is NOT faster. Some of our more complicated combats take hours of real time to resolve a mere few rounds.Question: Just wondering... when using a battlemat and figures or tokens, do you remove the figure from the board when it dies (thus effectively clearing that space on the board for other stuff) or do you leave the figure to represent the dead body for the duration of the combat? We've always taken them off the board, mostly for convenience sake, and I guess also because there is some gratification in seeing the tokens representing your enemies diminish as you conquer them (kind of like playing Chess). But I suppose leaving them on the board would be more realistic.Cheers,-War Golem</blockquote>

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