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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 9303367" data-attributes="member: 53980">The first thing, IMO, is to figure out where your bottleneck is. Are the players deliberating a long time on their turns? Is the DM spending a long time considering their tactics on the monsters' turns? Once you know what the table is spending lots of time on, you can takes steps to address it.I'm not sure if it helps with speed of play, but I use an alternating initiative system. Player > monster > player > monster. I think it helps keep the players more attentive, which probably helps with speed.What does save time pre-combat is that I have the players give me a default initiative order. They roll initiative and I roll for the monsters and whoever has the highest roll, their side acts first. Saves me so much time over trying to arrange individual initiatives.I don't usually have combats run over 2 hours, even at high levels. Oftentimes, significantly less.The last session I ran, the big combat went around 60-90 minutes. There was also another, easier, combat that was under an hour.IIRC, the party was 16th level. Moon Druid, Soulknife Rogue, Aberrant Mind Sorlock, Fey Ranger, Battle fist Artificer, as well as 4 NPCs who are mostly a bit weaker than the party - 2 fighters, a stone giant (reskinned), and an adult red dragon.The big fight involved a Kingfissure Worm (Flee Mortals) and 3 Purple Worms. It was supposed to begin inside a combination darkness/anti-magic field, but thanks to good scouting by the party it took place on the outer edge of the field instead. Several characters (including the dragon) were swallowed early in the fight. The players found it to be a challenging fight.I did end the fight a little early. The last worm was at 60 HP, the outcome was a foregone conclusion, and they had no reason they wouldn't be able to take a long rest, so I called it. I doubt that would have added more than a few minutes to the fight though, at most.I also ran high level games for a much smaller party, and I found that to be faster than the big party I'm running for now.</blockquote>

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