Combat Speed Tips

[Henry]

One of my greatest time savers have been "initiative cards." It combines the "sticky notes with PC stats" idea with the "initiative pad" idea. I first got the idea from the Game Mechanics:
http://www.thegamemechanics.com/products/initiativecards.asp
You can easily use the idea in 4th edition, too, but you'd need to make them yourself, unless someone does the work at some point in the near future for 4e. You write all the relevant pc stats on 3 x 5 index cards, and then put the cards in order by who goes in the init. You don't necessarily need the initiative number after the initial roll at that point; you just move the person who went to the back of the stack. If someone delays or readies, turn the card sideways in the stack, and when they take their turn, shift them just after the person they go after (or just before in the case of a readied action). I hardly ever game without them for home games anymore, and my group, having seen me use them, has all taken after them, as well.

The second advantage is that you have all relevant PC stats in front of you in case you need to make a secret roll, against say perception, or diplomacy or such.

Failing those, that magnetic initiative board from Paizo publishing is also a really great idea, though I've not used it and can't compare the two for you.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I am playing in a campaign where we are level 14. There are a lot of spells that do 14d6 damage. These instead do 4d6+35 damage instead. It speeds things up a LOT.

I usually run initiative on a laptop with relevant stats in an excel sheet. InitTool looked like a great tool for doing this too. (see post above).

I am going to try out a new way of running initiative. If somebody doesn't know what they are doing when it comes to them, I am going to skip to the next person in line. The person who was skipped can do their action later if they come up with something.

This should help people to plan ahead what they are doing, instead of waiting to do the thinking when its their turn. If somebody has a question about how somethings looks, a specific rule, or something like that I will answer it. Nothing is as annoying as misunderstanding what a Gazebo is and attacking it, and creating a new monster.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

You should reconsider this. While it does save some time, it makes combats with multiple foes unbalanced. Basically it creates a problem because they all get to act at the same time, without any player being able to interfere, for example via healing or other things. It makes for some odd combats.

Group Initiative can be dangerous, especially if the NPCs take advantage of their group movement to the hilt.

I think there is a middle ground where the DM can get significant speed up by moving 2-3 NPCs/Monsters at a time with little downside, especially if the DM is careful about not metagaming himself.

 

[Simplicity]

One of my greatest time savers have been "initiative cards." It combines the "sticky notes with PC stats" idea with the "initiative pad" idea. I first got the idea from the Game Mechanics:
http://www.thegamemechanics.com/products/initiativecards.asp
You can easily use the idea in 4th edition, too, but you'd need to make them yourself, unless someone does the work at some point in the near future for 4e. You write all the relevant pc stats on 3 x 5 index cards, and then put the cards in order by who goes in the init. You don't necessarily need the initiative number after the initial roll at that point; you just move the person who went to the back of the stack. If someone delays or readies, turn the card sideways in the stack, and when they take their turn, shift them just after the person they go after (or just before in the case of a readied action). I hardly ever game without them for home games anymore, and my group, having seen me use them, has all taken after them, as well.

The second advantage is that you have all relevant PC stats in front of you in case you need to make a secret roll, against say perception, or diplomacy or such.

Failing those, that magnetic initiative board from Paizo publishing is also a really great idea, though I've not used it and can't compare the two for you.

Init cards are fine, but they don't help people to anticipate when they are going to go next. They REALLY help the DM. But the DM is not the problem in most cases. With the init boards, the order is in front of everyone and you can get some parallelism when people plan their turn ahead of time. Though i suppose you could keep 2 cards drawn at all times. One whose turn it is and one "on deck".

 

[Henry]

Init cards are fine, but they don't help people to anticipate when they are going to go next. They REALLY help the DM. But the DM is not the problem in most cases. With the init boards, the order is in front of everyone and you can get some parallelism when people plan their turn ahead of time. Though i suppose you could keep 2 cards drawn at all times. One whose turn it is and one "on deck".

I've never found it to be the case; when the inits are in full view (like written on a page) the people for some reason NEVER look at it, and rely on someone else anyway to tell them whose turn it is. When I use the cards, I keep them in a one-handed stack. I do tell them who's "on deck" next, and one thing I do find is that when I do this, rather than on a page, for some reason my group remembers better who is "before" and "after" them. When I'm not looking at init numbers, for some reason, it goes dramatically faster.

One thing: I do use "monster group init", and I've never found it unfair or overpowering to the players. Others' mileage may vary, but I've never had a fight, large or small, where players complained of being "unfairly swarmed."

 

[Simplicity]

There may be some truth to that. I find myself in charge of telling people who goes next even with the combat pad sometimes.

Group monster init is the only way to go though.

 

[Lindorie]

We finished another session a few hours ago. I thought I'd report in due to all the great help you're giving me. Believe me when I say that it's mental comfort to have your support. I'm not sweating combat near as much as before my first post, and made some Monster Cards that should help.

I do, however, think the problem is bigger than combat. Even with no combat today, the pace was still very slow. It may be just me dealing with inexperienced players, which I've never done before. But there was three main problems I saw today.

1) Having combat the first day caused some trouble. Today, outside of combat, the players kept specifying what they wanted to do in mini one-round-like actions. I stopped them many, many times to let them know this wasn't needed. It took a lot of prodding, but they eventually loosened up [a little]. This may be solved by the next time we meet. One of the players finally caught on and started leading the non-action. This player helped change the "we move 6 spaces" to "we move to the forest clearing we visited last night".

2) Inter-party arguing. Every NPC interaction caused them to go into high debate, trying to figure out the right approach. This is taking a lot of "herding" on my part, but i think it'll eventually work out. I do, however, feel like I'm weak or missing some DM skills to handle this.

For instance, one of the party members died in the previous combat. I introduced their new character today, setting up a situation that I thought would be conducive to a "we're heading the same way, so...". The rest of the party planned for about 10 minutes how to introduce themselves to this new stranger [not *entirely* unreasonable, as they are somewhat fugitives from the town they just left, but I made it clear the other party member was from another town, meeting them at crossroads].

The new-character's player wanted to role-play his introduction and be convinced to join the party. Another player was pushing to "just say yes and lets get on with it". Another player was trying a bluff that the rest of the party didn't want him to do [the guards are looking for YOU, stay with us for protection], and yet another kept a running dialog going with new character filled with bluffs and diplomacy. The other two characters were mostly silent, fulfilling their assigned roles as sentries and waiting for things to play out.

I'm embarrassed to say how long this took. As I said, I'm now questioning my DM skills for handling this reoccurring "everyone wants to do their own thing" scenario.

3) The strong-willed 3.5 player. He's constantly telling the others what they should do. Several times, I pushed to get everyone's input when he was railroading the situation. At the end of the day, all but one player were getting their words in. At one point, he was pressing with "I'm the leader of the group or I'm not playing". Seriously! To which two other members of the group were caving in, knowing that he really won't play unless he is. There hasn't been a real need for a leader yet, so we'll see how that turns out. Personally, I think the person who helped fix (1) would be a much better and more diplomatic leader, and may enjoy playing a warlord (anyone have a good writeup?).

Overall, it was a little better, so I'm optimistic that it'll eventually work out.

 

[malraux]

Minor question, what ages/age ranges are we talking about here?

I'd also recommend talking to the strong willed 3.5 player outside of the game and set him straight on what works in your game, regardless of what he played like before.

 

[Jack99]

Seems to me that your problem is due to your players, and not to the system that you are running.

Maybe there needs to be established some ground rules, both for the inexperienced and the experienced.

Good luck, sounds like you have your hands full.

 

[Surgoshan]

Yeah, it really sounds like we're dealing with 10 year olds here.