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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quasqueton" data-source="post: 2392187" data-attributes="member: 3854">I currently have 4 Players. (I had 6 when I started tracking the time, so I have data for both situations.)Each Player takes about 20-30 seconds, on average, from the moment I call their character's name to the moment I call the next character's name. This includes telling me and everyone what their action is and rolling the dice to determine the outcome. I do not enforce this time with a stopwatch or anything like that. This is just how long they naturally take. [Stop what you are doing right now and look at your watch for 30 seconds.]Occasionally a Player's turn ends up taking 2 minutes -- they dropped their die and we all have to look in the carpet for it, they make some out of character comment about the action going on and everyone rolls around laughing, they ask an uncommon rule question and we get an answer, etc. And then sometimes it only takes them 6 seconds -- "I attack again. <roll> 16 and 12. I missed. I'm done."My Players pay attention to the battle as it happens, and most of the time they've already decided what they are going to do by the time I call for their action. No one is rushed or hurried in their decision or action. There is no mad dash for speed.I, as the DM, take anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes, depending on how many bad guys are in the battle. 1 troll fighter making his attacks takes 30 seconds, but the troll fighter with a wizard BBEG, a cleric henchman, a dozen goblin warriors, and half a dozen wolves takes longer.The biggest time waste in other games I've seen and played in (like the one described in my opening post) is how every PC action is discussed in committee. And it gets especially frustrating when a PC actually has no really useful action to make, but he considers *every* possible option so that he doesn't "waste" his action. My Players aren't afraid to delay and ready actions when they've nothing meaningful to do.Things like AoOs don't seem to bother my Players. They suck them up when they provoke them, and they don't take much time considering each square of movement. And actually, they rarely provoke AoO. I The 5' step eliminates half or more of the AoO situations. I'd say there is an AoO once in 4 battles.Our battles last 3-4 rounds on average. That's around 20 minutes. Ironically, the shorter battles seem to take longer per round than the longer battles. After a few rounds, everyone is into the roll of the battle and a round may only last 2 minutes total. We've had grand/epic 20-round combats last 1 hour (~3 minutes per round). That's 1 hour of action-packed excitement.If we wanted to play rush-battle we could go even faster. But we're comfortable with the pace as it is. What amazes me are those players who see D&D combat taking too long, and rather than look at how they are playing, they just blame the rules system.Quasqueton</blockquote>

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