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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Levitator" data-source="post: 3287484" data-attributes="member: 40099">I found a way to both increase combat speed and the feel of chaos by doing 2 things.  The first of which may shock some gamers; we play diceless.  I use DM Genie to run my games and it has an autoroll feature.  I think it's worth mentioning that I've been playing since 1981, and 2 of my players have been gaming longer than me.  I mention this because I think we are what some onliners consider grognards in a sense.  Our group just decided that the method used to arrive at a number was less important than the decisions made based on the result.  For us, it doesn't matter whether a piece of plastic or a computer determines the number, and it increases combat speed immensely.  Which led us to our second rule for increasing the speed and chaotic feel of combat.  We use realtime rounds to declare actions.  You have 6 seconds to begin to declare your action.  If you can't decide within that time, you are considered to be dalaying action and you must wait until after the next person to jump back into the round.  Since we have a group of pretty experienced players, this only happens about once or twice a session.  I know this style of gaming isn't for everyone, but my group won't play any other way. The added bonus of using DM Genie is that we use several variants which it handles instantaneously ( opposed defense roll, defense bonus, armor as DR, and combat facing, to name a few). It allows me as a DM to focus on story and description, not number crunching.  An average combat of 4 players against 4 creatures is usually resolved in about 5 minutes per round (I also use Maptools, a VT, so it takes me a few seconds for each player's actions to move tokens around).I know that hardcore powergamers will hate this style of play because they can't spend several minutes playing out every single option in their mind and calculate he best statistical action to maximize their chance of success.  That's kind of the point.  In the heat of battle, even the most seasoned vetrans can make tactical errors or miss an opportunity to end combat more quickly.  It' s always a fun part of the game after a battle when players smack themselves on the head as they suddenly remember something they could have done.  It seems to encourage players to know their characters better, and it definitely encourages team tactics and pre fight planning by the group.I know this is a little off topic from the original topic of adding a declaring segment for combat, but since the conversation drifted towards keeping combat runing quickly and smoothly while maintaining a sense of chaos and grittines.  I believe in our method of gameplay and I believe it's a great way to accomplish both goals, speed and creating the grittiness and action of combat.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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