Do your combats take a lot of Real Time to play out? Why?

[Jedi_Solo]

The things that takes the longest... 1) players who don't know their characters abilities and try to look them up when it's their turn;

Agreed. While I probobly should have expressly listed this in my post I think it ties in with 2/2.5 which I guess be summed up as "be ready when it is your turn". When it isn't your turn is the time to look something up or to count out ranges and double check magic areas. I like to think I know the rules fairly well but sometimes I want to "just make sure" and the like. Is something a 'move' or 'standard' action or some such or 'what is the range on this spell again'.

 

[el-remmen]

I'd say that's about average for my groups as well.

You (and others) might find these two threads interesting:


Average Length of Combats [Poll]
[Poll] Average Length of Combats (Redux)

 

[KB9JMQ]

Our combats normally take 20-45 minutes no matter what it is. My longest was an hour.
My players will delay if they are not ready when it is their turn. They don't really ever hem-haw about it.They don't like to waste anyone's time since we only game about 3 hours a week.

I know combats go much faster from a DM POV if the creature/bad guy's tactics are prepared ahead of time.

 

[Voadam]

Play by email. The latest battle involving 5 16th level PCs and over 40 classed opponents with several attack beasts and summoned monsters on multiple decks of a flying ship. It has lasted 16 rounds and taken literally months to go through.

 

[reanjr]

It didn't help that we had a summoner. He doesn't feel like he's doing something unless he summons every round.

I'll second that. I have a druid in my group that summons almost every battle. Between his actions and the actions of his animaol companion and summoned creature, his turn takes forever compared to straight fighters/rogues. Casters in general take some time as well.

Other points I've seen that I agree with and some things I try to do to avoid it:

- Lots of NPCs = Long combat; use powerful individuals
- Iterative attacks = Long combat; keep games at low level
- AoO = Long combat; remove movement AoOs except approaching a reach target
- Grid = Long combat; remove the grid and play more descriptively

Other things to try out (mixed success for me, see how it works for you):

Remove iteritive attacks from the game, but allow standard non-attack actions to occur in the same round as an attack action. Giving people more opportunities to do interesting things besides attack adds alot of creative fun. Problem is monsters which this doesn't fix and can be hard to guage CR (I increased CR by 1 for CRs above 6)

At high levels, many iterative attacks are pointless, as only the first couple have a decent chance to hit. Give a +2 damage bonus for every iterative attack that the player foregoes in a full attack action. Encourage them to use this. Alternatively, grant a +1 attack bonus for hard to hit creatures. These bonuses only apply to the first attack.

Every player should have a measured string for how far their character can travel. This is much better than a ruler as it is always perfectly the right length (no need to look at numbers or lines) and you can easily measure non-linear movement (around corners or in a wide arc around monsters).

 

[Voadam]

Round 1 began April 20 post 12425

Round 18 begins June 23 post 12820, the party is trying to figure out what to do with the pilot while trying to finish off the last attack beast, having defeated the rest of the crew and beasts.

So almost 400 messages and over 3 months to get through 17 rounds of combat.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

The things that takes the longest... 1) players who don't know their characters abilities and try to look them up when it's their turn;

Out of our current group, most of the players are relatively unfamiliar with 3rd edition rules (and doubly so with Arcana Evolved). I made color coded cards for every spell, and most of their equipment. Thats sped things up considerably, and we can bring fewer books to the table. Last session I think there was 5 total.

2) some rules situations that don't come up a lot (grappling is the usual suspect).

With us, its turn undead. Which reminds me to make a card for that.

Otherwise we can run a round of combat in a couple minutes. I'm encouraging players to roll their damage dice at the same time as their attack roll, and discouraging "action by comittee" that takes longer than 10 seconds or so to discuss. Slow combat seems to evolve from people over-strategizing things too much and too much out of character debate over what someone should do.

 

[EricNoah]

I too prefer less table talk during combat, whether I'm playing or DMing. Just make your choice and live with it!

 

[diaglo]

OD&D combat is short and sweet.

i've played in the newer editions where 2 rounds of combat have taken over 2 hours. one of the players in that group would go play video games until his turn came up again.

after going thru several DMs i finally found a group that got comfortable with combat. it is still on avg longer than OD&D but it is at least not excruciatingly slow

 

[thundershot]

I too prefer less table talk during combat, whether I'm playing or DMing. Just make your choice and live with it!

Quoted for truth.


That bugs the living hell out of me. Things like that stall the game and just piss people off. Several people in my group are cell phone slaves. I make them turn the damn things off or leave the game. My sister was the worst offender last week, as she was toying with it, and I realized that she was text messaging someone.... Grr....



Chris