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

[Raven Crowking]

IMC, people get around 30 seconds to make and implement a combat decision. If they can't they miss their turn. Spellcasters have some leeway for looking up the precise effects of spells, but they have to be able to decide which spell to cast in the time given.

I give spellcasters no special leeway. Want to play a caster? Know your spells!

 

[Dagger75]

Combats go pretty fast for me, well for 2 out the 3 players.

Rogue, Fighter/Wizard/Runecaster, and warlock.

The rogue's actions are usally, Fient or attack, or try to flank.

The Runecaster is pretty good, knows his spells and is usally ready on his turn.

The Warlock takes forever. I mean, either you shoot or you don't.

The players get mad at the amount of time it takes and generally give a minute for you to act.

More leeway is given at high leve/epic level (15+) due to the complexity.

I am dreading the tripping, grappling monk the Player who has the warlock has cooked up my Spelljammer game.

 

[Odhanan]

I give spellcasters no special leeway. Want to play a caster? Know your spells!

I agree utterly. It's frustrating to have people playing spellcasters and not knowing how Magic Missile, Melf's Acid Arrow or Fireball work. I can understand about details like area of effect for obscure spells, but commonly used spells? Come on!

 

[Hussar]

Like Quas, I have also timed my guys. Mostly because I instituted a shot clock to get them motivated. I play over OpenRPG, so, it's just not possible for me to reach out and smack the offending player upside the head and get them to pay attention.

My bunch now averages around 30-60 seconds per turn. Since I have all my die rolls in nodes which requires two clicks to send to the chat, even if I have multiple baddies, my turns rarely go much longer than that.

My only real problem is one player refuses to node his attacks and frequently gets skipped over. Drives me bonkers.

Shot clock is definitely the way to go.

BTW, RC, about the speed of leveling. My bunch level every four to five sessions (1/week) which is exactly the same speed we leveled in 1e and 2e. So, obviously YMMV but blanket statements of edition differences might not be so cut and dried.

 

[Raven Crowking]

BTW, RC, about the speed of leveling. My bunch level every four to five sessions (1/week) which is exactly the same speed we leveled in 1e and 2e. So, obviously YMMV but blanket statements of edition differences might not be so cut and dried.

Maybe not, but it was a stated goal of the designers, so it can't be so far off.

 

[diaglo]

Maybe not, but it was a stated goal of the designers, so it can't be so far off.

you mean the one year = 20 levels at 13.1 encounters per level.

read my sig.

 

[rvalle]

Ok... I timed most of our last game.

5 players playing via Fantasy Grounds and using voice software.

Battle: 5 7th level pc's and 1 6th level npc vs 13 Baghest, 2 Greater Bahgest and 1 7th level wizard (with no mass damage spells). Per an encouter calcuator its an encouner level 12.

Battle lasted 8 rounds. I lost track of time around the 7th round...

Round 1: 18 min or .8 min per combatant (6 of the Baghest start invisible)
Round 2: 20 min or .9 min per combatant
Round 3: 30 min or 1.3 min per combatant
Round 4: 37 min or 1.6 min per combatant
Round 5: 24 min or 1.09 min per combatant
Round 6: Not sure
Round 7: 8 min

Total 3 hours 15 min or an average of 24 min per round.

The above assumes there was no decrease in the number of combatants which isn't true. Numerous baghest died as well as 1 pc and the parties npc.

rv

 

[Hussar]

Rvalle, what happened in rounds 3 and 4? You spike in the middle there really hard. Do you recall?

((Must time next week's session. Lots of combat.)

 

[rvalle]

Rvalle, what happened in rounds 3 and 4? You spike in the middle there really hard. Do you recall?

((Must time next week's session. Lots of combat.)

The invisible creatures started to engage. The number of people actively swinging at each other was probably at its max then.

We also had some minor tech issues (another player jumped in which meant we had to stop using skype and start using Team Speak so delays while we worked that out).

rv

 

[Pickaxe]

My combats don't take long. I use an initiative card system and the guys are very into the habit of taking care of that quickly and putting their cards in order for me while I get NPC/monster initiative cards ready. Then it's boom, boom, boom. i also pre-stat/pre-calculate enemy spellcaster spells using a calculating spreadsheet I can copy and paste into my notes.

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

The cards are a good idea. I play in an Age of Worms campaign where we use a two-card system, which I think was suggested by Monte Cook, or maybe comes from UA. I play all four characters. The DM and I each have a set of cards, so we can both keep track of initiative order. Furthermore, my PC cards have a list of typical things the character might do, with modifiers. When you're playing multiple characters, it's easy to forget that character #3 has a wand of shatter, etc. I imagine that the same system is useful for inexperienced players, at least having cards listing their main options for their turn.

--Axe