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<blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 2913492" data-attributes="member: 1165">I think every group at least starts with combat taking &quot;too long&quot;.For DnD, combat took a really long time. It didn't help that we had a summoner. He doesn't feel like he's doing something unless he summons every round. Elementals don't die quickly, either, so his action took a lot of time. A lot of the proposed solutions (eg roll the d20 and damage dice at the same time, or roll all your iteratives with multi-colored dice, etc) did not work for our group.The time in combat seemed dependent mainly on level, number of NPCs and mapping. The group was large, and it's generally a better idea to use lots of NPCs rather than a few powerful NPCs (and here, NPCs means monsters, not just classed humanoids). Unfortunately, this just slows things down.And, of course, counting out AoEs, distances, etc, took time. Players don't want to die because their buddy accidentally dropped a Fireball on them, so I'm not surprised at this.IME, for my Modern campaign, the way I was mapping combat really slowed it down. I used graph paper. This meant the players couldn't really see what was going on until their turn. Each time someone's turn came up, they would have to figure out what they were going to do, where their buddies were, etc, and then count out squares or what not.Now I use a modified battlemat (half inch squares). We use a ruler (1 inch = 10 ft), so figuring out diagonals doesn't take long. We need to get a meter stick (with inch measurements) for high speed characters who want to run sometime. The game goes much faster now.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="(Psi)SeveredHead, post: 2913492, member: 1165"] I think every group at least starts with combat taking "too long". For DnD, combat took a really long time. It didn't help that we had a summoner. He doesn't feel like he's doing something unless he summons every round. Elementals don't die quickly, either, so his action took a [i]lot[/i] of time. A lot of the proposed solutions (eg roll the d20 and damage dice at the same time, or roll all your iteratives with multi-colored dice, etc) did not work for our group. The time in combat seemed dependent mainly on level, number of NPCs and mapping. The group was large, and it's generally a better idea to use lots of NPCs rather than a few powerful NPCs (and here, NPCs means monsters, not just classed humanoids). Unfortunately, this just slows things down. And, of course, counting out AoEs, distances, etc, took time. Players don't want to die because their buddy accidentally dropped a Fireball on them, so I'm not surprised at this. IME, for my Modern campaign, the way I was mapping combat really slowed it down. I used graph paper. This meant the players couldn't really see what was going on until their turn. Each time someone's turn came up, they would have to figure out what they were going to do, where their buddies were, etc, and then count out squares or what not. Now I use a modified battlemat (half inch squares). We use a ruler (1 inch = 10 ft), so figuring out diagonals doesn't take long. We need to get a meter stick (with inch measurements) for high speed characters who want to run sometime. The game goes much faster now. [/QUOTE]

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