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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Creamsteak" data-source="post: 1369640" data-attributes="member: 552">I've had a lot of experience with large groups as well. Averaging 6, but I've ran sessions for groups of 11 for more than 6 months. When people say it slows down combat, it does this quite well, but I've got some strategies now that reduce these problems.Some Ideas: Use Initiative Cards, <a href="http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=1980&" target="_blank">Spell Cards</a>, Feat Cards (gonna have to create these yourself), special attack cards (trip, disarm, bull rush, sunder, charge), monster cards, pre-roll initiative, and use miniatures. These all help for their individual purposes, the goal here is to put all the information a player would need to consider for their combat round directly in front of them. Initiative cards are used so that you know exactly where combat is at, and can go through the deck in order without fail.Spell cards of all prepared (or known for spontaneous casters) spells keep the mages from needing time with their players handbook. If you issue one card for each instance of the spell known, the player can "hand the card over to the DM" in a HeroQuest/Magic the Addiction manner. This makes your player of a spellcaster that isn't a complete and total master of his spell-list into a much faster element.Feat Cards, Special Attack Type Cards, and possibly Skill Cards do the same thing as spell cards, but for monks, fighters, and rogues. This way, you'll never need to look up grapple, bull rush, or sunder. Even if you know these rules, this lets the player look at his "hand" and quickly assertain if he should use these methods, rather than sitting there trying to think of which one is appropriate or if he should perform a regular attack. Skill Cards aren't all that useful, but maybe listing the by the book DCs would help players make judgement calls to guess how difficult a skill is going to be.Monster Cards and Pre-Rolling Initiative are just methods to speed up the DMs actions as much as possible. Roll all your dice together, and designate which dice represents which attack and which damage (I have 4 sets just for this). Monster Cards aren't necessary if your book-keeping is good, but since mine are the same size as my initiative cards, I use them in place and they include special attacks/qualities descriptions.Miniatures, I do recall you have. The more players you have, the more you need to have precision placement of everything. You don't need this advice, but it's still worth pointing out.</blockquote>

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