NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ringtail" data-source="post: 8148031" data-attributes="member: 7015570">1. Is 5e Combat Slow? It certainly can be, but I really think it depends on the people at the table. I have two groups that couldn't be further apart. One, full of optimizers and rules-lawyers can run through several turns quickly and multiple combats in a session. We all plan our actions during other players turns, execute them quickly and move on. My other group has one player who never plans ahead of his turn or often changes his mind on his turn, wondering out loud and comparing pros and cons of certain spells in a running commentary until he decides. Believe me we've tried, but I think that's just the way he thinks through problems. He's a very technical guy working on his master's in computer science and I've seen the way he writes code and its exactly the same. I don't really have any tricks to speed up combat. We like 5e the way it is and don't really want to mess with the rules. The only things I could say are plan your actions ahead of time and pick out all your dice ahead of time. I would even suggest rolling attack and damage at the same time but some DM's don't seem to like this. While I find the experience less satisfying, moving to a Virtual Tabletop for the pandemic has helped speed a lot. We can all see the map easier and manipulate our tokens faster, making it easy for us to make tactical decisions. Several of us also have automated sheets and macros, which roll attack, damage (and in my case sneak attack) all at once and automatically calculate extra crit damage. However, several players still prefer rolling physical dice so the speed advantage is still negated somewhat. 3. Was it always slow? Can't say for certain as 4e was my first but I've dabbled in B/X and watched Streams of PF1, PF2, B/X, 4E and 5E. I think some editions, 3e/PF and 4e, took longer because you had a lot of choice on your turn and a lot of fiddly rules. 5e I think is quicker as there is less going on, but I think combat takes more rounds in general because of higher hitpoints. I still think it comes down to the group though. I've listened to the Glass Cannon Podcast play Pathfinder 1e and they move through those combats pretty quick because each player knows their stuff. I also watched Adam Koebel run a B/X game where combat seemed to take forever, somehow. I am a fan of OSR (So 0e, B/X and sometime 1e) and a lot of people talk about how quick those combats are as being a aspect of the game they liked. With such simple rules combined with a good familiarity I think it would be quicker.</blockquote>

Verification