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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DrSpunj" data-source="post: 4664784" data-attributes="member: 994">Most in my group I wouldn't consider optimized either, and Lady Luck has certainly blessed me (as the DM) on occasion and/or crapped on various players at times. All of those could certainly be lengthening our typical combat, though again, in the middle of combat no one is complaining of things moving too slowly or that they're not having fun, we just get done with it and are shocked that half our 4 hr play session is gone (and we only meet every other Wednesday, at best!).This comment leads me to this follow-up question:Since my group of 7 PCs just literally hit 3rd level at the end of our last session (as in, we haven't tried any 3rd level powers yet!), could part of our long combats just be that the PCs don't have that many encounter & daily powers to use (assuming at least some of them hit, and statistically some of them should <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> )?I guess I just always assumed when people were describing low level games that the slowness came from "learning the game". While we have 1 new player to D&D, the rest are veterans to at least 3e if not earlier editions of the game, so I don't think that's been slowing us down too much beyond the first handful of combats.Now I'm wondering if things will just naturally speed up noticeably with another Encounter power at 3rd level for all the PCs to throw around, and maybe again at 5th level with their next Daily (if I remembered that correctly)?Thanks to all for sharing their experiences, very interesting! And so far makes me feel quite a bit better about how we're doing things.We're using the magnetic combat pad (which Nail uses to track Initiative so I can focus on other DM things) & most of us are rolling one or more d20s for attacks along with the damage dice (and some are doing it just ahead of their turn to speed things up a bit more). My combat maps are typically Dungeon Tiles or Skeleton Key Games printed tiles so I lay them out and explain any pertinent features which never seems to take all that much time.We're also using the Alea Tools markers though a couple sessions ago we felt we spent way too much time adding & removing various markers, mostly on the PC minis related to ongoing damage, bloodied, conditions, etc. so we tried something different the last session which really worked well.Each PC gets one designated color (it's the same from session to session, like Dark Green for the Elven Ranger) set of four 1" & two 2" markers. Each player puts one of the 1" markers under their mini, sets one of the 2" markers in front of their stuff at the table where everyone can see it, then puts the remaining markers off to the side. Any time a PC was bloodied or affected with some condition by a monster I'd throw them a marker that they'd place on the 2" base in front of them. Same thing if they were given a bonus to attack or damage or some other effect by a fellow player, the player would just toss one of their markers onto that player's base. When the effect was saved or the duration ended they'd just slip the marker off and send it back.This way there was never any fumbling with the PC's minis directly and everyone could just glance around the table to see which PCs were bloodied, poisoned, weakened, etc. There were still markers going on & off the enemies but that's generally a lot more limited: Hunter's Quarry usually stays put until the enemy dies, Warlock's Curse lasts the whole combat (and with a Rod of Corruption pretty quickly it became easier to keep track of who wasn't cursed), bloodied mobs generally don't last that long with focused fire, etc. The Defenders still had to move their Mark around but I don't think there's much room for improvement playing with minis.Hehe, uh, sorry to derail my own thread but hopefully someone else will find this helpful! <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/blush.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":blush:" title="Blush    :blush:" data-shortname=":blush:" /></blockquote>

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