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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ariochdm" data-source="post: 4677761" data-attributes="member: 71045">In our group we have 5 players that have played many versions of D&D over the years so a very experienced group. We've been playing about 12 hours per month since the game came out and have been playing keep on the shadowfell and the follow up Thunderspire module. Party is 6th level now (wiz, fighter, warlock, rogue, cleric). On average our combats take 2 hours some longer. The game itself is mostly fun but when the combats take more than an hour (unless its a key battle with the main NPC enemy or something) then it really puts a drag on the game. We like to play the game as it was intended (no rule modifications) to maintain balance and most monsters fight to the death (party feels cheapened if I try and just call the combat and say they've won).  I'll also add that there is very little BSing or roleplaying going on during these combats.  It takes 2 hours to get through them without any distractions.  Add in some distractions and your heading towards 2.5 hours on average. We use a lot of tools miniatures, battlemats, and pc's. One thing that I've found that has really sped things up (the battles used to be 2+ hours on average but that has been reduced to 2 hours because of this tool) is using google docs. Every player has a pc. We all login to google docs and we can look at a spreadsheet on the web. What is great about this spreadsheet is there is no check/check out or refresh required. You can see real time as the players manipulate the fields and who is manipulating what field. We put all the conditions, inititaitve, hp's, spent surges, etc into the sheet. Having everyone see what the stats are makes the players move faster through the combat with their strategies and they know when their turn is coming up. As the DM I've also had the players enter as much info into the sheet as I can for me. They put their damage into the spreadsheet, when a creature becomes bloodied I tell them and they mark it in the sheet, when they hit a creature they record the ac for that creature into the spreadsheet, etc. This has helped a lot making me (the DM) move through the combats faster as it offloads some of the stuff I had to deal with and I can focus on the strategy and dealing damage. I rarely have to record any information letting the party (not just one person but everyone so the workload is spread out) do that for me in the spreadsheet. <a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&nui=1&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F&followup=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F&ltmpl=homepage&rm=false" target="_blank">https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&nui=1&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F&followup=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F&ltmpl=homepage&rm=false</a> I still wish that WOTC would come up with some additional playtested rules for speeding up combat.</blockquote>

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