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<blockquote data-quote="MarauderX" data-source="post: 2812194" data-attributes="member: 9990">Just finished a night of 4 hours of battle... rounds 8 through 19.&nbsp; The party level is 14-15, and they are fighting a ton of bad guys.&nbsp; What usually takes the least time is the iterative attacks, depending on the player.&nbsp; What takes the most is calculating spell effects, special combat manuevers (we are experts on all of them, still a lot of rolls &amp; resolutions), and adding in all the bonuses that stack or don't stack.&nbsp; To me iterative attacking melee guys are the easy ones... it's the summoning druid with 4 elementals moving around, a brace of unicorns healing and the druid getting 3 attacks to grapple a caster that takes longer.&nbsp; Calculating in the bard's song, haste, magic bonuses, DR, resistance spells and all the other things add to the mess.&nbsp; I'm glad to hand all of that off to the players, and they calculate it all before their turn, thankfully.&nbsp; As a DM I find that doing the same calcs on the fly are rough and typically not worth the effort in the time it takes.&nbsp; That usually ends up with bad guys buffed a little less or with more rigid tactics when dealing with the party.&nbsp; After all of the bad guys' spells, abilities, critter qualities, etc., I look forward to resolving the simple melee bad guys with iterative attacks.&nbsp; Most players figure out the classes to guess at the baddies strengths and weaknesses to stop/exploit respectively.&nbsp; Keep the fighters from closing to melee, stop the casters from casting, cast spells with Will saves vs. the rogues... little in the way of surprises, really.&nbsp;&nbsp; 4E better be an experience-point buy system so I can scrap having to build specific traits to get a goofy one-trick-pony PrC.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="MarauderX, post: 2812194, member: 9990"] Just finished a night of 4 hours of battle... rounds 8 through 19. The party level is 14-15, and they are fighting a ton of bad guys. What usually takes the least time is the iterative attacks, depending on the player. What takes the most is calculating spell effects, special combat manuevers (we are experts on all of them, still a lot of rolls & resolutions), and adding in all the bonuses that stack or don't stack. To me iterative attacking melee guys are the easy ones... it's the summoning druid with 4 elementals moving around, a brace of unicorns healing and the druid getting 3 attacks to grapple a caster that takes longer. Calculating in the bard's song, haste, magic bonuses, DR, resistance spells and all the other things add to the mess. I'm glad to hand all of that off to the players, and they calculate it all before their turn, thankfully. As a DM I find that doing the same calcs on the fly are rough and typically not worth the effort in the time it takes. That usually ends up with bad guys buffed a little less or with more rigid tactics when dealing with the party. After all of the bad guys' spells, abilities, critter qualities, etc., I look forward to resolving the simple melee bad guys with iterative attacks. Most players figure out the classes to guess at the baddies strengths and weaknesses to stop/exploit respectively. Keep the fighters from closing to melee, stop the casters from casting, cast spells with Will saves vs. the rogues... little in the way of surprises, really. 4E better be an experience-point buy system so I can scrap having to build specific traits to get a goofy one-trick-pony PrC. [/QUOTE]

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