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<blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 9014170" data-attributes="member: 6796661">If it makes you feel any better, I had a combat last six hours last session. That doesn't include hours of preparation they put preparing for it. Long combat is only a bad thing if you and the players are not having fun. Really, I think whenever the discussion of &quot;combat is taking too long&quot;, it needs to be reframed as &quot;how can I make combat more fun for my players.&quot; If your players just are not into combat, put less of it into your game. If your main objective is to shorten IRL time spent on combat, you have a lot of options as a GM. But before jumping into that discussion, I would first need to understand why you don't like long combats in the first place. Short combats can be equally unsatisfying, either because you don't get enough rounds for the monsters to do interesting stuff, or because you have to make the monsters hit so hard to make them feel like a challenge that you may risk upsetting some players by downing their characters in the first round. In my personal experience, when combat in D&amp;D starts to get unsatisfying it is usually because of the wait-your-turn initiative system, or the time it takes per player turn, rather than the overall length of the combat. I've played other systems where players basically work together to build dice pools based on how they contribute to the combat. These make each round take more time, but it doesn't feel like it because everyone is engaged, working together on what they will do as a group. I've been looking into options like side-based initiative that don't mess too much with the core mechanics of D&amp;D and still support that moving-spotlight approach to combat that let's each PC have its moment on stage. I haven't come up with anything I'm satisfied with yet. The more I play around with changing turn-based initiative to more I think it would just work better to run a different system.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="MNblockhead, post: 9014170, member: 6796661"] If it makes you feel any better, I had a combat last six hours last session. That doesn't include hours of preparation they put preparing for it. Long combat is only a bad thing if you and the players are not having fun. Really, I think whenever the discussion of "combat is taking too long", it needs to be reframed as "how can I make combat more fun for my players." If your players just are not into combat, put less of it into your game. If your main objective is to shorten IRL time spent on combat, you have a lot of options as a GM. But before jumping into that discussion, I would first need to understand why you don't like long combats in the first place. Short combats can be equally unsatisfying, either because you don't get enough rounds for the monsters to do interesting stuff, or because you have to make the monsters hit so hard to make them feel like a challenge that you may risk upsetting some players by downing their characters in the first round. In my personal experience, when combat in D&D starts to get unsatisfying it is usually because of the wait-your-turn initiative system, or the time it takes per player turn, rather than the overall length of the combat. I've played other systems where players basically work together to build dice pools based on how they contribute to the combat. These make each round take more time, but it doesn't feel like it because everyone is engaged, working together on what they will do as a group. I've been looking into options like side-based initiative that don't mess too much with the core mechanics of D&D and still support that moving-spotlight approach to combat that let's each PC have its moment on stage. I haven't come up with anything I'm satisfied with yet. The more I play around with changing turn-based initiative to more I think it would just work better to run a different system. [/QUOTE]

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