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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5610042" data-attributes="member: 4937">Five of my six current players were complete novices a year ago and are still pretty green.  I typically find they are much less of a problem than so called 'experienced' players because they a) don't have any bad habits to begin with, b) are much less likely to be jerks about this sort of thing. I believe that exchange takes less than a minute, or should.  It's also a lot of wasted breathe with people speaking out loud what they were doing like this is something difficult.  I know my player's save DC's.  They haven't changed since 10 minutes ago.  Halfing a number less than 100 takes less than a second of head time.  I shouldn't be reporting which minotaurs saved or didn't anyway, much less need to waste time reporting it.  The only slow parts of the above exchange is adding up the d6's, which after 20+ years of DMing I can do in just a few seconds if the player can't, and a few seconds to jot down the numbers on my legal pad once I know the results.It would be more like this:DM: Ok, 14 go.PC: I cast fireball on the three minotaurs at the back of the room *starts rolling dice*DM: Alright *starts rolling saving throws*PC: 28 damage.DM: errmmm..... Ok, your fireball catches all three minotaurs in a exploding blossum of orange flames, but though the beasts bellow in pain, they continue their charge - roaring out of the dissipating flames with the heads down and smoking charred skins.DM: Ok, 10 go.Granted, it's not always that efficient, but it often is.  When it goes well, a straight foward fight like this against three minotaurs is going to be 10-15 minutes of real time.  We could get in 6-8 of them in a night depending on what we are doing.   More usually, we do 3-4 fights in a night, plus roleplaying and investigation.Now, I do have long fights in 3e, but they usually involve very complex three dimensional terrain and multiple monsters utilizing that terrain, and running fights and cat and mouse between the two sides.  Twelve hellhounds chasing the party across the rooftop of a city, or a fight between a whole shipload of pirates and an army of sahaugin, or a fight between the PC's and warband of goblins in a multilevel cavern complex, or a cat and mouse chase with a high level spellcaster/sniper through a foundry complex can and did take a long time each.  But, well, sometimes its worth pulling out that sort of complexity to get an epic feel.I agree that buffs are the real problem, especially at higher levels.  Fortunately, my players are really good about keeping notes about their character's abilities during common buffs that they use.  If it gets to be a bigger problem at higher levels, I'll probably insist on buff cards to keep track of things.Players aren't allowed to debate with each other about positioning or tactics, or to ask advice of the other players.  They are allowed to say one IC sentence or so in a round, but any OOC chatter about the situation is frowned upon and anyone attempting lengthy IC directions will be cut off.  This is only a problem if you are gaming with minatures, which is only worth it if these questions are likely to have highly relevant answers - which they usually don't.  Whether or not 7 or 8 orcs are caught in the fireball isn't something you should spend more than a second or two of worry on.  When in doubt, fudge in the PC's favor and move on to something important.  If it's really a repeated problem, cut out a template on paper or bend a wire into shape.  If I thought this was slowing down play a lot, I'd make players buy and bring templates before I'd let this sort of thing ruin everyone's game.</blockquote>

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