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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 5610081" data-attributes="member: 19675">That does not sound like our table.  We joke, we putter, we get snacks.  But when it is your turn to act, you're generally expected to be ready.That MAY mean asking the DM some questions about whether something works a particular way or not.  If so, hopefully, you've got a Plan B at the ready.Even so, we have players at the table who have to read every power they have- SLOWLY- every time to figure out what they want to do.  And these are guys I've been gaming with since 1998, and had been playing since the days of 2ED.A lot of factors go into the speed of combat.  #1 has got to be familiarity & comfort with the system and your PC's abilities within it.  That veteran player who has to sort through his powers each time just doesn't connect to 4Ed the way he did with 2Ed & 3Ed.  Its simply not as intuitive to him.  Me?  The only thing that slows me down is if I get distracted with other players' actions and didn't hear my name called by the DM, telling me its my turn to go. (That happens about 25% of the time.<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":o" title="Eek!    :o"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":o" />)#2 is probably design elements like how tough the foes are supposed to be.  1Ed & 2Ed (and even 3Ed) had critters that were supposed to be like fighting wet TP one on one, but if they had good leaders, could take down mid- to high-level parties.  See "Tucker's Kobolds."  4Ed critters, but for minions, are considerably tougher one-on-one across the board.  2 kobolds standing shoulder to shoulder nearly took down our party's fighter in our 1st adventure.  That would almost never happen in 1Ed or 2Ed, and would be pretty rare in 3Ed as well.  Yet it happened another 2 times in that adventure in that 4Ed campaign.#3 is going to be sheer dumb luck of the dice.  Last week, our DM expected us to have a hard time with a particular encounter, and was all set to have it be the last thing of the night.  Instead, my Starlock opened a jumbo sized can of whupass (his first crit of the campaign plus another nearly maxed out roll) on the Cave Troll (or whatever it was), more than bloodying it in the first 2 rounds of the combat, before it closed on him.  Then I teleported away and let the fighter & Wizard finish it off with a good blow from a flaming axe and a Magic Missile.  Despite its reach and fearsome bonuses, the Troll didn't hit a single PC before falling, and round 5 was mopping up.  Total time from starting to draw the map and setting up the minis to final coup de grace: @15 minutes.As a result of a tough encounter turning into a cakewalk, we managed to get another encounter started before we had to end for the evening.  (The DM photoed the battlemap so we don't screw things up when next we meet.)And this happens from time to time.  A few weeks ago, it was the fighter who used a burst melee attack while surrounded and critted on nearly every attack roll, including the one on the leader.Well, some spells DO have half damage or other effects on a miss.Again, it depends on a lot of things.  Personally, I agree that 4Ed combats don't seem to take appreciably longer than 3.X ones, but I know a lot of people on these boards- rabid fans of 4Ed included- have complained about "grind."</blockquote>

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