Shorten Combat: reduce complexity 20%.

[BobTheNob]

I'd suggest giving your players 1 action point per encounter as opposed to every two encounters if you want to help speed things up, as well.

We have been doing this for ages. Has a massive impact, which we are noting especially as we transition into paragon (damn blood mage!). Still a very good rule change. The player love it, I have one less thing to keep track of.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Another way is to have something game changing happen after turn X. For example, if the players can get to point Y and do action Z by turn X, they win and the monsters surrender. Or, if they don't, they better flee for their lives.

For example, enemy army is coming, infiltrators have thrown open the gates. Players have 5 turns to fight their way into the gate tower and release the portculis. If they do, the infiltrators surrender, knowing that they can't lift the portculis before the players's reinforcements arrive. Or, if the players fail, its suddenly become an n+20 encounter and they had better run.

Or, if they don't, that's a great cliff hanger to leave your players with. "Okay, you failed to close the gate and 3000 angry hobgoblins are pouring through the gate. See you guys next week..." And in the meantime, you can think of some exiting, interesting and feasible set of encounters based on how events turned out... perhaps a skill challenge/series of encounters to fight your way free and back to the keep.

Or, if you want to encourage your group to play faster, state that the X deadline to do something is a particular realtime deadline - so, if they don't do Z before 6:00 as indicated by the DM's watch, then whatever horrible it is they are trying to prevent happens.

 

[Garthanos]

I think that limiting encounter and daily powers would cut down on combat time, since players don't have as many or as complex decisions to make, but I think you'd have to seriously cut down on them - maybe 1 per tier.

Hilarious I was just thinking if you could reuse powers more often you dont have to hem and haw about whether you use them or not... like for instance allow daily powers to be encounter powers... and trust me that would also be more more damage and faster battles.