Slow Combat Problems

[Ant]

I DM a group of 9 PCs + 1 cohort + 1 henchman + 1 animal companion. I'm also a huge fan of throwing hordes of vile beasties at the party. Now normally this combination would spell disaster but here's what we do to make combat flow nicely (most of the time). You'll find it pretty much agrees with all the other great advice posted in this thread:

1) Roll all the dice together: It's amazing how this little trick helps speed things up. Getting the players to roll their attack and damage dice together is pretty easy (those crazy players love rolling as many dice at once as possible).

2) Use initiative cards: If you do nothing else, do this! Initiative cards save so much time and help keep things organised. A few sessions ago I forego the cards as a bit of an experiment ... and it wasn't pretty.

3) Work out the bad guy's tactics and stats beforehand: Sure, you can't foresee everything the players will do but get a quick battleplan together. Will the evil, leather-clad, halfling mage-sisters be prepared with enhancement spells? Well, figure that into their stats! Are the hobgoblins going to throw handaxes then charge into melee? Make a note and then use it! And don't go into too much detail -- you probably don't need to know the modifier for every single skill for every single monster or NPC.

4) On the ready line: Player's need to be prepared for their action. It's up to the DM to give them warning that their turn is imminent.

5) Use miniatures: For largish battles you really need to know where everyone is so that the players get a sense of fair-play. Is that savage druid/bard in range for a charge or did that half-orc barbarian just cop a fireball to the nether-regions? Minis and battlemaps are the way to go.

6) Distractions: It's inevitable that people will get side-tracked, especially in a big gaming group. Let people chat but the DM should never have to shout to be heard (I need to improve in this area myself!).

7) Streamline: Keep a one pager behind the DM screen with all the vitals you need for combat (stats, tactics, spells). Keep page number references on this sheet if you want (where to look in the PG, DMG or MM etc). Use this in conjuction with the initiative cards.

8) Print out a few "cheat sheets" containing simplified descriptions of the rules for combat, situation modifiers etc. Hand them out to the players and encourage them to use the sheets.

9) Have fun!

 

[S'mon]

With a six-player group 15 minutes between turns seems pretty normal, that means a typical 3-round combat will take about 45 minutes. I don't get bored waiting 15 minutes for my turn; only if it went over half an hour would I start to fidget.

Obviously all players need to have their turn ready when the GM gets to them; as GM I'd give a tardy player 6 seconds to decide, otherwise they do nothing. I find 'Delay' actions are quite popular these days.

Flicking through PHB to decide what to do _on your turn_ is not acceptable in my book, if the round takes 15 minutes you've already had plenty of time to do that.

 

[Janx]

I'm not sure I'd vote on not letting the wizard look at the PH until after his turn. Define after. Is it after my turn when I look during the current player's turn, which is before mine?

Simply stick to the acceptable rule that all classes must be ready on their turn, or else they "Delay Action" The smart wizard will have looked up his stuff before his actual turn, and that's what you really want, a prepared wizard, not a crippled one.

Janx

 

[D+1]

I can understand how people get slow combats, but a few of the reasons are, I think, just a tad beyond my comprehension in that the fixes being suggested seem so... pointless. Just IME of course.

For example, rolling attack and damage dice together. Seriously? This is a problem for people? I can recall exactly ONE player in 25+ years of gaming who just couldn't seem to get round to dropping his dang dice onto the table. And that was less related to the dice than to the fact that he just kept TALKING about whatever while he held his dice in his hand and we all waited for him to just roll. I suspect it was a device he had stumbled upon where he could maintain attention upon himself and what he was saying - nothing conscious about it I'm sure, just some silly neurotic need that he sought to fulfull. But that's just ONE quirk of ONE player. What I hear when people suggest dropping multiple dice at once is that players are simply SLOW to find and roll dice. Like the little league pitcher with the pointless 30-second complicated windup. There simply HAS to be something else happening there WHILE he's supposed to be rolling dice. Slow to add numbers or the like.

Or Initiative Cards. It takes me barely any longer to jot down on a piece of scratch paper the current order of initiative than it does for players to report their initiative rolls to me. Data that is suggested for the cards should ALREADY be at hand for the DM. I suppose if you DON'T prepare stats before beginning an encounter that initiative cards are a fine way to ensure that you DO get that information and keep it at hand, but what are people doing otherwise? Do they keep flipping back and forth between Monster Manuals checking AC again and again for 4 different monsters because they haven't been sane enough to just write them down before getting involved? The problem, I suspect, has nothing to do with initiative and a LOT more to do with having a precis' of information about monsters/PC's at hand.

Or am I missing the problem because I just haven't personally experienced it? Other methods suggested for speeding up combat I see as much more practical:

• First, as Emirikol suggested, verify that everyone perceives and is willing to work on the problem.
• Turn off the TV and eliminate other such distractions - this, IME, is a classic problem
• Don't focus only on the current player but be sure that the next player in line is getting ready
• Quash ruthlessly the distracting OOC chatter - if the chatter IS, in fact, a source of difficulty. What I mean is that if you're running a game among strangers that's different than running a game among friends who may only see each other once a week at the game. D&D IS a social activity. As long as everyone is willing to sacrifice game time and flow for socializing I don't object to "wasting" time in conversation mixing with the game. If there's one player who is constantly harping about, "Go, go, go, let's get some GAMING done here..." then THAT person could be the problem, not the other way around.
• Invest in miniatures or at least a "battlemat" and counters to eliminate questions and arguments of where characters and objects are and who will be within areas of spell effects.
• More players is not the problem, it merely exacerbates it. If players are ready to TAKE their turns when they come up then flow of the game is no worse with 4 PC's than with 8.
• Read, understand, and follow the rules. So obvious it often gets overlooked. If you CONSTANTLY keep having to look up combat rules during combats then you need a refresher on how combat works. It's one thing for newbies to keep stumbling over rules that they aren't familiar with but if you've been playing 3E for more than a year then you have no such excuse - even the seldom-used rules should be familiar enough not to bog down anyones turn.
• Finally, while I personally would shy away from skipping a players turn (it'd have to be a pretty incurable lump of a player), though severe it IS an option. Also I'd suggest that OVER-fixation upon rules can be as much of a problem as not knowing the rules. Pick a DC and move on if it's going to take as long as all that to get the precise rule applied.

 

[Emirikol]

With a six-player group 15 minutes between turns seems pretty normal, that means a typical 3-round combat will take about 45 minutes. I don't get bored waiting 15 minutes for my turn; only if it went over half an hour would I start to fidget.

15 minutes! HOLY CRAP! I'd be snoring under my DM's screen! We have a guideline to be under 5 minutes per turn or somebody's going to get smacked.

Our group has 5 players and I have a rule to not have more than 12 opponents against the PC's (it's a standard rule for RPGA scenarios, and we apply it to our home games too because it works well).

So, each player rolls their attack and damage dice together (or I give them sh*t). If they're not ready, I delay their action and then the OTHER PLAYERS give them sh*t). Each player takes _maybe_ 30 seconds to roll and explain and for me to record.

30sec, 30sec, 30sec, 30sec, 30sec
"Christy you're up, Kevin you need to start preparing your action, Jack you're in the hole."

That's 2 minutes and 30 seconds on the players side total. A lot of times it's less because a player rolls and misses (5 seconds).

For me, even if I have 12 monsters it takes all of about 5 seconds for me to roll for each monster and assess if they hit and how much damage they did (I tell the players and move on). Most of the time, it's less. Monsters hit a lot less than the PC's so their results are pretty obvious.

5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5

That's 60 seconds for the all of the monsters to act.

All told, each round takes less than five (5) minutes per turn.

Our action is fast, fierce, and fun. My players expect that now and keep each other on their toes. Basically, we're getting in 3 times the amount of gaming that slower groups do. We also have more time to role-play and socialize because we make better use of our time.

jh
..

 

[Gronin]

Use index cards for initiative management- my god, it's invaluable. It sped up my combats so much I can't even tell you.

It's also a good idea to announce who's next so that they can plan their turn.

As far as index cards are concerned check out the Game Mechanics they have "initiative cards" that a designed specifically for this. They also serve as miniature character sheets so the DM has some of the essentials right there behind the screen. They can be found in the section of the webpage called freebies down near the bottom of the webpage under the heading Fantasy Freebies.

For anyone who is not familiar with the Game Mechanics, you should check out their other stuff even if the initiative cards aren't for you.

 

[Gronin]

Another thing I use to speed things up is to get players to roll ahead of time, when it comes to a players turn he/she announces the numbers and the results are determined.

 

[jmucchiello]

Or Initiative Cards. It takes me barely any longer to jot down on a piece of scratch paper the current order of initiative than it does for players to report their initiative rolls to me. Data that is suggested for the cards should ALREADY be at hand for the DM.

The value of initiative cards is in combat where a lot of delay and ready actions occur. We use to just write a list of names on a scrap sheet at the beginning of combat but after a round or two with multiple delays and readies and you have a horrible scrawl of chicken scratch instead of an initiative order.

I do agree, though that stats on init cards are silly. The only thing we put on the card is Dexterity. This way when everyone announces their initiative number at the start of combat, you don't have to ask for dexterity when there is a duplicate.

Since there isn't much pertenint info on the card, I find it makes sense to have one of the players run the initiative cards. One less thing for the DM to pay attention to.

 

[Wolffenjugend]

I use an Excel spreadsheet to auto generate all NPC rolls - saves a bunch of time!

I agree with the initiative cards - absolutely necesary.

We found that summoning creatures ate up a lot of time so now any player that wants to summon something is responsible for having its stats on hand. No looking it up in the MM after the spell is cast.

Finally, when I make up my monsters I cut n' paste from the SRD so I won't have to go looking up obscure rules or spell descriptions.

 

[Altalazar]

Use index cards for initiative management- my god, it's invaluable. It sped up my combats so much I can't even tell you.

It's also a good idea to announce who's next so that they can plan their turn.

Oh yes, Index cards are excellent for that.
It also helps if the players really are prepared to go on their turn.
And if helps to keep the NPCs actions going quick as well.

You can really speed up the combat with such organization tips. However, there are some things that just will be slower with such a huge number of players. Seven is kinda a lot. I'd not want to go over five, with perhaps four being ideal. It is enough for diversity, and yet it is small enough that everyone can generally feel engaged most of the time.