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Message: <blockquote data-quote="weem" data-source="post: 4882767" data-attributes="member: 9470">I'm going to repost something I have posted here (at ENW) before because it was for the same topic (speeding up combat). It's a simple change of the way initiative is handled - it's saves us a lot of time. My campaign adopted it first, and three others have followed (others i play in) after seeing it in action... Anyway, here is the paste, but see my notes after the 'paste' as well...---paste---Basically PC's/Creatures roll initiative. Those players who beat the creatures go (if any do) then the creatures go (all of them) then back to ALL PC's including those who got to go before the creatures and we then simply alternate from there, Creatures > PC's > Creatures > PC's etc.Players decide amongst themselves who is going to go, who follows next etc. It keeps everyone engaged, and those who are not quite ready figure it out while the others go. It also allows for more player strategy (you go here, then i will go here and do this) etc. It's all per RAW since a) everyone can delay to go at the same-ish time and b) you can shout commands as free actions.This method (referred to as the ars ludi method) sped our encounters up enough that nothing else needed to be done. It's become one person after the next after the next - bam bam bam, no real downtime between each persons actions.As has been pointed out to me, it is not EXACTLY per RAW because you can have a situation where, let's say for example, someone is unconscious... so when it comes back to the PC's turn, they could (using this method) have the cleric go first and heal the unconscious player, who could then stand when the cleric is done and have his turn -- but as per RAW if you are unconscious, you can not delay -- so you could argue the unconscious player has to roll his death save before the rest of the players go and do nothing else, etc. I let it go (the one time it has happened from what I remember). These little workings of the system are exciting to the players and don't hurt the encounter imo.Again, this has 1) saved us a lot of time and 2) made the encounters much more dynamic and exciting. Previously it was easy to ignore what happened after you went - the battle field was going to change so much as players kind of did their own thing etc that there wasn't much of a point to plan what you were going to do next - might as well do something else. Now, the mobs go (I am quick at running this) and then right back to PC's who have been watching it unfold and have been planning as it went for how they were going to (together) setup their next turns.This is the method I use, but it is NOT my invention. You can see it here... <a href="http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.ph...silent-killer/" target="_blank">http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.ph...silent-killer/</a>---/paste---I can't stress enough how much this sped up our encounters. Do they only take 15 minutes? No, but they are quick for the number of people we have (4 at least, and up to 7 at times).My friend has been using it in his campaign as well, but this last weekend he decided to switch back (to the standard initiative method) during one encounter. He is going to make a program that tracks initiatives (which has been done before) BUT also has a really easy method for tracking conditions etc - so he wanted to test something. Anyway, that encounter was much slower - it took longer to setup, we weren't really sure who was up next (suppose he could have called out "on deck" but he didn't) - we couldn't setup combination's since our turns were all spread out with mobs in-between etc. Anyway, he said "that took too long" - not just for players to figure out what they were doing, but also for the DM to manage his side of it, so we went back to this method (above) after that.Anyway, this has worked well for me and the other three games I am in. It's sped things up and made combat more dynamic at the same time. Try it for one encounter <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />---edit---Link to that previosu post as well...<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/259403-how-we-speed-up-our-encounters-what-about-you.html" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/259403-how-we-speed-up-our-encounters-what-about-you.html</a>And another one on RPGnet where I also posted this...<a href="http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=466007" target="_blank">http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=466007</a></blockquote>

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