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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dragonblade" data-source="post: 5772267" data-attributes="member: 2804">One optional rule that others mentioned is halve monster HP (but not players) but then double damage that monsters do (not players).Mathematically a monster that normally lives for 6 rounds now dies in 3. But they still do the same amount of damage in those three rounds so combat moves faster but its just as exciting and tense.If you want to play the game as is, your group can train like a military unit to speed up combat, though that's not for everyone. My group trained for the Ultimate Dungeon Delve (which WotC discontinued a couple years ago), and that helped tremendously.Essentially, the UDD is a WotC convention tournament they used to host. Your party of 5 has 45 minutes to get through a tough encounter. If you run out of time before you defeat all the monsters, you lose. You then have to beat 6 timed encounters like this with no extended rests, but you get a short rest between each one.We used the Dungeon Delve book and grabbed encounters out of there to train with. At first it was hard, but after about 3 to 4 practice sessions of really focusing on speed, we got through it. By our 7th or 8th run we could beat the encounters in 30 to 40 minutes and our main limitation became the speed of the DM to run all the monsters.As a result of our delve training, long encounters no longer occur. Every one of our players can take their entire turn in under a minute and usually in under 30 seconds.Here are the tenets of fast gameplay we developed:1. Pay attention to what's going on in the battle.2. Know your character's powers intimately, and when your turn comes be ready to act immediately.3. Roll attacks and damage together.4. Tell everyone when you are done so the next player can act.Delve style play isn't for everyone, but on a side note here are some of the delve rules we developed to run our group more like a fantasy commando unit that could make it through the delve quickly:Designate a leader (as in unit leader, not the 4e role)- The leader's job is to decide who gets focus fired.Focus Fire - Pick the most dangerous enemy, usually a controller, and target them above all else, then move on to the next most dangerous enemy and so on.No turtling - No hanging back and launching tentative attacks. Be aggressive.Don't split the party - Everyone goes together so the monsters can't isolate a PCKnow your roles (aka Protect the Squishies!) - Defenders defend the controllers and leaders, leaders stay back and heal the defenders and strikers, controllers control the battlefield to hinder the enemies and help the defenders and strikers, strikers support the defenders and focus fire on the designated targets</blockquote>

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