D&D 5E Speeding Up Combat

[ProphetSword]

In the campaign I've been running over the last year, the players have reached 13th level. Even though the combats in 5th Edition are a whole lot faster than they were back when we played Pathfinder, I would still like them to be just a bit faster. We sometimes still hit battles that can take quite a while to get through if the enemies have a lot of hit points. Not sure why that is, but it does happen.

I wouldn't care, but we sometimes only have a few hours a week to play (around 3 hours). There have been nights where a single big battle is the majority of the game. That certainly didn't happen in the early stages of the game, so I can only guess that more hit points require more time to chop through.

I've considered reducing the hit points of the monsters to speed up play, but increasing their damage output to in order to make them a bit more deadly as they'll probably die quicker. Not sure what that will do to the balance, though.

Has anyone else faced this issue? Or does anyone have any advice on how to speed up things without breaking the game?

 

[jodyjohnson]

Lowering the HP and raising the damage will balance out the Challenge.

Pretty sure I saw Mike Mearls tweet about this earlier in the week.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Do you use encounters with more lower CR monsters instead of a few/one higher CR monster? Do you use the mob attack rules when you do so? If not, doing both of these together might speed up some encounters by making each monster involved take less time to deal with individually, and not also adding to the time spent resolving monster turns by a significant amount.

Are these combats that are taking considerable time doing so because your players hold back on expendable resources like spell slots? If so, talking with your players about them spending resources more freely so that the combat doesn't take as long, and letting them more readily rest to recover the spent resources, will speed things along.

Are the "victory conditions" of these combats "reduce all the monsters to 0 hp" and not other things (for example: distract the dragon long enough to steal the [thing], keep the ogres at bay while the [npc(s)] escape, or get past [monster] without [bad thing it wants to do to the PCs] happening)? If yes, then speeding up combat is as simple as having these kind of victory conditions, or deciding that once it is clear that the NPC forces the party faces are not going to turn things around and defeat the PCs (according to whatever the NPC force considers its victory condition to be, such as a hungry monster wanting to eat them) the NPC force will flee or surrender as appropriate because they'd rather not die if that is at all possible.

Altering the HP/damage of monsters is something I'd only suggest if literally all else fails, since while that will certainly speed up combat resolution, it also has the highest probability of leaving the players feeling dissatisfied by way of either not feeling their opponents even stood a chance against them, or by feeling like they don't have the durability to stand against their foes' damage.

 

[Shiroiken]

Things that may help (depending on your group)

1) Run Theater of the Mind, rather than using miniatures and a grid. IME, players who have a grid are more likely to want to nit-pick "optimal" moves, which are seldom much better than the obvious plays.

2) Keep your player's focused, having each prepare their action in advance. The really does speed up the game, and the faster the combat rounds, the more focused players tend to be. You might suggest the players have crib notes of things they frequently reference (like spells).

3) Use fewer monsters. No matter how optimally you prepare yourself, the more monsters you have, the more time you take. The more time you take, the less time players are acting. The sole exception to this would be the Mobs optional rule from the DMG, which allows you to quickly just deal damage to players (assuming the number of hits by swarms).

4) Have a player be the initiative tracker, noting who is active and who is next ("on deck"). A good system we've used is a deck of cards, with players being Hearts, allies being Diamonds, and enemies as Spades. The deck is built, then the initiative tracker calls things out. This keeps that player engaged, and keeps things from slowing down (also takes away one more thing the DM needs to do). Ideally that player should be playing the simplest character, so they don't have to look up a lot of things.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

Player management will certainly help. I'm trying a few new things this week to hopefully speed up combats, based on advice I've read on the Web.

Fast Narration

At the start of each round in combat, I'm going to summarse the situation in a couple of sentences. At the start of each player's turn, I'm going to summarise what's important to that character. Then the player gets a few seconds to declare actions. No declaration means they lose their turn due to indecisiveness (which means their character dodges and doesn't move). The players need to be spending the *other player's turns* deciding their actions.

For example:

Start of the turn: "Two mummies are attacking the party. Alice is down, Bob is wounded, Eve is unharmed at the back. So far, Eve's fire attacks have been extremely effective."

Start of Bob's turn: "Bob, two mummies are attacking you, Alice is on the ground bleeding out but the mummies are ignoring her. What do you do?" *one* *two* *three* "Bob is dodging. Eve, you're next..."

No Looking Stuff Up

I'm banning looking in a book during combat. If any of the players don't know what their character's features do, I'll just make a ruling on the spot. If the ruling later turned out to be wrong, that's OK, we'll fix it next session.

Players need to be prepared, with the appropriate notes either memorised or written down on their character sheets. Spell duration, attack range, feature description, etc.

Same goes for me as a GM! For example, monster stats written on 3×5 index cards (which are bulldog-clipped to my screen). If I have to stop and look at a Monster Manual then I have destroyed the pace of the encounter.

I'll post here later this week with how well it went for my group.

 

[iserith]

How many players do you have? How much time does each one take to describe what he or she wants to do and make whatever rolls you ask for? If any given turn is longer than 30 seconds, I'd say start there by talking to your players about a turn being for acting, not for thinking about what to do. When the spotlight is on you, GO!

Finally, the perception of a challenge taking too long is generally when the resolution is known but you're just going through the motions - doing "clean-up" as it were. Consider ending the scene when the ending is known and moving on to the next challenge before it drags.

Me, I don't mind if the entire session is one long battle as long as it's exciting from start to finish.

 

[Unwise]

IMC the world has a red Hunter's Moon, it has an erratic orbit, whenever it is in ascendancy in the sky, whether it is day or night people tend to avoid conflict or stay indoors. Damage in increased by 25% and HP are lowered by 25%.

This adds a way for PCs to know if I plan on using those rules for the upcoming encounters, as well as giving them the occasional chance to choose for themselves "Let's wait 'till the Hunter's Moon to strike the keep, we will kill the sentries easier and speed is of the essence".

 

[Rhenny]

How many players do you have? How much time does each one take to describe what he or she wants to do and make whatever rolls you ask for? If any given turn is longer than 30 seconds, I'd say start there by talking to your players about a turn being for acting, not for thinking about what to do. When the spotlight is on you, GO!

Finally, the perception of a challenge taking too long is generally when the resolution is known but you're just going through the motions - doing "clean-up" as it were. Consider ending the scene when the ending is known and moving on to the next challenge before it drags.

Me, I don't mind if the entire session is one long battle as long as it's exciting from start to finish.

Good advice.

If an encounter ever gets to the point where it is just a mop up, I like to have the foes run, surrender, or attempt to bargain for their lives (especially the intelligent ones).

Also, Iserith has given advice in the past about changing the victory condition for the encounters so I'll add that here. Not every encounter has to be kill the monsters. Some can be hold them off so that one or more of the party can get somewhere or capture a necessary item, or to rescue an npc and escape, or to just cause chaos and fade into the night. Sometimes alternate victory conditions can be met without longer combats.

Also, if you are using a lot of foes, pepper in some minion type creatures that the PCs can handle more easily along with some of the more challenging foes. If the players can kill a number of softer targets, they will feel as if they are making progress.

One more...set up ways for the PCs to use the terrain to gain advantages or use features as improvised weapons that can deal with a number of foes in one action. For example, place foes on scaffolds so if a smart player decides to hack at a support beam, the entire thing falls and all the foes on the scaffold take damage, or use large ceiling fixtures that can be shot loose sending 10' radius iron chandeliers plummeting down upon a group of foes, or have pits of fire that PCs can push foes into (or cliffs, etc.). I love when a player in my group tries to do something other than attack with his/her weapon. It makes the encounter more exciting and sometimes it speeds up the combat too.

 

[Warbringer]

Don't sweat the small stuff.

Don't worry about exact position, or range or any such nonsense
If a monster isn't important in the scene, then a hit is as good as a kill
Don't worry about book keeping
Don't worry about mop up, just bring a scene to a close
Make players keep attention and have their actions decided at the start of their turn

 

[iserith]

IMC the world has a red Hunter's Moon, it has an erratic orbit, whenever it is in ascendancy in the sky, whether it is day or night people tend to avoid conflict or stay indoors. Damage in increased by 25% and HP are lowered by 25%.

This adds a way for PCs to know if I plan on using those rules for the upcoming encounters, as well as giving them the occasional chance to choose for themselves "Let's wait 'till the Hunter's Moon to strike the keep, we will kill the sentries easier and speed is of the essence".

I think this is really cool. Have some XP!