Speeding up play: suggestions?

[Voadam]

Avoid throwing in NPC helpers, discourage familiars, cohorts, and animal companions as they increase the number of figures to keep track of.

You can house rule some scenario specific rules to be generic (dodge feat for example).

Don't waste time on arguments. If a player objects to things allow them to quickly show you the rule, but make a decision quickly and move on. Tell the player you will look it up later/discuss it with him later if need be.

Depending on the group, the flow of combat and the story can be more important than specific nitpicking rules. As a player I've lived with AoOs for wand use and AoOs for charges in game because that was the DM's ruling despite my pointing out the actual rule at the time of the combats. I accepted it for the flow of the combat instead of grinding the game to a halt and the DM later confirmed I was right and changed how he handled it in game. You want consistent rules and to know house rules before you start, but enjoying a fight as a group can be more important than getting it technically right at the moment at the cost of pacing, immersion, interest, and involvement.

 

[Ferret]

I keep check on a sheet, I made when I kept loosing track.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Use the Take 10 and Take 20 rules. All the time.

Take 10: encourage your players to use this every time they meet the criteria (not rushed or threatened). The nice thing about Taking 10 is that either the player or the DM can easily precalculate the skill check result and compare it to the DC without any dice rolling. (E.g., a Wiz1 with Int 15 and 4 ranks in Spellcraft would have a result of 16 when Taking 10.)

Take 20: most players already know the advantages of using this, but in case they don't, point it out to them. When you're not time-constrained, Take 20 is your best friend.

Also, even though it's been said before, it cannot be overemphasized: roll as many dice as possible at once. Attack, damage, miss change, caster level checks... if you want to get fancy you can have different sets or colors of dice for each iterative attack or whatever. But even just rolling attack and damage at the same time speeds up the game tremendously.