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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fenes" data-source="post: 4154775" data-attributes="member: 604">My proposal to speed up combat (since you mention your players feel constrained by the combat rules): Expand and simplify it. Focus on a few key actions, and handwave the rest.Don't play out how dozens of minions get killed one by one by the fighter blocking the door they want to get through. Have him roll to kill the first, and eyeball the outcome from that, narrating it as a heroic action with lots of cleaves.Skip the "charge, full attack full attack, cleric heal! full attack" routine.Instead make special moves matter more than the rules make them. Make it so that if the fighter can bullrush the enemy off a cliff that this means half the fight is won (could play this out in 2 or three rounds, tops - fighter bullrushes the enemy to the edge, the rest closes in to keep him there, next round it's bullrush over the edge). If your NPC gets disarmed, make that matter more than "he picks his weapon up, AoO, he attacks". If the weapon is disarmed, it should very hard to recover due to terrain or party action.A way to visualise this is to not see the enemy as having hitpoints that need to be dropped, but as having a few key "assets". Once all or the majority of those are removed/destroyed/neutralised, the battle is over.Example:The heroes are facing an undead knight clad in black plate, wielding a black sword dripping poisonous ooze and riding a nightmare while commanding a horde of lesser undead.That's the following "assets":- Protection- Magic Sword- Mobility- MinionsAny of those can be dealt with in various ways. Fighters can (attempt to) sunder/disarm the weapon, kill the nightmare, block and cleave the minions, and hack the armor to pieces (least effective). Rogues (or similar characters) can trip/ensnare/hamstring/kill the nightmare, backstab past the armor if in position to do so, drop a chandelier on the minions, or pull a rug, or otherwise block them, use some magic device to neutralise the poison, etc.Mages and clerics can use various spells to either neutralise one asset (turn undead, fireball, wall of force, etc. to deal with the minions, banishment/dominate monster/slay living/disintegrate, hold monster/force cage/entangle etc. for the nightmare, protection spells to avoid damage from the sword, spells to make the undead easier to hurt, etc.So, in essence: focus on pulling a few key stunts/moves, and handwave the rest with narrating. Don't roll how long it takes to kill all minions, or how long it takes to hack past the 30 AC of the undead night once he's lost his mount, weapon and minion. If the main enemy is dead or has fled, handwave the minions away as fleeing/getting killed easily. And of course, NPCs should flee or attempt to as well if the battle goes against them. At the very least this makes them easier to kill when they turn their backs, speeding up combat as well.If the battle turns against he group, do the same for escaping, present a few key tasks they need to do, and see if they manage - you can always switch to full "hp by hp" mode if TPK starts like it will happen.</blockquote>

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