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<blockquote data-quote="Thomas Shey" data-source="post: 8389413" data-attributes="member: 7026617">There's always a situation where lack of meaningful decision making can end up speeding up a combat because, well, turns cycle fast.&nbsp; If you've got fighters that just move up to the nearest target and swing until they fall down, and spellcasters who have an SOP they drop into as a default, the amount of actual time most incarnations of D&amp;D have to take up is limited.There are two issues here of course:1. There's some important caveats buried in that regarding spellcasters.&nbsp; Even if a fighter doesn't have much overhead, spellcasters can end up spending a lot of time dithering because they have a finite resource to use (or not).2. Even if a fight is comparably fast, that doesn't mean its not tedious.&nbsp; In OD&amp;D it was not uncommon that the only useful decision in combat for a fighter was picking his target.&nbsp; That could make combat as interesting for someone playing one as watching paint dry.&nbsp; I'd rather have a combat that was three times as long where I had a sense that I had some actual decisions were to be made, and not just iterating against a counter until the target fell down.&nbsp; But of course for people who don't want to do that, that extra time is a distinct deficit.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Thomas Shey, post: 8389413, member: 7026617"] There's always a situation where lack of meaningful decision making can end up speeding up a combat because, well, turns cycle fast. If you've got fighters that just move up to the nearest target and swing until they fall down, and spellcasters who have an SOP they drop into as a default, the amount of actual time [I]most[/I] incarnations of D&D [I]have[/I] to take up is limited. There are two issues here of course: 1. There's some important caveats buried in that regarding spellcasters. Even if a fighter doesn't have much overhead, spellcasters can end up spending a lot of time dithering because they have a finite resource to use (or not). 2. Even if a fight is comparably fast, that doesn't mean its not tedious. In OD&D it was not uncommon that the only useful decision in combat for a fighter was picking his target. That could make combat as interesting for someone playing one as watching paint dry. I'd rather have a combat that was three times as long where I had a sense that I had some actual decisions were to be made, and not just iterating against a counter until the target fell down. But of course for people who don't want to do that, that extra time is a distinct deficit. [/QUOTE]

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