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<blockquote data-quote="Jeff Wilder" data-source="post: 1846452" data-attributes="member: 5122">The comments regarding the complexity of stacking ongoing effects have me a little perplexed.In my group, we use a megamat.&nbsp; If someone casts bless, at least one person notes the effects on the margin of the megamat.&nbsp; If someone later casts haste, same thing.&nbsp; If a specific character gets a bull's strength, that character marks the effects on the margin of the megamat.&nbsp; If the party wizard casts slow on my bad guys, I mark the effect on the megamat.This isn't calculus.&nbsp; This is addition, generally speaking of single-digit integers.&nbsp; It shouldn't take someone bright enough to play D&amp;D more than a half of a second to look down, note modifiers, and apply them to his or her character.That said, there is one player in my group who slows things down consistently on her turn, precisely due to stacking effects.&nbsp; But she is both severely math-phobic and lazy.&nbsp; She also has this thing about pretending to be helpless that annoys the hell out of me.My point is: just have a system, even if it's as simple as ours, and the problem goes away.Now there is the problem of players who are very slow to make up their minds, but that's a different issue.&nbsp; There's one player like that in our group, but people tolerate it because his tactical abilities have saved the entire party on more than one occasion.&nbsp; I admit that I tend toward slowness, too, because I tend toward developing very mechanically complex characters.(For example, my last character was a barbarian with Power Attack, Improved Combat Expertise, Improved Trip, Karmic Strike and so on and so on.&nbsp; Calculating the interactions of that many potential bonuses and penalties does get slow, primarily because they can only be worked out in advance to a limited extent.&nbsp; And my current character is a necro-theurge, with all of the spell choices involved.)For groups that have this problem, a strict time-limit should solve it quickly and easily.&nbsp; A 30-second sand timer costs, what, a buck?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jeff Wilder, post: 1846452, member: 5122"] The comments regarding the complexity of stacking ongoing effects have me a little perplexed. In my group, we use a megamat. If someone casts [i]bless[/i], at least one person notes the effects on the margin of the megamat. If someone later casts [i]haste[/i], same thing. If a specific character gets a [i]bull's strength[/i], that character marks the effects on the margin of the megamat. If the party wizard casts [i]slow[/i] on my bad guys, I mark the effect on the megamat. This isn't calculus. This is addition, generally speaking of single-digit integers. It shouldn't take someone bright enough to play D&D more than a half of a second to look down, note modifiers, and apply them to his or her character. That said, there is one player in my group who slows things down consistently on her turn, precisely due to stacking effects. But she is both severely math-phobic [i]and[/i] lazy. She also has this thing about pretending to be helpless that annoys the hell out of me. My point is: just have a system, even if it's as simple as ours, and the problem goes away. Now there is the problem of players who are very slow to make up their minds, but that's a different issue. There's one player like that in our group, but people tolerate it because his tactical abilities have saved the entire party on more than one occasion. I admit that I tend toward slowness, too, because I tend toward developing very mechanically complex characters. (For example, my last character was a barbarian with Power Attack, Improved Combat Expertise, Improved Trip, Karmic Strike and so on and so on. Calculating the interactions of [I]that many[/I] potential bonuses and penalties does get slow, primarily because they can only be worked out in advance to a limited extent. And my current character is a necro-theurge, with all of the spell choices involved.) For groups that have this problem, a strict time-limit should solve it quickly and easily. A 30-second sand timer costs, what, a buck? [/QUOTE]

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