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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6744232" data-attributes="member: 6787650">I've experimented with alternate rules systems for truly mass combats, but for PC-sized combats on the order of 30 or 40 combatants at a time, here are the lessons I've learned. They're surprisingly simple.1.) Make sure you know all of the monster stats by heart. Flipping back and forth through the MM sucks the life out of you.2.) Buy lots of dice. Rolling twenty attacks at once is trivial if you have twenty d20s; but rolling five d20s four times and adding up the number of hits takes quite a bit longer for some reason. It's the same reason why rolling Fireball damage on a single d6, eight times, is slower than having a full 8d6. Mathematically they're equivalent but ergonomically more dice is faster.3.) For Speed Factor initiative: write down action declarations and resolutions. I don't know if this would be as important in the default, cyclic initiative that 5E comes with in the PHB, but for Speed Factor variants it's pretty vital for me to have a little table with a row per level so I always know who has and hasn't declared their action yet, at a glance without having to ask, and so I also know who has and hasn't resolved yet. (E.g. for an attack, I write down a "-" or a checkmark and the amount of damage.)It also comes in handy when players want to respond to unexpected changes in circumstance. When the mind flayer de-cloaks right in the middle of the PCs and Mind Blasts them, and the barbarian says, "I grab [the wizard] and drag him out of the line of fire," it helps that instead of just saying, "You had your turn already," I can say, "No, you're busy right now firing the catapult."Oh, and this is doubly important when the DM is running multiple creatures on both sides of the battle, like your case where friendly NPCs are helping the PCs. I actually prefer to offload those NPCs to the players to run for the battle, or if not to keep the NPC actions simple and fairly uncreative, so the spotlight stays on the PCs.4.) Practice. Run practice combats in advance against test parties (not clones of the PCs, that would be unfair--the monsters should not be optimized specifically for beating your PCs) to determine tactics, memorize monster stats, learn the terrain, get better at managing creatures on both sides of the battle, etc.</blockquote>

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