D&D General What wastes time at your table?

[prabe]

I have a dry erase board on the wall behind me with the initiative order clearly on it - so everyone can see when they act in the round. I also use this to track spell durations/concentrations.

I can see how this might solve the problem of people not knowing when it'll be their turn, but there are too many times when I have notes on my initiative sheet for things the party doesn't know about (yet) for me to embrace this approach myself.

 

[el-remmen]

I can see how this might solve the problem of people not knowing when it'll be their turn, but there are too many times when I have notes on my initiative sheet for things the party doesn't know about (yet) for me to embrace this approach myself.

Can you explain in more detail? Not sure what you mean by 'initiative sheet?'

 

[Zio_the_dark]

I can see how this might solve the problem of people not knowing when it'll be their turn, but there are too many times when I have notes on my initiative sheet for things the party doesn't know about (yet) for me to embrace this approach myself.

You can have your own initiative sheet and a player board for that. It takes more time but I prefer to lose time at the start of combat rather than losing time during the battle.

 

[CleverNickName]

I think the battle mat is the biggest time-waster at my table.

Expectation: Ah, I see. This clear representation of the battle scene really helps us imagine the moment.

Reality: Player 1: Ah, so the rogue moves over there then? In that case, I'm not going to cast a fireball spell, instead I'm going to completely change my entire action and move to a completely different area, and cast a different spell.
Player 2: Oh, so if the rogue is going to move over there, and since the mage isn't going to cast fireball? Well. Hmm, let me see...no, my first idea won't work, so instead I'm going to step over here, one, two, three, four, five...wait no, three, four FIVE six squares, and then I'm going to attack that orc.
Player 3: Well if the mage isn't going to cast fireball and if the fighter isn't going to be adjacent anymore...hmm. No, let me re-think my entire round.
Player 4: Me too, the battlefield is completely different, I need 15 minutes to recalculate The Best Tactic^TM. Where did the rogue move to?

 

[not-so-newguy]

Holy Jebus Christmas it's this...

 

[Thunder Brother]

The solution to both issues was to use group initiative, which has all the PCs go on the same turn, in whatever order the players are ready to tell me what they want to do. Not only are all players do their thinking time simultaneously, they also don't get surprised that it's their turn which cuts each player's thinking time down even more.

I've been using group initiative for my current campaign as well. We're only four sessions in but so far the results have been good. Makes bookkeeping an absolute breeze.

 

[iserith]

When it comes to playing with my regular johns, I have to say there really is no wasted time. We've sort of all figured out how to avoid those sorts of issues.

With a pick-up group, the time wasters are typically going to be a lot of questions that players have instead of just saying what they want to do. A lot of them have been trained to ask 20 Questions before they commit to an action because it's safer (since a question can't have a consequence). I try to break them of this pretty quickly.

 

[R_J_K75]

I have a player currently who is playing a kleptomaniac...err rouge. Its getting to the point of being annoying as its a waste of time and they're even trying to hide treasure from the rest of the party. As this person is took the arcane trickster archetype I'm really considering cutting off his hands if he gets caught forcing them to rely solely on mage hand. Theyre constantly over analyzing every situation and then trying to do things in combat on other peoples turn. These things only eat up a little time at once but oiver the course of the session it adds up and is just unfair to all the other players.

 

[Thunder Brother]

When it comes to playing with my regular johns, I have to say there really is no wasted time. We've sort of all figured out how to avoid those sorts of issues.

With a pick-up group, the time wasters are typically going to be a lot of questions that players have instead of just saying what they want to do. A lot of them have been trained to ask 20 Questions before they commit to an action because it's safer (since a question can't have a consequence). I try to break them of this pretty quickly.

I wish I had a spray bottle so I could train my player to stop saying "can I search the room?", "can I talk to the blacksmith?", etc.

Alas, we play online.

 

[iserith]

I wish I had a spray bottle so I could train my player to stop saying "can I search the room?", "can I talk to the blacksmith?", etc.

Alas, we play online.

I just do the Dad thing and say "I don't know, CAN YOU?"