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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 9171943" data-attributes="member: 996">Though I suppose its inevitable that some spell in some edition has been that baroque, I can't really think of a lot of D&D mechanics that accomplish something simple like just doing damage to one target, slowing the game down that much.  It's more interesting mechanics that do more than just damage.Can't go over everything but, these bits stood out:I see.  A player rolling to hit twice in one round slows things down.  What about a spell that forces saves for half damage from multiple targets? So, make an attack roll on one round, on the next round force multiple saves and make another attack roll - will speed things up?I'm not sure that, if you, say, did both of those, it'd have a big impact on the turn cycle.  Maybe if you had more characters just making an attack per round than you did casters?Different tables can resolve turns much faster or slower than others, and different individuals have vastly different perceptions of time and tolerance for 'delay' (ie, getting the action back to the only turn that matters, theirs.)  Of course, if a game is balanced, players are comparably skilled, and play time is fairly distributed, then, in oder to get back to your turn quickly, you turn will aslo be shorter.  That's the best 'fast combat' can hope to accomplish - cycling very short turns.  Whether you get 12 turns that each resolve in 30 sec or 3 turns of 2 min each out of an hour of play, you're still not taking your turn for 54 min of that hour.(I suppose you'd consider that the 'same DPS' if we're covering once combat in one hour, either way...  But, wouldn't that make the ideal/fastest iteration of D&D 3.x 'rocket tag,' tho?)I've often likened RPGs to entertainment in which the players are both audience and writers.  Ideally a good TTRPG would engage the entire able through each turn - when taking their turns, players would acting as writer/direct/actor, and when not, as audience.  I haven't seen many RPGs come anywhere near that, some good FATE tables seem to do it, D&D is certainly bad at it, but 4e not quite so bad as most other editions, it keeps most characters about comparably engaging to play, and entertaining to watch being played - and it has built in incentives on the purely game side, to pay attention between your turns - even so, I'd hesitate to even rate it 'fair,' for many of the same reasons...One way D&D exacerbates the issue is that, in most editions, anyway, it's only turn-based, player-by-player, in combat.  Out of combat, it's generally unstructured.  (Yes, in 1e, there was the idea of exploration turns and a 'caller.')  And that's another benefit of fast combat, if less of the game is devoted to the turn structure where there's at least a possibility of play time being equitably divided, then that leaves more time for unstructured play, in which a player with the right personality and skill can claim more of said play time.  That might or might not be a problem for everyone else at the table, and facilitating that sort of thing might be reasonable if there were more roles than DM & players, if there were a third, 'main character' role for the exceptional player who entertains the other players with his brilliance, skill, acting, and initiative, while they indulge in the audience aspect, for instance.   Not that I've ever seen an RPG structured that way, but there certainy seem to be players out there aching for it.</blockquote>

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