I'm looking for ways to speed up the combat in my D&D 3.5 game. It seems that turns - both player and non-player - simply take too long. I have thought about giving everyone a 30 second timer, but I'm afraid that might inhibit their ability to come up with strategy and tactics.
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A few general ideas, we've tried. Structure some encounters such that the end condition of the encounter isn't the death of one side. NPCs can flee or the objective could be something besides killing each other. Rolling attack, damage, and miss chance (if any) can also help a little. Make sure that those who use the special combat maneuvers know the rules for those maneuvers before they try them, so you don't have to stop the game to look them up. Make sure that spellcasters know what the spell they are casting does before they cast it, so they don't have to spend time looking it up. And maybe the encounter just needs to be that long; maybe the encounter just needs to be spiced up so that noone notices that the fight took the whole 4 hour session. |
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Some of these have been mentioned, but here's my list: GM's assistant Make someone else in charging of tracking the initiative order. Each turn, have them call out whose turn it is, but also who's "on deck" so that the next person can get ready. The GM's assistant can also help move monsters, as someone mentioned. Make players roll ahead of time This is key. Don't let the player fumble through looking up a bunch of bonuses on his sheet and adding them together, while everyone stares at him. Have him make all of his attack rolls, and damage rolls, at the same time and preferably have them figured out before his turn. Time limit on turns This goes with #2. The player should already have figured out what to do by the time their turn comes up, and started making rolls. At the start, announce that there'll be a time limit (say, 30 seconds) for players to start taking some action. Tell them it's combat time, they have seconds to decide. Be nice and pause to answer questions if they are unclear about something, but be firm if they are taking too long. Give them a countdown, and skip their turn if you have to. They'll speed up, next time. Battle sheet and initiative order Have the initiatives, HP, and AC of all characters and monsters written down in one clear, concise format. Order them by initiative. If you have an initiative board, that lets you shuffle tokens around when the players roll initiative to order them, that's ideal. A whiteboard also works. I love index cards, since they can keep all character and monster combat stats together, and are very easy to reorder. Use a visual representation Chessex makes great, printed, wet-erase battlemats, and I'm sure you can find others. At the very least, use a visual diagram of some kind, with markers that can easily be moved. This keeps everyone on the same page, and avoids arguments about which character or what terrain feature is where. Obviously, miniatures terrain works, too; decide on a scale, and have tape measures available (welcome to the wargaming room!) Know the rules Be familiar with the system. Use a GM screen with printed charts, if one is available, for reference, or make your own by printing out the charts and fixing them to something that stands up easily. If you don't know, or there's an argument, make an arbitrary ruling, to keep things moving, and look it up after game for future reference. For spellcasters I highly recommend creating a custom spell sheet which has columns for all of a spell's basic stats, a brief description (like the one-line listing at the beginning of the Spells chapter; be sure to include damage dice, etc.), how many preparations of that spell you have per day, and how many scrolls of it you're carrying. |
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I've found that aides can help with that quite a bit. Prepare a cheat sheet or cue cards with some common combat rules written out. But the thing that helps the most is not to bother worrying about the rules exactly. If people want to swing on the chandelier and drop down on an enemy, make them perform a jump check and an attack roll. Sure, there may actually be rules for it, but it's better to keep the pace going. |
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Is the problem that combat takes too long per player, or that they take too long organizing strategies. If the latter requires communication, give them a certain amount of time for communication before an action must take place. If it's that the player is trying to choose between ability x, y, and z, then give them a little more time. There's nothing more frustrating than wading through my abilities trying to figure out which one I was thinking of and having someone be pushy. At the same time, this is one of the major problems with 3.5 in general. |
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Make sure your players know initiative order. When I am running combat I tell them 2-3 ahead, and if there are two PCs next to each other in initiative order I will let them go at the same time, especially if they are working on separate targets. When it's my turn to move all the baddies, I'll enroll a knowledgeable player to help me work through them as fast as I can. |
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Increase the time to a minute or minute 30. I've had DM's do that to our group ... strategy and tactics are all well and good if you have the time, but if you want a realistic combat (or as close as it gets) you don't really have a lot of time to think and plan. If the timer runs out you can always say "so-and-so is stunned into inaction by the rampaging battle around him." and move to the next player. |
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Roll initiative only once at the beginning of the encounter, and ask the players to throw both to-hit and to-damage die at the same time. |
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Don't be afraid to impose a time limit on the players' decisions. Be soft at first, but ramp up enforcement. Your players might chaffe at first, but they will get used to it. A player has plenty of time between turns to come up with an action. The trouble is that most players will get bogged down trying to find the absolute best tactic, which is unneccessary, especially because there usually isn't an absolute best. Remember the words of General Patton: "a good plan violently executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week." In my games, I expect a player to start talking the moment their turn comes up - either to declare an action or to ask a question and then declare an action. They get used to it and everyone appreciates the increased speed. |
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I think 30 seconds is more than fair. If people are paying attention during other folks' turns, it shouldn't take a lot of additional time to pull out an action. And I don't allow a lot of "table talk" and strategizing during combat - you do what you do, and if you want to spend actions discussing at length with your allies that's fine. Rolling to-hit and damage at the same time helps. As does planning out NPC combat actions somewhat ahead of time, and printing out spell effects and whatnot so you're not book-flipping. Also, you can just wing things. It depends where the time is going. Is it really going to people 'deciding what to do?' Or conducting the mechanics of it? Or is it spent looking up stuff? If the latter, I just swag it. Someone starts looking up "does dispel magic affect a supernatural creature ability on Tuesday.." and I just say "It works!" If someone's relying on some complex rules combo then they'll have it ready and looked up ahead of time for me. |
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I have a similar idea to Scott Vercuski, the combat turn is supposed to be 6s long (in DD3.5) so the players shouldn't have too much time to think about what they are going to do as their character also wouldn't have much time. This might end up with your battles getting a bit less planned, a bit more messy, and the players suffering a bit. However, maybe some easier enemies for a while, and when the players get used to some quick thinking in battle, the "heat of the moment" mistakes might add to the realism. |
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I played in a game where we tried something I hadn't heard of before: Monsters did full damage when they hit BUT they only had half of their hit points. This sped combat up quite a bit. |
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This is absolutely a problem with 3.5 in general. I recommend replacing the combat mechanic with a very simple system like Swords & Wizardry or D&D 2e. That is: every attack is just a single d20 roll, add your opponent's armor class and any to-hit bonuses, and if you reach the target number (20) it's a hit; or use THAC0. Any "more fancy" combat maneuvers should be described by the player with you (the ref) improvising the results (e.g. "OK if you want to jump on the monster's back, that's -2 on your attack roll and double damage if you hit"). Another tip: roll initiative for the whole party, not for each player. Players attack in order of Dexterity. |
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Go with your timer idea. The characters don't have lot's of time for tactics during a battle, you might increase the tension and excitement if you put the players under the same stress. |
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Putting a time limit on a turn seems harsh to me. I prefer to rule that if a player doesn't have an action in mind when it comes to their turn, they count as "holding", and we move on to the next player, then back to the first player. If they're still not ready, they hold again, until they act last in the round. If the player still can't decide, then they make a basic attack against the nearest enemy. It's still an incentive to be ready, but doesn't necessarily rush a player into making a bad choice. If anything, it gives them more time to figure out what to do, at the risk of losing an action. Some kind of initiative display really helps too. If everyone can see at a glance when they're due to move, then they tend to plan ahead. We use a wipe-clean initiative tracker, which I think is a D&D4 accessory, and some dry board markers, but we've also had success with simply writing the initiative order on the battlemat. |
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This can work with any system that mechanically supports it, but make sure everyone has the capacity to deal lots of damage, and to hit well. In 3.5 this would mean making sure the enemies have magic weapons, or other damage dealing magic items, but not much in the way of armour or protective items, and that naturally the player characters would get ahold of this. It doesn't require any changes in play style by the players, as all that happens is hit points get chopped down way faster than usual, so a monster that's supposed to last 5 rounds goes down in 2 or 3 instead. In AD&D, this could include save or die poisons that are readily available, particularly the type that take 1 minute to take effect (so you can bring in neutralise poison or slow poison on the PC side). The counterpart to this is make sure there aren't any stat draining effects. Level drain might be a big deal, but if you have an enemy with strength drain it actually drags combat out significantly. Enemies that frustrate the PCs but don't deal much damage also drag combat out significantly. |
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