Just yesterday my group and I were playing 'Keep on the Shadowfell' and just entered the keep. During the five hours of game play, we had three encounters and cleared only a third or so of the first level of the keep. Between roleplaying and combat, we spent most time in combat of course. A few of us were a little sadden about how little we've done. So, now I'm wanting to figure a way to increase the speed of combat.
Most of us probably know about some basic techniques of speeding it up, especially if you read articles from WOTC about this. Some basic ones are:
1)Knowing where you are in the inniative order
2)Thinking while others are acting about what you are going to do.
and etc.
Well, do any of you have even more interesting or creative ways of speeding it up? Do players who get single attacks roll their d20 right before their turn? Are the players already shaking the dice up in their hand before it's their turn? Do DMs try to keep it going fast as if it's a real heated battle? Does anyone of suggestions for simplfying powers on cards?
I've even been thinking about timing the group and coming up with the average per player round. Then set goals on shorting the rounds.
Now I don't want it like speed chess, but half an hour to kill 5 goblins seems like quite a lot of time.
Please share ideas!!!
Will
As a DM I call two or three turns up so that people know they're going to come up soon. Unless something particularly tactical is happening on someones turn, they can usually figure out what they're going to do before hand.
Also as a DM make sure you know what your monsters can do and their stats without having to constantly reference the monster manual. I'll stick the 4 defences for monsters right next to the monsters HP so I can glance down, say yay or nay to the hit, and then jot down the damage if any.
Speeding up the DMs turn is probably the biggest time savor around. You can do this by deligating out certain things to your players. Tell them it's their responsibility to remind you of damaging effects that happen at the start of the enemies turn (Things like flaming sphere and Rain of Steel). Also let your players keep track of the ongoing effects on them. Again you have to use the honor system, but if your player just remembers to take 5 poison damage at the start of his turn and make his save at the end, then you're good to go.
If it's just that players individually take a long time with their turns, then it's a matter of having a talk with them. I play with a fairly large group of 7 people, and the reason it works is everyone has to realize that they need to play their turn fast so that combat doesn't get bogged down.
As a DM, do all actions for each unit in groups. Move the minions en masse, then attack en masse. Give each group of units the 30 second limit but talk the whole time. Describe to the players what each kobold does as you roll it's attack, but don't talk about it anywhere past the die roll. ("The little bugger runs up and swings his pick, does a 34 hit? The pick hits your leg for 209 damage, piercing a major artery. Who's turn is it now?") However long it took you to read that is how long the DM's and eventually the players turns should take.
I hate when my players spend everyone elses time trying to figure out what their encounter power does or what the damage is for this item: Force them to streamline. Impose the 30 second limit. If they go past their time move on (or threaten to move on, but laugh while you do it. Keep the pressure fun, but realize that the pressure will speed things up tremendously)
It's like you're the announcer for a kung fu movie. The DM gives the blow by blow of what the characters involved do, the players give the DM their actions, the DM executes them. Use descriptions as you roll, and it will be much quicker and rewarding.
Or try and create more opposed skill encounters. Tug of war over a pit of death has a certain appeal to it, and all you need is a few athletic checks... Basically if you want fast and dirty encounters: Traps are the way to go. For combat: Epic Pressure with cool cinematics (from you or your players) to keep things flowing...
First move all enemys, move several of them together if possible.
Then roll the attacks.
I note the AC of the players in advance, then quickly role through the enemys. After that it's 2 hits on this player, 1 hit on he one over there..your turn.
On the other hand we tend to slow down again to flavor the action a bit and take some time describing what exactly the goblin did to hit or fail.
Works great with lots of minions.
When it comes to your turn you just do what you think your character would do, roll the dice, add fast and shout out your numbers.
It is really pretty fun this way. The DM does the same and doesn't study the board trying to use every feature against the party. When combat begins everyone just does their thing.
Other than that, my biggest suggestion would be to make sure your players know what they're capable of. When I introduced my group to 4e, only three of them were very excited about it, one of which had never played any version of D&D before. So I essentially had two highly engaged players, one engaged by inexperienced, one moderately engaged, and one who seemed like she was bored all the time. The problem that arose out of that was that half the party didn't get to know intimately what their powers did and in what situations those would be effective. The bored one never even used her encounter or daily powers. While I doubt your group sucks as much as mine did, it's still much more efficient if your players don't even have to look at their power listing because they've already memorized the attack and damage modifiers and the additional effects.
Another way to speed things up is to group enemies all together (this may have been said already). Unless the encounter has a villain, just roll one initiative roll for all the monsters at the second highest value in the group, then order them however you like amongst each other. That makes it much easier for you to call for a round of rolls from everyone. If you like to describe the action, this is a great way to get into it. You call for everyone to make their attacks while you roll for the monsters, then you supply the action narrative for the whole round. I imagine it a bit like the computer games: you pause at the start of a combat, tell all your guys what to do, then sit back and watch the mayhem. If you've never tried that sort of combat DMing, please do and let me know how it goes because I've always wanted to and never had a group that could immerse that well.
Hope that helps
Cheers
Kyle
Most of the standard time-savers during combat have already been stated in one way or another, but in my experience a big time expenditures is in setting up the battles. My group uses a battle mat that we draw the encounters out on with wet-erase markers, so each time there's a battle, several minutes are spent drawing out the scene on the grid. Going over the map so you're familiar with it makes it much easier to draw out quickly, but having some way to predraw them would be even better. I can't afford a bunch of battle mats, but being able to just lay down the right one at the start of the combat would be great.
What I have been trying, is using a transparent battle mat and placing a pre-drawn or pre-printed sheet under it. I haven't actually got organised enough to do more than draw a map when needed and rreusing it later, but it seems to work quite well.