| Conshey |
One of my biggest pet peeves during combat is the people who take 5+ minutes figuring out the best tactical choice. Things like this drag the game to a halt and puts other players to sleep!
In the games I run I almost always have a time limit set on how long you can 'think' about what you're going to do during your turn. I find that this speeds things up quite a bit and players tend to pay more attention to what other people are doing so they can react to it when there turn comes around.
Generally if a player fails to declare an action within 30 seconds of the start of there turn, they lose a move action. If they take more than 60 seconds the character spent there turn gawking and it's the next persons turn. The only exception to this is if the player is actively inquiring or quickly double-checking a spells range or something.
I wonder how many other people set turn time limits and how effect they are at speeding up combat?