I am getting ready to start a Legacy of Fire campaign and one of the complains that I have had is that combat is taking too long in Pathfinder. The biggest complain is the amount of time between people's turns. Does anyone have ideas that they have implemented to speed the game up? These can be house rules, short cuts, organizational tools, etc.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
|
There are two main things that slow combat down:
1. Needing to look up rules, and
2. Deciding what to do with your turn.
For #1, learn the rules, and insist that your players do so as well. If a player doesn't know how a given class/feat/whatever works, he can't use it. Period. If there's a point in-game where no one knows the answer to a question, the GM should make a temporary ruling, to be investigated away from the table later on. If people don't like that, they can start learning the rules so the situation comes up less.
For #2, people should be spending the time when it's not their turn deciding what to do when it IS their turn. If someone's turn comes up and they don't know what they want to do, their PC delays. Simple as that.
Can you list your party? That has a huge effect.
One common suggestion is to get a sandclock. 30 seconds worth, maybe a minute tops. If you don't decide what you do before your time is up, you are doing X. Usually delaying.
My party varies for campaign to campaign. This is a general observation of Pathfinder and not a specific group of characters. We all love Pathfinder and feel that it is the best system out there.
Not cracking a rule book during the game was one of the first rules that I was considering. Spells are one of the things that get looked up the most along with the occasional rule.
I am also looking for ideas on how to speed up combat. Part of my plan is better organization for the creatures and their abilities to speed things up on my part.
Ah, I misread that post and thought it said your were in the middle of LoF.
Making sure people know their spells is a great idea. It's a lot easier when the character is a spontaneous caster, because they have only set spells to know.
At high levels my groups make sure that we roll out our dice while waiting for our turns to come along. That way we can have a list of attack rolls and the damage that goes with each roll, and we just ask the GM which ones hit. This speeds things up significantly.
In the games that I run, I use an alternate rule for itteritate attacks to speed things up. At bab +6 you can make two attacks, both at a -2 penalty. This penalty decreases to -1 at bab +11 and 0 at bab +16. The average damage output of the player is the same, and he has half as many dice to roll at high levels.
|
Knowing your abilities and stats is definitely important. Make sure players know what their bonuses total up to for each type of attack BEFORE they attack - waiting for people to do math is really tiresome. Also, make sure that all the stats for spells and summoned monsters are on hand - I created a literal spellbook for my wizard.
Also, if you're playing with new players, or if only a minority care about following the rules to the letter, it's not the end of the world to streamline things. When one of your level 1 friends says "I walk over here, pull out my bow, and shoot him," don't say "sorry, pulling out your bow is a move action until you have a BAB of at least +1"; say "okay, roll a d20." Remember, the goal is to have fun.
The DM can be a huge bottleneck, especially if he's controlling a lot of creatures.
I tend to make a point of having everything I can pre-calculated for myself. My spellcasters (I haven't done a divine caster yet) have their spells known with a mostly complete description of the spell; save, SR, range, damage, etc., so I can avoid hitting the book... and the page number in case I do need it.
Similar things for the DM can help.
What Jiggy said, though. Knowing the rules, and going for quick "for now" rulings rather than pausing to debate or look up the rule are huge. And know what you're going to do. When I'm a player and it's not my turn, I'm watching the situation and re-evaluating what I want to do. So when my turn comes up, if I'm not ready to announce my actions, it's because I've got a question I want the DM to answer about the situation; typically something not exactly covered in the base rules.
I am getting ready to start a Legacy of Fire campaign and one of the complains that I have had is that combat is taking too long in Pathfinder. The biggest complain is the amount of time between people's turns. Does anyone have ideas that they have implemented to speed the game up? These can be house rules, short cuts, organizational tools, etc.
One idea we've used in the past is for the GM to classify foes regarding the number of hits it would take to kill them rather than how many hit points they have - at least generic ones. Goblins are 1-hit to kill, 'tough' goblins are two hits and so on... goes a lot faster than trying to keep track of individual hit points for an entire horde.
Also, rolling a d20 as an attack die, a (different colored) d20 as a crit confirmation AND your damage die all at once. That moves things along.
No amount of houserules will make up for an over-sized party. For me 1 GM and 3-5 players tops is ideal. 7 and 8 player groups are just too cumbersome to deal with and would be better off breakign into two seperate games.
We had a guy who was only a part-time player who we decided rather than play a character instead takes over all the bad guys, freeing the GM up to adjucate. He has a blast and things move along quicker...
Finally, as a sort of theater technique, we stand for combat - there are no chairs around the map table. It creates a sense of immediacy and involvement rather than just sitting around waiting for your turn.
If you do not already have the SORD PF pdf it goes a long way in sorting various combat aspects into a nice tidy package. For the most part the current version should at least cover most of the items in combat excluding some things in newer books.
Make sure player understand there PC.
Know your spells, feat, magic item, skills, class abilities, traits ect.
Understand the type of actions.
Know you BFN...(BIG FAT NUMBER) To damage, to saves to AC.
Know your jargon/ terms.
Pre roll INT for both PC and monsters.
Use turn tracker.
All caster should have spell cards for all there spells.
Use the buff deck to keep track of stuff.
2 minute rule
1 minute to declare your action.
1 minute to resolve your action.
Know your place in the order. When come your turn to come up to bat.
Know what your role is do not try to do someone else role.
Only have your PC roll if it needed. Ie if they are searching for traps do not make them roll for each and every square.
Have maps ready.
Have ready and printed out hand outs.
Have Monster Printed and put in slip sheet so they can write one them with Dry erase.
If you Adavance monster with a template or class level print to with photo of fig.
PC have character sheet in slip sheet so they can write one them with Dry erase.
This is every common in hospital/ nursing home for case files of patients
One person Track EXP
One person Track Treasure/ party funds.
One Person Track INT
Have Party Funds sheet to track party items list to make off charges and money.
Put items on Cards keep them in 9 pock page(baseball card). This make it easy to know who has what to trade items. Back fore between PC.
If rule can not be found in 3 minutes roll dice odd goes for the PC even goes for Bad guys. Ie Flip coin … Look up during your next bath room/ food break.
Main Rule #1 it a game and every one want to have fun.
So do not hog every thing share… Combat time… roll play time… Loot…
Preroll your random encounters.
Preroll your treasure.
Prepull for figs for fights.
Any thing you can get done now is better than doing latter.
Do I do all this no but I do most and I run for table size of 6 to 9 PC .
We get though 5-7 fight per night. With role playtime.
Make sure everyone knows what their abilities do. Also one of my DM's recently implemented the idea of calling out whose on deck when he calls out whose turn it is in order to speed things along. If it really becomes an issue give them 10 seconds to start doing it or they're passing.
That aside, how many people do you have playing and what system are you used to where things go faster? For DnD I've played a lot of 3.5 and 4th and didn't see a huge difference in turn speed among the 3.
For beginning players, things will take a long time; that's part of learning the game. For more experienced players, here are a few guidelines:
1. If you don't immediately declare what you're doing when your turn comes around, you lose your turn.
2. If you try to use a spell or ability and aren't quite sure how it works, or haven't done the math yet (e.g., for Power Attack), the action fails. No pauses to look it up in the book, or try to find it on your laptop, or to add up the numbers. Likewise, if you can't keep track of what bonuses are affecting you, then they stop affecting you. Each player is always responsible for having done all the math for his or her PC, and having looked up all the relevant rules, in advance.
3. Roll all dice simulataneously (or, as someone already mentioned, roll them while the person in front of you is taking their turn). Having several sets of differently-colored dice makes this really easy.
(1) and (2) may seem harsh, but if there's an actual penalty for bad behavior, people are more apt to change it.
Finally -- if your group can handle it, throw away the battlemat. I've found that most combats that don't involve small armies of combatants and/or all kinds of complicated terrain can be adjudicated in your heads. Not moving dolls around the table really speeds things up.
• Use the "minion" rule -- all the nameless, generic mooks have 1 hit point and Evasion. That way they die as soon as someone lands a hit on them. The other benefit of this is the DM can throw a horde of low-level baddies at the party and not have to track hit points for any of them except their leaders.
• Get rid of attacks of opportunity. They almost single-handedly slow down the game by forcing everyone to carefully consider the simplest of motions, measuring every possible action like deciding which piece to move in chess. We got rid of them years ago and never looked back. If you don't want to fully get rid of them, maybe you could keep them for characters "on hold" (which spends their action for that turn).
• Keep the pressure on the players to make decisions quickly. Look at how turns are handled in tournament play, where players have only a few scant seconds to make a decision or be passed over. I'd give players around 20 seconds, no more (don't time it, but just estimate). It will encourage them to do some pre-planning while it's not their turn, rather than texting or stacking d20s, and also simulates the rapid chaos of a battlefield. If a player can't decide on an action in time, they automatically hold action.
Have someone keep track of buffs on a piece of paper, and having a current total bonuses summation as well.
For me it can get tedious trying to remember Bless, Haste, Bard Song, and whatever else might be up.
I disagree with you on attacks of opportunity. If you're playing with people who are familiar with them, then planning for them kinda becomes second nature. The only time I see AoO slow things down is when we have to explain to someone why they are being attacked for moving that way and pointing out how to move without provoking... it usually seems to be the same one or two people who never quite get it >_<
I disagree with you on attacks of opportunity. If you're playing with people who are familiar with them, then planning for them kinda becomes second nature. The only time I see AoO slow things down is when we have to explain to someone why they are being attacked for moving that way and pointing out how to move without provoking... it usually seems to be the same one or two people who never quite get it >_<
I guess it depends on whether one has a mind for tactics. It actually took me many years just to understand the concept of AoO and why all of a sudden someone gets a bunch more attacks just because his opponent has decided to draw a new weapon from his scabbard. I was thinking too literally about it (same thing with hit points).
But it seems every group I've been in, all the players move their piece around, move it back, try out another path, argue over a detail, look something up, move it back again, think about a suggestion by another player about where to position themselves, move the piece to a new spot, realize they can't actually go there, move it back, discover they've been using the wrong starting square the whole time, argue about whether or not that would have changed last round's action, think about an entirely new action, change their mind again, move their piece to a new location, decide it will block their view and move it back, bicker with another player about which monster they should be worrying about, then decide in the end not to move at all because they don't want to be exposed to even one potential attack of opportunity. Rinse, repeat.
>:(
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Just reading what you've had to deal with fills me with rage >:[
I'm... so sorry it happened to you.
Oh, another suggestion for speeding things up: Try running most of the less important encounters without a mat and minis at all. Just use description and cinematic action. This works if the DM can relinquish some control and let players help with the battle descriptions. Area of effect attacks really present the only problem, but just declare who is involved, randomize it, or just be clear about where everyone is relative to the threats. Use generalized terms like "next to," "near," away from," and "far from" and just let everything else be free-form. You'd be surprised how freeing this can be.
Then break out the mat and minis for important/boss battles, or ones where the environment is so particular that it requires careful positioning.
Just reading what you've had to deal with fills me with rage >:[
I'm... so sorry it happened to you.
LOL, yes, this is why combats always seem to take two or more hours, even just to handle the four goblins guarding a door.