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I was wondering how long your round takes.
If you are a player, how long does it take you when your turn comes around?
If you are a GM, does your round go longer than the players or less time?
Tiers and classes helpfull.
Also as a player is there anything the GM could do to help you, for instance a GM telling player A your up Player B your next. Do you like index cards with pre rolled initiavies done at the start of the game.
For instance I started using wave initiative, I disliked it when I first really learned about it. If there are 3 different pairs of creatures 2 goblins 2 kobolds and 2 frogs. I find it faster to group them together and have the frogs go on the same initiative. If there are 16 moorlocks I will group them in 4's. If there are 3 rogues I will not put them in wave iniative.
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Over the years I developed or picked up little things to help the round go as quickly as possible, especially since I regularly ran games that had 6-10 PCs and Con games with as many. But some things you can't condense without losing the individual flavors of prticular encounters.
1. Holding premade Index cards in Intiative Order - each card has the basic #s- Name, Initiative, Saves, AC and Attacks
- All my PCs put thier sheets in plastic covers and use wet erase markers to highlight or make combat notes for easy reference- including magical /spell effects
2. Each group of creatures should have seperate initiatives- especially since many have different bonuses.
3. Advise PCs to know what they are doing prior to their turn- Roll to hit and damage at same time.
4. I use the 30 second rule to discourage inaction- if the PC doesn't act and is delayed, he is skipped over.
5. If the group is trustworthy - at the announcement of a new round have everyone make their appropriate rolls and announce their actions as they come up- this gives them time to see if what they want to do works and can relay the results.
6. I also had sheets that had 100 random predetermined roles per dice that I would just check off as my NPCs /Monsters went. That was th quickest, though stales way to reduce time.
7. Pick ONE rule judge- the PC that is most knowledgeable with refernce books handy. When determining a rule, skip over and then return to back
to the Rule Judge.
Hopefully some of these ideas help!
Brian
I definitely do what you are calling wave initiative. Having every single mook get its own initiative count would clutter things too much for my tastes.
The index card initiative thing is something I just saw done for the first time when I played PFS at a con and I am definitely going to start doing that, it ran smooth.
I also like rolling damage dice together with attack roll dice, in big handfuls, color coded dice for different attack types. Some of my players have followed suit and it speeds things up more then you might guess.
Also if you can do it without feeling like too much of a dick, you can just have a players turn get delayed if they don't know what they want to do.
Edit: I posted before I realized this thread was in PFS forum, so I'll mention that I am not a PFS GM but I did play recently for the first time and I noticed PFS GM's are doing things to keep things moving along at a nice pace.
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I use combat manager as a GM to really speed up my end of things. With players, the above advice is really good, and I put off rules issues with
this:
Okay, we'll role a d6 for this round: 1-3 we do it my way, 4-6 your way, and you look it up while you wait for your next turn.
This is quick, and leads to accuracy.
I also recognize that even though I'm GM, I may be wrong about the rule.
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When I GM and players are considering their next move, I use that time to plot the next move of my minions. It changes with every PC action, but I try to be prepared to act as soon as my initiative comes up.
I follow the same thing as a player and often my turns as a player end up be 10-15 seconds even at high levels. I also tend to avoid pet classes and classes that require excessive amounts of dice rolling/adding.
For high-level tables, I often ask the players to pre-roll as much as they can. I also give each player about 10 seconds or so to tell me what they're doing and if they don't say anything I start asking and poking (sometimes literally). If a player being ready to act starts becoming a problem, I will eventually force them to delay in initiative until they're ready to act.
Much of what keeps combat in RPGs exciting is pace.
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If you are a player, how long does it take you when your turn comes around?
Level 5 and under, 10 seconds or less.
Level 9 and under, usually 20 seconds or less.
When it's not my turn, I'm either looking up how a spell works or adding up relevant bonuses for an upcoming roll (or rolls) or gathering the right dice so I can roll attacks and damage all at once. The only thing that really slows me down is tallying totals for dice-intensive rounds ("I swift action combat heal myself for 4d8+8, move action quick channel for 6d6 then standard action channel for another 6d6...")
I die a little bit when its someone's turn and they stand up and survey the board like its the first time they've seen it even though we're 3 or 4 rounds in...
If you are a GM, does your round go longer than the players or less time?
Almost always longer as I either have multiple mooks to move and roll for or a BBEG with special abilities or a spell list I have to peruse. Usually I know what I want do as I'm simply reacting to the players, but the uncertainty of handling an unfamiliar character slows me down.
GM TIP: If you have HeroLabs, simply print up the spellbook for the caster NPCs ahead of time and then you have them right at your fingertips to expedite your decision and resolution.
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Dabbling with LFR actually helped me be more efficient on my turn as a player and as a GM. I find myself sometimes prompting players "Okay, you hit. How much damage? Alright, you still have a move action left. Are you doing anything else? Okay, John is up, with Jane on deck."
Or from the player point of view, "Okay, free action 5ft. step, then standard action for magic missile *roll* 3, 4 damage to that one. I still have a move... I draw a healing potion to drink first thing next turn, or for Jane if she needs it more. I'm done."
My problem with planning my actions in advance is that what I want to do changes with each other character's turn. Sometimes it's actually more productive for me to look something up in a rulebook that may be important, and then ask for a quick recap when my turn comes back around. But I know that irritates the GM, because it irritates me when I'm the GM. :D
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pretty much universally, ~5-10 seconds per creature i'm activating.
If I'm activating mutiple monsters that are the same, attacking the same person I roll all the dice for everything together. keeps time down
I play a lot of summoners (currently playing Summoner in PFS). if I have 2 guys out, assuming they are attacking different creatures, i'll mark them with colors matching the dice i'm going to roll for them.
I usually carry 4-5 sets of dice so my damage rolls clearly relate to their d20 roll.
checking for traps + disable device I roll together, designating color.
if my turn takes 30 seconds+ our party is probably in a lot of trouble and im in the think tank lol.