A home brew question.

[DM_Blake]

Why not just turn this rulesy stuff into flavor text. Get a group of friends who trust your GMing and know you're not out to screw them, then tell them in advance "Hey, this game, I'm going to get very fluffy in combat, describing things off the top of my head in ways that I hope are interesting, but won't follow official rules. I'll do it to you and for you so it will be fair and balanced and I hope it will be lots of fun."

Any decent group ought to love playing in a game like that. Unless you've established a reputation for being a harsh GM out to screw over the players, in which case, they probably won't want that extra helping of suffering.

Doing it through story rather than mechanics can save a ton of extra rolling and math and figuring, and keep the battle flowing instead.

[Robert Stone]

I haven't had that problem but our last DM was kind of a DM versus Players type and caused some bad blood. I want to add this but also show that it will be done fairly. Well that is unless I have to nerf a hit from some lucky NPC to keep from killing the party and ruining the adventure. I do my best to tax the party but not to over power them but sometimes the monsters get lucky.

[wraithstrike]

Robert Stone wrote:

And isn't combat now kind of a long process that we have been using for so long it's second nature to many of us?

Roll a die.

Add Strength.

Add magic.

Add base attack.

Add any others.

What's their AC?

Are they flanked?

Are they surprised?

Are they flat footed?

Compare the totals just to see if you hit.

That is a bad comparison because the things we need for that list are precalculated. We don't have to make extra rolls for all of that. What you are doing is stacking extra rolls and calculations onto an already long combat expesically at higher levels.