if both teams are fighting to win you'll usually have fast and decisive battles.
The game is rigged so that player's win. You need CR+4 before the player's should have a 50% chance of losing.
Either the enemy's big trick wins or it doesn't.
But when HP is like 100, and damage is like 75 a person and healing is like 25 a spell, it's easy to see why fights don't last long. The way to make a fight longer is keeping the damage from happening, but even then, it's quick once they finally reach their target cause Damage output of team > enemy HP.
The only way to turn a fight is using a high level spell, and waiting till your losing before casting it, which isn't in the enemy's best interest, they'd have used it earlier.
But if you want a multi round fight, you need both teams to have damage output < enemy's HP. So if both sides have high HP and AC, decent accuracy, and low damage, then fights will drag on as it takes at least X rounds to win. This is because X = how long before DPR of party > HP. And with high damage and average HP, X isn't big.
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Do most of your battles come in the form of 'all of our guys vs. all of their guys in a big room'? If so, you need to vary it up a bit. The GM should have enemies attack in waves, and make use of environmental hazards so that combats have variety.
Plus, maybe the enemies aren't all out just to kill you. Perhaps some want to steal your gear, or infect you with a disease, or kidnap one of you. Make it possible to win the battle but still lose the war.
If you want battles to last longer than 5 rounds, than it needs to be more than just standing still trading full attacks until someone falls over. Since most melee type characters are built to do that, something in either the enemies or the environment should sometimes discourage it.
While it's not the greatest idea and should be done with an assistant GM, a party split is another way to drag fights out. If you have a 4 person party, split them down the middle and have them fight their way through the BBEG's lackeys until they can regroup right before the boss fight, they'll presumably have taken more damage, have had less time to heal up and it will cause a boss monster that would go down in two or three rounds to take a lot more time.
I wouldn't do it every time, but that's one way to do it. Another way to do it that was done by a GM was have the party be forced to take two paths, one that leads to the boss who apparently is prepared to fight you and the other path is to chase down the less powerful lieutenant or second the boss has who has been sent to gather reinforcements.Then one party has to fight their way to the boss and later delay the boss monster long enough for the other half of the party to finish the lieutenant and run back to finish the job. Then again I think the only reason that worked well enough was that it was a five person party and the inquisitor and samurai went to tackle the second while the cleric, wizard, and fighter kept the succubus from escaping until after the rest of the party came in.
Our biggest houserule to address this is:
Add your Constitution score to your starting hit points. Temporary changes to your Constitution do not change your hit points beyond the modification already applied for adjusting your Constitution modifier. Permanent changes to Constitution adjust this total. Undead gain bonus hit points at the same values as constructs.
This has the effect of smoothing out combat just ever so slightly. It's a big impact at first, but levels off the higher level you get (while still remaining relevant.) It also has the effect at low levels of allowing the GM to be more lethal with his or her tactics and to play enemies more intelligently, since you're not going to die after taking two hits. On the other hand, enemies being healthier means that they aren't simply getting one-shot either.
I see the main problem in short fights beeing to high dmg output. Low point buy can help with this, but players tend to sacrifice secondary attributes more, which does not remove the issue at hand. The best way is for the players to adress it, themselfs by not focusing their characters purely on dmg. I normaly play support characters, or if i play melee I usualy have a shield equiped, it just drags the fights out and makes for more interesting battles.
I am dm in a Reign of winter campaign and I have to adjust encounters constantly. Normaly I just give Mobs close to max Hp, If there is only one enemy in an encounter I add moocks that distract the party, but if they still focus on the BBEG, we have had some pretty anti climatic boss fights.
Imho the dmg output of 2h is to big and it scales to strong with strenght. I ve been thinking of ways to tone it down, without giving it at to big disadvantage but it s not so easy.
I still think removing the 1.5 dmg is a drastic but simple solution that adresses one of the core issues. 2 weapon fighting will become more dominant but from my experience, the lower to hit chance and fullround limitation keeps the dmg output in check. If choosing this route I would strongly advice, to also reduce multiple natural attack dmg output, which again solves issues with pet classes and some very powerfull builds out there.
An other possible way, which I introduced in my campaign after dropping 3/4 of the party below 0, with just one bloodrager of their lvl. Is that 2h weapons deal a max of w10 dmg, which helped with the vanilla 2h sword wielding, enlarged melee class. I also nerfed powerattack to always only add +2 dmg per -1 to hit. They are small changes that brought the game in the right direction.
Since your supposed to have about 4 combats per day try to increase the number of debuffs your dealing specially early in the day. This forces them to not only spend recources that could be spent on damage increases but also means that alot of the time they will not be operating a full capacity. My current DM treats the entire dungeon as a massive debuff run with a few actually dangerous encounters thrown in the middle and I love it. Non hit point damage adds variety and makes hit point damage enemies more threatening.
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I find the most complex fights come when players assault a dungeon (as opposed to stumbling upon some enemies on the overworld) and the enemies in that dungeon fight intelligently and are organized.
- Reinforcements: Nothing screws up an easy fight against, say, 4 orcs like 4 more orcs showing up. Combat is ridiculously easy to hear, which is the usual excuse for this. Don't be a jerk about this- at least have a general idea how many enemies are in the dungeon, where they are, how long it takes to get to the battle, etc.
- Traps. Nothing like the good ole' enemy retreating to lure the player into a trap. The enemies should know where the traps are, and use them to their advantage.
-Enemies escaping in general. Nothing is scarier than an enemy escaping, because that generally means the next group of enemies will be prepared, possibly fully buffed, and likely they grabbed some other mobs too. Alarm traps are similarly useful.
- Dungeon design that encourages hit and run attacks. Walls that don't go all the way up to the ceiling against flying enemies. Small rat tunnels in the walls for enemies that can change their size (like, uh, wererats).
-Spellcasters. Sadly, every group of enemies you want to be a challenge should probably have at least one spellcaster if it makes sense for them to have spells. Spells like Blur or Mirror Image can do wonders to the survivability of bosses. Cause Fear, Color Spray, etc, they can turn the action economy against the players real quick.
-Environmental hazards, as others have said. Nothing makes combat more suddenly complicated that having to fight a water boss in a room full of water (I use this example because I'm about to have to do this in a game I'm in =X).
Basically, release Tucker's Kobolds upon the party, and giggle maniacally. Treat the entire dungeon as one single battlefield, know where all your enemies are and what they're doing, and command them as a general might against the forces of good. But remember, if the tide starts to turn against the party to the point where they might wipe, one common feature of evil is pride and overconfidence, so feel free to tone things down again if you went too far. Maybe some of the enemies stand back because they think their allies have totally got this and they're lazy. Maybe they get angry and step in that green slime on the floor in their rage (OPPS).