What can I do as GM to speed up rounds?

[Rectlum]

Ey!
First of all, sorry for my English, not the best one.

Well this is my problem, actually i'm running a campaing (Rise of the Runelords), with 5 players and four kind of players:

- 1 of "da expert", who roleplays his character always, help with rules, but doesn't give tips in the middle of the battle, some times only the 6 seconds free action that he can say.

- 2 "newbies", they try to RP some time forgot about some feat or spells they have, but do their best.

- 1 "turtle", that kind of players who loves feats, spells, an have a good range of possibilities, but is very slow when he has to do a choice and dubts about what to do.

- 1 "chaos", blessed by the Outer Gods, has knowleadge about everything in general but don't remember how truly works, he only has the idea. When he has to play nobody knows what is he going to do, sometimes go to the vanguard with an archer, another times go around the battlefield spending all the combat just moving, forgot about being stealthy in an infiltration...and obviously has de higher PJ/player ratio in the campaing.

Well, after describing my group my problem comes about real time, only "da expert", with a sorcerer level 14 can do a fast turn (2 min), "newbies" more or less (2 min da barbarian, 5 the bard) but when "Turtle" and "Chaos" come into play maybe they are 10 min/ea for the turn. They try to talk Out Of Character with the others, or sometimes just say "I'm going to do this..." and at the end they say "Nope, better this" or they cannot decide wich spell to cast.

I tried to make them say what are they going to do, in general ideas, in only 6 seconds or skip the turn, but that was a catastrophe.

What do you deal to with this? Is normal having rounds of 20-30 minutes? Any GM-tip?

Thanks,

Rectlum

[Dave Justus]

The first question I have is what exactly is the problem?

A turn taking X time isn't a problem in and of itself. If the players lose interest, if you aren't having fun those could be problems, but an arbitrary time isn't a problem.

My advise is, unless people are unhappy, to relax and go with the flow. It isn't a race.

[LordKailas]

It sounds like the two "problem" players are having different issues and so they need to be addressed separately.

The "turtle" player sounds like they suffer from what is sometimes called "analysis paralysis". The only way to combat that is to request that this player decide what they are going to do before it's their turn. They will still probably take longer than other players on their turn but hopefully this will cut down on the time spent deciding what to do.

The "chaos" player sounds like they really crave having a chance to be goofy. The best way to handle this is to have encounters (which may or may not be combat encounters) that will cater to this player. Give them a chance to get into shenanigans with the questionable halfling selling pies. Hopefully, this will help satisfy this players craving. So that during normal combat, they might still do odd things, but they won't feel the need to emphasize the weird thing they are doing quite so much and so their turns should also be shorter.

I agree that turn length is relative to the situation. In high level games a single turn can easily take an hour and no one at the table will even consider it an issue. What's important is that one player isn't taking substantially longer than everyone else at the table.

[Shiroi]

Combat is a hectic thing, if you watch Critical Role you'll see how it -could- be handled by allowing players to take their time making their decisions, but applying light pressure that "the situation is not waiting on you for long, if you don't make a decision the enemy will get a chance to act before you do.".

It's not perfect, and it depends on the mood of the table, but if you look around and see two or three people bored by the decision making time of 'turtle' it may be time to give him a nudge that even a less than perfect decision is better than sitting and doing nothing.

For the chaos player, I agree with Kailas that it's going to probably be a role-play solution, or possibly a gentlemens agreement with the player that he will limit the shenanigans to out of combat. Alternatively, find a way to introduce chaos he can USE. Give him wagons he can push over with a strength check to bull rush and falling damage a target, lit lanterns and bales of hay to save the party a light spell and make hazardous terrain, and piles of goblin poo to fling as a blind and nauseate fort save. You could even look for 3pp or Homebrew a class that gets such things as a class feature, or a feat line that makes those things more common/available/useable to him. "Fortunate Warrior" or something similar, the first few feats/class levels give pools of points each day or combat to use to make a situation appear that he can use (I didn't describe it before, but you spot a chandelier hanging by rope, mark off your chaos point and roll acrobatics), later levels/feats increase how effective they are (you get a +5 to this check and deal 3d6 bonus piercing damage if you succeed by 5 or more).

[Mark Hoover 330]

I haven't gotten my game up past 8th level so I don't know how long 14th level fights are supposed to take. I CAN tell you that my current campaign is at 6th level and is a homebrew - some of the fights can take an hour or more.

My current table is 5 players running well combat-optimized PCs. They are also all experienced players. For this reason I generally set the Average fight against the party at APL +1 with an experience budget of approximately 4000 XP to "buy" my enemies with. I try to avoid fights with only 1 villain so at the least this means 2 CR 5 monsters and a CR 3 minion.

Now think about that for a minute. I as the GM alone have to keep track of the powers and Feats of 3 enemies. To make things interesting for my expert players I have to exploit the best strategies, select the optimum spells or Spell Like Abilities to use, and navigate the combat area in the most efficient way possible for up to 3 separate combatants.

That alone is a time sink.

Then you add in an Investigator with Formulae, poison use and 3 DIFFERENT types of injury-based toxins, a Wondrous Figurine that acts like a mount, and insane Stealth skills; a Druid with a multitude of spells and abilities that make her a jack-of-all-trades; a warpriest with a switch-hitter build and spells/abilities plus magic items that get him around the map easily; a weird Bloodrager/Brawler multiclass PC with a cornucopia of feats and abilities that also make HIM a switch-hitting master; and finally a barbarian that, thankfully, is a one-trick pony of run-up-and-smash.

Needless to say, an hour for an Average fight is a kindness.

Now our game sessions are only 3 hours long each week and my players have complained at how slow their advancement is even though I'm using the Medium track. I don't enjoy taking a long time in fight scenes, especially when some of them are really just random encounters or speed-bumps to delay the party from reaching the boss villain, so I've instituted a couple fight speed enhancers:

1. Player-managed Initiatives: one of my players keeps a white board handy and records everyone's initiatives, then helps me keep the order of who's going when.

2. "On Deck": When one PC is going I turn to the next person in the order and tell them they're "on deck" or that they're going next. That way they have a couple extra minutes to focus up on what they'll do on their turn.

3. Timers: I haven't had to for a while but a few levels ago I used my phone to keep players to between 2-3 minutes per turn. When I'd get to the last 30 seconds I'd remind them that they'd get skipped and move lower in the initiative if they didn't take an action. After enforcing that a couple times folks got better with time management.

Now the downside to keeping a fast pace in combat is that things get missed. The barbarian has forgotten her own Rage bonuses several times; the tactical Investigator PC has often been relegated to shooting an arrow for weak damage; the Bloodrager/Brawler has realized AFTER his turn that had he used a Move action for a DIFFERENT feat it would've had a much better effect against the foe.

So I say, go at your own pace with these suggestions.

[Mike J]

This may not appeal to you or your players, but I allow/encourage my groups to "call timeout" and have a strategy meeting at the start of a combat. This gives them a chance to come up with a plan about how to tackle the combat. I don't put a time limit on this meeting.

Once they return to the game, I use what Mark Hoover 330 recommends, although players who have played with me before don't need timers and stuff, as they know to think on another person's turn and to "move it" when it is their turn.

This won't be helpful at all, but is worth saying - don't play at high levels if you want a faster game. The higher the level, the slower the game. It is just a fact.

[Shiroi]

Also there's rules I recall for rolling all of your attacks at once, it amounted to saying you check your first roll at full BAB, and continue subtracting five from it until it didn't hit anymore. Then you check your sheet and roll all of the damage dice + all the mods is your damage. It's swingy, you can miss all your attacks on a bad roll or hit on all of them with one good roll, but it cuts way back on the time to run a full archers shots. It does mess with crits a bit, reducing you to one critical a round, and multiweapon fighting when you have different hit bonuses can be awkward (you'd basically need to order the hits in such a way that you'd be able to look at your sheet and say "three of my attacks hit, two are left handed my second right misses and the rest miss", by ordering them highest attack bonus to lowest and marking each + to hit with L/R).

If dice rolling is slowing down your turns after the option paralysis wears off, this may help some.

[Soulgear]

We had a similar problem at our gaming table, easily solved by our GM.

He used a sand timer, found in many board games. Once it hit your turn, the timer would be flipped and you had 2-3 minutes to decide your actions. This wasn't the entire time allowed for each turn, but was meant for those who had difficulty deciding what actions to take.

I should also mention that we "imbibe" of the green, leafy herb of excellence, which often contributed to the delayed decision making.

At first, some people struggled with the timer, but no one missed their turn. It really helped to hasten combat rounds.

[SheepishEidolon]

If combat takes long, you can also try to make it more meaningful. Skip random encounters and replace them by story-related encounters. If you worry about not enough XP, just give them double XP - or stronger opponents.

[Shiroi]

SheepishEidolon wrote:

If combat takes long, you can also try to make it more meaningful. Skip random encounters and replace them by story-related encounters. If you worry about not enough XP, just give them double XP - or stronger opponents.

Social encounters actually reward exp.

[Icy Turbo]

As a DM, you've already taken the first step by identifying what kind of players you have and what their weaknesses and strengths are in combat. At least a solution that hasn't been suggested yet is to put a physical display on the back of your DM screen (if you use one) or a stand-up whiteboard that shows turn order for everyone. Sometimes even with a timer you have players get distracted and not always know when their turn is up.

If after all these solutions you are still stuck with long combats, sit down and talk to your players about it. If it's specific players, talk to them separately and look for what can help them make faster combat decisions or ask what troubles they have in combat regarding decisions. If you can accommodate those players then your one step closer to breezing through combat encounters!

[Brother Fen]

Make sure everyone knows their place in initiative. Usually a simple "Joe Joe you're after Jimmy" will suffice.

Remind everyone to be ready for their turn for when it comes to cut down on decision making during their turn. If they still can't decide during their turn, just delay them behind another player and tell them so.

Don't let players get away with too much conversation during initiative. Ask the players waiting their turn to show courtesy to the others by refraining from off topic discussions during combat.

Limit the PCs to the six seconds of speech during the combat round. If they're trying to deliver the Gettysburg address during their round, give them a six second countdown and let them know that their six seconds of free speaking is up for this round.

And most importantly, don't let them act out of turn. Everyone will want to make knowledge checks and perception checks, but they need to use their turn in initiative for those actions.

[blahpers]

Brother Fen knows his stuff.

Encourage players to get some idea of what they're doing before their turn starts. Then, set a time limit on deciding a course of action. If they're midway through figuring out how that action works rather than deciding what to do (e.g., where to target the fireball rather than what spell to cast), when the time limit runs out, let them finish resolving that. Once the time limit is up, if they haven't decided, they take a delay action and can continue figuring it out during the next character's turn. Make sure the time limit is well known and the same for everybody, but be willing to call a time-out if there's a rules question that genuinely can't wait to be settled later. (On that note, settle most rules questions on the spot and worry about whether the ruling was right later.)

Re: talking, note that a character can talk out of turn as well, so long as they aren't still flat-footed and haven't used their entire six seconds of jibber-jabber since their last turn. Also note that some actions, such as casting a spell, might reduce the amount of time available to chat.