Has any GM tried to simplify his combat encounters?
I never experienced this need as a player since I just had one character to know every rules about, but now that I hosted about 20 games as the GM, I feel like simplifying everything for my hundreds of different characters would help a lot.
I was thinking about making basic templates for the ennemies instead of having to learn all the new feats, spells and items everytime a new monster appears. Keeping their unique traits in notes would be easier than learning the whole creature. I will still take the time to learn how bosses work, but I will not bother with henchmen and random encounters.
Has anyone tried something similar? How did it go?
What is it you are currently doing?
A bestiary stat block (or NPC gallery stat block) is pretty much a 'basic template.'
I certainly don't recommend building a full character sheet and unique characters for 10 different bandits, just use the brigand NPC (or whatever fits your game/challenge rating) for the mooks and maybe make a custom character for the leader if you think you need it.
Building out full unique characters for every hostile NPC works of course, but it takes a ton of time and usually doesn't add much, if anything, to your players experience.
I'm following an adventure path. And yeah, the ennemies pretty much all have very unique characteristics.
What I'm thinking of with the basic template is to forget about the feats, forget about the barely useful spells, forget traits and all the things you have to look up to be sure what bonus they grant.
Simply average hp, ac, atk, dmg, saves, skills. Try to make it minimal and still working. And only keep unique spells or abilities.
The best things I've done to streamline combat are:
-initiative. Start with a blank piece of paper. Point at the player on your left. They tell you what their initiative is. On the left side of the page, write it down, putting fairly high numbers near the top, low numbers near the bottom, etc. Move around the table according.
No more of this "who got higher than a 20? You did? Okay, what did you get? 21, okay..." It's tedious, pointless and kills the tension.
Also, you can keep track of a monster's hp just to the right of their initiative. And when there's another combat, you just repeat slightly to the right of your first entries. I can usually fit 3-5 combats on a page.
-get your players to help. They need to know their stuff. The rules and what they plan to do with said rules. Players who know what their character is going to do BEFORE their turn are worth their weight in gold. Rolling attack and damage dice at the same time helps a lot, too ("I charge and swing my razor-sharp axe! 17, 9 damage if it hits.")
-be upfront with DC's. "The troll shaman's AC is 21," "the Acrobatics check to make progress across the rickety bridge is 15."
There is little to nothing to be gained from keeping this stuff secret, and it skips a whole step of math.
What I'm thinking of with the basic template is to forget about the feats, forget about the barely useful spells, forget traits and all the things you have to look up to be sure what bonus they grant.
Simply average hp, ac, atk, dmg, saves, skills. Try to make it minimal and still working. And only keep unique spells or abilities.
What are you averaging? All different enemies into a single generic enemy? That seems like it would make the game a lot less interesting, and also add an extra 'averaging' step to the preparation.
"You're attacked by an orc shaman, a black dragon, and six orc warriors. Everyone you're fighting has identical stats. Would you wait a few minutes while I add everything up and divide by 8?"The most effective way to simplify running combat encounters for a GM is to run just about any game system other than Pathfinder 1.
I'm using the Combat Manager (Discussion thread here) and I honestly don't know how I would be able to GM without it. A library of not only monsters (with templates addable), including probably all the ones from your AP, but also feats, spells, and rules, with popups on mouseover so you can check what a feat or spell a monster/NPC has does in seconds. I've made characters for my PCs so I can roll stuff like perception without my players noticing. I also use the initiative roller, because while "roll initiative" at the start of combat can be cool, it a) wastes a lot of time, b) distrupts the flow of the game and c) prevents the GM from using initiative for situations that may or may not result in actual fighting (because when they have rolled initiative, the players will presume a combat is absolutely going to happen).
To track initiative for the players, I'm also using little folded pieces of cardboard with the PCs names (and numbers for monsters that the party knows about) on both sides that I put on the top of my laptop and move around so that the one farthest to my right (the players' left) is the the current character and the players can see who's next and so on.
In my experience, the biggest speed bumb in combat is players not knowing what exactly to add to a roll or what exactly a statistic (like AC) is. Followed by players not knowing what their characters can do (how exactly an ability or spell behaves, for instance). For that, I strongly suggest to have the PCs create cheat sheets for their characters, where they can quickly see all the important statistics, including attack rolls and damage rolls under different circumstances. Here are some examples. Calculating the currently valid attack roll(s) every round is probably the biggest time waste during combat. Likewise, have the players use Spell Cards and the likes for spells, active abilities (bardic performances, hexes, etc.), and printouts for complex on-the-fly choices like Summoned Monsters.
OP, are you trying to simplify the GM prep before the session, or GM actions during the session?
I'm with Derklord (except I have my players roll their initiatives. They're all aware that initiative doesn't necessarily mean there will be a fight.)
Combat Manager makes it so that I'm able to GM. I couldn't imagine running a game above level 7 without it.