I'm doing an all day marathon speed run. We have lined up a set of modules and are seeing how much we can get through as fast as we can.
I'm not looking for build advice. What I want is tactics and strategies to increase the real time speed in which we can clear rooms and floors of a dungeon. I want tips to increase my personal play speed, and strategies for making the team as a whole act as quickly as possible.
We are sticking strictly to PFS 1st Edition rules. We will be starting at 1st level. I expect to progress to 10th level or beyond over the course of the day.
Any tips or tricks to increase play speed would be appreciated.
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1. Know your character. If you're stoppong to look up rules you're slowing things down. There will probably be some points where people have to stop and look things up, but knowing your character inside and out will minimize this.
2. Pre-plan your level-ups as much as possible so you can jump from one level to the next with a minimum of downtime. If possible have all your character sheets pre-printed (or loaded or whatever).
3. Have a backup character ready. Follow the same steps for your backup character.
4a. Pre-plan your combat tactics so you know what you're doing ahead of time. If the GM trusts you enough you can even pre-roll your attacks/etc.
4b. If possible talk about combat tactics as a group before game-day so you can plan group tactics. This should help cut down on long decisions as well, and if you vaguely know what you're doing should make your group more efficient - it will make combats shorter and keep your spent resources to a minimum - which cuts down on rest-time as well.
5. Have a coin on you, if people are taking too long to decide on something flip it. If there's more than 2 choices in the mix you may have to improvise some kind of multi-sided coin ;)
6. Use averages for out-of-combat healing. In combat it can sometimes add to the tension if you roll to heal, but outside of combat it just adds time. Rolling 34d8 for the groups healing wands isn't fun, just call it 5.5 per charge and be done with it. If you use 9 charges you heal 49.5hp - the 0.5 is lost so it's 49hp. If you really want to speed things up you can use this in combat as well, but if you're pre-rolling your attacks/etc this should be pre-rolled as well and shouldn't really matter.
Spell: Sift
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Whatever buffs or debuffs you plan to be able to give out, print out or write out cards with the details of those on them so you can pass them to the recipients as necessary. I expect you're all veterans of PF1 and you know this stuff, but it still saves a little brain space to have the card there in front of them.
Reduce the number of options your characters have. Picking the poerfect spell/weapon/manouvre takes time. So instead of a wizard with a toolbox of spells, go for a sorceror with a blast, a buff and a CC.
Reduce the number of powerups / buffs the party has, and eliminate any that have to be decided on a round by round basis, unless you really know the class. "I miss... no, wait, is Bless still running?" slows down fights.
If your arithmetic isn't great, write down your attack bonuses / modifiers on index cards, and select the ones you are using during the other players' turns so they're all in front of you.
Pay attention during other players' turns and decide your tactics based on what they did. That way, when the initiative clocks round to you, you should know where you are moving, what you are hitting or what you are casting and only thing you need to adjust for is the impact of the previous player's action.
If you missed on a 15 last time and you just rolled a 10, you missed again. Don't waste time doing the maths.
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Have initiatives posted for all to see, and someone responsible for announcing who is on deck to go next.
Have all likely buffs and debuffs preloaded into character sheets if you are using something like Hero Lab, so you can avoid mental math and just turn them on and off with a click.
Have a turn clock - if you can’t declare your action within 15 seconds, then you are delaying or passing on your turn.
Have the DM announce ACs and health status for foes, to save time asking and confirming hits/misses. There are a few cases where this will help players choose whether to use a particular bonus or ability, but the increase in speed is worth it.
tell the players when they seem to have gained the maximum or sufficient information in a social encounter, to avoid wasting time as conversations drag out needlessly.
Similarly, have multiple ways for the PCs to learn key bits of plot info, so that progress is not derailed by a single skill failure or missed clue. Even be ready to have an Npc give them what they need, perhaps at a penalty in terms of treasure or other consequences.
Thanks for all the feedback. I think I will pass a bunch of this on to the other players.
I may try to boil this down into a handful of key points to keep in mind during play.
Avoid summons, pets (AC, Familiar, Mount), and anything that requires lots of GM interaction like many divination spells. The more creatures on the table, the slower combat goes.
Combat in general takes a lot of time. So if you can one-shot the bad guys, that speeds up play, but at the cost of glory hogging. It might not go well if you do it a lot.
/cevah
Avoid summons, pets (AC, Familiar, Mount), and anything that requires lots of GM interaction like many divination spells. The more creatures on the table, the slower combat goes.
Combat in general takes a lot of time. So if you can one-shot the bad guys, that speeds up play, but at the cost of glory hogging. It might not go well if you do it a lot.
/cevah
Actually in this vein - Debuffs like Dazed, Nauseated, Staggered and Stunned are great, they take away enemy actions (which speeds things up) without the GM needing to recalculate anything (which would slow things down). Likewise things like Ill Omen or the Misfortune Hex simply require the GM to roll more dice, so again these are powerful debuffs that don't require a spreadsheet to keep track of them.
Shaken, Sickened, Negative levels, Bestow Curse and the Evil Eye hex are all great debuffs, but they require the GM to recalculate everything, so they're more likely to slow the game down. Even if using Hero Lab or a similar program you still have to find and activate the correct conditions, which takes time.
*snrk*
Dazing Spell is PFS legal.