How long do combats take ?

[Grifthin]

We play dnd 3.5 - last night I pitted the party against some HUGE scorpions and then a another band of bounty hunters. I learned two things - Back to back encounters are a pain in the arse, and too much combat is boring because players lose interest after a coupla hours.

Combat was 3 hours long. People where getting distracted and fidgting or wanting to talk about other stuff. This is my first time being a dm (3d session now) - And I'd like to know - How long does a encounter with about a dozen people last for you on average ?

Ways to speed up combat.
Thanks in advance.

[Gamerlord]

Don't have massive encounters, that or make it interesting.

[Tyndmyr]

Well, it depends on the combat. I've done marathon multihour combats from hell, but those are rare.

Generally, I aim for about thirty minute encounters for typical fights. My group just got two newbies, though, so Im probably going to break this horribly. Experienced players speed up fights a *lot*.

Boss fights, or fights with a gimmick, or army scaled battles, tend to take significantly longer.

Basically, don't sink all your time on random encounters and such, space out encounters so people don't get stuck in a rut, and try not to make any one night completely encounter, or completely encounter free. Variety is good. You can break any rule once or twice for special events, but if you do, watch player interest levels, and make sure you have something unusual in very long encounters to re-grab attention.

[Ozreth]

you are playing with 12 people?

[Tyndmyr]

Woah, yeah, I missed that.

A dozen people slows down combat quite a bit. Consider forming different groups out of them, and having them work together, but give each a seperate init. Dungeons that say, have to be cleared down both directions at once for some various reason...it's actually easier/faster to run two separate 6player combats than one 12 player one.

Still, though, it's a lot of DM work. If possible, recruit an assistant.

[jmbrown]

Long fights are boring when they're a cake walk or have little interesting features. Now, a tough encounter can be both long and grip a character on the edge of their seat. Fighting that glabrezu in the Shackled City adventure path took almost 6 hours but it was such a brutal and close victory that everyone was gripping the edges of their seats.

A really boring fight I remember took about 5 hours against a horde of gibberlings. I was playing under a lesser experienced DM and instead of having the gibberling horde (like 100 of the guys) climb up the walls and tear the structure around us, he made them sit at the bottom of a stone structure while we picked them off with arrows *yawn*

[Thurbane]

I play in two D&D groups:

1.) DM + 5 players, level 11-12 characters. We're lucky if we get through more than one combat per gaming session (sessions tend to be 3-4 hours).

2.) DM + 2 players, level 3 characters. An average combat takes about 5-10 minutes!

The main variables seem to be number of players, and party level. High level combats tend to take a LOT longer.

[Xefas]

A single encounter for my group (with 3-5 players - it changes) generally takes a few hours, depending on the nature of the encounter. One thing I've learned though, is that if victory is a sure thing to begin with or if at some point in a combat it becomes so, and all that's left is to 'mop up' the remaining enemies, then just skip it.

For instance, if your party of five level 5 PCs runs into a group of twenty 2HD zombies, then there's not much reason to have the fight. It's going to take forever, there's very little chance the party is going to have any trouble at all, and if they're smart they won't even take damage (or minimal damage).

If your party of five level 5 PCs runs into a group of twenty 2HD zombies that are being made a genuine threat by the fact that they're being lead by a level 5 Necromancer, then as soon as they focus fire the Necromancer down, the remaining zombies are just blobs of HP milling around, waiting to die. Skip that part, and don't waste your time.

[Grifthin]

yeah Pretty much new to the whole dm thing, I used to just play - but most combats we fought dissolved into fighter walking forward. Get hit, hit back. Cleric heal, Wizard makes things go boom.

Pretty much every combat, and as we go up levels enemies just hit harder and had more HP. I've tried to shake things up with trips, grapples, disarms, flying enemies, burrowing enemies etc so far 1 awesome session, 1 ok session, tonite's Epic failure (in my eyes cause players didn't stay interested). I wanted lots of Dialogue and role playing too - but tonites abortion prevented that. so - 6 party members vs 6 enemies. Hour tops ?

[RagnaroksChosen]

We play dnd 3.5 - last night I pitted the party against some HUGE scorpions and then a another band of bounty hunters. I learned two things - Back to back encounters are a pain in the arse, and too much combat is boring because players lose interest after a coupla hours.

Combat was 3 hours long. People where getting distracted and fidgting or wanting to talk about other stuff. This is my first time being a dm (3d session now) - And I'd like to know - How long does a encounter with about a dozen people last for you on average ?

Ways to speed up combat.
Thanks in advance.


Um well first i've never had 12 players..
Most was 7 and with varying game knowledge.
the newer your players the longer combat is.
The more battle hardened the faster..
Or so I have noticed.

but 12 people damn...

If your having trouble with people taking to long combat going to slow. Implement the 5 second rule. When we do that combat goes fast.

Basicaly each player gets 5 secounds to tell you what there character is going to do, if they don't say any thing within 5 secounds there characters take a defensive posture and are "thinking" and they waste there turn. by round 2 most players will have what they want to do figured out by there turn... also i would tell spell casters to look up spells they want to cast and have them ready or they don't cast it till the round after...
(i ususaly give em about 30-40 secounds to say what the spell effects are)

I don't seem to have a problem now. though ocasionaly when some one is playing a caster for the first time i have to hold up my hand and start the count down and they ususaly spit off what they want to do pritty quick...

just don't be a total ****.

[AslanCross]

Our combats usually take 1.5 hours if they're regular mook encounters. The longest fight we've had was the Skull Gorge Bridge encounter of Red Hand of Doom, which was the climactic encounter of that chapter. They were interested for all the 4 hours it took since they really wanted to see that boss dead. :D

I only let fights drag on for that long if they're totally relevant to the adventure. I've done back-to-back encounters (Red Hand of Doom is known for this); they can be exciting, but you have to make sure that they aren't (or don't feel like) a string of pointless random encounters.

The current (unfinished) encounter we're paused at involves goblins, worgs, and barghests chasing refugees through the night. The PCs have finished off the first wave but ended up running into a seriously dangerous ambush with an advanced greater barghest and several hobgoblin knights mounted on tigers. The PCs know they have to save the villagers and keep them from being slaughtered, so they're always on their toes.

[Hazkali]

If you have that number, certainly split your group in two or three. It'll give a much better experience for everyone, even if each player only plays every other session that you run. If you absolutely have to have 12 players, consider getting an assistant DM.

First speed-up of combat is increase the number of books you have. One PHB for two players is a good ratio, certainly there should be one for the DM and one for the current player, with another for players to check when it's not their turn.

You could use a stopwatch on combats- players have exactly 90 to 120 seconds to resolve their turn, and any actions they fail to complete in this time are wasted. If you have 11 other players, they'll have 16.5 minutes to plan their turn, get books ready, work out modifiers.

In general, interesting encounters need a mix of monsters, some environmental effects, and maybe a trap or two. Certainly, a boring encounter will just be a bajillion-hit-point monster in a featureless 30' by 30' room. They take forever to kill, but aren't interesting from any tactical point of view. Definitely add in interesting geometry to your rooms.

Especially at higher levels, don't underestimate the fun of adding in some trivial monsters that the PCs can utterly hand their buttocks on a plate to, especially if they were once thorns in the PCs' sides.

Good description is important, but is easily forgotten unless you're constantly weaving it in. If the building is on fire and players are taking damage every round, they're not going to forget it!

[erikun]

Erm, I had one combat that took 5 months or so. That was an unusual one, though.

Probably the easiest way to speed things up is to simplify player choices. Throwing a bunch of straightfoward mooks at the party is easier to combat than a bunch of skirmishing archers. Work with the spellcasters/ToBattlers so they have a better idea of what to throw out when. Avoid using monsters that are annoying difficult to kill, such as high unpassable DR or multiple immunities.

Look around and see what is slowing down combat, and think of what can be done to speed things up. Is one person having trouble deciding their actions? (note cards can help) Is the DM taking forever rolling for NPCs? (preroll sheets) Is everyone getting confused with initiative order? (dry erase boards)

With such a large group, you're probably better using less encounters, and making the ones you do use more epic, multiwave fights.

[Berserk Monk]

We play dnd 3.5 - last night I pitted the party against some HUGE scorpions and then a another band of bounty hunters. I learned two things - Back to back encounters are a pain in the arse, and too much combat is boring because players lose interest after a coupla hours.

Combat was 3 hours long. People where getting distracted and fidgting or wanting to talk about other stuff. This is my first time being a dm (3d session now) - And I'd like to know - How long does a encounter with about a dozen people last for you on average ?

Ways to speed up combat.
Thanks in advance.

A dozen people? Like a dozen PCs and a DM? No wonder combat took so long. Most gaming groups only have 4-6 PCs.

[ken-do-nim]

In my opinion, 3.5 is the wrong system for role-playing with 12 people. You need rules-lite.

Anyways, even with few characters high-level 3.5 combat will take a while, but as long as it is fun, who cares? My 17th level sorcerer has what I call "the factory", and when it gets going my turns take forever. First I've got the spell I'm casting that round, and then through imbue familiar with spell ability my familiar has a spell too. Then I've got 4 or 5 summoned monsters to move around. Then I might have a couple Mordenkainen's Swords floating around (house-ruled to work like Spiritual Hammer so move action to switch + iterative attacks). Next level I'm taking that 9th level spell that creates a sphere of destruction to give me another spell to move around. So that's all the actions of one character.

[valadil]

12 is too many. I played in a 14 person game once. Even when we all played quickly, it averaged 30 minutes between combat turns. When we weren't quick it was worse.

Cut your group down to 4-6. If necessary split and run for two groups. That will help a lot.

When I run combats, I try to make the combat take 60-90 minutes. That's roughly a third of the session. If I have multiple combats I try to sandwich a bit of roleplay in between them.

[Defiant]

Sweet gods, 12 players is a nightmare! I once had a group with 8 people and that easily broke down. I stick to groups of 4-5, wary of doing 6.

[Claudius Maximus]

Seriously people. He has 6 players, not 12.

I have had some very long encounters. An encounter should last as long as the players maintain interest. None of my marathons ever seemed to bore my players, but if they really seemed disinterested, I would probably find some reason to cut it short and consider what I did wrong. The game is about having fun, after all.

[Karoht]

If you find yourself rule checking specific spells, animal descriptions, etc, I recommend recording book abreviations and page numbers. Players should do this for things like their spells, their animal companions, certain pieces of gearmo, druid shapechanges (common ones) and summon nature's ally junk (again, common ones) and the like.

4 years ago I was in a play group with a guy who shows up to every epic campaign, and his characters are never finished. He's still sitting there, working out his army of cohorts and minions and equipment. His characters will typically span no less than 8 books, between cohort templates, feats for everyone, spells, equipment, pets and familiars and prestige classes and... yeah.

To make things faster, have references at the ready, you can pre-roll some of the bad guys saves and skill checks prior to combat and such, maybe even a few attack rolls even. Also, I find if it's an army of mooks, I'm not too sticky on their hit points. Sometimes for sake of speed, the attacking player got lucky and hit the mook with lower con, so he one shot that one so he gets a cleave on another. It depends on how far the combat has gone. If the players are very clearly winning, the bad guys either crank it to 11 or pull something out of their asses to change the tide, or buy them time to run, or we just mulligan some of the players rolls. Call it an anti-morale bonus if you must.

2 Things that speeds up combat the fastest I found. One, be prepared to house rule just to keep pace moving along. And 2, at the start of the round, have the players declare what they are probably going to do, then go down initiative order. If one says that he/she are going to cast a spell, get her/him looking up the spell. If one says that she/he is going to use a feat, get them looking it up. Upside, you get a preview of what they are going to do, giving you time to think as well. Just don't metagame it or your party will hate you hard.

[Eldariel]

As long as I'm playing with players who are intimately familiar with their characters (in other words, have been playing them for a long while and know why they chose what they chose for them), and have a solid grasp of the game system (in other words, veterans), I can get a level 20 combat concluded (that is, most likely one party falls behinds and escapes) in 10 mins.

That's usually about 1-3 rounds of real time in-game (Time Stops, Celerities and crap flying around that's much more than that though), involving about ~4-30 action effects and a lot of random crap. What usually allows me to save time is that all players are forced to preplan their turns and excessive thinking (over 10 seconds, though I can be a bit more lenient with high Int characters) means you delay initiative until you are ready to act.


We don't look at rule books for unclarities in-play; DM rules as he rules, if a player feels the DM ruled wrong, the player brings it up and the DM decides whether he goes by how he, or the player, remembers the rules (most likely by common sense). Sometimes that leads to wrong HPs on creatures, wrong spell shapes and so on, but c'est la vie. Won't make the same mistake next time. I dread the next campaign I'm DMing though; there are two complete newbies involved so I think I'll have to prepare for half-an-hour long combats.

[shadow_archmagi]

i had one group that would spend eight hours on a session and spend six of it getting through two combats.

Level 4, with like 6 players.

Of course, we were practically Darths and Droids bad at things like cooperation.

*fifteen minutes later*
Josh: So, that vote settles it. We're going to set John on fire and throw him.
Ben: But what if they have spears? We could grab the spears and throw them instead.
Gilbert: I *still* think that freezing it would work.
*fifteen minutes later*
Peter: So, that vote settles it. We freeze Spencer and throw him into the fire.
Spencer: What does that achieve?
Ben: Nothing.

[letters]

wow i'm really surprised by how long all of your combat encounters are taking. a long one for my party of 4-5 lvl 12 pc's takes half an hour at the most.

try giving each type of monster its own initiative, like if you have 4 gargoyles, 2 minotaurs, and a mummy, the gargoyles will all go on the gargoyle's turn, the minotaurs will all go on the minotaur's turn, and the mummy will go on it's turn.

with 12 party members you might even want to do this with each four party members and have three groups of four.

[Grifthin]

I'll definately try out some of the suggestions you guys have made.

[letters]

and hang in there, it'll just get better. it took me a while to transition from being a player to a dm and now i usually having more fun dming :smallbiggrin:

[BobVosh]

Longest combat bar none that I had was about 7 hours. Level 24 party, 15 players, vs a really, really blinged out firedrake type(it won).

Anyway normal combats take about 20-45 minutes for our group. We have been together for about 1.5 years as this exact group makeup. So we generally know the rules, the houserules, and we know how each other plays.

As a DM I generally don't have to worry. There is only one player that is an issue, so it won't really help. Just make sure the melee types have worksheets for their standard attacks, and even ask them to roll ahead to have all the numbers ready if you can.

If it is casters, well, that is a standard problem. Especially summoners. Make sure they have all the stats done before summoning.

*edit* My current group is 6 people and a DM.

[dsmiles]

A dozen people? You mean a dozen players? Whoa! I don't think I'd ever play in a group that big, especially not DM for one. IMHO, 5 players is optimal for a group that's not so small that they can't handle an equal level encounter, and not so big that a single combat takes several hours. With 5 players, a combat generally takes around 30 minutes, real time.

[Karoht]

See, my normal problem is, my party is very efficient (and are very lucky in rolling crits) and tends to do the opposite. They fly through bosses and end encounters quickly.

So what I do is, if they're still at 75% of their health or better, and are about to kill the boss, I give the boss another bunch of HP. Usually in increments of 100 or multiples thereof. Makes them feel like they really REALLY beat the snot out of the boss. And it still keeps things flowing just long enough that the fight doesn't go too long, but doesn't feel too short.

If I want a fight to end quicker, I will mulligan an attack roll or two, or a save, always to the enemy detriment, never to save a party from iminent danger. Or I start encouraging the use of an appropriate skill check that might encourage a particularly intelligent course of action, which might shorten the fight somewhat.

IE-The mage has been tossing fireballs the entire fight. You couldn't tell by looking at it, but the thing they've been fighting is made of metal, which is conductive. And there happens to be what look like electrodes all around the evil badguy's abandoned laboratory. One good spot check later to notice, give the player the notion to 'put it all together' and the mage hits one of the electrodes with lightning bolt. The electrodes act in unison, increasing the damage signifigantly, zapping the boss quite harshly, and any mooks near the boss (and players in range wearing metal armor or wielding metal weapons) are hit by the electricity. Effectively it turns the lightning bolt spell into a chain lightning, cast on the construct, and the construct auto-fails any saves to negate. The kind of thing that turns the tide of the fight, but not something they would want to do again. Adds a bit of fluff or color to the fight.

Again, just make sure that it can only be done once, and perhaps carries a negative. IE-Yes, the construct is damaged, but now any attacks made against it by metal weapons cause electrical damage to the attacker. Or anyone in melee range takes electrical damage, every time the construct is struck, as electrical sparks fly off and arc about.

[IonDragon]

I've got one more suggestion to speed up combat:
XP penalties for talking out of turn. The biggest slowdown in my group seems to be other people piping up to tell the person who's turn it is what they think they should do. I therefore implemented the rule "If your talking when it is not your turn in combat, take -50xp X CL" and require every player to bring some method of communicating without talking. Notebook and pens, computer and IRC/AIM, I really don't care how they do it as long as the person who's turn it is is the only one talking.

Some exceptions apply like if I messed up a ruling or something I'm not going to dock XP for correcting me, something is on fire, etc.

[oxybe]

between 30 minutes to an hour, depending on party composition, monsters and terrain.

we normally have 5-6 players + 1GM in our games.

a few things that could help speed up the game:

research things on other player's turns
few things slow the game down more then a wizard debating between 3 spells between 2 books... on his turn. if you're paying attention to the combat, on a round-by-round basis, you should have an idea on what you're going to do already. slowly adjudicate your next action as the turn sequence approaches you.

get your dice ready to throw before hand
my warlock throws 10d6+2d6 hellfire eldrich blasts. i've got 10 white six siders and 2 red ones in front of me at all times. less time spent fetching dice is less time wasted.

throw damage + hit/SR at the same time
roll, confirm, roll, announce is a bit slower then roll, confirm, announce. to keep my warlock as the example, i among those 12 6-siders is a d20. i already know my attack bonus is +18 VS touch AC, so by the time the GM has confirmed if i've hit or missed, i've got my dice grouped up and ready to announce my damage. it doesn't seem like much but it's a practice a few other players have picked up and it speeds up in the long run.

same with the SR if your ability requires it. roll for effect+sr at the same time.

don't clutter the table
keep the general play area clean. while i normally eat delicious thai food takeout, i try to keep my mess at a minimum. less clutter at the table means less confusion as to whether this d6 or that d6 is the monster. same with chips, peanuts, and other munchies. use a pass-the-bowl method, not the "in the middle of the table free-for-all".

turn off other distractions
when the game starts, unless it's game related, keep ipods, gameboys, tv, laptops, ect... turned off. the players have enough stuff to occupy them on the table, Guitar Hero shouldn't come into the equation.

[Karoht]

use a pass-the-bowl method, not the "in the middle of the table free-for-all".


Oh my gawd, your players have table manners? *applause*

Also, a note. Really smart combat ideas, speed up the combat and make it more decisive. -50 xp * CL is a good penalty, but +100 xp * CL for really clever ideas gets players thinking quick on their feet. Fast thinkers are fast acting, and speeds things up.

Rotation
If someone is going to go to the trouble of getting Whirlwind every turn, I say use it. If you have some godly feat combo, use it frequently. Keep it easy on the DM, use it when you get the chance.

Monkeys...
I always say, your spells, feats, manouvers, whatever, are all there to create opportunities for your strengths to be applied to their maximum effect while reducing your weaknesses (or enemy opportunities) to a minimum effect or chance. As a player, I try to work on the first part and not fuss too much about the second. I find the talky, argue starting, time wasting players are the ones who constantly make sure that they are doing both, to the point where they will sometimes refuse to act until someone can point out an action which will satisfy both requirements. In other words, they want crazy damage, and be able to inflict it with impunity. Teach these people to use their strenghts correctly (IE-choose the right target to fireball) and they won't have to worry nearly as much about taking a hit.

[drengnikrafe]

One of the longer combats I was part of took at least... I dunno... 4 hours. It was us (6) versus 128 enemies. It ended with a bunch of big explosions from the wizard (Yay blaster mages).

Another one of the longer combats was 10 people (6 of which had no idea what they were doing) versus 30 misc vermin. Word to the wise... never take on more than 1 or 2 newbies at once. Please.

Shortest combat ever was probably 3 medium scorpians versus a party of 3. It only took 6 or so minutes.

[Frosty]

I have 4 players. some have cohorts so it's usually 5 to 6 characters on the PC's side against usually 3 really tough things on the monster side. Combats tend to average 2 and a half hours. We're also high level.

I only do like 2 combats per adventure though since the DIFFICULTY of said encounters make them run out of resources.

[Thespianus]

After having read this thread, I have to ask: What do you people do at the table?

What is taking so long?

In my group, we go through 4-6 encounters/session and we play for 3-5 hours/ session, and the fights are usually over after something like 2-6 rounds. I believe it takes us about 10-20 minutes to go through combat, and we're 4 PCs.

We do:
1) DM announces that something happens (with a short description of what)
2) Roll initiative
3) Each character in turn moves/chops/casts. (20 seconds-1 minute each)
4) DM moves all his goons in the same inbitiative slot.
5) Repeat from 2) until all are dead (yes, I know, we roll initiative per round, it's unorthodox but fun)

What takes up these hours that you people talk about? I'm very interested. Do you spend a lot of rounds going after the enemy? Or do you just go round the table real slow each round? :)

[Korivan]

Random Encounters, I try to get them to be less then 5-10 minutes, or in game time 3-10 rounds.

Massive battles, I like to break them up into sections. Each part lasting about the same as Random Encounters, with story plot on how the party's actions are affecting the main battle inbetween fights.

End Bosses, These can last alot longer, and in many cases, its better if they do. Though if these do last awhile, I fudge dice rolles and make sure that the BBEG or its minions keep the PC's on thier toes. After all, you dragged the PC's through mud and the 9 Hell's. All the stuff before this fight was just to prep them. Like scared collage freshmen who recieved a pamphlet about tick-tacks and are expected to take a 600 question exam about the human anotamy complete with ALL the lingo, correct spelling and all baby:smallbiggrin:

Though, if they do manage to 1-shot the BBEG, or take down a Random Encounter in 1-2 rounds, awsome, give credit where credit is due.

[Jastermereel]

I agree with those suggesting you cut down the number of players. 12 is waaay too big for anything faster than a few hours.

The group I was in had slowly grown over a few years until it was the DM and 10 PCs. Combat generally took far too long and got to be dull very quickly. Even if players have a general sense of what they're going to do, if they have to wait through 10 other people to take their turn they will lose interest and will need to re-familiarize themselves with the way the battle looks when their turn comes up, which in turn makes it all take longer. There were battles it got so bad that half the table would play a few rounds of poker while waiting to hit the dragon again.

Since then we split that group into two smaller groups so it's now one DM with 4 PCs and 1 DM with 5 PCs. We still all play in the same room, but just at opposite ends of it and it works much much better. Not only do players get to take their turn more than twice as often (One fifth of the time v. One eleventh of the time) but they stay interested and involved in what's going on even when they can't directly affect anything.

If you cut your group in half, you'd have a DM with 5 and a DM with 6 which would be far more manageable.


Also, how are your players with the rules? In group, there were people who knew the rules forward and back and could cite page numbers from the PHB.........and there were those who couldn't figure out the difference between "to hit" and "damage" bonuses which really slowed things down. Even if your players fall somewhere in between, consider two things:

A. Find a rules and reference cheat sheet that you can pass around. There's a few out on the net and even if they reach 6-10 pages, it's much faster than waiting for your turn to thumb through a single copy of the Player's Handbook to check how to grapple.

B. Sit your most knowledgeable players next to your least knowledgeable players so that they can help them prepare their turn.

[JaykoMekthal]

One of the longer combats I was part of took at least... I dunno... 4 hours. It was us (6) versus 128 enemies. It ended with a bunch of big explosions from the wizard (Yay blaster mages).

Another one of the longer combats was 10 people (6 of which had no idea what they were doing) versus 30 misc vermin. Word to the wise... never take on more than 1 or 2 newbies at once. Please.

Shortest combat ever was probably 3 medium scorpians versus a party of 3. It only took 6 or so minutes.

I was CO-DM for this campaign, and I was in the 4 hour 6 versus 128 as well lol, horrid stuff, I even made the encounter with the 30 vermin, more then 3 noobs = epic fail

[Radiun]

It's getting to be that combat is basically over when I get my turn.

Or this may have been purely symptomatic of the last session.

But my druid has:
Knocked a lich off the skeleton dragon it was riding (I wasn't there, but good use of Control Winds from the player who took over)
Buried entire encounters (Call Avalanche is a nasty spell due to it's enormous area of effect and pseudo-save-or-die status)
And killed nearly everyone around with a Wall of Thorns (I honestly didn't know they had no armour and low HP)

So, to speed up combat, get a druid ;-)

[soulchicken]

Have your meleer's roll their damage and to-hit dice at the same time, and before their turn officially gets there.

That way their turn will be "I move here, and attack him with x weapons. My to-hit was xx and if it hit, the damage was xx."

A good melee player should have a turn that lasts like 5s.

Obviously, you can't do that on every turn, but you can do it on most of them. For casters that are laying down AE attacks, like fireball, they can also roll out their damage and add it up before their turn is up.

Another obvious point is that players need to have integrity for this to work, but you can seriously shave off quite a bit of time by having your players do this.

[AslanCross]

After having read this thread, I have to ask: What do you people do at the table?

What is taking so long?

In my group, we go through 4-6 encounters/session and we play for 3-5 hours/ session, and the fights are usually over after something like 2-6 rounds. I believe it takes us about 10-20 minutes to go through combat, and we're 4 PCs.

We do:
1) DM announces that something happens (with a short description of what)
2) Roll initiative
3) Each character in turn moves/chops/casts. (20 seconds-1 minute each)
4) DM moves all his goons in the same inbitiative slot.
5) Repeat from 2) until all are dead (yes, I know, we roll initiative per round, it's unorthodox but fun)

What takes up these hours that you people talk about? I'm very interested. Do you spend a lot of rounds going after the enemy? Or do you just go round the table real slow each round? :)

I think primarily what takes so long is all the calculation and/or my players sometimes not being sure of what to do when the battle is going awry. That does look like an interesting variant, though. That way the players keep guessing every turn and there's less of a determined "you will die on next turn" feeling. How do you keep track of spell durations, though?

[Hazkali]

What takes up these hours that you people talk about? I'm very interested. Do you spend a lot of rounds going after the enemy? Or do you just go round the table real slow each round? :)

I think it depends on how confident the players are and how much meta-talk is allowed at the table. I know one of the limiting factors at our table is the discussions about what to do for maximum effect, whether it would be better if I cast X or Y, who should go over and stabilise the fallen party member, how to cram everything you need to into two actions and that sort of thing. It's not good for immersion, but it's the way we roll.

[Eldan]

When I still had a group, with three players at the time, I tried to make combat not last longer than 5-10 minutes, because any longer than that and my players would start throwing dice at each other, make stupid jokes or discuss what they saw on TV last night.

[pasko77]

For our game style, anything longer than 20 minutes should be reserved for the grand end-of-chapter battle, or the games goes from role-play to roll-play.
It may be different for lovers of strategy-tactics.

[PhoenixRivers]

Mission 1: In groups of 8 or larger, you should have an assistant DM. For 12? Consider 2. They can process and streamline actions to get things moving faster, and handle when the groups split (as they likely will from time to time).

Mission 2: See mission 1.

Seriously, 12 man groups are the province of experienced DM's. If you're new, try to avoid more than 5, 6 tops.