Which is more important?

[SlashRunner]

As a fledgling DM, I often find myself confronted with a very simple problem: there just isn't enough time. Often, encounters will take such a long time that we'll spend 1/2 or 3/4 of our 4 hr. long sessions on one encounter. Admittedly, I'm one for grandiose, large-scale battles, but they take ages.
Which leads me to the crux of the issue. The main reason why battles take so long is due to weak minion-type enemies. It takes ages to move them all, and the heroes, no matter how powerful, can only do so much per turn. However, the hordes of weak NPC's make the characters feel like true badasses. Weak NPC's often go down in 1 or 2 hits, and can be killed in a variety of inventive ways. Also, the DM can bend the rules a bit while fighting them to allow the PC's to do really cool things that aren't 100% RAW, since they're only using them against weakling 1st level elf warriors. However, long battles leave very little time for plot advancement.

So, which is more important: making the players feel badass, or furthering the plot?


EXAMPLE TIME!! (Massive wall of text ahead, not exactly crucial to answering my question, but an interesting enough read as it is. Read it if you have time and patience, otherwise, just skip it.)
So, at our last session, the players were attacking an Elven village. As a bit of backstory: this world has an Empire, a cruel dictatorship that is fanatically devoted to Hextor (who is a bit toned down here; no more slaughter and murder and crap, just conquest and tyranny). The Empire hates the Elves (on a scale of 1 to Heretic, the Elves are at Heretic) and has launched crusades to conquer them and burn their precious forest to the ground on 22 separate occasions. However, they've been turned back every time by the forest's strange magic. So, the Empire has embarked on it's 23rd Crusade of Holy Righteousness and Conquest and the players decided to enlist in the Imperial Legion.
Anyways, the characters are given this sort of mission to just clean up this little Elven village. It's a few miles out of the way of the Legion's path, so they're sent to just do some casual slaughtering of innocents, all that jazz. There are 5 other guys coming with them, 1st level human warriors. They reach the village and find a bunch of trees with shelters grown directly out of the wood and Ewok-type wooden bridges and platforms connecting them. One tree is bigger than the others, and the shelter on it is quite a bit larger than the rest. Also, the house isn't grown out of the wood, it's attached to the tree via ropes. There are 14 guards standing watch in pairs of two on various platforms. The big house has 4 guards and seems to be quite active, as voices are heard coming from it and there is movement inside. One of the two players that were attending the session that time (we usually have 3, but one couldn't make it), a Kenku Soulknife henceforth to be known as Mr. Soulknife, had the genius idea of surrendering to the guards and asking to be taken to their leaders. He succeeded on a bluff check and was taken into the main area, where he found a council of Elves discussing the Imperial invasion. He told them that he was a messenger from the Imperial Legion, here to inform them that the Legion was surrendering. When the leader came up to question him, he promptly summoned his Mindblade and stabbed him. He then proceeded to take on the three guards that were in the room, as well as the four outside the house, by himself. He managed to pull off some pretty awesome stuff, including some creative use of Up the Walls and some awesome moves involving knocking people off the platforms. Meanwhile, the other party member, a Half-Orc Cleric, henceforth to be known as Mr. Cleric, occupied some of the guards with Summon Monster II and Spiritual Weapon and lead the 5 human warriors in, using their longbows to snipe some of the guards. While all this was happening, two of the elves that were in the house starting doing all this weird chanting and crap. After three rounds, the tree started shaking and started rising into the air. They then found out that the tree that Mr. Soulknife was on was actually a Treant (though Mr. Soulknife had figured it out on his own ages ago, due to the fact that the tree was huge and the hint that the structure on it was built to do no harm to the tree). It stood up, which provoked a balance check from everyone on it. Mr. Soulknife succeeded, the Elven guards he was still fighting did not. As such, they all died from falling damage. Incidentally, the PC's had been given a scroll (I said it was Sending when I gave it to them, but the scroll didn't have a 10 minute casting time. So really, I don't know exactly what it was) by their commander to contact them in case they couldn't handle the puny little village by themselves. They started fighting the Treant and weren't exactly doing well. Mr. Soulknife was stabbing it while still standing on it, Mr. Cleric was bashing it with his mace and casting Inflict spells, and the 5 human warriors were shooting it with their longbows. Eventually, it got to the point were Mr. Soulknife was down to 6 HP and Mr. Cleric was at 10. Both had already gone that round, and it was time for the 5 humans to go. The Treant was at 2 HP, but the warriors could only hit it's AC with a roll of 19 or higher. If they didn't manage to kill it with 5 shots, it would almost certainly kill either Mr. Soulknife or Mr. Cleric on it's next turn, and neither was important enough to the Legion to warrant the expenditure of 5000 gp in diamonds in order to Raise them. The rolls ended up being: 11, 13, 9, 16, 20. The 20 did not confirm, but it still dealt exactly 2 damage, killing the Treant.
So, the moral of the story is: the fight would have been just fine if it were just the Treant, but the Elven warriors made the characters feel totally badass. However, I got absolutely no chance to further the plot in that session.

[Honest Tiefling]

Do your players care? Now, I am not saying its a bad campaign setting (In fact, seems rather fun), but they might have fun with the murder-slashy-stabby-gorey fun time.

However, the players might get bored of this for a while, and then you can throw in encounters with more fluff to them.

Do anything you can to speed up combat. Institute a rule that you have a minute to declare what you are doing if you need to. Print out cheatsheets. Use a map. Have players keep track of initiative.

And remember...Just because the players are not talking does not mean they are not role playing! Nor does it mean that talky time is the only time to get plot going. Give them an elven shrine to desecrate. See what they do with elven goods of more symbolic then monetary value. And remember to put in your plot hooks in the form of shiny, value objects.

http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/players-caring.html

Number #3 is the one you want.

Heck, have the mooks interact with the players. They can act fearful or protect valued targets. I suggest royalty, nobility, clerics or druids for these roles. The former will bring in the idea of ruling NPCs, the latter gods. Or if you have particular weapons or items you wish to focus on, get a martial class in there.

Mooks can also shout things at the players, referencing their beliefs, how scared they are (this will please the players and make them pay more attention), or orders.

As for your question...Neither. Do you need plot to have fun, and do they need murder-stabby-slashy gorey fun time to be happy? And can you two reach a good compromise so everyone has fun?

[Rejakor]

You're talking about 2 separate encounters. The guards, and then the tree.

Basically, don't run combat if there's only mooks left and it's not plot-relevant.. if the main bad guys go down, I don't spend 12 rounds watching players run around gutting helpless mooks, I go 'after you finish murdering the remaining goblins as they squeal and run in terror, three holes in the basalt rock of the mountain await' etc etc.

Secondly, I make combat more lethal than 4e. Combat should not last longer than 5 rounds against a bunch of mooks. So any enemy on the battlefield is either a blocker or a damager. A damager can hurt a PC in a way the PC cares about. So not 2 pts of damage on the 150 hp warblade that it only hits on a 20. That's a blocker, or, as I call them for added confusion, mooks. Once all the damagers are down, or things have gone in the PCs favour, enemies retreat or I just describe the end of the fight. I also try to keep combat moving, with a very evil 'if you don't know what to do on your turn, you don't get a turn' rule. I find I can run a round every 5 minutes or so with 4 players, especially since I have all the stats of what they're fighting against with me, and I do the warhammer player's mook movement - measure one, move the rest to be near it. Also, I don't roll mook attacks. I pre-roll them, or use a random number generator set to show me how many get above a certain threshold. Rolling 40 dice is a waste of freakin' time. I also have a piece of paper with vital PC statistics like AC and spot checks on it.

My combats, the big, multipart ones, can take up to an hour, but usually not more than that.

EDIT: As part of the 'combat should be lethal' thing, I tend to not run combats with 40 mooks who take 5 hits to go down and have high AC and no way of hurting the party. That's a dull, boring, combat. Mooks like that exist, but sparingly, and only to protect other mooks who are using reached weapons to hit the PCs hard, or bombarding them with dangerous ranged attacks, at which point the tough mooks with high AC are more of a obstacle than a threat.

[SlashRunner]

My problem is that I'm ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that destroying the armies of mooks made the players feel awesome. And Mr. Soulknife did take some damage, enough that if he didn't have a random potion of CLW sitting around, he would have died in the Treant fight. I also had fun, as the encounter really felt epic, and I got to basically control the whole thing.
However, I would have liked to have advanced the story a bit during this. What I'm ultimately aiming for is that the further the army gets into the elfy-forest-place, the more trees just randomly stand up and attack them and weird magical stuff starts happening. Remember, if you read my entire wall of text, the Empire has crusaded against the Elves on 22 previous occasions, and it has failed every time, despite the fact that the Elves are sort of wimpy. In the end, I plan to have something happen that separates the PC's from the main army and have a sort of Mordor-ish feel as they navigate enemy territory alone. The only thing that I go to do with that story this whole time was to show them that Treants will be a common threat.

[Z3ro]

In cases like the one you described, I'd suggest doing a little more to seperate the encounters into distinct groups. If the players enjoy murdering helpless guards let them, but make those encounters shorter (and really they should be, how hard is it to mop up when 1 or 2 hits kill a guard?), leaving more time to focus on the bigger fights.

In the example with the treant, I like the strategy of being taken captive then attacking. After the fight with the guards, have some elves retreat and give the players a chance to loot the trees (even if there's not much there; give them something to look through) then have the treant attack. It'll feel like two fights rather than one long encounter, when all you did was put a little break in the middle.

[Urpriest]

I know in my experience as a player that only finishing one fight a day makes me feel frustrated, not awesome. The players may feel powerful for taking down mooks, but they'll feel weak for not being able to go through multiple combats in a day like they think most other gaming groups do.

[Kantolin]

My group does that. ^_^

I usually try to balance them out. Sometimes we have runs with only one combat in them and a lot of social encounters, sometimes we have gauntlets with tons of them and hardly any talking.

For my group in particular, I maintain that you adamantly should not end a combat with only mooks in it unless the party would really like to move on (Like, if the PCs are chasing the main villain through the streets and are interrupted to fight something, you can end that fight when it's obviously over to get back to the main villain).

Various DMs trivializing things like that has led to quite a bit of frustration in our group. Try speaking to your players - if they're happy with the way things have been going, you've struck a pleasant medium.

Now, if you're unhappy with this, then that's a little different. Try ensuring that something focal is happening during each combat - have a small side plot a few runs earlier about an evil druid who's with the treants, and then have that evil druid be there too. Or just make sure you do extra plot-moving the next time - after a gauntlet of violence involving cultists of the church of slaughter (Erythnul), my group is then going through a period of no-combats as everyone tries to clean up the mess with advantage to themselves.

That may help alleviate things.

[SlashRunner]

Hmm... do longer sessions help alleviate this problem? Currently, our sessions are from 6:00 to 10:00 every Friday night. However, with the advent of the summer, we will probably be able to stretch out sessions longer and do them more than once a week.
The crux of the issue is that killing the mooks makes the players feel awesome, but it gobbles up valuable time. For example, the example fight I gave with the Treant would have been just as good of a fight if they had just been fighting the Treant. However, the mooks add both realism and enjoyment.
And, knowing my players, they like both feeling awesome AND plot advancement.

[sonofzeal]

What's more important depends on your group. I know people who love the hack-n-slash and don't care about the plot, and the reverse is sometimes true too.

Personally, I like a little bit of both, but what's more important than feeling badass is to have tactically interesting fights. If I can just smash through, that's not fun. If there isn't anything I can do, that's not fun either. What I game for are the moments when we're in trouble, where we have to be creative, where we win but with difficulty. Producing those moments is the mark of a good DM, because it requires a very precise pitching. It's easy to miss on the high or low side, and sometimes the dice conspire. But you want your players to feel that they're in trouble.

Now, sometimes that's plot, as well as fighting. "Trouble" can be a plot development that poses great threat to the PC's agenda, and the challenging, difficult win could be a tough negotiation or a clever use of scrying or a Batman Gambit that pays off.

But just throwing in mooks I can plow through? Not interesting, unless they complicate an otherwise easy fight and make me reconsider tactics and adapt to the new situation.

[SlashRunner]

Incidentally, should I make the encounters in every session challenging enough that there is a significant chance that the players will die? In this battle, the survival of the PC's hinged on the ability of 5 NPC warriors to be able to roll 19 or higher on their attack rolls. It was pretty damn close.
Should this be the level of difficulty I should aim for? It was really intense and everyone was enjoying it, plus it was a bit nonstandard as one of the players was actually fighting ON the Treant. However, I don't want my players to be dieing a bunch.

[Archwizard]

The thing to do really is talk to your players. After a few sessions like that, see if you can find an off-session time or start a session early and just ask them how they feel.

All that is important in the final analysis is that everyone is having fun.

[137beth]

Once they start leveling up a bit, they will eventually find that hoards pose almost no challenge. And, of course, a caster could fireball them all in one action (at most).
Now that you've established the PCs as badass, you can more into more meaningful encounters. The challenging enemies will seem even more significant because the player's know they must be stronger than the hoards and hoards of mooks.

[sonofzeal]

Incidentally, should I make the encounters in every session challenging enough that there is a significant chance that the players will die? In this battle, the survival of the PC's hinged on the ability of 5 NPC warriors to be able to roll 19 or higher on their attack rolls. It was pretty damn close.
Should this be the level of difficulty I should aim for? It was really intense and everyone was enjoying it, plus it was a bit nonstandard as one of the players was actually fighting ON the Treant. However, I don't want my players to be dieing a bunch.
I did a campaign once, mostly a dungeoncrawl, where I think every session had at least one seriously dangerous encounter. The campaign lasted maybe 20 sessions, and the first PC death was 15 sessions in and directly caused by one character's stupidity. Even then, I didn't actually kill him, until a DIFFERENT player showed up and finished the job by fireballing his unconscious-but-stable body in the face... in an enclosed room that also had a Necklace of Fireballs. I don't think anyone ever found the pieces.

Now, this doesn't mean that every single fight has to be a total life-and-death smackdown. Some should, but you can also mix in "Puzzle" fights. One of my favorites involved a spiked wall with archers on top, or mages performing a ritual on the other side of a huge room that had a grease'd floor and was nearly impossible to make forward progress on, and had some protection against arrows. Beating the first involved archery or climbing. Beating the second involved figuring out a way to get through the room and up to the mages without getting zapped to pieces. Both were beaten without a PC death.

There's plenty of ways to do that, too. Beyond making the enemies inaccessible, you can have regenerating enemies, or stealth, or swarms of minor things, or enemies with huge reach, or enemies that use other enemies as projectiles, or enemies with special defences, or fights in strange environments, or fights with strange win conditions, or a time limit, or any number of things. Mix it up. Raw power is a good one for the mix, but it shouldn't be your whole repertoire.

[Rejakor]

Work on streamlining the actual process of combat. From what you're describing, fighting the guards and then the treant took you and your players 4 hours. I'd get through that in an hour and a half, at most. And that's with like 7 players, all of who should get at least a few mook kills. You've got what, 3? Like I said, it sounds like you're spending a lot of time making sure each model moves it's movement and rollings lots of d20s separately... streamline that ****.

[SlashRunner]

Actually, we didn't even use models or have a game board. We just sort of had a rough sketch of a map that we updated occasionally to show roughly where all the NPCs were. We just eyeballed move distances. However, the attack rolls did take quite a while, plus the fact that there were tons of NPCs. Also, one of our players, Mr. Cleric, took ages on every turn since he is the most strategically inept person I have ever met. He would decide to do something really stupid or against the rules (he does not understand the rules, despite the rest of us making numerous attempts to get him to understand them) and then either Mr. Soulknife would convince him to do something that's actually smart or I would tell him that his course of action is illegal and suggest another way to accomplish the same thing that would actually be rules-legal.

Warning: following stuff is not exactly relevant to the original purpose of this thread, it's just a random other problem I have. Also, I realize that the following text will probably make me look like an arrogant douchebag, but it's still a valid concern.
And, while I'm at it, why don't I ask for advice on another problem I have. How do you guys deal with a disparity between your players' intellects? Mr. Soulknife, Mr. Rogue (our as-of-yet unmentioned third) and I are significantly above average intelligence (as in all Honors courses, score in the top 1% for several grade levels higher on tests, all have taken the SAT/ACT and scored considerably above average), whereas Mr. Cleric is of average to slightly above average intelligence.
To put it into D&D terms, three of us would have effective INT scores of 15-18, based on what subject we are applying it to.
One of us would have an effective INT score of 10-14, again based on the subject in question.
Now, this normally would be no problem, but I've been finding lately that this has been dragging the game down quite a bit. As stated before in the example, Mr. Cleric often spends ages debating what to do during his turn, and has difficulty remembering the rules, even when the rule in question is a rule that he has had problems with before and we've explained to him several times. Furthermore, he has trouble getting pretty obvious hints, and the other players often don't think to explain them to him since they assume that he figured it out by himself, thus leaving him in the dark. Is there anything that you guys do in situations like this to make sure that the person in question doesn't drag the game down?

[Honest Tiefling]

TANGENT: To my understanding, 18 is super-genius. Unless your name is Lex Luthor or you have a time machine in the back room, your intelligence is more 12-15.

On your player...Have you tried discussing the issue with him? Sit him down and say, dude, I notice you are having problems with the rules. They are a bit dense, I know. Is there any way I can help you get comfortable with them? See what he says. Also, which bits of the rules is he having issues with? If it is combat stuff, try printing out cheatsheets for him to look at while other people are discussing what they are doing. Having something to remind him might help out a lot.

If it is how his class works, consider the spontaneous cleric version. I know perfectly smart people who tend to relax at the gaming table and forget what they've prepared for the day. (A tangent to the tangent: Anyone read Darths and Droids? Yeah. That guy). I've also known people who completed intensive programs at good universities and had the common sense of a brick.

Also, from my experience, intelligence does not always make for the best players. Even smart players need a bit of wisdom and charisma now and again.

For difficulty, I agree with Archwizard. I think mixing up your fights, as Sonofzeal's suggestion is good, but try to work in challenges that make sense for the plot. Crazy magical fields and lots o' trees and plants might be good. Do remember, plants are immune to criticals which will hamper the rogue. I strongly suggest adding in skills or squishy elven druids to plant intensive fights.

[Rejakor]

Actually, you probably have a specialized int score of about 12, 13, maaaybe 14. Unless you are honestly saying that you are as smart as socrates or einstein. Secondly, you're trying very hard to avoid words like 'dumb' but you're saying them anyway, and worse, at length. Just go 'one of the players has frequent and recurring problems understanding the rules and the tropes/clues that I use'. Intelligence comes in many forms. I know a lot of conventionally smart people, and I know a lot of unconventionally smart people, and I know people most would label 'dumb' who in their own sphere are absolute masters that I am just in awe of. Don't avoid calling people dumb because it's politically correct. Avoid calling people dumb because it's nigh impossible to actually ascertain. Use more specific terminology, again not because it's PC, but because it's more accurate.

Well, again, use a program to roll, or pre-roll. Prerolling is easy. Roll a sheet of numbers, add modifier to it, write it down. When it's the NPC's turn, look over numbers, compare to AC. To be honest even I don't do this as much as I should, but I find that I can roll pretty quickly especially if I keep in my head the number I need to roll on the die to hit, and roll all the damage as one thing and not individually.

You mentioned 8 guards. That's not tons of npcs. Unless the elf villagers were doing important stuff, you can just say 'elf villagers go all over the place running away'. I once ran a combat with over 150 npcs(50 goblin archers, 30 orc blackguard infantry, 30 orc shamans, a cave troll, the orc leader, 12 ballista crews, a wyvern, 3 giant lizards, 3 beast handler teams, and I think some paragliding suicide goblins, a lava pit, a rope bridge, three tiered firing decks, a electrified wire trap, and a mud golem - that was one encounter), and I kept it fairly snappy, just by using grouping and volley fire.

The problem with your cleric is that he isn't interested enough to pay attention. Or has a personal problem with learning the rules, i.e. he doesn't want to for some reason. Maybe he thinks it's roleplaying not to know the rules or something. I don't know. Short of finding out what that is and solving it, your options are basically; use 1 minute turns, or use 1 minute turns. Seriously.

It's really not hard. Don't enforce the minute. The only time a player loses their turn is if they don't know what they're doing - haven't rolled a die by the time 60 seconds elapse. If the player whose turn you skipped starts getting shirty, you do one of two things. If they go 'no no i'm doing this', let them do it. If they go 'that's unfair blah blah blah' cheerfully inform them that it applies to everyone including you in the kind of cheerfulness that invokes DM vs players. That makes it a-okay. The kind of person who balks at rules to make the game go smoothly accepts DM vs players without a qualm. No exceptions.

[SlashRunner]

TANGENT: To my understanding, 18 is super-genius. Unless your name is Lex Luthor or you have a time machine in the back room, your intelligence is more 12-15.

On your player...Have you tried discussing the issue with him? Sit him down and say, dude, I notice you are having problems with the rules. They are a bit dense, I know. Is there any way I can help you get comfortable with them? See what he says. Also, which bits of the rules is he having issues with? If it is combat stuff, try printing out cheatsheets for him to look at while other people are discussing what they are doing. Having something to remind him might help out a lot.

If it is how his class works, consider the spontaneous cleric version. I know perfectly smart people who tend to relax at the gaming table and forget what they've prepared for the day. (A tangent to the tangent: Anyone read Darths and Droids? Yeah. That guy). I've also known people who completed intensive programs at good universities and had the common sense of a brick.

Also, from my experience, intelligence does not always make for the best players. Even smart players need a bit of wisdom and charisma now and again.

For difficulty, I agree with Archwizard. I think mixing up your fights, as Sonofzeal's suggestion is good, but try to work in challenges that make sense for the plot. Crazy magical fields and lots o' trees and plants might be good. Do remember, plants are immune to criticals which will hamper the rogue. I strongly suggest adding in skills or squishy elven druids to plant intensive fights.

REPLY TO TANGENT: Hmm...that's not exactly the scale I thought it operated on, but I'd be willing to defer to your knowledge on this issue. In any case, I was more saying that that was the general range rather than an actual number. In any case, I saw somewhere that a 16 INT was roughly Mensa-qualifying, and I think it's definitely possible that we're in the top 2%, though I'm not certain.

For the slightly problematic player, he has problems in combat mainly when he tries to do something that is rules-illegal and we have to explain to him why he can't do that. I'd have no problem occasionally explaining something to him, or just saying "No, you can't do that" but the problem is that he's also the type that argues every single point. For example, during our 3rd session, he spent 5 minutes trying to convince me that he should gain 2nd level spells upon attaining 2nd level because it "makes sense".
This is coupled with the fact that, out of combat, he often suggests and attempts to carry out plans that are completely illogical. For example, at one point they were trying to kill a dragon living in the mountains near the town they started in for all the phat loots and XP's. However, there was one problem. They were level two, and the dragon was CR 8. So, Mr. Cleric had the idea to hire mercenaries to kill the dragon for them. I warned them that the mercs would ask for a significantly higher pay than that listed on SRD for a task so dangerous, and it would take quite a bit of digging to find mercenaries that are both hardened and desperate enough to take on a dragon. I also warned them that I wouldn't "hand-wave" the whole process of finding the mercs, and that they would actually have to play it out. He then suggested they mislead the mercs into thinking that they will be fighting bandits instead. Obviously, there is a big flaw in this plan that I'll leave you to figure out yourself.

Hmm... why are plants immune to criticals? In fact, of all the monster types listed on the SRD, only oozes should really be immune. What prevents you from landing a particularly deadly blow on, say, a construct?
Yeah, I should probably do more combats involving problem-solving and fewer enemies.

On a side note, I think we should probably end the intelligence discussion, as I now realize it was probably a mistake to bring it up. In any case, the player I have here isn't exactly dumb, he just has very little common sense and often times does not utilize logic in coming to conclusions. I'll just tell him from now on that Mr. Soulknife and I have the rules memorized, so if one of us is telling him that he can't do something, he probably shouldn't try arguing for the sake of expediting combat.

[Honest Tiefling]

For plants, I really have no idea why. I would assume that even a plant has squishy bits to stabinate. I guess because performing a critical hit on a tree does not make sense, as it has no squishy bits? Through, most trees are not suitable encounters.

To circumvent this, you might want to put in a sword in that allows sneak attack damage to plants. Call it something like the Winnower, and tack on some lore. I mean, these guys are fighting tree hugging elves! An NPC can also hand it over. Maybe they'll stay near an NPC for conversation if they get a reward now and again.

[mint]

There is a lot you can do to streamline combat.
A hard time limit on turns at 1 minute for example.

Large numbers of low level mooks are ... not great.
Rolling for them takes a lot of time and they will almost always miss anyway. If you want cannon fodder, model a formations of mooks as larger creatures. Less actions, more danger.

[Jornophelanthas]

I will second the suggestion that groups of low-level opponents should be handled all simultaneously.

Here's an example to show you how. (Spoilered for length.)

Suppose you are planning an encounter with a boss- or caster-type foe standing in a throne room, with bodyguards clustered against the side walls, leaving a path open from the door (where the PCs start out) to the throne (where the boss awaits).
- Cluster all bodyguards on one side of the room into a single group. Cluster all bodyguards on the other side of the room into a second group.
- Each group should contain identical foes with identical stats, weapons, etc, so that you need to calculate hit chance, damage, AC etc. only once.
- Every member of a given group should use the same initiative. Just roll the initiative die for the entire group.
- All members of a group take their actions simultaneously. For example, if you want them to swarm an individual PC, have them move all around that PC at once, and then perform attack rolls for all of them at once.
(To be fair to the players, if any of them would receive flanking bonuses as a result of this tactic, exclude one enemy from actually having this bonus on its attack.)
- Roll all attack dice at once in one single motion. Use differently colored dice for minor differences. (e.g. "The two red dice are attacks on player A, the three blue dice are attacks on player B", or "The one red die has a +2 flanking bonus, while the rest does not".) Do something similar for all damage rolls.
- Refrain from using readied or held actions for members of these groups, as these have a tendency to split up the group into individuals. Similarly, discourage your players from interrupting the actions of individuals within groups, or create a houserule to keep your groups intact for as long as possible.
- By the time groups are whittled down to a relatively small number of individuals (say, two), the need to manage them jointly might have disappeared. In that case, just stop doing all of the above for those foes, and instead treat them as individuals (who happen to share initiative).

Another thing you could do, especially if the PCs have NPC allies with them, is to split the combat into two:
- The PCs vs. some enemies;
- The NPC allies vs. some other enemies.
Simply handwave the NPC-vs-NPC combat, or adjudicate it with one die roll per round maximum, until the PCs actually decide to get involved in it.
Of course, if one of the two battles is decided, or if the two combats move into the same space, just collapse it back into one battle.
(Typically, don't allow this to happen unless the number of combatants on at least one side has gone down significantly.)