Kurts' Kombat Kwickeners

[Kurt Kurageous]

This is my second thread.

I am looking for your DMing ideas and house rules that speed up combats on the DM side so players have the maximum time to play and minimum time to get bored during what's supposed to be an exciting part of the game. Below is what I currently do/use.


Have a player management sheet in front of you so you already know the initiative, AC, and HP left for each player. This is my current version. It was revised due to inspiration from the user Fightstyles. What makes this great is the players fill it out at the start of the session so I don't. It's useful outside of combat as well.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzHVsiBMMb98VDZfd3hnR2Q3M2s/view?usp=sharing

Make a compendium using a clipping tool containing all the monsters planned to appear in the adventure. Highlight or rewrite in large numbers the monsters' AC, to hit, and damage dice. Here's one of mine done in powerpoint. And if you don't reach for the MM, players don't know they are coming into combat. Drama!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzHVsiBMMb98MlRPNEx2NUhKZHM/view?usp=sharing

Use the MM average hit points. Tweak for toughness if needed. It speeds up play and it's fair.

Preroll all of the DMs' d20s using excel or by hand. Print out the list and cross them off in order as you use them for the initiatives, saves, to hits, etc. The attached worksheet has 300 rolls on it and has lasted me three sessions without using the first hundred. This is probably my single best idea. It's amazing how much this speeds up multi-attacks/saves. The players spend less time waiting around to know if they are hit/live/die or if the monsters made their save. A weakness of this is all your rolls must remain hidden. A strength is they can actually be audited by the players!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzHVsiBMMb98VkhsNXZ6aC13QTg/view?usp=sharing

Abbreviate initiative. I use side initiative (DMG pg. 270.) It's flawed, but it's real fast using the prerolls. A side effect is my players don't mind losing initiative as much anymore when they roll high. It takes out a higher number from my pre-rolled list, which is a good thing as they see it.

Ask your players to roll their d20 and damage dice together at the same time. If it's not a hit, you don't look at the damage dice. Should this be standard practice? Maybe it is and I'm just the last to know.

Streamline the critical. This is the only house rule I offer not supported by RAW. The player does not need to pick up and reroll the damage dice. A critical deals the maximum possible damage the weapon could do plus the damage dice already rolled. You will like not having to remember what they rolled the first time. Your players will like that there are and no more dud crits.

Komments, kontrarians, and kritiks? Welcome.

[gullveig]

Great thread! I was thinking about write a post about something like that too.

Just a little addedum to the Side Initiative that I use is "Being surprised is an automatic failure in initiative."

[Kurt Kurageous]

"Being surprised is an automatic failure in initiative." That is on my list of bad starts to combat. Worst is one side gets a whole turn, very bad is lost initiative, just bad is other side gets free move (call it a dash) and a micro-action such as an interaction to ready weapons, pull a lever, sound an alarm. After that, it's normal initiative. And remember that not all of the players have to be equally surprised, so that adds another tool.

[gullveig]

Another hack to speed-up the combat is to use the [B]Mob Attacks[b] from the DMG... Basicaly, you get the AC from player minus the monster Attack Bonus and than consult the table to see how many monsters you need to one of them auto-hit the player.

The problem is that I found the number a little illogical, so I recalculated the table using as base a 80% chance of at least one of them hit Here is my table:

AC-ToHit -> # Monsters
2-5 -> 1
6-10 -> 2
11-13 -> 3
14-15 -> 4
16 -> 5
17 -> 7
18 -> 9
19 -> 14
20 -> 28

[FightStyles]

snip


Have a player management sheet in front of you so you already know the initiative, AC, and HP left for each player. This is my current version. It was revised due to inspiration from the user Fightstyles. What makes this great is the players fill it out at the start of the session so I don't. It's useful outside of combat as well.

Snip

Thanks for the credit. *although I'm a bit late thanking you for it. haha*

[Lord Il Palazzo]

I did something similar to the prerolled d20s but expanded to all the dice I was likely to use for an adventure. It was a spreadsheet with a different die in each column (d20s, d12s, d10s, etc.) plus a few extra columns for rolls that would use multiple dice. (I think I had a dragon with a 5d8 breath weapon so I had a column with several 5d8 rolls instead of having to do the math on the next five 1d8 rolls.) It did speed things up, but it took a little bit of the excitement and suspense out of DMing the game so I haven't done it since.

I find that making sure the initiative order is publicly visible helps a lot. Folded a bunch of notecards in half to make tents and had each player put their character name, AC and perception (and maybe a couple other stats, I forget) on one side (to face me) and their character name on the other (to face them) and then I arranged them along a bar in front of me during fights, moving each card to the end after the player's turn. It make it easy for everyone to see who was on deck and gave me a quick reference for relevant character stats.

When you can, predefine your monsters behaviors. In the 3.5 Monster Manual, a lot of boss-level monsters had suggested routines spelled out as "Tactics Round-by-Round". For example the Balor has:

Prior to combat: Unholy aura.
•Round 1: Fire storm or implosion and quickened telekinesis, or summon additional demons. If the balor does not deem itself seriously threatened, it conserves abilities usable only once per day and uses blasphemy instead.
•Round 2: Insanity or power word stun.
•Round 3: Full melee attack with weapons, including entangle with whip.
•Round 4: Teleport or fly away with entangled foe to reestablish range; repeat round 1 and continue.I like to write up lists like this, especially for bosses and doubly for casters with a lot of spells to choose from. This makes it really quick and easy to decide what your monster is going to do each round without having to spend a lot of time at the table strategizing unless/until the party does something unexpected.

Write things down the players are likely to ask you to repeat. I've had a few times when the game ground to a halt as someone asked me to repeat an item's properties several times to make sure they'd written everything down so now, if they're going to find a magic sword or something, I have a notecard with its stats ready for when they identify it. The same goes for conditions that the players might not be familiar with; rather than explain what it means to be prone, I'll just say "The ogre knocks you prone" and hand them a notecard (usually as a tent so everyone can see who has what condition) with the full explanation.

Similarly, I like to keep summaries of spells somewhere I can find them quickly. If the boss is going to cast Wall of Fire, I better either know exactly what Wall of Fire does or have it at my fingertips. If I have to open a book to look it up, that slows down the game massively. The same goes for spells your players are likely to cast. I had a player once who knew what his spells did (Web makes webs, Color Spray shoots disorienting rainbows, etc.) but was bad at remembering the mechanics. I ended up keeping a cheat sheet so I could tell at a glance how to adjudicate all of his most common spells.

[Kane0]

Some of these may or may not have already been stated above:

Co DM. Put your resident rules lawyer to good use fielding rules questions and organizing initiative.

Scribe. Nominate or bribe someone to take notes and hold all the prop documents our DM gives out.

Backup. Have someone hold backups of character sheets in some sort of archive just in case.

Pair up. Each green player gets a veteran buddy in order to help out when they want to do something or it's their turn. Speeds up play an encourages socialization around the table.

Timer. Tell people who is coming up on initiative and hurry them up for their turns, or have a timer for each persons turn (either to decide or resolve their actions).

Combat Tweaking. The more entities on the field, the slower the fight. The more abilities each entity has, the slower their turn. Keep this in mind when designing combat. Inconsequential fights can be handwaved unless they serve a specific purpose, like intentionally slowing down the party or whittling away resources.

Communication rules. Try to have only one or two people talking at once during combat. Notes can be used for less (or more) important things and communication discipline keeps everybody focused. Be careful not to inhibit players speaking among themselves, but when combat is happening put aside discussion on what they are going to buy when they are in town next.

Monster, Spell and ability cards. Or some other way of reducing an option into summarised or point form. The less flicking through the books the better.

Average Damage Rolls. Taking the average damage of rolls is quicker than tallying it all up. Better for players with lots of dice to roll, forgetful of bonuses or not the strongest at math.

Important Info. Stick it to the back of your DM screen, or on the front if its for the players. Have a whiteboard or something where people can just look up and reference without asking or looking through books and character sheets.
This may or may not include things like enemy stats and HP depending on your playstyle, it saves players asking 'do I hit him?' and 'is he dead?' every turn.

Alternative Initiative. Just go around the group clockwise, starting with the highest roll. If people cotton on and start abusing the system (which means they are paying attention, kudos to them) decide to go counter clockwise every now and again. Don't forget to add another 'DM' turn or two somewhere between people for different things you are running to shake things up.

Cinematic Finishes. If the outcome of combat is a certainty (in the party's favor), don't bother to finish rolling it out. Just get them to flavorfully describe how they hand their opponents asses to them and move on.

[MaxWilson]

Abbreviate initiative. I use side initiative (DMG pg. 270.) It's flawed, but it's real fast using the prerolls. A side effect is my players don't mind losing initiative as much anymore when they roll high. It takes out a higher number from my pre-rolled list, which is a good thing as they see it.

I use a Speed Factor initiative variant (without the speed factors). If you do this, it's important to realize that you rarely have to actually roll initiative! Most of the time you just declare actions, and then resolve actions. (I don't mind if players roll their dice while everybody is declaring, but I do ask them to keep the results to themselves until everyone finishes declaring.) Sometimes, it will turn out that the order things happen in actually matters: e.g. did I kill the wombat before the wombat hit Rory? At that point, you roll initiative for me and the wombat, and if I beat his initiative, Rory does not take 7 points of damage; otherwise he does.

Another combat speedup for large battles (8+ combatants) is to write down what actions everybody declared, and check them off when that action is resolved. That saves my sanity because I don't have to check with everybody: "Are you ready now? Did we miss anybody?" It is also occasionally useful for proving to players that they've already acted this turn. "No, you can't Counterspell the Meteor Swarm right now--you're busy right now casting Shield against the goblin arrows."

Another tip: buy lots of dice. Doing math to add up numbers is usually pretty fast, and rolling twenty d20s and looking for all the dice larger than X is faster still--but alternating between rolling and counting is very slow. (E.g. rolling 8d6 fireball damage with a single d6 is an order of magnitude slower for me than rolling all eight dice at once.) And as the OP said, don't be afraid to take the average damage instead of rolling.