Speeding Up Combat for Large Groups

[JRosco]

Hey guys. I've been having a hard time keeping all my (7) players engaged whenever it comes time for combat. For the first couple rounds, everyone is into it, but by turn three, only about 3 or 4 are still paying attention to the entire combat round. The others snap to attention when I call on them, but then I have to catch them up on what happened previously and that further slows the game down.

Any tips for speeding up combat? Having them fight weaker monsters doesn't seem to be the answer, since that means they really won't face a challenge.

Thanks for any insight you guys might have!

[gullveig]

See that thread... :smallwink:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?428489-Kurts-Kombat-Kwickeners&p=19547822#post19547822

[Chaosvii7]

I had a huge combat for the finale of Rise of Tiamat; I had about 10 - 15 named NPCs on my side in addition to the countless hoard of cultists, and then the 8 player characters each had themselves AND a special NPC that they could control for the fight. To speed things up, I used mob combat rules from the DMG and average damage for the NPCs(including the ones the players had). Those both helped immensely from experience. It made the nameless cultist mooks a sizeable threat while also making the NPCs still difficult to ignore(a lot of the enemies and the players' special NPCs were made using DMG rules so their damage averages were fairly relevant to their expected CR).

I've also heard DMs reward players for those who consider their actions for the round ahead of time. I probably wouldn't give advantage/disadvantage, but maybe some other benefit for players who can plan at least a turn ahead would work well. As for engagement issues per player, I'd say that the solution might be in less creatures that are overall more challenging than a bunch of weaker ones. YMMV, but I would think that the party could stay focused on one enemy designed to challenge the whole party as opposed to a few creatures that the party has to divide firepower on.

[Ciraq]

I cannot remember where I heard of this one originally, but I used it when I ran a 4e campaign with 6 PCs. Basically, if a player knew what they were going to be doing when their turn came up, they would get a +1 to their next attack and damage roll. My players liked to keep track of their kills, so this helped speed things up a bit.

[FightStyles]

One thing I've tried and used successfully is to give them a countdown randomly on their turn. If that person doesn't act during the countdown, I let a monster use their turn instead. USE SPARINGLY AND LET THE PLAYERS KNOW ABOUT THIS PRIOR. They get kind of mad if you just start counting down and then they lose their turn without understanding what is happening.

However, now that I have implemented this, they stay more intent because their failure to act tends to affect the whole team negatively by giving the monster another turn.