So what is everyone's personal fix to speed up combat?

[UndertakerSheep]

My 4e campaign has been going for 3.5 years and has just reached paragon tier. We're having a lot of fun, but the combats are becoming a drag. Enemies have way too many hit points! I've tried the -50% hp, +100% damage and it was exciting but brutal. I tried to play with the numbers a bit, keeping the 50% hp but lowering the damage increase to either +50% or +level, but nothing seems to really work. Either my monsters deal too much damage (bloodying the PCs in one hit), or they don't live long enough to be a threat.

I have my players support in decreasing combat times. Any player who knows exactly what they're going to do on a turn get a +2 bonus to any d20 roll that turn. The players are also all for reducing the hp and increasing the damage, but they've complained in the past of the damage bonus being to high.

So tl;dr: what is in your eyes the best fix for reducing combat times, especially considering monster HP and damage?

P.S.: I have also tried designing combats with a clear 'out' in mind, hoping to end all combats before the fourth round, but I'm running out of ideas. Does anyone have a good resource for combat outs?

[MwaO]

My 4e campaign has been going for 3.5 years and has just reached paragon tier. We're having a lot of fun, but the combats are becoming a drag. Enemies have way too many hit points! I've tried the -50% hp, +100% damage and it was exciting but brutal. I tried to play with the numbers a bit, keeping the 50% hp but lowering the damage increase to either +50% or +level, but nothing seems to really work. Either my monsters deal too much damage (bloodying the PCs in one hit), or they don't live long enough to be a threat.

I have my players support in decreasing combat times. Any player who knows exactly what they're going to do on a turn get a +2 bonus to any d20 roll that turn. The players are also all for reducing the hp and increasing the damage, but they've complained in the past of the damage bonus being to high.

So tl;dr: what is in your eyes the best fix for reducing combat times, especially considering monster HP and damage?

P.S.: I have also tried designing combats with a clear 'out' in mind, hoping to end all combats before the fourth round, but I'm running out of ideas. Does anyone have a good resource for combat outs?

In general, I'd do the following:
Hand out a +2 bonus for anyone who gets their turn done in under a minute(usable until EoNT)
Use MM3 monster damage numbers(Monster Manual 3 on a business card (http://blogofholding.com/?p=512))
Use average damage except still roll one die. So instead of a monster doing 3d12+6, they'd do 1d12+19 instead.
Don't use a d20 for to-hit rolls at all - instead roll a d6. If the PC is exceptional in the defense, you need to roll a 5. Average, roll a 4. Weak, roll a 3. If the monster is above average in level, reduce those numbers by 1 each. Below average in level, increase by 1 each.

Note what the last two things do - want 10 monsters doing to-hit rolls? Roll 10d6, count the ones higher than 3, then roll that number of d12s for damage...

[ThePurple]

So tl;dr: what is in your eyes the best fix for reducing combat times, especially considering monster HP and damage?

I don't really have much of a problem with combat times except where players taking a long time to think things over is concerned. It helps that the experienced players in my groups are the only ones with extremely complicated builds; the newbies I bring in I tend to give Essentials characters since they're very simple.

Where dice and math is concerned, I'm lucky insofar as I play on a virtual tabletop that allows for macros and quick and easy functions for tracking values. Some of my players go all out with their macros and have a different one set up for each of their powers that rolls to-hit, damage, and declares the effects all at once (you just ignore the hit stuff if the attack bonus isn't high enough). The tabletop version of this would be having people roll their attack and damage rolls simultaneously. It still slows it down a bit with people having to do the math though.

Something else I do is, when the players are forming their party, I try and get them to perform some party optimization so that the group has a lot of synergy. It cuts down a lot of thinking time when the players have some default tactics that they discussed when they were putting the party together and know exactly how/where to move and what powers to use in given situations.

At my table, I don't really find the numbers to be as much a problem as the option paralysis that tends to occur more and more often at higher levels when players have ever increasing conditional modifiers and boatloads of powers to choose from. I work with my players to cut down the option paralysis and make the conditional modifiers easy to track, which means that my fights tend to last 30-45 minutes (sometimes as little as 15-20 if the dice are with the players).

[Beoric]

I don't really notice a problem. If I had to guess why I don't have a problem, it might be because:


I tend to have fewer, but I hope more memorable combats, so it isn't actually a big component of game time relative to other types of encounters, and the combats themselves are interesting. No-one begrudges the time spent in them.
I run on a VTT with macros that speed up the math and condition tracking.
I make decisions quickly myself, and play with a lot of energy. That seems to keep interest levels up and the pace seems to be infectious.
When I run for inexperienced players, I nudge them towards Essentials classes, or at least easy-to-use powers.

[Dimers]

Either my monsters deal too much damage (bloodying the PCs in one hit), or they don't live long enough to be a threat ... The players are also all for reducing the hp and increasing the damage, but they've complained in the past of the damage bonus being too high.

Psh. If they're not actually staring TPKs in the face every other fight, tell 'em to quit their bitchin'. :smalltongue: No, I don't mean that entirely seriously. Being unconscious isn't fun. But some players will get terrified if they break a nail -- oh no, my Dwarf Battlemind is down a whole third of her hitpoints, whatever shall I do? :smallamused:

If the PCs really were going unconscious a lot at the +100% damage increase, scaling it back will work, but the results will be swingy enough (huge threat or no threat) that you'll only find a pattern over a long period of play, like 20 fights minimum. Try one and stick with it a while. It'll be fine.

My big advice for speeding combat is to call it early. If the opponents are mooks without a lieutenant -- including if the PCs already brought down the lieutenant! -- then just say, "Okay, you scare off / wipe out / break control / de-energize the rest of the little guys." Maybe have somebody volunteer to lose one last healing surge, with the prize of detailing the party's heroic victory. Don't get me wrong, I love tactical combat, but I'd sooner get on with the important stuff than figure out if the combat lasts another 6 seconds or 12.

[Terdarius]

Where dice and math is concerned, I'm lucky insofar as I play on a virtual tabletop that allows for macros and quick and easy functions

Wow. Could you tell us exactly what you are using. I would love something like that! :)

[ThePurple]

Wow. Could you tell us exactly what you are using. I would love something like that! :)

roll20 (https.roll20.net) (my roll20 profile is referenced in my sig)

It's free to use (though you can pay to get extra stuff; one of the coolest things you can do with the subscription is dynamic lighting specific to each individual player so that each player can only see what their character can see), is usable for pretty much any game because it's not system specific, and a bunch of other awesome stuff. It has integrated VoIP as well, but pretty much no one uses it because it's not particularly good. Pretty much everyone I know just uses Skype.

[Kurald Galain]

Kurald's Golden Rule of 4E: doing 20 damage now is better than thinking for a minute and then doing 23 damage.

Make sure your players are aware of this. The one thing that ruins a 4E game most is the kind of player who spends an excessive amount of game time thinking about minor bonuses. That also means you should steer players away from items/feats/powers that give a small situational bonus some of the time, because they slow down gameplay without affecting it much.

And yeah, call combat once the outcome is clear. That will usually be after two or three rounds, at paragon tier.

[NomGarret]

Kurald's Golden Rule of 4E: doing 20 damage now is better than thinking for a minute and then doing 23 damage.

True. And while those two options may be the difference between 20 or 23 averaged over time, on that one roll in that moment a little luck can swap those numbers anyway.

My somewhat more basic level rule is put together actual power cards with the math spelled out. Don't write 1d8+int+2. Write 1d8+6.

[Yakk]

My "half-monster" is 50% Hp, no change in damage, but there are 50% more of them. And I use MM3 monsters.

Total HP goes down by 25%, initial damage goes up by 50%. This supplies threat, while shortening combat.

Combat length is mostly monster HP based (esp if you are fast at using monsters yourself -- and you have to be! Don't agonize over monster actions: play *fast*. If this results in sub-optimal monster actions that are inefficient, oh well, next encounter have more monsters!)

[MoutonRustique]

It can seem "boring" - but predetermined damage values speed up combat significantly for groups that do not dawdle over-long in the decision making process. Otherwise the gain is pertinent, but never as much as streamlining decision making speeds.

I keep the "random" aspect of damage on crits.

[UndertakerSheep]

Thanks for all the great advice everyone! I ran a session this week where I decided to go for Yakk's -50% monster hp / +50% amount of monsters and it seemed to do the trick. Combat was lethal in the first two rounds, but when the party seized the upper hand I called it. I think the combat lasted just over an hour, which in my opinion still is too long but I don't think you can go lower than that without sacrificing some cool part of 4e.

We also experienced with a team based initiative system, because the players all rolled higher than the monsters and I had told them I use that initiative in my 5e games.

My players called it a success. They didn't think the combat lasted too long. I'm going to keep on using this rule of thumb and see if it works in the long run. So far, very impressed.

[StrengthofMany]

Like others have said in this thread before, I use a virtual table top, in this case MapTools with Veggiesama's old framework. Lots of easy to make macros helps.

I don't DM for groups larger than 4 players at a time, 5 players as an extreme maximum (I dislike how that complicates roles AND time schedules however!)

I use MM3 math and often make custom monsters tailored to how I want a fight to go. The actual MM entries tend to either be too little or too much (see: At-Will dazes) and have mechanics that can slow a fight down in undesirable ways.

My group likes to use a shot clock to track turns and allow no more than 2-3 minutes for the actual action, and another 2-3 minutes for them to type up a description to narrate what they did. This speeds things up considerably, as they have to think of their actions prior to their turn coming around and in general stay more focused. This also reduces most rounds to 25-30 minutes at the most, often times closer to 20 minutes unless i'm using a lot of minions or standards in a challenging encounter.

Finally I have all of my map assets and monster tokens made well in advance, and hound players to have theirs accounted for BEFORE the session begins.

[bloodshed343]

Another thing that can speed up combat is an escalation die. Unlike the escalation die in 13th age, I use a d20 and roll it down each round or each time a player scores a critical. Player rolls above the value on the die are critical. This can shorten combat by 5 or 6 rounds and prevents your player from feeling lame once they've used their encounter powers. Also some abilities were changed so that they effect the escalation die.

It also adds a new tactical element. Play defensively for a round or two until the encounter is escalated a bit, then nova everything in a sudden burst of glory and blood.

[ThePurple]

This can shorten combat by 5 or 6 rounds

If your combats are lasting long enough that you need to shave off 5-6 rounds, you've got a whole slew of other problems than how long players are taking per turn. Most fights in 4e are supposed to last 4 rounds or so (in my experience); the occasional super fight should last 6-7. If you regularly need to shave off 5-6 rounds from fights to speed things up, something is really wrong with your group (even just using encounters and at-wills, my players can generally burn through a +1-2 fight in 3-4 rounds).

[Kurald Galain]

This can shorten combat by 5 or 6 rounds

What, seriously? I've only very rarely seen a combat of more than four rounds (which is also what the game math is designed on), and in paragon/epic tier most fights tend to be decided in two rounds. (hence, the advice/fix to DMs to call the combat once the outcome is clear). If you feel the need to reduce combat by five rounds, then there's something seriously weird going on here.

[Yakk]

If you presume random optimization (pick classes, powers and feats based on flavor rather than how effective they are, but attack stat of 14+ at level 1 and bumped every chance, items have enhancement bonuses but not much else contributing), then combat length in 4e grows quite seriously at high levels.

At level 1, your at-wills deal about 8 damage per hit and hit about 60% of the time. Monsters have about ~30 HP, so at-will spam kills them in ~6 rounds. Your encounter/action point and amortized daily power cuts about a round off of that. Two strikers (who do +50% damage or so), and one striker-leaning, character in the party cuts about another round off it.

Over the next 29 levels, you gain +6 enhance, +4 stat, +3 feat (generous), +5 from another die, for ~26 damage at level 30. You still hit ~60% of the time, especially if you count crits as double-hits. Monsters, meanwhile, have ~260 HP. Instead of an at-will dealing about 1/4 of their hp, it now deals 10%.

So it takes 16 rounds to beat someone down with at-wills.

Your 4 encounter powers deal another ~+2 at-wills worth of damage. The daily you ration out another ~1 at-will's worth of damage. An epic feature maybe deals another half at-will's worth of damage. And you get half an at-wills worth of damage from rationed action points. This shaves two whole rounds off. Assume some tactics and call it three rounds.

Strikers with little optimization still deal +50% damage, and a striker-leaning build maybe +25%.

So 5 players with 2 strikers and one striker-leaning gives an epic combat length of 10 rounds.

This is the "slog" that some people complained about with high-level 4e. If you create nearly "randomly optimized" level 1 characters (flavor based, with their prime attack stat being 14+) in 4e, you get a 4-6 round combats. If you do the same with level 30 characters, you get 10-15 round combats.

The stuff required to get combat length down at high levels to 2-5 rounds is optimization. Realizing that the engine rewards stacking small damage bonuses, and applying them repeatedly (as do most combat engines).

A feat that deals +1 damage per tier on a hit looks boring. At level 30, a character who managed to find 18 of those feats and the ability to attack twice per round outdamages that non-optimized character by a factor of almost 6. Even with merely 3 times the damage output (only one attack) combat length falls back down to 3 rounds.

Now, there aren't 18 feats that deal +1 damage per tier: but if you can find 18 feats that match or exceed Weapon Focus in power, you end up way ahead.

At mid-high levels, 4e provides lots of customization choices on your character. The baseline -- picking feats, paragon paths, etc based on flavor -- results in an increasingly incompetent character compared to someone who goes for small, incremental, stacking, multiplicative effects.

This, in my opinion, is a failing of 4e. There are a myriad of feats, and most of them are traps. The game doesn't work unless you at least somewhat optimize your feat choices.

[ThePurple]

This, in my opinion, is a failing of 4e. There are a myriad of feats, and most of them are traps. The game doesn't work unless you at least somewhat optimize your feat choices.

I'll agree with this. There are a bunch of options (feats, powers, PPs, weapons, class features, entire classes...) that are absolutely terrible. It's not *entirely* 4e's problem though because it happens in pretty much every tactical combat PnP (that actually provides you with options) I've ever played. Providing options while still preserving balance between those options can be surprisingly difficult, especially when you don't have really strong guidelines for what the performance of each of those options should be (which is one of the things that 4e didn't do; the biggest example of this that I can think of is EDs and PPs, which have the vaguest guidelines imaginable, if they have them at all).

Still, 4e *is* a game of tactical combat, so I expect at least *some* degree of optimization out of my players. Even the new players, I tend to give them hints as to what will make their character most effective while still preserving the flavor of that character. It's not as if you can't have flavorful *and* reasonably well optimized characters.

[Kurald Galain]

At mid-high levels, 4e provides lots of customization choices on your character. The baseline -- picking feats, paragon paths, etc based on flavor -- results in an increasingly incompetent character compared to someone who goes for small, incremental, stacking, multiplicative effects.

This, in my opinion, is a failing of 4e. There are a myriad of feats, and most of them are traps. The game doesn't work unless you at least somewhat optimize your feat choices.
Well said. This matches my experience that at several tables around level 11, I've seen characters that might as well not be there for all the contribution they made in combat (and predictably, this tends to make the player quit).


I'll agree with this. There are a bunch of options (feats, powers, PPs, weapons, class features, entire classes...) that are absolutely terrible.
I'd take that a step further and say that the majority of some options (certainly more than half of all feats, and easily around 90% of all magic items) are lacklustre to awful. I suppose that's a consequence of their initial publishing strategy of one splatbook per month plus dragon magazine.

[bloodshed343]

If your combats are lasting long enough that you need to shave off 5-6 rounds, you've got a whole slew of other problems than how long players are taking per turn. Most fights in 4e are supposed to last 4 rounds or so (in my experience); the occasional super fight should last 6-7. If you regularly need to shave off 5-6 rounds from fights to speed things up, something is really wrong with your group (even just using encounters and at-wills, my players can generally burn through a +1-2 fight in 3-4 rounds).

Right, it's probably important to remark that we tended to shove 4-5 typical encounters into a single action sequence that ended with a bigger encounter, which made the problem much more apparent.

I actually forgot that that isn't the normal way to play the game.

[ThePurple]

Well said. This matches my experience that at several tables around level 11, I've seen characters that might as well not be there for all the contribution they made in combat (and predictably, this tends to make the player quit).

It's for this exact reason that I make sure that no one makes their characters alone. I will personally walk new players through the character creation process, allowing them to prioritize race, class, power source, role, etc. while, for all intents and purposes, I build the character for them to prevent them from creating suboptimal characters. I've yet to have a new player that *wasn't* incredibly satisfied with their character (both from a roleplay and mechanical standpoint) because I do my best to make sure that I can translate their concept into an effective character (or, for some players, translate their mechanical character into something that makes sense via roleplay, since I run a highly consistent setting where not *everything* actually makes sense). It also allows me to steer new players away from mechanically and tactically complicated characters that would diminish their fun by forcing them to ruminate excessively during their turns.


I'd take that a step further and say that the majority of some options (certainly more than half of all feats, and easily around 90% of all magic items) are lacklustre to awful. I suppose that's a consequence of their initial publishing strategy of one splatbook per month plus dragon magazine.

I agree that it's not "a bunch" as much as it is "a majority", but I don't think it's as much a question of "lacklustre to awful" as it is "they're not as amazing as this small number of other options". A lot of the feats, PPs, EDs, etc. that are mechanically terrible are really good concepts; what they provide just isn't up to snuff compared to what more optimal choices can. A good example of this is the level 3 Rogue encounters: there are 18 possibilities (not counting DragMag), most of which are pretty good (they're an augmented at-will). The problem is that there are two powers (Low Slash and Startling Offensive) that are head and shoulders above the other options (since they're minor action and ImmRe attacks that deal full damage along with some other benefits).

It's kind of a semantic difference, but, if it weren't for that small number of well and truly *obviously better* choices out there, a lot more of the other options would actually be viable.

[Yakk]

The thing is, they should have treated static damage bonuses as highly dangerous (the core engine does) balance wise. Including conditional/unconditional bonus damage dice and the like.

Then tuned the game with higher baseline damage. Kept the pace of combat up.

Essentials almost pulls that off. With 5 feats a thief deals enough damage to not have molasses gameplay. Not charop-fast, but not slow either.

We still run into the problem that almost half the damage dealt by players (the damage-per-second-of-combat goes down over combat) is while the monsters are dealing half or less as much damage as the first round. Ideally, this should be balanced by the players recovery mechanics running out, and players being low on HP or other healing resources... but by paragon/epic, often your healers have a really, really deep bag of healing.

I wonder if D&D attrition-type mechanics would be better suited for a nearly heal-less system, or one where the toughness of warriors was far "more efficient" than the healing capacity of a healer (at all time scales). Healers would only really be useful as protectors of the fragile.

[Tegu8788]

Right, it's probably important to remark that we tended to shove 4-5 typical encounters into a single action sequence that ended with a bigger encounter, which made the problem much more apparent.

I actually forgot that that isn't the normal way to play the game.

Ok, that right there, that's the problem. It's like asking how to speed up pouring a glass of milk, and no one else knows you are trying to fill a gallon container.


So yeah, that's gonna stack. There is a reason why encounter powers are supposed to come back every 5 minutes, ideally between fights. If you still wanted to stack all the combats together, I'd either say every X rounds encounters recharge, either all at once or since it was used last. Make it a cool down mechanic. There's also some love for making player encounter powers recharge like monster powers do.

[bloodshed343]

Ok, that right there, that's the problem. It's like asking how to speed up pouring a glass of milk, and no one else knows you are trying to fill a gallon container.


So yeah, that's gonna stack. There is a reason why encounter powers are supposed to come back every 5 minutes, ideally between fights.


We still counted them as separate encounters for the purpose of power recharge, but we were in a continuous string of encounters with grid-based movement throughout (think the scene from the Hobbit where they're in the Goblin town, or helm's deep.)

Man, that campaign was fun, I wish I could remember all the rules.

[Kurald Galain]

I agree that it's not "a bunch" as much as it is "a majority", but I don't think it's as much a question of "lacklustre to awful" as it is "they're not as amazing as this small number of other options".

I agree that most powers are at least decent (but overshadowed by one or two excellent ones). However, I maintain that the majority of feats and items is lacklustre to awful. Basically all the equivalents of "you deal +1 damage against hippopotami on a tuesday" that at best don't do anything and at worst slow down the game a lot while still not doing anything.

[UndertakerSheep]

So I have a follow-up question that I think wouldn't warrant a new thread:

I've been calling combat for over a year now and I think it's been a positive addition to the game. I tend base my decision to call it on the player's behavior. If it's clear that they know they've got this combat in the bag and I have no further tricks up my sleeve, it's time to call it. But my question is: can you ever call a combat in favor of the enemy? My gut is telling me, "No, players will never accept to go down without a fight."

Does anyone have any experience with this?

[Kurald Galain]

So I have a follow-up question that I think wouldn't warrant a new thread:

I've been calling combat for over a year now and I think it's been a positive addition to the game. I tend base my decision to call it on the player's behavior. If it's clear that they know they've got this combat in the bag and I have no further tricks up my sleeve, it's time to call it. But my question is: can you ever call a combat in favor of the enemy? My gut is telling me, "No, players will never accept to go down without a fight."

Does anyone have any experience with this?

Well, I might tell players that it's clear they're not going to win this one, and they should instead surrender or get out of here ASAP.

Truth be told, in several years of playing and DM'ing 4E, the parties I've played with have lost a grand total of three combats. Four, if you count one that was scripted from the beginning as "the PCs will lose and be captured, because plot".

[Beoric]

So I have a follow-up question that I think wouldn't warrant a new thread:

I've been calling combat for over a year now and I think it's been a positive addition to the game. I tend base my decision to call it on the player's behavior. If it's clear that they know they've got this combat in the bag and I have no further tricks up my sleeve, it's time to call it. But my question is: can you ever call a combat in favor of the enemy? My gut is telling me, "No, players will never accept to go down without a fight."

Does anyone have any experience with this?

I find that the same players who tend to get into trouble, generally through poor tactical savvy, are the ones who need to fight to the bitter end and would resent any effort to "call" the fight in favour of team monster.

If my tactically strong players ever looked like they were going to lose a fight, I expect they would either attempt a tactical retreat (actually, I've seen this) or surrender if they didn't think that would end in instant death. I.e. they would call it themselves.

[obryn]

Longer combat is pretty much par for the course for 4e. It's a trade-off with tactical depth, though poor HP/Damage scaling takes its toll, too, at higher levels.

I've found that carrots work better than sticks. Getting the players continually engaged and planning their turns ahead of time makes all the difference.

I prefer the 'carrot' method; there's a few ways to go about it. First, you give a +1 or +2 bonus to the first attack roll if someone is ready to go with all their dice on their turn. A second option would be to use an egg timer or something of that nature, and if a player completely finishes their turn within that time, they get a +1 or +2 bonus on their next attack.

[UndertakerSheep]

Longer combat is pretty much par for the course for 4e. It's a trade-off with tactical depth, though poor HP/Damage scaling takes its toll, too, at higher levels.

At 11th level I can definitely feel the poor scaling between HP and Damage start to creep its way up. I'm not quite sure about the tactical depth part. I'm running Strike! for the same group this week, a game that promises the same level of tactics as 4e but without all the numbers/powers bloat. I'm really interested to see how it plays out! Maybe I can learn a few lessons to apply to 4e.

[ScrivenerofDoom]

A few things:

- Party composition. I've noticed a huge improvement in speed since starting a new campaign with two E-classes, a knight and a slayer. In the case of the former, remembering which monsters are marked is not a problem. In the case of the latter, simply having two choices each round helps enormously with decision-making speed. Also, we have a lazylord who simply hands out attacks to the slayer most of the time so the slayer simply repeats his previous attack.

- Lower-level but more monsters to still get the right EL. Lower-level monsters are easier to hit and less likely to hit. In the case of the former, if your PCs hit then combat goes faster. In the case of the latter, combats go faster because they're not always panicking about getting healing.

- Re-use previously used monsters so you, as the DM, know how to run them without having to stop and think about tactics. You still need variety, but make sure you have some common - but tactically interesting - monsters you can use over and over again.

- I would rather use an over-level elite than a same level solo. And, yes, this contradicts my previous comment about lower-level monsters.


I'm actually happy with combat speed and have been for a while.

[Devigor]

My DM doesn't really have to. We're all just really organized and we all pay attention and prepare all of our stuff immediately after our turns are done so we'll have stuff ready. He's a really good DM, too, so it's easy to pay attention to him. The role-play is real.

[MoutonRustique]

My DM doesn't really have to. We're all just really organized and we all pay attention and prepare all of our stuff immediately after our turns are done so we'll have stuff ready. He's a really good DM, too, so it's easy to pay attention to him. The role-play is real.
I'm trying really, really hard to not throw a rock at you, you lucky ba... dammit! :smallfurious: You made me throw a rock! :smallmad:

But, more seriously, great job! You and your DM are lucky people, you should give yourselves some high fives from me. :smallbiggrin: Bah! What am I saying? Buy yourselves a beer! My treat!*

I highly recommend this one : Simple Malt Scotch Ale (http://brasseursillimites.com/gamme-disponible/simple-malt/) (second one down)

*Regarding the bill... well, I'm on a teacher's salary... so... yeah.:smallredface:

[ScrivenerofDoom]

My DM doesn't really have to. We're all just really organized and we all pay attention and prepare all of our stuff immediately after our turns are done so we'll have stuff ready. He's a really good DM, too, so it's easy to pay attention to him. The role-play is real.

OK, now you're clearly joking.

There is no such thing as a group of players who are well-organised, pay attention, prepare their stuff between turns, and then say good things about their DM. I think you guys just broke the D&D universe.... :)

(Yeah, I am green with envy.)

[MwaO]

OK, now you're clearly joking.

There is no such thing as a group of players who are well-organised, pay attention, prepare their stuff between turns, and then say good things about their DM. I think you guys just broke the D&D universe.... :)

(Yeah, I am green with envy.)

Don't respond to the trolls!

;)

[Devigor]

OK, now you're clearly joking.

There is no such thing as a group of players who are well-organised, pay attention, prepare their stuff between turns, and then say good things about their DM. I think you guys just broke the D&D universe.... :)

(Yeah, I am green with envy.)

The reasons it works is really because of the DM, since we've had two other DM's before and it used to be horrible.

The list:

He's a genius. I mean, he got 35 on his ACT, a 1570 on his SAT, an IQ of 146, and he works full-time (and overtime) designing robots and diagnosing robot parts at an engineering facility. And he's only 18. He also works a part-time job doing product networking.
He's incredibly friendly. He jokes a lot, talks about random fun stuff with everyone, and he listens well; he remembered a bunch of stuff I had told him about two years ago for my birthday this past year. I think he had an EQ of like 170 or something like that, because I was talking to his mom about it.
He's good at being persuasive? He might even count as manipulative. His parents are really sweet, but also very strict, so I see how he can be so commanding without coming off as a meanie-face. Ironically, he does not get his intellect from them.
He's ALWAYS prepared. There has never been anything that we've ever done, in the past year we've played with him as the DM, that he has been surprised we've done. It's insane. I guess it's because he built his worlds from the ground up; every character (even random people on the street) has a name, backstory, secrets, family, personality, and influence on someone else. One time we went through the poor quarter in a port city and we talked to a bunch of people trying to solve a criminal case, and he had everything ready for like 25+ people.
He's a great voice actor. Every character gets its own voice. When one voice sounds like another one, he adds little things to make that person different than the others. Like, this dwarf bartender we talked to always said, "you know what I mean?" every time he ended a sentence, and his brother didn't (his brother apologized for if that annoyed us).
He has the plot wrapped around his pinky finger. Not only are there places where things are too high level to fight, but we have actually visited an old place we lived at in the game and drove out a warlord from a few levels before that we couldn't even scratch, with almost no difficulty now. It was awesome. He tied all of the backgrounds of our characters from the last campaign together, somehow, before we even finished making them, and we never got help from him when we were creating them or anything.
He's been our friend for two years. He's our kind of crazy. Our group is exceptionally close.
He's more mature than anyone else I've ever met. Older people who talk to him may be convinced he's in his 30's and just looks super young.


So... Have fun being envious! :smalltongue:

[ThePurple]

He's a genius. I mean, he got 35 on his ACT, a 1570 on his SAT, an IQ of 146

Just talking as a psychologist, no one who has an interest in measuring intelligence has considered IQ as a legitimate measure of intelligence in decades. There's a massive variation in what scores a person can get from one test to another (and people pretty much always take the highest rather than the average because we like to feel good about ourselves) but also because it assumes that intelligence is a monolithic aspect of the mind rather than a large number of different types of intelligence that work together and can only really be measured in any effective way through a battery of tests (which makes it prohibitively difficult to actually get data good enough to start talking about value in the extreme regions).

IQ is also laughably inaccurate when you get into the high numbers. Whenever I see anyone in the media talk about someone having an IQ approaching or higher than 150 IQ I have to facepalm because you're starting to talk about a level of accuracy that no IQ test is actually capable of achieving; IQ is built off of a statistical construct of everyone who has taken that specific test (when you get beyond 3 standard deviations, or 145, you start having too few people to compare against in order to actually make a legitimate evaluation given the incremental measuring and limited number of questions of said tests) and assumes, laughably, that all answers, on a multiple choice test, are either wrong or right by dint of the test taker, rather than simply guessing (also, if you are a good test taker, your score will be higher than someone who is not even though it's a skill not a type of intelligence, which further devalues its effectiveness as a measure of intelligence).

It's a common misconception that IQ was designed as a way to quantify how intelligent the most intelligent people are. It was designed as (and is only really useful as) a measure for "normal" people. The most it can tell you about an abnormal person is whether they're abnormal in a good or a bad way.

Also, if he's 18 now, he would be using a tri-score SAT (max score 2400) instead of a bi-score SAT (max score 1600). They instituted the tri-score SAT in the mid-2000s (2005, I think?).


I think he had an EQ of like 170 or something like that

Take everything I said about IQ and increase it by several orders of magnitude when discussing EQ. It's even more absurd when you consider that an EQ of 170 would mean that he's one of the 10000 most emotionally intelligent people in world... at the age of 18 (emotional competence develops *much* slower than intelligence because so much of it is built upon experience; also, highly advanced children tend to lack social experience with same-age peers and often have retarded emotional growth; most developmentalists believe that only an absolutely *minute* fraction of the world's population actually reach the highest levels of emotional development, and only after decades of life and diverse experiences).


Ironically, he does not get his intellect from them.

Studies about intelligence have been done and found that there's actually no significant correlation between the intelligence of your parents and the intelligence of the children (there's a correlation between education levels of child and parent, but not intelligence).


So... Have fun being envious! :smalltongue:

I'm not saying he's not intelligent and mature, but, keep in mind, this is the internet where everything must be taken with a grain of salt (or more). The psychometrics your referring to are basically worthless for anyone that would, legitimately, get a score that high and, statistically, this kid is a massive deviation from every imaginable norm that, if he was actually getting tested as much as you suggest he is (or has been), he'd be a case study that every quantitative psychologist would be clamoring to get their hands on.

(Btw, I say all of this as someone who scored in the 1500s on the bi-score SAT, in which I actually fell asleep during one of the math portions >.>, and was tested at above 150 IQ multiple times; I'm not saying this because I'm salty; I'm actually one of his "people")

[Beoric]

You have not accurately measured how tall that tree is. Well, okay, maybe it is tall. I'm tall.

What forest?

[ThePurple]

You have not accurately measured how tall that tree is. Well, okay, maybe it is tall. I'm tall.

What forest?

The point was that trying to use performance metric to try to convince people how intelligent a friend of theirs might be is something that is kind of pointless. If you want to say he's smart, perceptive, an excellent planner, and whatnot, just say that. Trying to convince people with inaccurate and obsolete metrics means nothing; it's just putting numbers up and hoping people interpret it as "high is good!".

[Devigor]

The point was that trying to use performance metric to try to convince people how intelligent a friend of theirs might be is something that is kind of pointless. If you want to say he's smart, perceptive, an excellent planner, and whatnot, just say that. Trying to convince people with inaccurate and obsolete metrics means nothing; it's just putting numbers up and hoping people interpret it as "high is good!".

It was bi-score translated because most of the people we talk to only know it by the old method.

Anywho, I was not using that to point out how smart he is. It was pointing out that he USES his smarts. I know some people who are smart and get low scores because they don't try. He's a really hard worker, and it shows in the d&d campaigns.

I am really bad at keeping organized with my English, and I still do not know how antecedents and things like that work yet, so please forgive me if that was not in the right spot. I thought I had placed it better but now reading it, that does not look right.

[Beoric]

The point was that trying to use performance metric to try to convince people how intelligent a friend of theirs might be is something that is kind of pointless. If you want to say he's smart, perceptive, an excellent planner, and whatnot, just say that. Trying to convince people with inaccurate and obsolete metrics means nothing; it's just putting numbers up and hoping people interpret it as "high is good!".

My mistake, I thought the point was to discuss ways to speed up combat. Which Devigor did, and you didn't.

[ThePurple]

My mistake, I thought the point was to discuss ways to speed up combat. Which Devigor did, and you didn't.

His response could basically be summed up as "have an awesome GM! wanna know how awesome he is? he's *this* awesome!". That's not really discussing a way to speed up combat; that's bragging about a friend.

[Beoric]

His response could basically be summed up as "have an awesome GM! wanna know how awesome he is? he's *this* awesome!". That's not really discussing a way to speed up combat; that's bragging about a friend.

And here I though he gave us eight bullet points about why his DM ran fast combats. Well, good thing you took him down a notch, then. We wouldn't want anyone saying nice things about their DMs, or friends.

[borg286]

One trick that our group tried was to preroll d20's. While it allows you to not waste dailies when you know your roll is going to be low, it speeds up combat because optimizers can spend their time precalculating attack results and damage values. You still get the exact same number of misses as if you had rolled.

[MagicMask]

One trick that our group tried was to preroll d20's. While it allows you to not waste dailies when you know your roll is going to be low, it speeds up combat because optimizers can spend their time precalculating attack results and damage values. You still get the exact same number of misses as if you had rolled.

Instead of pre-rolling all D20 rolls, all characters in our party have a set of "dice of auspicious fortune". We can only pre-roll 3 dice but that means each person generally has at least 1 guaranteed hit and we usually have 1 or 2 crits in the the mix as well. Our sorcerer likes to have one low roll in there too so he can use bursts without hitting allies.

Some really great tips here that I'll have to take back to our group when we start playing again in the fall. We always struggle with time management.

[Jesse Booth]

I usually don't find combat to be unbearably slow, but if you want to make it faster, I have three suggestion:


You can change damage die to make rolling for monster attacks quicker (such as turning 2d6 into 1d12). This can throw off the average damage an attack does, but rarely in any appreciable manner.
You can have certain enemies damage their allies. Two good examples would be a callous wizard who doesn't care about his allies getting caught in the blast of his spells & a Drow slaver whipping their Grimlock henchmen to make them press their attack - both leave strong impressions of your villains being grade-A *****, while still shortening the battle by a bit.
Have some encounters start with enemies already slightly injured. Perhaps the Hobgoblins your party stumbled upon in the woods are recuperating from a fight with a bear?