I give players 1 minute - my table rule is if you are just attacking you should be pre rolling - if your doing something that requires dm interaction then you have 1 minute - outside of that I skip the player - tell them ill come back to you before the top of the order if you still do not know then you can go next turn. 

I am of the opinion that it is rude to all the other players at the table to have 1 or 2 players monopolize the game time while the rest of the table is sitting there rolling their eyes and bored - so I do not allow it. 

Every table is different of course but I tend to run fast combats - so there is time for exploration and RP - if everyone takes 5 min on a turn or more you'd be lucky to get 1 decent combat in per session imo. 

Edit for context i hold myself to the same rule even if I am running 5-6 creatures in a fight i roll all digitally and keep the creatures turn as close to a minute total as I can - occasionally if there are more creatures 10-12 it may take 2 minutes between casters and melee creatures but still well under the 3 min mark. 

As a DM I did this once back in 1987 when i dm'd my first game and the only persons expectations that were not met were my own and I learned a valuable lesson. Friends are more important than the game.  It is not worth my time to try to push the players when i can simply enjoy my time with my friend and we can have a good session  just going with the flow.

In my opinion it's not pushing the players - its balancing the amount of time each player has of speaking - deciding things - rp'ing - exploring - if 1-2 players take up 50% of the game time then the other 4 players are being short changed. I think while it is never an exact science as a rule of thumb if there are 6 people at a table then everyone should be "playing" for 10 minutes per hour -  so it does not turn into 4 people watching 2 people indecisively not play. 

We will have to agree to disagree. 

Quote from AnzioFaro >>

So after listening to literally hundreds of hours of combat at that speed, that now feels to me like the normal pace that combat should be moving at. So when I'm at the table and ask my players to role initiative, I click into that pace of speaking. I begin to sound like an auctioneer.

 “Roll initiative! We’ve got a +1 to hit, now +2, now +2, will ya give me +3?“

Quote from AntonSirius >>

Quote from Bomooo >>

Whenever we figured out the initiatives, I tell the first player to do his turn and tell the other what players are next (mostly the next two players) to give them enough time to prepare their turns. But this seems to not be enough. I was thinking about adding like a timer, if the player takes too long scrolling through his abilities and rereading some stuff. What do you guys think about that? Are there any ideas or ways to make combat feel exciting, even for the players that are waiting for their turns.

 

The thing is, there's only so much pre-planning you can do, especially for casters. What everyone else in the battle does affects what you can do. Maybe you were going to fling out a fireball, but then the barbarian runs up into melee with the group of enemies you were going to blast, that sort of thing 

 Actually, that was the way the game worked 40 years ago.  You had a caller, who collected the actions of the players and communicated them to the dm who then described all the action occurring simultaneously.  Bad things sometimes happened.  Of course we didn't have opportunity attacks, reactions, bonus actions and such.  It might have even been side initiative so the wizard would throw the fireball then the melee types would go forward.  Different times.

My games are on discord. I wrote my own program to handle initiative and share that on the screen so people can see where they are. 

On top of that when I say a player is next up I mention the next player is coming up after. 

In session 0 I make it well known that if anyone is taking too much time I'll give them 60sec or skip their turn. 

I have thought about putting a timer on my program so they see it. I might actually do that with my new campaign and see how it goes. Combat should be stressful and cause players to freak out and make decisions. Good or bad. 

I've played with groups where the whole party and enemies complete a turn in two minutes, and others where the same turn has taken 45 minutes.  Waiting more than half an hour for your turn to come back round again can get really dull - there's only so many ways you can describe swinging a sword so keep it short and sweet.

I encourage people to think in advance about what they want to do, and if they don't have a cool idea then default to "action, bonus action, interact and quip".  If they need to clarify something about the environment, attitudes or similar, then try to keep it to one or two questions so everyone can feel involved.

Keeping combat ticking along quickly means you get the fun of the fight, but can soon get back to the roleplay and interaction with less hanging around waiting for people to say "Ummmm, what colour is that orc's hair?"

Oh, and keep comments and chat to a minimum during other people's turns - discord or Roll20 chat is great for this.  Encouragement and enthusiasm is cool, but chatting along while someone else is meant to be in the limelight isn't.

It really depends on why the turns are dragging. Each of the many possible reasons have different solutions.

1) Slow decisions. Sometimes a player can't decide what to do. They could cast a spell, they could attack, they might be able to feed someone a potion. What is the best thing to do? There are several approaches to this

- the DM says "you have X amount of time to let me know what you want to do or your character will take the dodge action". Don't be draconian about it but if they can't decide by the end of the time window then gently let them know that the character is dodging and move on to the next character.

- the DM can also help out the player by suggesting good courses of action. This assumes the DM is at least as familiar with the character class as the player but the DM could suggest a useful action or spell to the player as a possibility. This could help the player to better learn their character and the game by having a more experienced person make suggestions. This can also work by assigning another player as a mentor to help the slow player but only if the slower player is willing to accept the help.

2) Slow mechanics. This is especially true with multiple attacks with multiple modifiers. A level 5 fighter or ranger using 2 weapon fighting or polearm master could have 3 attacks. In this scenario, the player says they will attack target X. They then search their dice for a d20, roll it, look up their character sheet to get their total to hit modifier, spend time adding them, turn to the DM and ask if the attack hit, (do this even if the total was higher than a previous attack which hit) search for the needed damage die, roll it, search for any modifier die like a d4 for Crusaders Mantle or a d6 for hunters mark or hex, roll that die, spend 10 seconds adding 4 from the d6 and a 3 from the other d6 and then looks at the character sheet to see what their damage modifier is then adds them all up and then tells the DM they did Y damage. Repeat this process for each of the three attacks. 

I've played at a table where this happened, the player is a really nice person, but their turn could take 5 or more minutes just searching for dice and adding things up. However, I was also at a table with a druid who used conjure animals to summon a pack of four Deinonychus - each of which has 3 attacks - plus the druid's attack. One would think a recipe for slowness but in this case, the player rolls color coordinated dice for each attack, rolls the to hit and damage and any modifiers all at once, glances at the d20s and can tell which are higher than an attack that previously hit and which are clear misses ... asks about the ones that are uncertain, then tells the DM the total damage done. The turns of folks who roll all the dice at once can take 30 seconds to a minute even with multiple attacks with to hit and damage modifiers like bless etc ... just by having the player search out the needed dice and roll them all at once.

So for players that are mechanically slow, encourage them to roll all their dice for the attacks all at once (to hit and damage). If they have multiple dice sets they can roll all the attacks at once too. Then teach them to keep track of what AC was needed to hit before so they can screen the die rolls and only ask the DM about ones that are uncertain -  the rest are hits or misses. The same goes for casting spells. If the player is thinking of casting fireball then they should have the 8d6 ready when their turn comes around - not looking up the fireball spell to see how many dice they need.

Finally, encourage folks to remember some of the details - their character won't usually change round to round. Remembering that the character's to hit modifier with their favorite weapon is +5 isn't that tough usually.

Generally, all the calculations for things like attack modifiers should already be done on the record sheet and the dice should be kept within easy reach.  If they're digging for a D20 every round, they've got organizational issues.