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