Homebrew Rule to speed up combat

Hi everyone, 

I saw an idea on social media where you can speed up combat by having the players all go at once then have the npcs go. I see how it would speed up combat. I am wanting to implement it but not sure how it would work. Here are some things I have been considering. Feel free to give me ideas, suggestions, etc...

- Have everyone still roll initiative. But if the NPC rolls higher than one of the players, they are able to act before that player. 

- This could open up combos the players could perform. I could reward with extra damage. 

- One difficulty is I would have to sacrifice a bit of realism and go by instinct. This would mean the players would have to abide by my rulings. I could consider their explanations as well. 

- I would have to get into the head of the NPCs. DMs do that anyway right?

Let me know your thoughts.

I've run an asynchronous game like this. Things to note:

1. Yes players can pull off some combos that would be very difficult otherwise. You DO NOT need to award any bonuses to this, the power of the combo is its own reward. Instead you will need to add additional difficulty to the combats for them to feel like a challenge -> especially having enemies with stronger incapacitation effects or willing to kill the player characters because dropping a player to 0 hp does very little in this style of game because another player can heal them at the start of the player turn and then the player gets a their character's turn as normal. Alternatively use additional HB rules so that a character always loses 1 turn if they are reduced to 0 hp by the enemies.
2. Initiative is irrelevant, don't roll it, it's a waste of time. Instead the first round of combat should always start with the most powerful enemy(s) - unless the party successfully surprise the enemies - then the player characters, then any minions or low power enemies. This ensures your Big Bads always get at least one turn rather than all the players dog piling them and obliterating them before they get to act.
3. I don't know what you are talking about with respect to realism?? D&D combat is already extremely far away from realism.
4. The point of this system is so that players who know what they want to do can act while the more uncertain players are thinking. So ensure your players understand that everyone waiting on someone else will not be acceptable, and those ready to act should act immediately even if it isn't necessarily completely optimal.

No matter how you do it, it still comes down to the players to speed it up.  Players need to know when they go/roll. Players need to know what they will actually do, and need to know what is allowed or not.

Combat grounds to a halt when a player does not realize it is their turn and/or don't know what they are going to do. 

Having 'side' initiative, in any challenging encounter, tends to devolve into "all the monsters go at once, pick one character to dogpile, and kill them before anyone can do anything to save them"

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Having 'side' initiative, in any challenging encounter, tends to devolve into "all the monsters go at once, pick one character to dogpile, and kill them before anyone can do anything to save them"

 Only if the DM wants to play it like that.

Which is the case in general. Even with scattered initiative, if the DM wants to have all the enemies focus fire on one PC, it's going to be very bad for that PC very quickly.

Quote from jl8e >>

Which is the case in general. Even with scattered initiative, if the DM wants to have all the enemies focus fire on one PC, it's going to be very bad for that PC very quickly.

Being focus fired is always difficult, but scattered initiative means things like feeding a potion to a downed ally is possible.

The reason legendary actions exist is precisely to avoid having the monster just do all its damage all at once, as that's likely to obliterate a character.

I’ve tried a similar system and it can work really well for keeping combat moving. Having players plan together first makes turns feel more like a team effort instead of everyone waiting. The only thing I’d suggest is keeping some kind of initiative order for reactions, surprise moments, and faster enemies so it still feels dynamic.

Here are the things I have found that slow down combat:

1) PC's have minions.  Do not do this.  It doubles or triples  the time between rounds.

2) DM has lots of different types of enemies working together.  He has to remember everything each one does.  Stick to only a few types of enemies - and make hand written notes about what each does (People remember things they wrote better than things they typed.)

3) Group all enemies into as few as possible sets.   That is, 2 trolls vs 4 PCs, then the trolls go on ONE initiative. 

4)  Have a list of PC's proficiencies and do not ask them to role for simple things.  That is, do not have them roll for Perception checks, the proficient guy just sees it during combat.   Non-proficient misses it unless it is essential.  Same for Insight Checks, Medicine checks, Religion checks, etc.   But if they are trying to get a combat advantage, like say Sneak Attack by being stealthy, then they still have to roll. 

Quote from Mog_Dracov >>

 

3) Group all enemies into as few as possible sets.   That is, 2 trolls vs 4 PCs, then the trolls go on ONE initiative. 

 

 This is actually the official rule.

I don’t know that this would do much to speed up combat. IME, things slow down because a player doesn’t quite know what a spell will do, or gets really into analysis paralysis trying to find the perfect thing to do each round. Group initiative doesn’t solve those problems. It might actually make them worse with all the PCs now trying to find some perfect combo each round.

But if were to try it, I’d definitely make sure the PCs go in the same order every round. Theres lots and lots of effects that last until the start/end of your next turn. Allowing them to shift around their initiative order could make those powers much stronger — either ending negative ones earlier or having positive ones last longer.

And I’d worry that if you’ve got a lot of enemies (especially once they start getting multiple attacks), it could get boring for the players, as there could be an extended stretch where it’s just you rolling and rolling and rolling.

I agree with Xalthu, if you are worried with the combats you have taking to long, there are a few things you can mitigate that with.

You can impose a time limit on turns. Combat can be disrupted by people having decision paralysis, and putting pressure on them helps to remove that. It can also make the reactions of the players more natural and less fancy, unrealistic, and time-consuming. You'll probably want to run this through your players first too.

You can also just cut out the combats that don't add anything to the narrative. These extra combats only add false action and don't feel meaningful, but eat up lots of time. Only put in the combat encounters that mean something for the plot of your game.

The longest turns in a combat are almost always the player who doesnt know what they want to do. They want to optimize so they consider a dozen possibilities and discuss it out loud with the other players, at which point, i usually tell them im skipping them, and will check in if they are ready after the next player finishes.

As a player i try to keep my turn to under a minute. 

As a dm, i tend to give players 20 seconds to make clear they know whatbtheyrr going to do and the remaining 40 swconds to roll the dice. If by 20 seconds they have changed their mind 3 times, i tell them i will come back to them and move to the next player.

One thing that I've found helpful when dealing with players who have analysis paralysis or (gods help us) distracted players is to announce who is up and who will follow that. Sometimes just hearing their name seems to help get players focused. So a quick, "Rick, you're up. Ilsa, you're after Rick."

Having played quite a wide variety of TTRPGs my take on this is that slow combat is part of the deal with D&D 5e and 5.5e. Yes there are ways of speeding combat up, and yes some DMs have come up with a lot of different house rules on initiative to work more efficiently for their players.

The hard fact is though that D&D is built for tactical combat and that will mean allowing players the chance to make their decisions. Spell cards, physical character sheets, and even ability cards are really helpful for players even online and will address slower combats much better than different initiative systems in my experience. 5e and 5.5e especially when people run multiclassing in their games tends to provide players with lots of options (that's good), but makes it hard for them to know which option is the best to choose (that's bad), but that has the potential to help create those fun and unexpected moments (that's good), but the system also means that when an enemy dies it can radically alter the plan of the next player (that's bad).

My point is that initiative as written comes with downsides, but having recently tried the abomination that DC20's new combat system it reminded me that almost all systems have drawbacks with what they choose. Pathfinder 2e for example takes the decision paralysis and ramps it up to 1000. 

Here's the real advice though. Have your players complained about slow combat?

If no - then don't stress about it. As DMs we can often feel a different passing of time, a responsibility to keep the game going at pace, while the players feel the same thing as intense and laden with anticipation.

If yes - ask the players what they feel is slowing the pace down. What do they want to try to resolve it? Come to an agreement as a table about what you want to try. And most importantly don't make the mistake of thinking that what works for one table will work for yours. Every table, every group is different.

Ref the advice to group enemies to as few initiatives as possible, don't.

Grouping the enemies is a must to keep speed, but if you reduce an encounter with 2 trolls to 1 initiative, you're risking removing some of the narrative in favour of getting through the combat faster.

I aim to have 2-3 groups, max. I'll often group then geographically, EG if the party is in an ambush, the ones on the left and the ones on the right go in 2 groups, regardless of what monsters they are - you might have a group of 3 dogs and 2 bandits on one side and 5 bandits on the other.

I've had plenty of narratively fun fights in my games because I've had the enemy spread out through the initiative so that they can respond to my party's shenanigans partway through the party's actions. Letting the party resolve everything and then the enemy resolve everything basically makes initiative moot.

The best way to speed up combat is players who are engaged. Describe the active players turn to the other players as their PoV, so that they are still involved. Make sure they know who's on deck. Introduce the enemies as their initiative opens, not all at the start, so they have to pay attention.

Quote from ThorukDuckSlayer >>

Ref the advice to group enemies to as few initiatives as possible, don't.

...

 

The best way to speed up combat is players who are engaged. Describe the active players turn to the other players as their PoV, so that they are still involved. Make sure they know who's on deck. Introduce the enemies as their initiative opens, not all at the start, so they have to pay attention.

Engaged or not engaged is not the same issue as analysis paralysis. I have had plenty of engaged players who start getting overwhelmed with which spell should they cast to get thr best, most optimal outcome.

As for grouping, sure, if you have 2 enemies, you can probably give them different points on the initiative order.  But the dm usually isnt the one taking time. I assume the dm is familiar with thr encounter and has a sense of ehat each monster will do. And i also run encounters that have 20 to 40 monsters. Wizards love to fireball a hoard once in a while. And there is definitely some overhead if you have each monster roll their own unique initiative, from adding all the numbers to the initiative tracker to switching your focus from the players doing things to your monsters and tracking hit points and whatnot, to the monsters doing things to your players.  The 40 goblins all moved on the same jnjtjative count and was waaay faster to manage that way.