Looking for ways to make combat more interesting. There is too much downtime for a player between attacks in the current system. This system allows players to be more creative in combat and makes combat quicker.
Players discuss what actions they want to do this round (I haven't decided if these actions are locked or can be changed during play)
Players decide what order they want to go in this round
Roll for initiative
Example
Players decided their turn order
Sarah
Kim
Josh
Andrew
Players rolled for initiative
Kim: 20
Andrew: 15
Sarah: 12
Josh: 10
Monsters rolled for initiative
Monster 1: 13
Monster 2: 10
Finalized turn order (ties go to monster)
Monster 1
Sarah
Kim
Monster 2
Josh
Andrew
Repeat this sequence of decide action, decide turn order, roll initiative at the top of every round.
How does adding rolls speed combat? I can see combat being quite different, but not faster
There was an unearthed arcana a while back that was Mike Mearls’ idea of this sort of thing (except that different actions had different effects on what your initiative for a round would be decided by).
The thing I dislike about the “decide what you will do before you know when you’ll do it” style is that a lot of actions depend on where things are when you do them. “I want to cast wall of Fire to separate some of the baddies from us,” but they roll higher initiative and now they are all mixed with my allies. Wall of Fire certainly isn’t the best choice now. Do I waste my turn? Do I get to choose another spell? If I do get to choose another spell then what was the point of telling my teammates what I was going to do anyway? Does the DM discuss with himself what the enemies are doing? The enemy plans could change based on what the DM hears. Shouldn’t the players get that too?
You might want to look at edge of the empires initiative system. Basically the rolls generate player slots and npc slots any player that hasn't gone that round can go in any player slot.
So for your example:
Players rolled for initiative
Kim: 20
Andrew: 15
Sarah: 12
Josh: 10
Monsters rolled for initiative
Monster 1: 13
Monster 2: 10
It would be:
PC, PC, NPC, PC, PC and npc however you want to handle ties.
Also it seems rather weird (and wasteful) to decide turn order and roll initiative. Kim’s 20 initiative is wasted because Kim wants to go after Sarah. At this point, I’d probably do initiative per side rather than everyone roll and not use most of the rolls.
Do the monsters use the same rules? Or do they just go when they roll?
If your goal is speeding up combat, without eliminating turn order & initiative, just go with initiative by sides. Keep in mind that will make combat encounters much more prone to dramatic shifts in momentum. A botched player round, or a particularly effective enemy round, can quickly put the players at an insurmountable disadvantage. Same thing with the enemies... when the players all attack first, an intentionally difficult encounter can be mitigated very quickly.
When someone wants to speed up combat encounters, I always have to ask: why? Combat is already very streamlined--action, bonus, move, reaction is very straight-forward--in this edition, so where is the bottleneck happening with your group? Is it that certain player(s) are taking a long time with their turn(s)? Indecisive about what to do when their turn actually comes up? These are by far the most common sources of game play slowdown.
When a group chronically experiences slowdown, the best things I can recommend are: put everyone on a timer, and encourage players to pre-plan (in general) their actions. Pre-planning is always the best practice for a player anyway, but obviously battle conditions change turn-to-turn. As Wolf mentioned, casting Wall of Fire might not be the best idea when the player's turn actually comes up, so having a bit of a slowdown while that player chooses a different action is not unexpected. Putting players on a timer helps with this. Thirty seconds to one minute is plenty of time for a player to decide on a course of action.
Timers also have the bonus effect of adding an element of anxious urgency to combat. Something unexpected happened, and now your original plan won't work? "Shit, okay, what to do... the spell I wanted to cast won't work the way I planned, and now I've got a Goblin in my face... **** it. I hit it with my staff."
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You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
My group generally experiences slowdown but only with specific players. We have two players who generally plan ahead and have a strong idea of what they want to do on their turn, and they usually finish quickly and move on. Then we have one player who usually keeps up pace, but occasionally wants to experiment and try to take advantage of the environment in ways that make logical sense but that the DM didn't necessarily plan for. Like, "can I kick open this cask of wine and drop my torch on it to start a fire in one turn? What if it's my action to kick it and bonus action to ignite it? Can I aim where the wine spills out? Am I going to set myself on fire if I try this?" The other player is simply terrified of failure and second guesses themselves constantly. Trying to figure out who they can get sneak attack against, should they go for the target that looks most dangerous or try to clear out a weaker, but easier to kill target. Always trying to get advantage whether they have cover to hide behind or not. But in the end it's entirely dependent on the player and how they like to play.
“Can I set this wine on fire?” Well wine isn’t flammable, you can certainly try. “Am I going to set myself on fire trying to light this wine on fire?” Well whatever you do to set a non-flammable liquid on fire is going to require a lot of heat, so probably. “Can I do this all as an action?” Nope because it is going to take you the better part of an afternoon to figure out.
1st and 2nd edition had rolling initiative each round. I would not go back. While it can make for some dramatic changes to combat due to (un)lucky rolls, it really slowed things down. And I’d never lock people in to choices at the start of a round, that sounds like an annoying computer game where you target the fireball, but all the enemies move before you finish casting it.
As people above note, the best way to keep things moving is to have players who know what they’re doing. Even then, some people will be slower.
Why are you trying to speed it up, anyway? Combat is pretty fun, and a group working together to solve a problem. Why rush through something that is supposed to be 1/3 of the game?
For alcohol to be flammable it requires over 100 proof if I remember. Basically grain alcohol. Flaming shots almost always have a splash of 151 on top or they won’t burn. (151 is both the name, and the proof by the way.)
When it’s your turn, I generally give you three seconds to start to tell me what you’re doing (finger countdown in the air and everything) or lose your turn. No discussion of plans between players beyond what they can call out in short phrases (heal me, fireball the bbeg, don’t touch the thing) and I try to limit this to once or twice only for each player
It doesn't work perfectly as there is always some talking/joking/implicit strategizing, but it keeps things moving and makes combat much more interesting as the party can’t optimize.
When it’s your turn, I generally give you three seconds to start to tell me what you’re doing (finger countdown in the air and everything) or lose your turn. No discussion of plans between players beyond what they can call out in short phrases (heal me, fireball the bbeg, don’t touch the thing) and I try to limit this to once or twice only for each player
It doesn't work perfectly as there is always some talking/joking/implicit strategizing, but it keeps things moving and makes combat much more interesting as the party can’t optimize.
Huh. Interesting due to the lack of strategy? In what way? That it sucks more for the players? In my experience, worse =/= more interesting, especially in games. When you take strategy out of a portion of the game that is strategic, you are just turning it into a mess of boring or unfun actions.
I like the idea of having a timer to some degree, but three seconds seems incredibly harsh. What I've seen more often is when the DM sees that one player is clearly being indecisive and perhaps too metagamey (asking what everyone is planning on their turn, asking which target has the lowest AC or whatever), then the DM will start a countdown for them. But doing it every turn seems like it would be less fun, to me at least.
I like the idea of having a timer to some degree, but three seconds seems incredibly harsh. What I've seen more often is when the DM sees that one player is clearly being indecisive and perhaps too metagamey (asking what everyone is planning on their turn, asking which target has the lowest AC or whatever), then the DM will start a countdown for them. But doing it every turn seems like it would be less fun, to me at least.
It’s not a super rigid thing, but when I come to a player, they respond immediately. The timer only actually starts if they are dawdling. It sounds harsh, but it’s really not. It creates an urgency in combat and avoids the whole “you did this and then I’ll do that and ...” or worse, waiting until their turn to consider their options. Players pay attention and plan what they are going to do before I get to them. If players really want/need to strategize, they start to plan for it before combat starts or they use precious turn actions for it.
Okay, I can understand the timer more when it's mostly in response to the idea that each player should be planning their action before it gets to their turn. That's pretty much how I usually play... I have a solid idea of what I intend to do on my turn, and I really only get screwed up if some major change occurs on the game board right before my turn hits
I don't think I was clear about the timing. It isn't 3 seconds to explain everything, it's 3 seconds to start and only if you're clearly hesitating. Then there is also adjudication and such. Sometimes I even correct assumptions and let them change their action. 3 seconds might not seem like a long time, but count it out in your head or even try to pause 3 seconds when you are talking with someone. It can be an eternity.
It's very interesting when you are first to react. Is the exposition of a plan (in the hopes that the others will follow suite) more important than just acting and providing some abbreviated call to action (in the hopes the others understand your intent).
It's not something for everyone's table. Particularly if you run a more crunchy/wargaming style game. For my current table, the only thing that really changes when combat initiates is that the timing becomes more precise (initiative) and more constrained (6 second turns). Restricting response times and limiting detailed communication helps create the natural tension and messiness of combat. The mechanics during combat are very much the same as the rest of the game, so it's just one more tool to differentiate.
As an aside, given that everything is really concurrent within a six second window, I've often wondered what it would be like to have everyone blindly submit what they are doing and then play that out in initiative order. Could maybe do it with Roll20 or some other tech. I suspect it would get in the way too much, but it could be a hoot.
I think having a time limit is reasonable, but yes, I was under the impression that it was much more harsh. I still like strategic and tactical combat, but not to the point of wasting time and this is a decent way of preventing it.
Why are the players waiting until they are even in combat to plan their turns? That to me sounds like they just don’t know their characters well to me.
the spells I have don’t change when combat begins.
my weapons (usually) don’t change when combat begins.
my skills don’t change.
a lot of variables can change, distance, ammo amount/spell slots, but the actual things to do don’t change.
if you think of combat as a math formula. And let’s be real that most of D&D is a math formula.
not know what to do in combat on a regular basis means you don’t know the formula. Players should already be entering combat with the formula unless they have: never played before, never played that specific class before.
otherwise they should have the formula, then it’s just quickly plug the variables and let it rip.
DMs can add new variables such as, hostages, put fall traps, etc.
but those still don’t change the formula. If my wizard is a “stay in the back and target group enemies with DoT/debuffs/fireball” that’s not going to change because there’s a hostage off in a corner.
if there’s a barbarian/paladin/fighter/swashbuckler/hexblade that just runs in and goes stabby stabby. They are the ones who adjust their formula from run in stab, to run in, rescue, stab (not the hostage).
and if they don’t know ahead of time if they would do that for that situation, then they either don’t know their chars, or never prepared mentally ahead of battle for different scenarios besides a “point and shoot”.
i don’t think 1 minute is harsh, I don’t think 3 seconds is harsh, I think any and all of it makes sense, provided you explained it ahead of time. Most DMs I encounter, and when I dm myself, give a brief “expectations” and “raf” for what they do. Combat is the most time consuming part of D&D even when everyone is flowing smoothly and knows what they are doing. Just the time it takes to hit. Miss. Roll damag. Gather die. Roll. Etc. repeat. Move etc. done shenanigans. Elemental adept wait. Some of the fireballs were 1, oh GWM, let’s reroll these 1s, etc etc etc.
There’s no right or wrong way to run a combat.
but there is a right or wrong way to approach your turn in combat.
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Looking for ways to make combat more interesting. There is too much downtime for a player between attacks in the current system. This system allows players to be more creative in combat and makes combat quicker.
Repeat this sequence of decide action, decide turn order, roll initiative at the top of every round.
How does adding rolls speed combat? I can see combat being quite different, but not faster
There was an unearthed arcana a while back that was Mike Mearls’ idea of this sort of thing (except that different actions had different effects on what your initiative for a round would be decided by).
The thing I dislike about the “decide what you will do before you know when you’ll do it” style is that a lot of actions depend on where things are when you do them. “I want to cast wall of Fire to separate some of the baddies from us,” but they roll higher initiative and now they are all mixed with my allies. Wall of Fire certainly isn’t the best choice now. Do I waste my turn? Do I get to choose another spell? If I do get to choose another spell then what was the point of telling my teammates what I was going to do anyway? Does the DM discuss with himself what the enemies are doing? The enemy plans could change based on what the DM hears. Shouldn’t the players get that too?
You might want to look at edge of the empires initiative system. Basically the rolls generate player slots and npc slots any player that hasn't gone that round can go in any player slot.
So for your example:
It would be:
PC, PC, NPC, PC, PC and npc however you want to handle ties.
Also it seems rather weird (and wasteful) to decide turn order and roll initiative. Kim’s 20 initiative is wasted because Kim wants to go after Sarah. At this point, I’d probably do initiative per side rather than everyone roll and not use most of the rolls.
Do the monsters use the same rules? Or do they just go when they roll?
If your goal is speeding up combat, without eliminating turn order & initiative, just go with initiative by sides. Keep in mind that will make combat encounters much more prone to dramatic shifts in momentum. A botched player round, or a particularly effective enemy round, can quickly put the players at an insurmountable disadvantage. Same thing with the enemies... when the players all attack first, an intentionally difficult encounter can be mitigated very quickly.
When someone wants to speed up combat encounters, I always have to ask: why? Combat is already very streamlined--action, bonus, move, reaction is very straight-forward--in this edition, so where is the bottleneck happening with your group? Is it that certain player(s) are taking a long time with their turn(s)? Indecisive about what to do when their turn actually comes up? These are by far the most common sources of game play slowdown.
When a group chronically experiences slowdown, the best things I can recommend are: put everyone on a timer, and encourage players to pre-plan (in general) their actions. Pre-planning is always the best practice for a player anyway, but obviously battle conditions change turn-to-turn. As Wolf mentioned, casting Wall of Fire might not be the best idea when the player's turn actually comes up, so having a bit of a slowdown while that player chooses a different action is not unexpected. Putting players on a timer helps with this. Thirty seconds to one minute is plenty of time for a player to decide on a course of action.
Timers also have the bonus effect of adding an element of anxious urgency to combat. Something unexpected happened, and now your original plan won't work? "Shit, okay, what to do... the spell I wanted to cast won't work the way I planned, and now I've got a Goblin in my face... **** it. I hit it with my staff."
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
My group generally experiences slowdown but only with specific players. We have two players who generally plan ahead and have a strong idea of what they want to do on their turn, and they usually finish quickly and move on. Then we have one player who usually keeps up pace, but occasionally wants to experiment and try to take advantage of the environment in ways that make logical sense but that the DM didn't necessarily plan for. Like, "can I kick open this cask of wine and drop my torch on it to start a fire in one turn? What if it's my action to kick it and bonus action to ignite it? Can I aim where the wine spills out? Am I going to set myself on fire if I try this?" The other player is simply terrified of failure and second guesses themselves constantly. Trying to figure out who they can get sneak attack against, should they go for the target that looks most dangerous or try to clear out a weaker, but easier to kill target. Always trying to get advantage whether they have cover to hide behind or not. But in the end it's entirely dependent on the player and how they like to play.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
“Can I set this wine on fire?” Well wine isn’t flammable, you can certainly try. “Am I going to set myself on fire trying to light this wine on fire?” Well whatever you do to set a non-flammable liquid on fire is going to require a lot of heat, so probably. “Can I do this all as an action?” Nope because it is going to take you the better part of an afternoon to figure out.
Well, to be fair it was Dwarven Wine, so that's probably closer in alcohol content to a fairly strong whiskey :P
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
1st and 2nd edition had rolling initiative each round. I would not go back. While it can make for some dramatic changes to combat due to (un)lucky rolls, it really slowed things down. And I’d never lock people in to choices at the start of a round, that sounds like an annoying computer game where you target the fireball, but all the enemies move before you finish casting it.
As people above note, the best way to keep things moving is to have players who know what they’re doing. Even then, some people will be slower.
Why are you trying to speed it up, anyway? Combat is pretty fun, and a group working together to solve a problem. Why rush through something that is supposed to be 1/3 of the game?
For alcohol to be flammable it requires over 100 proof if I remember. Basically grain alcohol. Flaming shots almost always have a splash of 151 on top or they won’t burn. (151 is both the name, and the proof by the way.)
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When it’s your turn, I generally give you three seconds to start to tell me what you’re doing (finger countdown in the air and everything) or lose your turn. No discussion of plans between players beyond what they can call out in short phrases (heal me, fireball the bbeg, don’t touch the thing) and I try to limit this to once or twice only for each player
It doesn't work perfectly as there is always some talking/joking/implicit strategizing, but it keeps things moving and makes combat much more interesting as the party can’t optimize.
Huh. Interesting due to the lack of strategy? In what way? That it sucks more for the players? In my experience, worse =/= more interesting, especially in games. When you take strategy out of a portion of the game that is strategic, you are just turning it into a mess of boring or unfun actions.
I like the idea of having a timer to some degree, but three seconds seems incredibly harsh. What I've seen more often is when the DM sees that one player is clearly being indecisive and perhaps too metagamey (asking what everyone is planning on their turn, asking which target has the lowest AC or whatever), then the DM will start a countdown for them. But doing it every turn seems like it would be less fun, to me at least.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
It’s not a super rigid thing, but when I come to a player, they respond immediately. The timer only actually starts if they are dawdling. It sounds harsh, but it’s really not. It creates an urgency in combat and avoids the whole “you did this and then I’ll do that and ...” or worse, waiting until their turn to consider their options. Players pay attention and plan what they are going to do before I get to them. If players really want/need to strategize, they start to plan for it before combat starts or they use precious turn actions for it.
I use a 1 minute hourglass egg timer.
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Okay, I can understand the timer more when it's mostly in response to the idea that each player should be planning their action before it gets to their turn. That's pretty much how I usually play... I have a solid idea of what I intend to do on my turn, and I really only get screwed up if some major change occurs on the game board right before my turn hits
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
I don't think I was clear about the timing. It isn't 3 seconds to explain everything, it's 3 seconds to start and only if you're clearly hesitating. Then there is also adjudication and such. Sometimes I even correct assumptions and let them change their action. 3 seconds might not seem like a long time, but count it out in your head or even try to pause 3 seconds when you are talking with someone. It can be an eternity.
It's very interesting when you are first to react. Is the exposition of a plan (in the hopes that the others will follow suite) more important than just acting and providing some abbreviated call to action (in the hopes the others understand your intent).
It's not something for everyone's table. Particularly if you run a more crunchy/wargaming style game. For my current table, the only thing that really changes when combat initiates is that the timing becomes more precise (initiative) and more constrained (6 second turns). Restricting response times and limiting detailed communication helps create the natural tension and messiness of combat. The mechanics during combat are very much the same as the rest of the game, so it's just one more tool to differentiate.
As an aside, given that everything is really concurrent within a six second window, I've often wondered what it would be like to have everyone blindly submit what they are doing and then play that out in initiative order. Could maybe do it with Roll20 or some other tech. I suspect it would get in the way too much, but it could be a hoot.
I think having a time limit is reasonable, but yes, I was under the impression that it was much more harsh. I still like strategic and tactical combat, but not to the point of wasting time and this is a decent way of preventing it.
Why are the players waiting until they are even in combat to plan their turns? That to me sounds like they just don’t know their characters well to me.
the spells I have don’t change when combat begins.
my weapons (usually) don’t change when combat begins.
my skills don’t change.
a lot of variables can change, distance, ammo amount/spell slots, but the actual things to do don’t change.
if you think of combat as a math formula. And let’s be real that most of D&D is a math formula.
not know what to do in combat on a regular basis means you don’t know the formula. Players should already be entering combat with the formula unless they have: never played before, never played that specific class before.
otherwise they should have the formula, then it’s just quickly plug the variables and let it rip.
DMs can add new variables such as, hostages, put fall traps, etc.
but those still don’t change the formula. If my wizard is a “stay in the back and target group enemies with DoT/debuffs/fireball” that’s not going to change because there’s a hostage off in a corner.
if there’s a barbarian/paladin/fighter/swashbuckler/hexblade that just runs in and goes stabby stabby. They are the ones who adjust their formula from run in stab, to run in, rescue, stab (not the hostage).
and if they don’t know ahead of time if they would do that for that situation, then they either don’t know their chars, or never prepared mentally ahead of battle for different scenarios besides a “point and shoot”.
i don’t think 1 minute is harsh, I don’t think 3 seconds is harsh, I think any and all of it makes sense, provided you explained it ahead of time. Most DMs I encounter, and when I dm myself, give a brief “expectations” and “raf” for what they do. Combat is the most time consuming part of D&D even when everyone is flowing smoothly and knows what they are doing. Just the time it takes to hit. Miss. Roll damag. Gather die. Roll. Etc. repeat. Move etc. done shenanigans. Elemental adept wait. Some of the fireballs were 1, oh GWM, let’s reroll these 1s, etc etc etc.
There’s no right or wrong way to run a combat.
but there is a right or wrong way to approach your turn in combat.