QQ&A: Faster combat
Here’s a question I, as a fledging GM, would have loved to know the answer to:
How do I make combat faster?
It’s one of the strange flaws of D&D, no matter the edition. In 5e, combat tends to be faster, but not fast enough. When roleplaying, you can become fully immersed in the experience. In combat, you spend most of the time waiting for your turn.
One problem with this is it turns battles from war into chess. In chess, you want to optimise each move. In battle, a dumb move done now is probably better than a perfect move done a minute later.
There’s more to it, though.
I hate turn-based games. I hate them.
It’s frustrating, because I love them. I like being able to take a few moments to calculate your best move. What I hate is how other people take liberties with that.
Take a typical turn-based game with, say, me and four other players. My turn comes around, I make my moves, then I hand over to the next person. Then I get to hear something like this:
“Oh, it’s my turn now, is it… I see… well, let me just… take… a moment… to… look… at… my cards… Oh! This one… looks… cool…”
I timed it once. In a friendly game of… something, I forget what it was, I’d spend maybe 30 seconds on my turn, then have to wait over ten minutes for the other players to do theirs.
(Yeah, I timed it because I was bored. Of course I was bored - I was only playing in 30 second bursts between naps.)
That’s why I prefer GMing to playing, most of the time:
For one thing, you’re always doing something, even when it’s not “your” turn. You’re either attacking the PCs or being attacked by them. It’s great.
For another, you can impose the law.
On a player’s turn, they can ask me clarifying questions about one of their abilities. If they decide that’s the best time to look at their character sheet for the first time, though, then they miss their turn.
If a player hesitates, so does their PC.
There’s a lot more to making combat faster, even more to making it feel faster. You can automate what you can, delegate what you can’t, roll more efficiently…
But this - setting the expectation for fast, snappy combat - is huge.
Combat speed is just one of the ways TTRPGs tend to be unsatisfyingly unrealistic.
Another is how generic the enemies can be.
I’ve helped you with the first one there. Now let me help with the second.
If you want to craft unusual (yet believable) characters, civilisations and races, then you’ll get a lot out of Call of the Gods: