Fast combat

Nice. I'd heed these words.
The issue is not that I am slow, but I want to be FASTER.

How long are your average turns?

...

Roughly 5 minutes assuming 4 PC's and 6 monsters.

How long for your turn specifically, not the total round?

Roll damage dice as normal, but you kill that many mooks instead.

2 minutes tops.

Oh this
www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/unchained-rules/removing-iterative-attacks
Every day

It;s terrible explained but the concept is simple.

>Remove HP bloat.
How would one go about doing this, specifically?

pro tip: dice-rolling isn't what makes up combat slow. what slows combat is
a) looking up rules,
b) endless weighing of options,
c) prolonged debates over what's happening in the game world because players didn't attention or the GM didn't explain the situation properly.

>Any other ways I could make it faster?

"Flip a coin. If it's heads the party wins, if it comes tails the party loses. Can do 2 out of three."

Rolled 1 (1d2)

Rolling. 1=Heads 2=Tails

>Even "tough" monsters should be sort of glass cannons. A monster that hits hard but goes down in (relatively) few hits keeps the risk up and the action going.
Adding to this: Don't be afraid to steal from vidya and include "phases." A colossal golem that goes down in a few hits is anticlimactic; it's supposed to be tough and shit! However, a colossal golemn that goes down in a few hits... but then reforms into a speedier, more aggressive golem with magic sparks flying off where it's been cracked is a loot cooler. This way, you've established that the monster is indeed a tough motherfucker, but you've also kept the encounter fresh by introducing a "new" threat.

One final thing is that don't have every fight be to the death. It's not fun, it's not realistic, and it doesn't make for good stories; there's literally no reason to do it. Have people flee or surrender.

No clue, really. That's why I included the caveat "this'll probably fuck the game sideways." Gun to my head, though, I'd probably go with 4 + 1 class/race hit die maxed out + (level*con modifier) or just (con modifier) if the mod is negative. This is in no way tested, though, and probably needs someone much more comfortable and experienced messing with 5e's mechanics than me.

>Off the top of my head.
- +Con doesn't add directly to HP
- All classes start with d6 HP
- For every +1 Con mod you up the dice size 6>8>10>12.
- Below 10 Con gives a d4.

hp Dice is capped at d12? Or continues with d12+d4 > d12+d6

Just a random thought, haven't thought it through yet.

Assuming they take averages, this just nerfs the HD of tougher classes.

Doesn't speed up combat really, aside from making the fighter drop faster I guess.

Also counting ten million +1 or -1 modifiers to the roll.

1. Fix health bloat. Harder enemies should be harder to hit, not damage sponges. Three to four hits, tops. Mooks should die in one or two.

2. Increase damage for every thing. Every. Thing.

3. Don't roll for damage. Make it a flat number. Use the attack roll instead. Something like every one above the target number is bonus damage.

4. Make your players put their abilities onto index cards, so they don't have to dig through a rulebook because they forgot what X power or spell does.

5. Use a hourglass to put a hard limit on turns. I use 15 seconds, with a 5 second timer I only turn over if they start staring into space or try to think about their turn while it's their turn.

6. Everyone should get some form of AoE damage. Instead of 2-4 separate attacks, have them declare 2-4 targets within range and just roll once. Apply the results to each.

7. Avoid healing during combat, or just disallow it entirely for everyone, NPCs and PCs.

You're taking almost as much time to take your turn as the rest of the players combined. Stop doing that.

>averaged damage instead of rolling
It's a better idea for enemies and NPCs than PCs. Maybe consider modifying that damage a bit depending on circumstances.
Also consider treating large groups as more disposable, as one stat block, or both.
Another good trick for speeding things up is to pre-roll initiative, perception checks, and other things for NPCs.

Personally I've found that if you get good at theater of the mind and have players that don't get totally uncomfortable with the lack of miniatures that combat tends to be faster.
But, if you're bad at TotM and/or have players that aren't comfortable with not have miniatures, then it'll take three times as long and will just frustrate everybody.

Alternatively, check out how attacks and damage works in Open Legend. That's pretty fast, and there's probably a way to adapt that to 5e.

Dave Arneson's Blackmoor proto-RPG games used Rock, Paper, Scissors for a bit when they were still feeling things out, before Chainmail was released and they adapted its mechanics.

Not trying to be a dick, but if you actually want combat to be faster, you should try a system that is not d20 based. All d20 derivatives are slow, and there is little you can do to change that.

Try FATE, or Barbarians of Lemuria, or Savage Worlds, or MiniSix, or Atomic Highway, or BASH, or one of the dozens of games based on ORE or Apocalypse World, or RISUS, or Lasers and Feelings, or Doctor Who Adventures, or FASERIP. Better yet, try all of those and see which one you like.

But if you are insistent on sticking with what you have, sure, go ahead and do this dice switching thing. It won't really help, but it won't hurt things much.

>All d20 derivatives are slow
Dungeonslayers is reasonably fast, actually.

if you got system mastery, you can handle the most frequent 7 to 10 with ease.

I'm gonna have to agree with this user.

Honestly, just remove the CON modifier to HP but give everyone an automatic increase to their HP equal to the average of their HD.
>d6=4
>d8=5
>d10=6
>d12=7
Also, when you spend HD to restore health, you automatically restore health equal to your CON modifier for a short rest and double that if you're doing a long rest.

That way, weapon damage scales better and reaching the point where a longsword doesn't kill you in one hit actually has meaning beyond just being an expectation of the game.

That's really what makes HP bloat so shitty, what should be accomplishments borne from the broken bodies of a shitload of character deaths is just "Meh" beause everyone can take a longsword to the chest like it's no big thing.

Not having to roll damage shouldn't make that much of a difference, at least not when compared to other considerations. Do group initiative (if you don't want to have the 1st team to act to have a huge advantage, then, on the 1st turn only, they all roll a d6 and on a 1 to 3, they don't get to act). Don't use complicated modifiers, iterative attacks, soak rolls and shit like that.

Don't let players sit around and think for too long. Doing group initiative can help with this, because the PCs can act in any order, so the folks that are ready can go first. Otherwise, I give players about 10 seconds to think before asking them what they do. After another 10, I tell them it's time to make a decision. After another 10, I ask them one last time and then skip them if they don't have an immediate answer (you can include them later in the initiative order--after the next enemy ask them if they're ready to say what they do, and if not push them back behind another enemy and ask again at that point; and yes, this can even push them into the next round). Now, if they have questions, those don't run out the clock, as long as they're reasonable and aren't obviously just stalling for time.

Naturally, having combat be relatively deadly rather than a long hit point grind can make a big difference. If you do d8 damage and an enemy has 50 hit points, that's gonna take a shitload longer than if you do 2d8 damage and an enemy has 25 hit points.

Honestly, it's more important that turns *seem* fast than they *are* fast, though obviously there's a strong correlation between the two. You want as little dead time as possible, where somebody sits around and thinks while everybody else waits. If a player's turn takes 40 seconds, and that's spent asking questions and describing in detail what they do, that's much better than if he takes 30 seconds, but 25 of those are spent in silent contemplation.

Honestly, that seems about right to me, though a lot depends on the level of detail people go into. In our combats, we tend to describe our maneuvers in significant detail and may even occasionally demonstrate the way we swing our swords and whatnot. This obviously takes more time than if you just say "I strike at the troll, hit with a 15, and do 5 damage."

4 times as long perhaps?

>4 times as long perhaps?
Well, I'm not a statistician, but I'm sure there's probably some way to math it out.

This, only newfags roll the attack first and wait to see if it hits before they roll damage dice.

>half the hitpoints and double the damage
hmmmm....

Amateur statistics nerd here, I'm going to throw my hat in the fire.

So let's say you roll 1d8 per turn with no modifiers vs. an enemy with 50 HP. If you roll average each turn, that's going to be 4.5 damage per turn, so you'll kill the baddie after 12 turns of rolling just average each and every turn.

If you roll 2d8 per turn with no modifiers vs. an enemy with 25 HP, and you roll average each turn, that's going to be 9 damage per turn, so you'll kill the baddie after 3 turns of rolling average each and every turn.

Let's assume that you roll max damage instead. In the first scenario, you'd be able to kill the baddie after 7 turns of rolling. Meanwhile, in the second scenario, you'd be able to kill the baddie after 2 turns of rolling.

So in conclusion, in the first scenario, you can expect to kill the enemy in (7-12) turns while in the latter, you can expect to kill the enemy in (2-3) turns.

Assuming I did the math right of course.

>half the hitpoints and double the damage
>hmmmm....
It's a real conundrum.

Damage bloat exists because hitting an enemy, doing damage and bringing it closer to death feels like progression. Missing yet another attack as you pray for an 18, 19 or 20 on your d20 feels less like making progress and more like dumb luck.

play a video game

>Damage bloat exists because hitting an enemy, doing damage and bringing it closer to death feels like progression.
There isn't really a progression when there's no feedback that lets you know that the damage you're doing means anything.

In ShadowRun, 5 damage is a fucking lot no matter how powerful you are and you know that whoever took that damage just went down -1 on the condition track.

In nWoD, five damage will generally be enough to almost fill most health bars and unless an enemy dedicated four or more dots into stamina, you're taking some sort of penalty to your next dice pool.

In D&D, five damage becomes less relevant as you progress through the game since everyone just becomes a damage sponge very fucking quickly. At best, you might look forward to the GM telling you that the enemy is bloodied but even that only tells you that you're halfway through with combat.

>hitting a damage sponge feels like progression.

Lol, no.

I mean his other example was two guys just whiffing at each other until one falls over dead which isn't any better.

Which only makes sense if the fight is 1v1 in a small empty room.

You should be taking other factors into consideration, granting bonuses and advantages depending on the environment.

So instead of waiting for a 18-20, you're trying to position yourself, figure something out, and using your skills to make it 15-20, or 10-20 instead.

Biggest problem with those is that you spend a bunch of time setting stuff up and then just whiff.

Sounds like a fight to me.

It's all about positioning.

And trust me, it's just as exciting, if not more, when you finally drop that fucker who's been dancing around. It's even better when he can drop you just as quickly.

The only time health bloat makes any sense is when the enemy is the size of a building with no critical organs.

I'm not for damage sponge but I prefer much less RNG and more risk and resource management.

Same, that's why I don't play D&D.

Our system uses playing cards and a 52-54 card deck for each player.

Mine's a 2D6, but relies mostly on onion defenses.

Raise all the accuracy numbers. A lot of games target 50% to 60% as the "ideal" accuracy range for two equally-skilled fighters but that's garbage because it means in half the rounds nothing happens.

Most Pokemon moves have 90% to 100% accuracy and that shit still functions.

Pokemon runs on a different type of logic. It's better to introduce abilities that either don't rely on accuracy or can sacrifice damage to reduce an opponents defenses.

90% accuracy is garbage because it means it's only disappointing when you miss and not exciting when you hit. Plus, if blows inflict decent damage, that means that the guy who goes first pretty much automatically wins if the combatants are of equal skill level.

I agree that you don't want fight to be a succession of misses, but if people hit more than 3/4 of the time, you might as well just drop the roll to-hit and just have a damage roll. I find that a 2/3 chance to hit for PCs is about right. Just make sure people do enough damage that it doesn't take many blows to end somebody.

I really like having accuracy roll over into damage, so you can have more consistent hits without as much consistent damage.

To illustrate my point, let's say you're fighting somebody who is your equal. You each have a 90% chance to hit, and it will take either of you 3 blows to kill the other person. You get lucky and end up going first. You have a 72.9% chance to kill your opponent in the 3rd, before he has had the chance to strike three times. That means your opponent only has a 19.76% to kill you in the third round.

Wait, are you actually saying that you'd rather have low accuracy numbers because it makes combat slide into a coin flip in a wider variety of circumstances?

>Wait, are you actually saying that you'd rather have low accuracy numbers because it makes combat slide into a coin flip in a wider variety of circumstances?
Rather than a coin flip where whoever goes first wins? Hell yes. Why bother playing out all those rounds if the outcome is essentially predetermined?

To expand on this, you should go into each round not knowing what's going to happen. That's what makes things exciting and is really the only point of playing things through rather than just rolling for the outcome of the whole combat upfront. If you know with greater than 80% certainty that both you and your opponent are going to hit in a given round, that's pretty lame. Rather than play through 3 rounds of combat knowing that the guy who goes first has a 73% chance to win (and the other guy a 20% chance), just give the guy who acts first something like a 78% chance to win the combat, and resolve things with one roll.

Many systems fall in love with themselves and forget that they're just a tool to accomplish a purpose. So you ask a guy to build you a car to go from point A to point B in relative comfort, but he spends all his time tricking the thing out with shit you don't care about. And sure, it only goes 30 miles an hour, but look at all the cool bling on it!

>To expand on this, you should go into each round not knowing what's going to happen. That's what makes things exciting and is really the only point of playing things through rather than just rolling for the outcome of the whole combat upfront. If you know with greater than 80% certainty that both you and your opponent are going to hit in a given round, that's pretty lame.
this. furthermore, you also shouldn't be able to tell that consequences will be incosequential. if you have a 100 HP dwarf barbarian and you realize that the enemy only dishes 1d8+1, this is damn boring.

>and not exciting when you hit.
Hitting was never exciting - it should be the default if abnormally high static defenses/active defensive abilities aren't in play.

Have a look at One Roll Engine's core dice mechanic. It simplifies every action into a single roll that tells you everything you need to know.

Haven't tried it out yet, but if you want 'FAST', them it should be worth looking at.

Pokemon is more a lightweight boxing match, lots of little blows.

Until you get to higher levels and are more optimized. Then it's one hit KOs down the line. Unless you're fighting a sandveil team or something dumb.

But 5e actually does what OP is saying. It's standard for monsters, and a variant rule for players. While D&D isn't my favorite system (I prefer Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Symbaroum) you are actually wrong on this point.

>Hitting was never exciting - it should be the default if abnormally high static defenses/active defensive abilities aren't in play.
No. Because you get into bullshit situations like this . Also, why would you need really high defenses not to get hit once every 6 seconds or so?

This.

I see nothing bullshit about that.

That's why I use an hourglass.

>I see nothing bullshit about that.
That seems ridiculous to me, but maybe if you addressed its points and explained your point of view, then I'd see that somehow it actually makes sense.

I don't like static damage, it makes combat too predictable:

>Player character has 8 hp
>Monster only deals 7 damage
>"it's okay guys! No need for healing or run away this turn, he can't kill me"

What I do to make combat faster is static initiative, equal to dex mod + prof (I play 5e). Players sit on the order of initiative (clockwise) so there is no confusion about who goes first.

The idea that losing initiative shouldn't be a, if not the, major determining factor in an honest-to-god whiteroom punching mirror match is what's ridiculous - and the idea that the counter to this is to make everything a coin flip because you're fetishing (a specific form of) unreliability is even dumber.

You want unreliability without that fucking bullshit? Try secondary effects that can be saved against.

While I generally agree with you, you could have static damage that's potentially increased by your roll to-hit. Maybe you do half damage if you hit on the nose, and double damage if you hit by 5 or more. It's okay if *most* of the time the monster does 7 damage; you just want there to be enough unpredictability that you can't say for certain that you'll be able to weather a blow because you have 1 more hit point.

>What I do to make combat faster is static initiative, equal to dex mod + prof (I play 5e). Players sit on the order of initiative (clockwise) so there is no confusion about who goes first.
Just do group initiative. It's quicker, easier, and you don't end up with logistical problems when characters go in the wrong order to properly pull off whatever it is they want to do.

This! My group just started an AD&D campaign and you wouldn't believe how fast the combat went when a) it was a straight d6 roll between one player and the GM and b) everyone in the group was able to do all their actions at the same time.

5e doesn't do fast combat, even if you don't roll for damage.

Oblig plug for Ironclaw 2e.

Hits pretty much all of these points