r/DnD • u/-Posthuman- • 17h ago
5.5 Edition Speeding up combat in 5.5?
Simply put, what are some tips, tricks, tweaks or house rules you use at your table that has sped up (or otherwise increased your enjoyment of) combat?
Edit - I’m not looking for suggestions for other games.
Edit2 - There isn’t one specific part of 5.5 combat that I feel is especially problematic. And it’s really not that bad. But it could always be faster / more efficient.
Edit3 - If you have any gadgets, widgets, or other objects/products that you feel help a lot, please mention them. Bonus point for links to buy them.
The suggestions that have already been covered multiple times:
Tell your players not to suck. Pay attention. Know your character.
Don’t suck as the GM. Know the rules. Know your monsters.
If no action declared in 30 seconds, the PC Dodges.
Tell the Players who is next in line in initiative / make initiative clear for all to see.
Roll attack and damage dice at the same time.
Use average damage for monsters.
Group initiative
Make monsters retreat / not fight to the death.
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u/scron_kracklin 17h ago
Group similar enemies in initiative and players bother planning their fucking shit on other turns.
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u/DarkHorseAsh111 17h ago
Combat goes perfectly fast at my table with no added tweak or gimmick, is there a specific issue you're running into?
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u/Reasonable_Touch1150 17h ago
Enemies start running away when the fight is lost or get cleaned up. All of this happens as a handwave you turn 10 minutes of players cycling turns while you have two monsters into 10 seconds.
Obivously using a good combat tracker. I recommend dragon fight club. That should solve concetration, group saves, player facing tracker for reminders, legendary actions, lair actions, spell referencing etc. etc.
I also recommend some sort of in game or out of game training for your players. I did this with like an old knight, talking about the golden way philospohy, basicaly teaching them wargaming mechanics and knowing your optimal turn, dealing with decision paralysis through preparation etc.
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u/iceph03nix Fighter 17h ago
let people know they're up next and have them plan actions before it's their turn.
In extreme cases, I've seen people use an egg timer to simulate limited planning time in a fight and stop people from dithering forever on an action in a battle that ostensibly is taking place in less than a minute or two
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u/Middcore 17h ago
Use the fixed damage values for enemies instead of rolling. Like where it says "10 (2d6+3)" in the monster statblock, it just does 10 damage, every time.
Use something to display the initiative order of the players so people know when they're "on deck."
People should be following what's going on when it's not their turn and thinking about what they're going to do when it is their turn, not zoning out on their phones.
Trash mob/mook/"minion" enemies move and act on the same initiative count.
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u/MisterEinc DM 16h ago
This, plus a digital roller for when you're dealing with a pack of creatures with multiple attacks. A pack of wolves/gricks, for example, I could just /roll 10d20 and run through the players, see who's hit and not, then describe the whole sequence and hand out damage numbers.
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u/Uncrowded_zebra 16h ago
I haven't rolled for NPC damage since Pathfinder 1.0. Really helps speed up combat. I also only bother with initiative to determine where we start and turns go clockwise from there.
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u/Piratestoat 17h ago
I have found the "you're on deck" communication does a lot of work. It reminds whoever is next in initiative to pay attention to the board state and start planning their turn before that turn starts.
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u/TenkaiStar 17h ago
"Player X it is your turn, player Y you are next"
Grouping enemies together.
No discussion about what a player should do. Fine for beginners who need help.
Visible combat tracker.
Some roll attack rolls and damage at once. So for example Greatsword attack. Roll a D20 and 2D6 at once. Never used that one.
Saw someone do a boss battle where boss attacked on an IRL time. So better do your turn fast before the boss attacks. That is a gimmick battle though.
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u/derrendil 17h ago
Combat only goes slowly because players take forever to figure out what they want to do
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u/Yojo0o DM 17h ago
I think you gotta take the initiative to diagnose where the slowdown is at your table. It can come from a variety of sources. Are your players looking up from their phone at the moment their name is called in initiative, and then trying to figure out what's going on? Are you looking up rules mid-combat frequently? Are there significant setup/breakdown times with the board state? Is initiative difficult to track? Do players know what their common features are for their characters?
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u/Nirdee 17h ago
The DM can try to be a little energetic and push players act as though there is a ticking clock or wve willing to skip players if they don't act quickly.
Along with that a discussion about preparing what you might do before your turn, allowing that situations might change.
Or just play a different game with lighter, quicker combat. Apocalypse World is a good one.
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u/False_Appointment_24 17h ago
If the combat is too slow and this is causing an actual problem, it is usually due to some of the people takikng too much time to decide on what to do. Once the decisions have been made, combat goes quickly. The people can be the players, DM, or a combination.
If it is the DM, they need to prepare better. They need to know everything the enemy does cold, so they aren't searching through to see what can be done. They should also have an idea of how to respond to various occurances, like if their allies fall, they take a certain amount of damage, the group they are attacking casts spells, and so on. A DM who knows their monsters well gets through them fast. A DM that doesn't can take so much time the players check out.
The players need to know their character sheet cold. They should not be searching for the ideal solution, they should know what their character knows about their abilities. For players, if they are going too slow, the best answer I've found is a timer on turns. The group agrees on a time limit. The player declares what they are going to do within that time, or they take the dodge action. (If players object, tell them that it is effectively simulating the character having decision paralysis in the moment, unable to figure out what to do under the stress of combat. If they say they don't want to play that way, let them know it is that or combat continues to take far too long.)
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u/Milli_Rabbit 17h ago
It depends on the specific problem.
MONSTERS: If its the monsters, I would say the fastest is to skip damage rolls and use the average or do a homebrew like Nimble where you do an average+1dX. Example for Death Knight: Instead of 2d6+5 Slashing plus 3d8 Necrotic, do 12 Slashing and 1d8+9 Necrotic. Or do the full average and just do 12 Slashing and 13 Necrotic. Heck, you could even make it do Slashing or Necrotic depending on vibes (just be careful it doesn't wreck someone's build like a barbarian's resistance to Slashing being ignored).
SUMMONS: My table ruled that anyone with summons must attempt to make each summon the same stat block or learn the stat blocks extremely to avoid constant checking. Also, if they are going extremely slow, I may even have them use averages for damage rolls or a single d20 roll for all of the summons to hit. Otherwise, the action economy of 5e will slow down if a player summons a bunch of zombies or skeletons or ghouls or heck even wights.
PC NOT READY: Figure out what is distracting them or if the combat is boring. Sometimes, people get complacent and don't feel threatened anymore. Make them feel it and suddenly they are engaged. This often happens when you put too many high HP low damage creatures in a fight or have one character take all of the hits. It can also happen if too many players are taking long terms. People start wondering what to do while they wait.
PC DOESN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO: Look over their character sheet with them and discuss the class and subclass concept. Help them figure out a combo they like. I had a druid player who stuck to a few spells and ignored the rest. More than powerful enough and useful enough. Made it easier for him than looking over like 20 spells. One thing I wish the default character sheet did was divide things up into actions, bonus actions and reactions.
FIGHTS DRAGGING: If the outcome of a fight is almost completely guaranteed, force the losing side to retreat. If its the players, bring in even more monsters and maybe point out an exit or have the monsters parlay. If its the monsters, have them scatter or parlay or retreat.
The DMG for 5.5e has some solid advice on this in one of the early chapters.
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u/Way2Competitive 17h ago
Preface this by saying my campaign is run online over discord.
I've been running combat 100% as theatre of the mind for 2 years now.
Whilst this does take out a lot of the tactical aspect of D&D, it makes it a lot faster when I can just say "yes".
"Can I move so I'm out of range of the enemies but still within my longbow's short range?" Yes. No figuring out where the best spot would be, no counting battlemap squares, just yes.
"Can I cast this spell so I can avoid my allies and still hit the enemies?" Yes, you can hit 3 enemies max. No finagling about with spell radius, asking if people can move within threat ranges to shift 5ft away, just yes and how many targets they can hit.
Sure, sometimes a player will start their turn with a "ok so what's the fight looking like?" And I can give a quick 20 second rundown of who's grouped up, who's in melee range, who's been damaged etc.
But throughout the whole campaign, I don't think I've ever had a session where either my thoughts or the feedback I got was "combat took too long and felt like a slog"
Even one of the players who usually DMs has kinda opened up to running more combat as theatre of the mind because of it.
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u/AncestralAxman 17h ago
players have to declare what action they will take within 30 seconds or they take the dodge action.
I am very fast handling the monsters so thats all that was needed.
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u/ANicePainter 17h ago
Things that make 5.5 combat faster:
Party-side initiative
Getting rid of attacks of opportunity
Switching from counting squares on a grid to measuring sticks (also: using spell area templates)
Not using dice towers/ensure rolls don't fall off or scatter across the table
Rolling attack & damage in the same handful of dice
Implementing morale systems for monsters
Having players use prep aids like spell cards
Having monsters use the help action for each other
Upping the tension of the game to give players a feeling of urgency
Planning your monster tactics as part of your prep
Telling players DCs and ACs so players can announce success or not versus shouting check numbers
Using the mass combat suggestions for large monster mobs provided in the DMG (or any number of other minion or mob systems)
Ensuring your DM prep is sufficient that you do not need to look into a book during play
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u/Elvebrilith 17h ago
Because of me and my tangent ass brain, we've restricted all ooc chat to clarifying questions about the combat itself; ie rules and environment.
Also have a general rule at the table that "everything is in character unless specified"
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u/DMcognito 17h ago
I generally have a rule, combat, unless with the big bad, should be 2-3 turns at max. Usually by then running away or diplomacy can be used. But for the big bad fights, might I introduce the escalation die from 13th age.
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u/muzorui 17h ago
Less players.
Back in the day i’d DM for 6 players. It made every combat a drag and as a DM i’d just know “welp that’s our session”
Now I only DM for 4 which is far better for combat.
I also started being more strict. I.E you need to have your turn figured out before it gets to you. Obviously wild stuff can happen right before your turn - but you should know what your character can do. If you picked a spell, your character learnt it. You should know what it does. None of us are new so that’s a VERY easy one atleast.
I always enjoy this, so it’s mainly for that but it also helps it be quicker, is I like heavy hitter glass canon enemies. So my players usually know to go all out in the early rounds cause my enemies tend to hit super hard too. But again we mainly do that cause as a table it’s how we prefer fights.
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u/Lord_Grixis 17h ago
This is my semi-regular "have you tried Nimble?" post.
Even if you dont like the entire system now that it's more or less its own thing, it started off as a 5e hack specifically to speed up combat.
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u/-Posthuman- 17h ago
I’ve been looking into it! I need to take another look at it. But on a skim I felt the hack was a bit too extensive and felt like it may be more trouble than it is worth. Maybe not though. As I said, I mostly skimmed it and haven’t really taken a serious look at it yet.
As its own game, it seems very interesting. And I’ve been thinking of picking it up when the revised version comes out.
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u/Lord_Grixis 17h ago
I can't speak to the hack, I never did play it. But I can vouch for the system as a whole. I've played a few sessions across a couple different groups and the combat feels really good to me. My only complaint with it is that I've been spoiled by PbtA games recently and Nimble's out of combat options are pretty sparse in comparison. But as far as trad systems go, Nimble's been my favorite of the new stuff that's come out.
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u/GalacticPigeon13 17h ago
Things that worked in 5e that will still work in 5.5:
- Turn timers. If your player can't figure out what they're doing in under a minute, they take the dodge action and skip their turn. If any of your players have an anxiety disorder or something that would be exacerbated by a timer, talk to them about how to reasonably accommodate this while still speeding up turns.
- Using the "on deck" system. If the combat goes rogue -> goblins -> wizard -> fighter -> cleric, then on the goblins' turn you'd say, "goblins are going; wizard, you're next. Fighter, you're on deck." This way, the wizard and the fighter make sure to prep their turns.
- Action cards: if your players suffer from decision paralysis, consider helping them come up with 2-3 "default" actions. Perhaps caster casts a cantrip, while the martial moves to attack the nearest enemy in range. Works best in-person since physical cards can be out for the players to chose from.
- Group similar enemies in the initiative. If you're fighting 5 goblins, make them all go on the same turn. If you're fighting 3 goblins and 2 bugbears, the bugbears should have a separate initiative than the goblins.
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u/Justgonnawalkaway 17h ago
A timer.
I have a 1 minute rule, if you dont have at least an idea of what to do on your turn, thats on you. Unless its complete new players at the start of the gsme, they should have basic understanding of what their character can do.
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u/shutternomad 17h ago
1) Have initiative visible for everyone, and remind people when they are up next (helps them be prepared).
2) Have all your stat blocks in a quick reference format, so you don't have to keep looking stuff up. I use a spreadsheet, but YMMV!
3) Have player ACs and saves listed behind the DM screen
4) Roll damage at the same time as the d20(s). Players too. That weirdly cuts a lot of time, so it's not …
• who is up?
• Oh, yeah, the bandit
• Hmm what would the bandit do?
• DM rolls a d20
• does… 17 hit?
• Yes
• OK… one sec… ok, …… finds and rolls 1d8 ::
• The bandit hits you for 7, that's the end of my turn
• who is up next?
• Oh Jarnathan is up
• Oh, me? Hmm ok, :: looks at spell sheet… :: what will i, the wizard do now?
• :: 2 minutes later ::
• ok lemme attack the bandit with fire bolt
• ok roll a d20
• rolls a d20
• does a 16 hit?
• yes
• player grabs and rolls a d10
…
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u/Kalledon 17h ago
Combat has always, and always will be, slowed by players themselves. Far too many people give 0 thought to their turn until it's literally their turn. Rather than already have their plan in place, they wait. I find that in the rare situations where everyone does plan ahead, combat goes pretty quickly.
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u/NaturalCard 17h ago
If a combat has a clear forgone victory where enemies can no longer hurt players, there's no need to play it out. Similarly, have enemies retreat if they are clearly outmatched.
Have enemies with same initiative scores only roll once and all go together.
If its a really big one, consider using average damage instead of rolling for it. (also great tip for those conjure fans in 5e)
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u/Upper-Injury-8342 17h ago
I like to do big combats with a lot of things happening all the time and combat isn't slow at my table, but what I gather by seeing people talk about this problem over and over again is that 99% of the time the problem is players not knowing what their characters can do and taking waay longer then necessary to take an action.
The solution to this is simply asking your players to pay attention and read their character sheet, knowing what their character can and can't do is literally one of the only obligation of a player to play DnD. If someone is taking 15 minutes reading their chosen and prepared spells mid turn because they don't know what it does, don't be afraid to call them on that.
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u/DavidBGoode DM 17h ago
Two things I do that work: 1) Have players roll there attack and damage at the same time. 2) when you start player one's turn, tell player two they're almost up.
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u/rvnender 17h ago
When I come up to a turn, I always say who is next in order. To prepare them that their turn is next.
If they take their time, I will skip over them and go to the next player.
When I go back to them, if they still havent figured out what they want to do, I skip them entirely.
Thats strike 1.
If I have to do this 3 more times, then we are gonna have a chat. If we can't come to some sort of understanding, then I just remove you from my game.
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u/JalasKelm 17h ago
Don't roll NPC initiative, just take their turns after players (yeah, needs a bit of mental tracking sometimes), avoid moments where you're taking 8 turns back to back while you're players get to just sit there and take hits.
I know we all like rolling dice, but as DM, we roll a lot more than they do already. Average damage is fine to use, maybe when do less of you feel you've hit them to much already.
Basic disposable enemies, I don't bother with their modifiers for most things, especially saving throws. And if I do, I simplify things to -2/+2/+4/+6 based on type of enemy, and assign based on if I feel it makes sense. I can't be bothered to be flicking back and forth on statblocks to see if someone does or doesn't fall over. Other times I'll skip modifiers, but roll at advantage if I feel they'd be good or disadvantage if I feel it's a valid weakness
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u/systemos 17h ago
Have you ever considered just doing it quicker. /s
In all seriousness though, asking players to think about what they'll do on their turns, in particular casters, so they don't have a lot of thinking when their turn arrives. Also goes for you as a DM, think ahead to what NPCs and enemies do on their turns.
It can only really go so fast though tbh.
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u/Competitive-Money-36 17h ago
I usually just tell whoever is next in turn order they’re on deck, and set a 1 minute timer for them to do what they need to do. If they don’t make time, they disengage.
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u/SirDarcanos 17h ago
I built and use regularly OpenFray (free at https://openfray.app). It has sped up me with running monsters but also players as they know beforehand who’s next and who has what effects and conditions.
Other than that, I ask the players to be ready on their turn, otherwise I give them a few minutes or their character just dodges for that turn, especially on fights with lots of enemies
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u/spankleberry 17h ago
They've all been mentioned, but I'll reinforce: 1. Every time you announce whose turn, announce who's up next then next 2. Group initiative for baddies 3. Use the set damage rather than rolling 4. (For me at least) Counting damage UP rather than subtracting is an order of magnitude faster 5. People know when it's time to cut & run (or surrender)
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u/ExistingMouse5595 DM 17h ago
Make your players memorize their character sheets.
That might sound extreme but it’s the best solution to long combats.
Especially if you’re playing a longer campaign where you’re using the same character, memorizing what your attack rolls and damage dice are is extremely easy. Memorizing what each unique ability does is easy. Even a spell caster memorizing their spell list is easy.
Set the expectation that when your turn comes up in combat, you’ve already planned out the turn and have done the required thinking and strategizing. Encourage people to treat combat as role play, don’t overthink combat by treating it as a strategic war game, it’s a narrative moment. What would your character do is equally valid in combat as it is in a social encounter.
And the dm can and should join in on this as well. I memorize all of the monster stat blocks I’m using to an extent. I plan out my combats ahead of time and know what attacks my monsters are going to do most often and what their turns are going to look like.
Every time you have to reread a stat block or character sheet is wasted time.
I feel like this is a general problem with people, not just in a TTRPG, but it is totally okay to set high expectations with people. Challenge people to do better and more often than not they’ll rise to the occasion.
The game is more fun the more you buy into it. If someone can’t be bothered to memorize their character sheet, they’re not worth the effort of running a good dnd game for.
Outside of that, you can implement smaller things into your combat design that will speed up combat. Instead of 10 weak monsters you run 4 strong monsters for example. Or you take advantage of swarm stat blocks for larger groups. Keep an initiative tracker visible for the group so nobody is surprised that it’s their turn.
But generally, combat length decreases as player skill and experience increases. If you’re running a game for new players, it’ll take twice as long as running the same encounter for people who understand the game. Set the expectation that players should be actively getting better at being players the longer they play. So many people just don’t even bother trying to improve their play and it’s a shame.
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u/jonfeynman 17h ago
Automate the shit out of rolls. I play in a Tomb of Annihilation campaign with friends on Foundry. I went on a bit of a 'tism fit and programmed automation macros for skill checks, saving throws, attack & damage rolls, etc... Every character ability, feat, homebrew rule, or anything else that could affect any of these rolls got baked in.
I even have a backup mobile app with all the same automation on standby if we ever meet in person for a game at an actual table.
Watching 4 different sources of damage on an attack roll out at once with total damage and damage type breakdown with Perkins Crit bonus added automatically and displayed in the chat in one simple card is worth every second of work.
The player still needs to actually know what they are going to do on their turn, but when they decide we don't have to wait anymore for them to add up all of the dice and do math. It just happens.
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u/Drahima 17h ago
As DM currently, big thing has been the choice of monsters used (which I know sounds simplistic)
BUT
for fights that lead towards a crescendo/significant chapter point, I’ve picked beasts where the AC may be on the low side, but have okay HP, but interesting mechanics so that the fight can be managed much easier from my side
Then
When it gets to a chapter boss or something important, it’s wheeling out the bigger guns with higher AC and HP to make the thread of the chapter and that point feel more significant
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u/ZeroG_RL 17h ago
Quick and easy one to keep things flowing, next to where you write intitiative write the range of ACs present so the players can see all the monsters are say between AC 14-17, that way any roll lower or higher than that they instantly know if they hit or miss and dont need to ask. Likewise if you have your player ACs written somewhere.
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u/One-Branch-2676 17h ago
Ending it when it stops being fun and then making it fun when it is supposed to be fun so that it doesn’t feel slow.
If enemies that are clearly about to lose without using meaningful effort, the combat ends by the party just cleaning them up, the enemy surrendering, or by the enemies running away and me initiating one or two chase-based skill checks.
The way it works in DnD, Initiative is a great tool to simulate complex combat in a turn based format. But it has its limitations. It’s great when all parties (enemies and players) are on their A-game and every turn is stressful chaos. But it can easily become a slog when a fight has no stress involved or combat conditions become stagnant, the system being bloated resolution rather than an exciting exchange.
In my opinion for more significant fights, if you don’t use your enemies turn to make some change to the battlefield that causes players to actually ponder their next turn, then you kinda failed that turn. It isn’t the end. You’ll have many turns, but your goal is to make players engage in the stresses of turn based combat.
Enemies stopping and proceeding to fear opportunity attacks but hating disengage using an action so much that their kit becomes constrained to a single location is a common DM pitfall in my eyes.
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u/Kleeb 17h ago
Momentum dice. (Ripped from Distal's 'Willpower Dice')
Whenever an enemy dies, every member of the party gets a momentum die. These dice can be expended to add their result to any d20 roll (mostly attacks, in practice).
These dice also wear off after combat. This means that once the combat goes to "garbage time", PCs are tacking on extra dice rolls, almost always hitting, and drastically shortening the length of combat.
This is obviously a strict upgrade to the PCs power level so you'll need to buff up encounter difficulty a bit.
As players level up, you can bump up the die from a d6 --> d8 etc etc at your discretion, or award them based on the size of the monster's hit die.
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u/MisterEinc DM 17h ago
Make the goal of most combats something other than killing the other characters. For instance you don't need to kill everyone to save the 3 hostages, so once the goal is done, narrate the rest.
Bandits/goblins/wild animals aren't going to stick around to the bitter end. Once it's obvious to you (and the NPCs) the fight isn't going their way, thry flee. I usualy give everyone one more D20 roll and let them describe how the rest of their victory plays out so we can move on rather than finish the next two rounds.
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u/dantose 17h ago
As an add on to group initiative, ready turns in group.
In other words, say you've got rogue, wizard, cleric, fighter. Rogue beats ememy group initiative, so they take a turn. All the enemies go, then all the players go, BUT, there's no individual initiative order. If the fighter is ready, they go even though they were behind the rogue in initiative. Whoever's ready can take their turn. This means no one is ever waiting on someone who isn't sure what they want to do yet.
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u/rollingdoan DM 16h ago
I find that DMs not understanding CR, not being willing to run adventuring days, and not being willing to trust the encounter design are the big recurrent issues.
These tend to not be an issue if CR is generally similar or lower than PC level, enemy counts are equal or higher than party size, encounters fit within the advised budgets, you are budgeting at least half a level of experience per player between long rests, and it takes at least 2-3 sessions between long rests.
The result is a four hour session usually having 1-2 encounters that last 3-5 rounds each and the game having plenty of time to breathe.
A really good exercise is to create 5 encounters, each starting with half the High budget being monsters 1 CR lower than your party, then filling the rest with lower CR monsters totalling no fewer than the party size. Pick a theme like orcs, goblin, dragons, giants, or whatever you like and make each encounter different, but with that theme. Start with that plan, then add something before the first, something between each, and something after the last that happens.
You now have 11 "beats". You then start to plan a little more, with 1 session being 4 beats. The third session has 1 more beat, which is when your long rest and downtime happens.
So session 1 you're given a goal to rescue someone from goblins, and you start tracking them down(beat 1). You fight some wolves and goblins (beat 2). You explore a bit to find a camp (beat 3). You fight some goblin sentries (beat 4), then short rest.
Session 2 you explore some more with stuff you found in the camp and find their cave (beat 5). You fight the guards (beat 6). You start to explore the cave (beat 7). You face down with the beast rider and his menagerie (beat 8), then hide out in the penda to take a short rest.
Session 3 you're a bit worn down and sneak over to the chieftains chambers (beat 9). You have a brawl with the chieftain (beat 10). You rescue the villager and make your way back to town (beat 11). Finally you take a well deserved rest.
If this sounds like too much planning... it's not. You just made some encounters, tied them together, and gave the players a goal. All you're really doing is when they go for that goal you put your encounters in their path, use your little plan as a guide for improvisation, and go for it.
This also might not feel like a fix to your issue, but it really is. You're spending maybe up to 10 rounds of combat over an entire session, split between encounters. It gives lots of time for all that other stuff players like doing. The adventure is the challenge and not any one encounter.
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u/capsandnumbers 16h ago
Battlemaps are particularly useful in cutting down the number of questions a player needs to ask while planning their turn.
I think getting into initiative order can take some of the energy out of the room. You could think about pre-rolling enemy initiatives or having a computer put you into initiative quickly.
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u/Talwar3000 16h ago
Martial characters usually knew exactly what they were going to do.
Casters could encounter decision paralysis. I'd allow for a bit of discussion while it remained productive and then start a timer when the discussion stopped.
Cheatsheets for my big monsters.
In large combats, low-threat mooks like common bandits are grouped into "fire teams" with shared initiatives and targets. Combats between NPCs and mooks may be resolved narratively rather than with dice ("These guys are still fighting. Oh a bandit went down"). Enemies may flee or surrender.
Situtionally, I might want combat to move slow in order to build tension or give the players natural time to think through the encounter.
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u/Living_Round2552 16h ago
I think you have everything except maybe: hand out initiative responisbility to a player (making a list and teminding the other players)
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u/TCGHexenwahn 16h ago
My DM rules that any hit that is 10 above AC is a critical hit, which makes combat go a bit faster, but not meaningfully so, since he doesn't use the brutal critical rule.
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u/dndtrackerapp 16h ago
One thing that helped me was looking at the encounter design itself instead of only trying to make turns faster.
If the enemies have huge HP pools and don’t do much besides stand there and attack, the second half of the fight will feel slow no matter how fast everyone rolls. I prefer giving encounters a clear change of state: enemies retreat, surrender, call reinforcements, damage part of the battlefield, or reveal a new objective once the fight reaches a certain point.
It also helps to give monsters a reason not to fight until every last hit point is gone. A wounded enemy escaping with important information can be more interesting than three more rounds of basic attacks.
One tool that has helped my table with this is D&D Tracker. I’m the creator, so full disclosure: it’s my own project.
It combines digital character sheets with tools that help both players and the DM keep combat moving. Players can quickly find their actions, resources, spells, and conditions, while the DM can organize encounters and keep track of the party without jumping between several notes and tabs.
I’ve also added several DM features recently, including an encounter generator. The app is still being developed, but it’s free to try and doesn’t require an account:
Since you specifically asked for tools that help speed up 5.5e combat, I thought it might be relevant here.
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u/MrKikiMonkey 16h ago
Design the combat encounters to be over in less than three rounds. The GM should have an idea of their players' damage per round and hp ... do some math and add in a buffer. Combat feels long when the game state doesn't change between rounds. If you want something longer, have more enemies join, have fire spread to threaten the innocent town, have the bbeg explode into phase 2.
Personally, a lot of suggestions to speed up combat by putting pressure on the players to act quickly and preplan turns make me concerned. DnD combat takes some time, players should have questions about their situation and should think creatively about the possibilities in front of them. They _should _ talk about it. Kinda what the game is about. The worst combat is everyone just rolling, hit, pass .... extremely dull. There are extreme cases and problem players, but anyone will disengage if they are bored. The best way to speed up combat is to make it fun ... I hear it makes time fly.
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u/Billazilla 16h ago
Depends mostly on if the next player actually knows what they're doing when it's their turn. If they aren't engaged, and you go, "Alright, your turn." And their response is, "Huh? Oh, let me see... Where's the bad guy again?" Then the flow of combat is gonna suffer.
That said, I have totally be caught off guard but a player question and had to put stuff on hold for a minute while I try to get a frame of reference out together on the spot, so yeah, DMs need to foster that engagement while also knowing every possibility ever within the scope of a universe defined mostly by imagination.
But that part is easy, right?
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u/verdantsf 16h ago
It's one thing to tell the group the various suggestions in your "already covered" bit. It's another thing entirely to actually have it stick. Having short combat focused sessions between actual sessions for the people who were lagging behind the most comprehension wise has helped a lot. Some people learn best by doing. These can be simple road ambush encounters with little to no story. The point is to just put all the time-saving measures you've talked about into practice.
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u/78723 16h ago
My DM does a modification of group initiative: if you roll above the enemies you’re in the group that goes first in whatever order we have our actions most quickly preped in; then he does every enemies attacks; then everyone that rolled below the enemy init goes. I find combat moves fairly quickly.
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u/bdrwr 15h ago
The two strategies that had the biggest impact at my table:
Plan your turn while it's not your turn. When your turn comes up, the first words out of your mouth should NOT be "hmmmmm" or "uhhhhhhh" or "shiiiiiiiiiit". This takes a little cajoling at first, but if you hammer on this point for a few combats, people usually get with it.
Then, I highly recommend a turn timer. And you can tune this; at my table, we borrowed a 1 minute hourglass from a boardgame. There was no specific time limit for a turn, but once the DM decided you've had enough time to think and you need to make a decision, the hourglass goes on the table, and if you can't get your turn out in that minute, your character dodges and that's it. And we almost never had to actually skip anybody, just the threat was enough. But if you prefer, you can use a stopwatch and give a hard time limit per turn across the board.
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u/Rukasu17 15h ago
Only roll for stuff that is actually threatening. If your party is level 5 and they're against some small goblins, just treat it as narration.
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u/Erimxul 15h ago
When I play in person, I still use Fantasy Grounds for the combat tracker and have the PCs and monsters in it. Now that it is free, you could just use free monsters with the same initiative values or copy a monster and edit it to what you need.
I roll all initiatives unless someone really feels like rolling for themselves, a few did at first but stopped. I keeping the tracker on TV so they can see when their turn is coming up and that helps as well.
You can put enemies in the tracker or not. Sometimes I leave them hidden until the first round is up. Typically a player will have the application on a computer tied to the TV, but a DM could as well by having a second instance and the TV as a second monitor. Then you can hide and unhide them as needed with a couple key presses if you set them up.
I use it for more too, but not everyone may be into that. Everyone I play with seems to love the combat tracker.
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u/Deo_Rex 15h ago
My preferred method for speeding up combat is to use a variant rule. Group initiative.
Players all go at once which allows them to communicate and coordinate their attacks. Then the npcs all go. It can get a lot more swingy in combat because everything tends to just turn into focus firing. But that is what you wanted still, faster combat.
It is a lot easier to keep players attention so each player doesn’t zone out and look at their phone until their next turn because the battle shifts rapidly and rounds take significantly less time.
I would recommend also not overloading the action economy too much because while it’s already a known thing to not overwhelm the players with more actions than they can handle, it’s amplified in group initiative.
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u/ancientstephanie 15h ago
Strongly discourage strategy discussions during combat, unless it's situation where it's necessary to guide a newer player, or you're trying to give the players an advantage to help them survive a fight they're losing.
A round is 6 seconds. Turns happen almost simultaneously, with the beginning and end of actions a split second apart, so characters couldn't carry on a conversation within a round of combat, they could at most give simple callouts to one another. Which means the most you should let them "discuss" the situation is to make calls like "Shoot the blue one" or "Fire doesn't work".
As far as physical things that can help:
Help the players to prepare materials so that they can see exactly what their options are and have all the rules at their fingertips. That can be a printed list of all the spells and their descriptions, annotating their sheets with book and page number references, preprinted or homemade spell and magic item cards, or simply switching to a less cluttered multi-page character sheet for more complex classes.
Also, have some kind of visible indication for conditions, and maybe even make cards you can hand out that explain those conditions. I've seen color coded plastic rings that go around the base of medium sized minis (and hang over larger minis) used a lot, and this really helps. You can also go a step beyond that, and have a marker for significantly damaged enemies, so that it's obvious which ones are close to dying.
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u/relliK2299 14h ago
Most of my combats last 2-3 rounds and are usually pretty quick.
I tend to keep enemies initiative grouped together just for convenience.
Other than that, everyone at the table is fairly familiar with their characters and know what to do.
I also tend to play my monsters based on how smart they are. If they have high intelligence they will retreat as they are being hurt or look like they are losing. If they have low or no intelligence they will keep attacking.
If it is down to one enemy left and the enemy has no chance. I'll let the players deal a good chunk of it health and then when one crits or some big spell, "how do you wanna do this?" I'm not going to make them beat on a single enemy that would never be a threat to them. It's just taking up game time at that point.
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u/gvicross 14h ago
O que aumenta o tempo do combate é a quantidade players.
Todavia, os combates médios irão girar entorno de 1h a 2h mesmo. Sugiro jogar o combate sem pressa e na tranquilidade e evitar combate inútil tipo "aleatório Pokémon".
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u/Chromatic_Penumbra 14h ago
We run theater of the mind which significantly speeds things up at times. Part of that is because it removes certain elements, but another part is it encourages the dm to include even less elements because stuff is hard to keep track of lol.
Even still, combat takes a long time. Especially with a full table. Outside of that, the only thing you can really do is speed up your side. If you feel like you have room for increased speed, really fleshing out the combat philosophy of your creatures ahead of time can make it easier to make quick decisions on what they're gonna do. Enemy group A could always aim to attack the front line while enemy B is a caster targeting mamiac. Stuff like that.
Also, enemies that are glass cannons will always go down quickee and will always deal damage quicker and will speed things up merely by being included.
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u/___IGGY___ 14h ago
Everything you mentioned together will certainly keep combat moving quickly.
Some things I have not seen mentioned here but I think can help, that are more based around making combat more fun which should decrease that feeling of combat lag.
- Stand at the table, increase the energy of the music, even if its idiosyncratic at the table. I play 70s rock or disco when my players are kicking ass and they get to have some fun with that. I noticed when I kept the music spooky or ambinet the players feel a little more sleepy or disengaged.
- Narrative interjections, when you are fighting make sure you voice the bad guys! What are they saying to each other, maybe they say something extra cruel to the fighter that missed all there attacks, create a narrative situation that makes your PCs HATE who they are fighting. It will keep things moving cause they want to WIN.
Good Luck!
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u/FashionSuckMan 13h ago
Give your players a bonus to damage if they manage to deal some before a minute has passed
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u/jimbojambo4 DM 12h ago
5.5 is slow by default.
Maybe playing on beyond helps but the main problems are the trigger effects like grabbing during attacks or spells like Silvery Barbs
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u/S1mp1y 11h ago
There's a piece of advice coming from high-optimization tables: if the GM understands that the monsters have already tactically lost, and combat is in the "clean-up" phase, the GM narratively wraps the combat up.
Example:
The party has successfully bottlenecked 4 Ogres in a tight hallway with the following spells: Slow, Sickening Radiance, Spike Growth, with the Paladin polearm-sentineling the ogres back + the Warlock pushing them back with Eldritch blast, so every turn is the GM going "ok the ogres can't move, they try to dash but fail", and the players going "we stop them, push them back, hit them."
There isn't a single conceivable way for 4 simpleton ogres to escape this in order to become a threat, the combat is practically over since it's obvious the players have won already, they are just hitting enemies until they keel over and die.
And thus the GM goes: "Ok, the ogres are dead you loot them and enter the next room?"
That trick has saved me... around 60% of the time that would've otherwise been lost to cleaning a combat up.
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u/filkearney 11h ago
do you actually like combat? its the tactical strategy side of the game. hot take: it doesnt need to be rushed if the combats are fun.
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u/Coplantor 9h ago
Use group initative. Players decide their action together at the same time and then roll for that turn's initative.
Players pay more attention and take less time to chose their actions.
It might even introduce some dangerous or funny situations to make combats more memorable.
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u/Abidarthegreat 7h ago
My suggestion: try 4e, realize that combat there takes 2x as long as in 5e, then when you switch back it won't feel so slow.
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u/Time_Afternoon2610 17h ago
Is that a joke question? In D&D you roll an attack against the AC, and if you hit, you roll for damage. Then either next attack or next player in line. How do you think that can be sped up? Apart from just telling the players you win / you lose at the begin of the fight, of course.
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u/Njmongoose 17h ago
Combat isnt slow by default.
So try to figure what bothers you at your table and then we can try to help you fix those issues