3.X turn length

[virgil]

What is it that makes even a single round take half an hour in D&D's 3.X? Is it the sheer volume of tactical choices for spellcasters round-to-round? Is it the constant barrage of forgotten modifiers from buffs/circumstances? Is it the math of performing four attacks with different iterative penalties (with a second roll if there's a miss %)? Is it the spells that force everyone to roll dice one or more times, be it penetrating SR, saving throws, checks from round-to-round? Is it the rolling and adding the fistful of dice with every set of actions, then tallying 58 from 115? Is it the movement planning from both setting up the board and checking which 15' you can move without provoking an AoO? Is it the cascading effects from statuses (fatigue creates a host of modifiers, some modifiers affecting other modifiers)?

[Psychic Robot]

All of the above.

[Juton]

I'm sure it varies from group to group, but it takes longer for our group to resolve an action than it does to choose one at higher levels. Seriously, 7 attacks, where you are rolling 15d6 at a time, thats other a hundred dice per turn. It's not just counting them, you have to count out the fifteen to roll, you have to pick up the re-roll the ones that fell off the table, tack on all the extra modifiers then calculate the result.

[Kaelik]

At about level 10ish, can usually resolve a round in 10 minutes if everyone is paying attention. Maybe my group is just abnormally quick, but I don't think we've ever had to spend 30 minutes except when we also spend part of that 30 minutes arguing with the DM who is trying to nerf a spell mid cast.

[RobbyPants]

What is it that makes even a single round take half an hour in D&D's 3.X? Is it the sheer volume of tactical choices for spellcasters round-to-round? Is it the constant barrage of forgotten modifiers from buffs/circumstances? Is it the math of performing four attacks with different iterative penalties (with a second roll if there's a miss %)? Is it the spells that force everyone to roll dice one or more times, be it penetrating SR, saving throws, checks from round-to-round? Is it the rolling and adding the fistful of dice with every set of actions, then tallying 58 from 115? Is it the movement planning from both setting up the board and checking which 15' you can move without provoking an AoO? Is it the cascading effects from statuses (fatigue creates a host of modifiers, some modifiers affecting other modifiers)?

Yes.

That, and random side-tracked banter, at least for my group.

Other things that can cause a problem are diving through the Monster Manual looking for that perfect Summon/Polymorph form, applying ad hoc penalties for ability drain/damage and negative levels, and random rule references from DMs who don't know how certain things work and players who don't realize how their character abilities work.

[hogarth]

What is it that makes even a single round take half an hour in D&D's 3.X? Is it the sheer volume of tactical choices for spellcasters round-to-round? Is it the constant barrage of forgotten modifiers from buffs/circumstances? Is it the math of performing four attacks with different iterative penalties (with a second roll if there's a miss %)? Is it the spells that force everyone to roll dice one or more times, be it penetrating SR, saving throws, checks from round-to-round? Is it the rolling and adding the fistful of dice with every set of actions, then tallying 58 from 115? Is it the movement planning from both setting up the board and checking which 15' you can move without provoking an AoO? Is it the cascading effects from statuses (fatigue creates a host of modifiers, some modifiers affecting other modifiers)?

Yes.

That, and random side-tracked banter, at least for my group.

Obviously some of those apply at low levels (movement plotting, remembering bonuses) and some don't (rolling iterative attacks and SR checks). But they pretty much all apply at higher levels.

[squee_nabob]

Side banter, people forgetting whose turn it is, and the GM having to figure out what to do. Those are the biggest killers in my group (usually because the caster PCs have index cards with all their spells on them and know which ones to cast when)

[TheFlatline]

I don't think I can remember the last time I had a single combat in 3.x take longer than say 30 minutes.

That being said, I have "combat rules" for D&D to make things run smooth:

1. Know the rules. As you get more comfortable, things naturally speed up.
2. Banter is fine, but no bitching about how long this is taking if you're part of the problem.
3. When it's not your turn, be planning your turn. That includes paying attention to the map, looking for that perfect polymorph form in the MM, reading what the f*ck your spell does, etc etc.
4. You have 10 seconds or so to actually tell me what you're doing by the time it's your turn, unless something major has just happened immediately before you. If you can't at least tell me what you do (attack, cast fireball, jerk off) you're frozen in place and don't act this turn. You do get a +4 to your initiative since you're gathering your wits.
5. If you have a rules disagreement with me, you have 30 seconds to make your argument. If you can't convince me in 30 seconds, save it to the end of the session and we'll argue then.
6. It's the caster's responsibility to tell me what my saving throw and DC for a baddie is. Same as it's my responsibility to tell the PC who is a target of a spell.
7. If you're rolling piles and piles of dice, get a dice tower. They make things move a lot quicker when all you do is dump and count.
8. If you know that rolling a 12 on your D20 hits the monster and you roll a 14, just tell me you hit. Don't do the math up just to tell me you hit on an AC 32.

The idea is to make combat feel fast and frantic. I've run massively complex fights in roughly half an hour just by having everyone focus and be efficient. D20 is not a slow system per se. Dark Heresy, there's a fucking slow system.

"I attack"
"Okay, you have X Y and.... yeah Z modifiers. That's a +10 to your ballistics roll"
"Okay... *roll* I hit"
"Shit wait what did you roll to hit?"
"Why?"
"That determines hit location."
"Oh... like 24 I think."
"Okay... 42... that's a chest hit. Roll damage."
"12 points."
"Okay, minus 3 for toughness, minus 4 for armor in his chest... that's 5 points inflicted on him."
"Hey, wake up, it's your turn!"

[Lago PARANOIA]

virgileso:

Discounting problems at the player's end, part of it is just outright bad design (having to add hits for more than 15 dice or count up the values on more than 8 dice takes too fucken long), part of it is intentional granularity (miss chances, spell resistances, etc.), part of it is just the inherent sacrifice of the genre. For the last one, a jRPG will just plain take longer to play than a platformer; that's part of the tradeoff of the genre. Rocket Launcher Tag will, all other things being equal, be shorter than Padded Sumo, but a lot of people don't like RLT in the first place so that's just a sacrifice.

But honestly, bad design is really just a small part of why turns take too long in 3.X. While you can tighten things up, you'd only get a reduction in playtime of about 20% at the most. At that point, you either need to decide that you need to get rid of granularity (Shadowrun's combat system is if you ignore the soak or dodge roll about as simplified as you can get without total abstraction) or you need to rethink your design principles altogether.

As TheFlatline pointed out, if you don't want to redesign mechanics you can get a pretty acceptable reduction in speed as long as your playing group well-oiled and well-coordination.

[Crissa]

We always had the problem that some players never respond except at a DM's prompt. So they'd say they were doing something, the DM would say roll, then we'd have to wait for the resolution of that... Ugh.

I always had my dice ready to roll my next planned action, including rolling damage dice at the same time as my attack. There wasn't any time wasted waiting for the DM to say hit or miss.

-Crissa

[K]

Just waiting for people to do an resolve their turn is the biggest problem. I mean, things are designed so that you might potentially have many rolls in one turn, and then force many response rolls, and that's just your turn.

I mean, if the lich casts a Fireball suddenly four people need to roll saves. Add in AoOs, multi-round saves like Holds, and calculating up mods and 30 mins a round is pretty conservative.

I mean, I've always known what spell I was casting 30 mins ahead of time, so option paralysis was never the problem.