Combat inDungeons & Dragonscan be the best part of the game– or the worst. Played well, it can feel like a scene from your favorite fantasy movie. Played badly, the game grinds to a halt while your wizard looks up spells and your barbarian runs to the bathroom.
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As the DM, you control the flow of the game.Combat doesn’t have to be slow and confusing. You have many tools at your disposal to make combat snappy and fun – and even veteran DMs don’t always take advantage of them. Here are some useful ways tospeed up combatat your D&D table.
Keep Everyone Engaged - Even When It’s Not Their Turn
As the Dungeon Master,it’s your job to keep your players actively playing, regardless of whether or not they’re doing something. If they get bored, you’ve got to shake up how you’re doing things.
If a player feels like they have nothing to do, they’ll tune out the game.They’ll ignore what’s happening and skim the sourcebook, go to the bathroom, or dawdle on their phone. Then, when itistheir turn, they’ll have to spend an agegetting up to speedwith what just happened. Which means that theotherplayers won’t have anything to do and will ignore their friend getting up to speed, which means that they’ll tune out the game… It’s a vicious cycle.
So even if your players aren’t actively deciding what spell to cast or what enemy to target, theyneedto have something to do.It’s your job to give them something to react to.
How To Reign In An Unattentive Player
If a player is zoning out,have a monster attack their character.This immediately pulls them back into the game–it makes them look at the board, see what hit them and why, and think about how to get their revenge.
If you’ve gotmore than one playerzoning out,do something to shake up the encounter. Ideally, that ‘something’ should affect every character in a way that changes how they relate to the encounter.
Maybe start flooding the room, or have another monster burst from the floor. Maybe the sky temple they’re fighting in begins to crumble away, dropping to the ground far below. Or maybe the boss monster you’re fighting suddenly starts using dramatic new abilities.
Donotgo into this planning to punish your players. You’re not trying to make them feel bad for ignoring you; you’re trying to give them a nudge to get them back into the action.
Look at your favorite video games or movies forinspiration– how dotheymake a long fight stay engaging all the way through?
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Design Waves, Not Hordes
Low-level monstershave tiny challenge ratings. If you want to run a battle with kobolds, your players will need to fight eight of them to earn a 1st-level encounter’s worth of XP. It’s easy to just dump a horde of low-level enemies on the table– but that slows down combat. You have to run eight kobolds' worth of turns. That’seight turnswhereyour players don’t get to do anything.
Instead,plan multiple waves of monsters.Midway through the fight, bring in a second round of enemies. Maybe your players find a room with four kobolds, and when they’ve killed a couple, their leader calls in reinforcements. Maybe a wandering monster hears the sound of combat and comes to investigate. Maybe one of the kobolds has a scroll of animate dead and turns their fallen comrades into zombies. The possibilities are endless.
If you design waves of monsters, combat becomes a lot snappier and more interesting.You don’t have to spend half the round running the monsters, so your players get more time in the driver’s seat. And, since your players never know whether they’ll have to face another threat, they’ll pay more attention to the battle and makemore interesting choices.
Design More Interesting Arenas
Think about the last fewfantasy moviesyou’ve watched. How many of their fight scenes took place in 30 ft by 30 ft square rooms, with nothing in them but a few orcs?
There is nothing moreboringthana dungeon room with nothing in it but enemies. If your players don’t have to think about anything but “which monster is closest,” they’re more likely to tune out during fights.
When you’re designing a dungeon,make sure each of your rooms hassomethinginterestingin it. It doesn’t have to be anything flashy– not every room needs a crumbling bridge over lava or an exploding dwarven clockwork. But every room could use somefurniture, or afountain, or anevil shrine.
verify theenemies use the terrainto their advantage. They can flip over tables for cover, attempt to maneuver the players into difficult terrain or activate the power of the evil shrine to blast your players with unholy energy.
If the arena’s interesting,your players have to thinkabout how to use it to their advantage. They’ll think about it when itisn’ttheir turn and stay more engaged with the game.
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Redirect Jokes When They’re Getting Stale
If you’ve played Dungeons & Dragons for any length of time, you know thatnothingis scarier than a bad running joke. Your players might decide to quote an entire scene of Monty Python at length because the villain carries a lucky rabbit’s foot or decide to mock a random mook’s repeated critical fails. Anyone who doesn’t think the joke is funny gets left out in the cold… andthe game grinds to a halt.
Your players are your friends, andjoking around is an important part of D&D. You don’t need to kill every joke in the cradle. But if a joke makes someone wait half an hour for their turn, and they don’t seem happy about it,it’s your job to step in.
Don’t make a big deal out of it. You can just say something like, “It’s Marsha’s turn now! What do you want to do?”
It’shardto do this if you’re not used to it– it can feel like you’re being really mean. But in the long run, your players will thank you.
Keep A Few Good Cheat Sheets
Sometimes it’s the DM’s faultthat the game’s slowed down. If you don’t know the rules for an action your player wants to take, or you don’t know how a certain spell works,you have to look it up.Even if you’re using an online tool like D&D Beyond, that takes precious moments away from your players. And the more often you have to look things up, the more combat slows down.
There’s a pretty simple way to fix this, though–keep a cheat sheet.If you’re playing without a computer, go old-school and set up a DM screen. If you’re playing digitally, set up a cheat document, and make liberal use of CTRL-F.
Keep notesabout the spells, mechanics, and systems your players are most likely to use on the inside of the screen. If one of your players likes to cast shocking grasp, write out the damage and range on a post-it, and stick it to the inside of the screen. If you’ve got a paladin, make sure you know what divine smite does.
Ideally, you should have a good handle oneach character’stotalHP, speed, attacks, and most commonly usedabilities. You should also have a handle on what themonstersyou’re using can do– their HP, their speed, attacks, and abilities.
Take some time to go over these things during your pre-session prep, andmake sure you can look them up without having to flip through a sourcebook.
Next:Dungeons & Dragons: Encounters To Throw At Your Players During A Long Rest
