Five GM-Tested Ways to Speed Up Combat Without Killing Tension
Combat is supposed to be the engine of your session. Instead, it’s sputtering.
You know the feeling. Dice are rolling. Minis are moving. But the energy at the table is leaking out round by round. Players check phones. Someone asks whose turn it is. The villain who was terrifying ten minutes ago is now just… still standing.
When combat drags, it doesn’t just waste time. It kills momentum, tension, and trust. Players stop believing their choices matter because everything feels slow, inevitable, and padded.
The good news is this: slow combat is almost never a single problem. It’s usually one of a few repeatable causes. Fix the cause, and combat tightens up fast.
Below are five proven ways to fix combat that’s dragging on too long. Each one targets a specific failure point, explains why it works, and shows how to use it at the table immediately. No system overhaul required.
First, a 30-Second Diagnostic
Before applying fixes, identify why combat is slow. Most dragging combats fall into one or more of these buckets:
- Too many turns per round
- Too many decisions per turn
- Too many misses and whiffs
- Too much rules or math friction
- No clear end condition beyond “kill everything”
As you read, mentally tag which of these you see at your table. You do not need all five fixes. You need the right one.
1. Cut the Number of Turns, Not the Threat
Symptom: A single round takes forever. Everyone is acting, but progress is glacial.
This is the most common issue, and it has a simple cause: too many turns. Not too much difficulty. Not too much danger. Just too many individual activations.
A fight with ten weak enemies feels dynamic for exactly one round. After that, it becomes accounting.
Why This Works
Time in combat scales with turns, not hit points. If twelve creatures take actions, the round is long even if those actions are simple. Reducing turns while preserving danger compresses time without reducing tension.
This is why so many experienced GMs independently land on the same advice: fewer monsters, harder monsters.
How to Apply It
Group enemies into fewer initiative slots.
- Three goblins act together.
- Six skeletons move as two squads.
- A swarm of cultists becomes “the mob.”
Use minion-style enemies.
- One hit, one failure, they’re out.
- Damage still matters.
- Fear stays high.
Replace quantity with pressure.
- One ogre with a dangerous battlefield effect is faster than six ogres trading attacks.
At the Table Example
Instead of eight bandits with separate turns, run:
- Bandit Skirmishers (one initiative, shared movement)
- Bandit Archer Line (one initiative, volley attacks)
- Bandit Captain (solo)
The fight is still busy. The round is half as long.
Design Note
If you want scale without slowdown, use waves. New enemies enter when old ones fall. The table stays focused, and the initiative order stays short.
2. Lower Hit Points and Raise Damage (On Purpose)
Symptom: Combat isn’t confusing or chaotic. It’s just endless.
This is the classic grind. Attacks hit. Spells land. Nothing changes.
Why This Works
Combat length is largely a math problem. If enemies take six rounds to drop and hit only half the time, you’ve built a slow fight even if nothing else is wrong.
Mike Shea (Sly Flourish) and other designers frequently recommend adjusting hit point and damage “dials” to control pacing. One common rule of thumb is to reduce monster hit points to around 75% while increasing damage slightly. The fight feels just as dangerous but ends sooner.
Alphastream has also demonstrated that lower hit rates dramatically increase required rounds. A monster hitting 75% of the time might resolve in four rounds. At 50%, it can stretch to six or more. Fewer misses means faster resolution.
How to Apply It
- Reduce enemy hit points by 20–30%.
- Increase damage slightly to keep threat credible.
- Avoid stacking high AC with high HP. That creates whiff-fests.
At the Table Example
If a monster normally has 120 HP:
- Run it at 90 HP.
- Let its signature attack hit harder or more reliably.
Players still feel pressure. They just reach the finish line sooner.
Personal GM Note
Many GMs resist this because it feels like cheating. It’s not. Hit points are not realism. They are pacing tools. Use them intentionally.
3. Kill the Whiff-Fest
Symptom: Turns are fast, but nothing happens. Miss, miss, miss, shrug.
Nothing slows a table like repeated failure without consequence. Players disengage because their turns don’t matter.
Why This Works
Miss-heavy combat stretches time and drains emotion. Even when damage numbers are correct, repeated non-events make combat feel longer.
RPG theory discussions consistently point to accuracy as a hidden pacing lever. Slightly lowering enemy AC or granting more advantage-style bonuses can dramatically shorten fights without changing damage output.
How to Apply It
- Lower enemy AC by 1–2 points.
- Increase access to advantage via positioning, flanking, or terrain.
- Replace “miss = nothing” with partial success.
At the Table Example
Instead of: “You miss.”
Try: “Your blade glances off the armor, but you drive the enemy back toward the edge. Take the space.”
Momentum matters more than math.
Optional Advanced Technique
Use progress damage. On a miss, deal a flat minimal amount or advance a clock. The enemy is still wearing down. The story is still moving.
4. Put a Clock on Decisions
Symptom: The round stalls on player turns, not mechanics.
This is decision paralysis. Too many options. Too much optimization pressure. Everyone wants to make the perfect move.
Why This Works
Combat time explodes when players decide during their turn instead of before it. The fix is not punishment. It’s structure.
Many experienced tables adopt a soft decision timer or default action rule. RPG Stack Exchange discussions frequently note that simply requiring a decision keeps combat flowing.
How to Apply It
- Ask players to think during other turns.
- When a turn starts, give a brief window to declare intent.
- If they stall, fall back to a safe default.
Default actions are not penalties. They are safety nets.
Examples:
- Attack the nearest enemy
- Dodge or defend
- Cast a basic cantrip
- Help an ally
At the Table Example
“You have a few seconds. What’s your move?”
If they freeze: “Okay, you take the defensive stance and hold the line.”
The game keeps moving. The player still contributes.
Table Culture Tip
Explain this up front. Framing it as pacing protection, not pressure, keeps it friendly.
5. End Fights with Objectives, Not Corpses
Symptom: Combat technically works, but it feels like filler.
This is the most important fix and the most underused.
Many combats drag because there is no reason for them to end early. Everyone is just reducing hit points until the last body drops.
Why This Works
Objective-based combat creates natural endpoints. The fight ends when something changes, not when numbers hit zero.
This also solves a hidden problem: players often don’t know when they’re winning. Without an objective, every round feels the same.
How to Apply It
Design fights with clear goals:
- Hold the gate for three rounds
- Interrupt the ritual
- Escape the collapsing chamber
- Steal the artifact and run
Make the objective visible and countable.
At the Table Example
Instead of: “Eight cultists attack.”
Try: “The cultists only need three rounds to complete the summoning. Two rounds in, the chanting grows louder.”
Now, combat has a timer. Tension spikes. The fight ends when the story resolves, not when the last cultist drops.
Storytelling Payoff
Objective-based fights feel faster even when they aren’t. Players remember stakes, not round counts.
Pulling It Together
Notice something important: none of these fixes are about rushing. They are about focus.
- Fewer turns
- Fewer misses
- Fewer stalled decisions
- Fewer meaningless rounds
Combat speeds up when every moment matters.
You don’t need to use all five. Pick the one that matches your problem. Test it for one session. Adjust.
One Thing to Try Next Session
If you do nothing else, do this:
Before your next combat, write down how the fight ends if the players don’t kill everyone.
That single question will tighten pacing more than any rule tweak.
Final Thought and Call to Action
Combat dragging on too long is not a personal failure. It’s a system signal. Your table is telling you something about attention, pressure, or payoff.
Listen to it. Adjust one dial. Watch the energy come back.
If this helped, choose one fix and apply it in your next session. Then note what changed. Combat design is a craft. You get better by tuning it deliberately.
And when combat stops dragging, everything else in your game gets sharper too.
How to Keep Distracted Players Engaged at the Table
At some point, every Game Master looks up from their notes and realizes half the table is gone.
One player is scrolling. Another is whispering about something that happened three turns ago. A third is staring into the middle distance like they’ve slipped between realities. You’re mid-scene, the stakes are real, and yet attention is leaking out of the room like air from a cracked hull.
This isn’t a personal failure. It’s not even a player problem.
It’s an attention design problem.
Modern tables sit at the intersection of long-form storytelling, turn-based mechanics, and a world engineered to fracture focus. If you want engaged players, you don’t fix this by banning phones and lecturing about respect. You fix it by shaping the session so that staying present is easier than drifting away.
This article is a practical guide to doing exactly that.
Distraction Is a Symptom, Not the Disease
Let’s start with a hard truth: most distracted players are not bored because they don’t care. They’re bored because the game has stopped asking anything of them.
Research outside of gaming backs this up. Studies from the University of British Columbia found that people who used their phones during face-to-face social interactions reported enjoying the experience less than those who didn’t. Other research shows that even the mere presence of a smartphone can reduce available cognitive capacity. Attention is fragile, and once it slips, it’s hard to claw back.
At the table, distraction usually shows up during three moments:
- Downtime: long waits between meaningful decisions
- Low-stakes scenes: nothing seems to change if they tune out
- Unclear focus: players don’t know when they’re “on”
If you treat the symptom, you get table rules and resentment. If you treat the disease, you get engagement.
So let’s treat the disease.
Step One: Diagnose the Distraction Before You Fix It
Before you change anything, run a quick mental audit during your next session.
Ask yourself three questions:
- When do players disengage?
- Who disengages, and who doesn’t?
- What is happening in the game at that moment?
If distraction spikes during combat, that’s a pacing issue. If it happens during roleplay scenes, that’s a spotlight issue. If it happens whenever one specific player acts, that’s a clarity or tone issue.
Here’s the key insight: disengagement almost always correlates with a lack of agency. If a player hasn’t made a meaningful decision in a while, their brain looks for stimulation elsewhere.
Your job as GM is not to entertain nonstop. Your job is to keep meaningful decisions flowing.
Step Two: Set a Downtime Budget
This is one of the most powerful tools you can adopt.
A downtime budget is a simple rule:
No player should go more than a set number of minutes without making a meaningful decision.
For most tables, that number is somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes.
A meaningful decision is not:
- listening to lore
- watching someone else roll damage
- debating hypotheticals
A meaningful decision is:
- choosing an action
- responding to a question
- committing to a plan
- reacting to consequences
Once you start tracking this mentally, patterns jump out fast. Long monster turns. Rules lookups mid-combat. Scenes that drift because no one is being directly addressed.
You don’t need to eliminate downtime entirely. You just need to budget it.
Step Three: Fix Combat First (Because It’s the Worst Offender)
If phones come out during combat, that’s not because players hate combat. It’s because combat is eating time without feeding engagement.
Here are concrete fixes that work.
Put Players “On Deck”
At the end of each turn, say who’s next.
“Goblin A attacks. Sarah, you’re up. Mark, you’re on deck.”
This single habit cuts decision paralysis and keeps attention forward instead of backward.
Front-Load Decisions
Ask players what they plan to do before their turn arrives.
You’re not locking them in. You’re getting them thinking. When their turn comes, execution is fast.
Reduce Monster Thinking Time
Monsters should act decisively. Pre-roll damage. Use average damage. Group similar creatures into shared initiatives.
If a monster takes longer to decide than a player, you’re bleeding attention.
Narrate Outcomes, Not Math
Describe what changes in the fiction. Numbers are necessary, but story is what keeps eyes up.
Combat should feel like a sequence of consequences, not a spreadsheet.
Step Four: Use the Engagement Loop in Every Scene
Outside of combat, distraction usually comes from unfocused scenes. The fix is structure.
Run every scene through this four-step loop:
- Micro-recap
One or two sentences. Where are we? What just happened? - Direct address
Pick a player. Ask them a question. - Clear options
Present two or three paths forward. Not infinite fog. - Stakes check
Make it clear what might change based on the choice.
Example:
“You’re standing outside the sealed vault. The lock is arcane and unstable.
Kara, what are you doing right now?
You could force it, try to dispel it, or search for another way in.
If you force it, something inside may wake up.”
That loop does three things:
- it anchors attention
- it assigns spotlight
- it creates urgency
Run it consistently, and distraction drops without you saying a word.
Step Five: Channel Side Chatter Instead of Fighting It
Side chatter is not always disrespect. Often, it’s unused energy.
People talk when they’re not needed.
Instead of shutting it down, redirect it.
Assign Table Roles
Give talkers something productive to do:
- initiative tracker
- mapper
- rules lookup
- loot recorder
- recap lead
These roles keep players engaged even when it’s not their turn.
Use Intentional Breaks
Every 60–90 minutes, call a break. Encourage phone checks then.
When everyone returns, do a quick recap and re-establish the scene. This mirrors best practices from facilitation and training environments and works because it respects attention limits instead of pretending they don’t exist.
Step Six: Stop Treating Phones as the Enemy
Blanket phone bans often backfire. They ignore accessibility needs, digital character sheets, and how people actually self-regulate focus.
Instead, set use boundaries, not bans.
A practical phone policy looks like this:
- Allowed: character sheets, dice apps, rules references
- Discouraged: social feeds, videos, unrelated browsing
- Planned: regular breaks to check messages
Explain the why. Phones fragment attention. Fragmented attention weakens the shared story.
Most players respond better to purpose than to rules.
Step Seven: Ask Questions That Can’t Be Ignored
One of the fastest ways to snap attention back to the table is to ask the right kind of question.
Not “What do you do?”
Ask “Why do you hesitate?”
Ask “Who taught you this?”
Ask “What are you afraid will happen if you’re wrong?”
These questions can’t be answered from a character sheet. They demand presence.
Use them sparingly and intentionally, especially when you sense drift. They turn passive listeners into active participants in seconds.
Step Eight: Have the Hard Conversation When You Need To
Sometimes distraction isn’t systemic. Sometimes it’s personal.
If one player is consistently disengaged in ways that disrupt others, talk to them privately. Be specific. Be calm.
Describe the behavior. Explain the impact. Ask what’s going on.
You’re not accusing. You’re diagnosing together.
Many issues resolve here because the player didn’t realize how visible the behavior was, or because something in the game isn’t landing for them.
Avoid public callouts. Handle it like a professional.
Step Nine: Design for Attention, Not Against It
The best tables don’t rely on constant novelty. They rely on rhythm.
They rotate spotlight.
They keep decisions flowing.
They respect cognitive limits.
They build habits that reward presence.
When you do this well, phones stay down without a single rule. Side chatter turns into collaboration. Disengaged players reappear because the game keeps inviting them back in.
This is not about control. It’s about care.
Bringing It All Together
If players are distracted at your table, don’t start by asking how to stop them from checking out.
Start by asking how often the game asks them to check in.
Engagement isn’t enforced. It’s engineered.
So here’s your call to action:
At your next session, pick one change from this article.
Put players on deck.
Run the engagement loop.
Set a downtime budget.
Schedule a real break.
Do it consistently for three sessions.
Then watch what happens to the phones, the chatter, and the energy at the table.
That’s how you keep players engaged, not by demanding attention, but by earning it.
Rokk Talk 