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Do you use one monster or multiple? More monsters, tends to go faster weirdly enough. They die quicker, and tend to have less complicated abilities. Solo/single high level enemies are missed often, and have lots of HP bloat. 

Consider giving the players a free +X to hit. If more of their stuff hits, they kill stuff faster. Do this if you notice they tend to miss a lot.

Do your players know what they plan to do when their turn rolls around? Pay attention to how long it takes them to actually take their turn. If any of them are taking "too long" to decide what to do, tell them you will hold their action until they are ready and move on. Encourage them to plan during other players turns, or even to come up with a "default" action when they can't think of anything esle to do.

Suggest they organize their powers into groups instead of one big pile. I usually group mine for defenders into the following catagories. "When I am Hit" "When Surrounded" "Default one guy" "Mobility" "Healing" "Big damage" "Assorted minor action stuff". Then I put the encounter powers on top, followed by at wills and lastly dailies. I just use the power cards in order depending on my situation. Once a card is used I put it upside down next to the pile, and as they recharge I re-add them to the pile. I hardly have to think when my turn comes around. "I am next to the boss. I will use the top from the big damage stack. Oh, and a random assorted minor action thing". "I am wounded, I will use the top from that stack [Healing Strike] to do damage and spend a surge, I have spent all my encounter minor action stuff so I'm done".

Do they horde their dailies for later fights? Encourage them to blow through them early and more often. Dailies tend to be more powerful, and using more will speed up the fight. As DM take this into account, and try for less fights each day.

Nov 22, 2012 -- 10:53AM, StevenJones wrote:

My comments are in red:

 

Nov 21, 2012 -- 1:09PM, Matyr wrote:

I would be interested to know a few things:

How many soldiers and leaders do the enemies have?
It varies. I do my best to utilize a variety of role types and manage them appropriately: usually no more than 1-2 soldiers, who usually serve as the "bosses" in any given encounter and I hardly ever use them with leader types. When I use a leader (which I try to avoid because their healing/buffing properties seem to prolong combat even further), I never use more than 1 and I usually try to protect him with a couple brutes (low AC, high dmg) and a handful of minions (3-5). Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I treat leaders a little like controllers in combat.

Sounds like you are treating things exactly as they should be.  Honestly this is a decent description of what any melee fight should be like.

Additionally, I'm the first to admit that combat roles usually get thrown out the window once the battle is in it's 2nd or 3rd round. By this time, my artillery has been slid next to the PC defenders, my soilders have been immobilized, my controllers are being wasted by some jackhole PC striker from across the battle map, and my brutes are being pummeled by some area affect created by the PC controllers. It would seem once this has taken place, it's only a matter of as many round to finish everyone off...for whatever reason, that's not happening. 

This to me seems to be the start of where things are going down hill.  From this description it sounds like your PCs aren't able to just killed that Artillery and aren't focus firing.  Recently I did a breakdown of how a hard encounter should go round-by-round with some decent Op and it doesn't look like what is happening here.  Your Controller should be the only one not focused on the kill target.  Everybody else should be focusing on the same guy or the same two guys to blow them up unless that PC can take the enemy out in a single round.

What might help, although I know this seems silly, is having your players take a gander at the Players Strategy Guide.  It is very basic, but it does a decent job of explaining some of the basic concepts that longer-term 4e optimizers take completely for granted.  Buying a copy and sitting it at the table might be a plan (Because you would never download a PDF copy and print it out of course...).

How high Op are these groups? How many rounds does a combat last?
This is a big problem. The guy I mentioned in my OP, who I added so that I could split the party, is the only one who has a well-optimized PC. He's so good at it that I've invited him to play in both parties; he's one of those guys that lives on the 4e Char Op forums. This problem reaches into both groups I DM: one party is older, busy with "life", and more into story than min/maxing anyway. The problem is that if you don't min/max in 4e, you've got a melee time encounter to deal with. The other party I DM is young (14-17yo) and they just don't get it. They have one striker in the party, who, at 13th level, is only doing like 10-20%dmg with dailies. It's pretty bad. The new player and I have directed them to the aforementioned 4e Char Op forum, but I hold out little hope that they'll utilize it.

The player who lives at Char-Op can be a big helper in this regard.  Sit down with the player and make copies of the other PCs, but optimized ones.  Don't change their core mechanics (don't turn them into a charge build if they aren't already, or start doing polearm momentum if they arent already etc) but make them stronger characters of the same class.  Then, tell your players that for the next combat you are going to use the "alternate" characters just to test them out and see how things go.  Most players, even ones who say they hate to min/max, change tune when they pilot a character that is just plain stronger.  They feel more heroic and more in control of the situation.  Piloting a strong character is also, to some extent, an ego boost for the person who wields it as they get the sense of being awesome when they single-round an at-level standard.  While the other players may not want to take the time to look around, or may say they dont have time, some of them (obviously not all) will take the hour or so it takes to flip through their class handbook and retool their character if they get to see the type of heroics their character could pull with the right numbers.

One of the key things with older players who use the term Min/Max comes from older editions where you could have incredible extremes.  You don't have things to that extent in 4e anymore.  The lowest stat is 8 with will only give you a negative in skills for the first couple of levels.  Gone are the days of a Half-Orc/ Half-Dragon who took everything they could to excel at one thing and is literally mentally handicapped.  All the new "mins" of the min maxing are instead of way below the curve, just slightly below average for the general population.  Explain this to your players and they will often time be less hesitant to build powerful characters.

How long does a player's turn take?
I could make a few more tweaks in this arena, but time is as well managed as possible. I'd have to time it, but I'd estimate the average player turn to take 3-4min. Initiative hangs on the front of the DM screen and the new player I mentioned uses the index card method. We have the typical "gotta take this call/bathroom break/gonna get some more nachos" looseness to the game, but most everyone is ready when it's their turn. It used to be our biggest problem, but it's much better now. 

I don't create individual PC cheat cards (base ATK bonus, etc.), but we use colored pipe cleaners for conditions, marking, and bloodied. I guess I should make one and pass it out next session. I assume they all have a pretty good idea how basic actions since we've been playing 4e for over 2 years now, but maybe not. I'll put something together this weekend.

If you give me your email I'll send you a copy of what I mean by cheat sheet.  It doesn't have anything to do with status conditions.  Basically what it does is put everything in one place for all the options a player has.  It would be easier to show you than explain it to you.  And to be clear it isn't a matter of not knowing, its a matter of mental math being a very common barrier, and also for the half-way-through-next-turn-forgot-to-add-charisma-twice condition.  Yes every player knows that 3+5+4+2+2+1+2= 19 but it takes a second and often times people get it wrong when they are on the spot.

How long do your monster turns take?
Amazingly short. Maybe a minute for a horde-type encounter, 2 minutes for solo types. I use Perkins' charts for average dmg and rarely get into the variety of powers monsters have at party level. Exceptions include important story-driven battles, dragons, demons, etc. Basically, encounters that will have some affect on the campaign beyond the risk of death or imprisonment.  

Sounds like your turns are faster than mine.  I use the Sly-Flourish DM Cheat sheet myself and roll everything at table.  While I know it takes more time there is something about the players getting to see my rolls that I like at the time (I dont play with a screen).

Are things like initiative clearly displayed at the table?
See above, but yes. Initiative is kept hanging from the DM screen and is also kept by a player. This was the first piece of advise I implemented last time I posted the question and it's been amazingly helpful.

Do players also have their own group buffs displayed for all to see in some way?  Our group's Warchanter for instance has a flag that says "+6 Hit / +9 Damage" that he holds up when another player takes their turn so they don't forget it. 

Do your players know vaguely what they are hitting at?
I get nervous being transparent about monster weaknesses and defenses. In both of my groups, it invites an amazing amount of metagaming. This solution, especially if discovered via roleplaying or nature/dungeoneering checks, may be something that will help and motivate non-roleplay-minded PCs to partake in more than melee.

Oftentimes it isn't about metagaming but speeding up the high and low rolls.  Your player knows before they ask that they missed that guy's AC when they rolled a 3, but they want to ask anyway.  If they know it won't hit (or vice versa they know a 19 is gonna hit) they can just skip that part of the equation and you can carry on with what you are doing.  Typically in my encounters the +Yes and -No are within 6 of eachother.  That means that when any player takes their turn there are a maximum of 6 possibly hit rolls where they have to ask me whether it hit or missed because they already know every other time. Of course there will be times where the players go "I bet the 30 is that soldier's AC" but then again they should be thinking something like that already.  All it is doing is quantifying something they already know.  Soldiers have high AC, Skirmishers have high reflex, controllers and leaders have high Will.  In practice it isn't as much of a problem as it would seem to be.

Can your players take parts or all of their turns before it gets to them?
We've tried this, but it's caused more problems than solved due to trying to figure what conditions were applicable, modifiers, etc. etc. etc. Not to metion when/if these things expire (on the turn of the player, save ends, etc).

I honestly have never seen this happen at a table and become an issue more than on a rare case, but it makes sense.  Another thing you can do to help with this is clothespins on your DM screen showing when conditions fall off.  Typically you need a "X Save Ends" and "X" for every condition (Like slowed is one pin and slowed Save Ends is another) but once you have them out you can clip them to where they go in initiative and they know what falls off where and when.

How much distraction is there at your table? 
Minimal, for sure. See above.

Good to Go then

Nov 22, 2012 -- 11:38AM, Prom wrote:

Melee combat shouldn't really make battles longer. Here is how I speed battles up at the player end.

(1) Award a +1 to hit if the players rolls the hit dice within a few seconds of their turn being announced.
(2) If a player is not ready within a few seconds, they delay. If it comes to the DM's turn, I keep going and will give two turns to the player if we missed the players turn in the last round.
(3) I warn players that they are next, while we sort out the current players turn.
(4) I encourage players to keep the same characters, so that they know how they work.

The main issue with those things is that the OP was talking about how his players are older and he doesn't want to be as harsh with them on time limits.  He can do that, but it may really hurt the feeling at the table.  Some players, especially old school players, will feel like they are playing too much of a "roll"-play game if they are put under such strict rules.