The D20 is an Icosahedron
In Dungeons and Dragons, as it is with D20 games, a single combat round is six seconds long. Whilst it is accepted that it will generally take longer than six seconds to think of and describe the actions your character takes some sage advice was given around our table recently.
When the conversation shifts to talking about dice being regular polyhedra it means you're taking a bit too long to decide what to do in the round.
15th December 2008 at 2.19 pm
Hmm.. interesting. This is a big problem with our 3.5e group. Some people take too long, be it lack of preparation or just trying to resolve their billionth attack.
I got the impression that 4e streamlined this a lot, is that true? Was this a case of one member being a little slower?
15th December 2008 at 3.09 pm
This was a case of one person taking a long time to consider his options at the very start of initiative.
Although there are no longer the multiple attacks of 3.5e that could take a while to resolve there are many more attacks and abilities that affect multiple enemies at once and a whole lot more status effects that all need to be tracked. So whilst 4e combat is streamlined in some respects it seems to take just as long overall as an average 3.5e battle, particularly as there is rarely a time someone fights in 4e with a basic melee attack and instead causes extra effects to occur.
Here's another snippet from around our table: