I personally find general concept of enforcing time limits on player turns during combat a very, very good thing for the following reasons:
- Just like in a real battle, you don't have a lot of time to think. Time limit represents this quite well.
- You don't have enough time to get distracted until you are acting again, no time is wasted while you think of something else, check Facebook feed etc, because waiting for everyone to finish may get boring.
- You can go through more encounters per hour, combat doesn't take forever to resolve.
- Combat becomes much, much more intense.
Etc, etc.
How I suppose time limits to work:
- You are only allowed to talk during your turn. That includes no asking for any clarifications, tactical advice, discussing what goes on while it's not your turn.
- While turn of the player who acts before you starts, GM calls out your name and says that your turn is next.
- When that player has acted and math is applied, GM describes what has changed. You are supposed to listen carefully, GM doesn't describe what's happening for each player individually. Sometimes it can take 10 seconds, sometimes minutes — doesn't matter.
- Your turn starts, you have 30 seconds per action your character can do. During that time you are supposed to tell the GM what are you doing and roll dice. Math doesn't count. If you need any clarifications, you have to use those 30 seconds. Same if you want to say something to anyone in-character during combat. Once you roll, you stop talking, GM counts and announces the result of your roll and current situation.
- If you don't both describe your actions and roll dice during those 30 seconds, which most likely means that you didn't have any plan in your head, you make a "default action", which is decided in advance.
- If you only described what you want to do partially and your time ran out, you have ~3 seconds to say if you do what you had time for to describe, if you perform a default action of if you do nothing.
- Of course, people may ask for a game to pause if they need to bring some tea, answer phone etc. After all, such intense combat may get people tired.
- GM describing what goes on between your actions doesn't count.
- Taking a full-round action has to be described during your first 30 seconds. If you don't do it, you cannot perform a full-round action that round, and one of your actions is lost as usual. Though, you might (in advance) name any full-round action as your default action.
The only real problem I see is that new players need more time to think anyway, sometimes even some help from others, but there are some experienced players who object to such solution.
I am myself new to Pathfinder E6, which I am going to use this solution for, so answers related to this system are most welcome.
What are the drawbacks of setting time limits on turns?
I expect answers stating exact problems that were caused by time limits actually observed during gameplay.
Best Answer
There's loads of drawbacks to time limits on turns.
A few have already been mentioned by other answers; I include them here for the sake of completeness, with details from my own experiences:
And here's some previously-unmentioned drawbacks to time limits on turns from my own experience as a GM and player:
The actual impact of the above drawbacks is playstyle-dependent. Personally, I find them too irksome to bother with, but I've known tables that barely noticed most of them, or were willing to live with the drawbacks of turn time limits as long as they continued to be outweighed by the benefits. I've therefore mentioned every method of mitigating those drawbacks that I know of, with one big exception: Nearly every drawback I've mentioned above can be mitigated to some extent by increasing the time players have to complete their turns in. Of course, this also reduces the benefit of having turn time limits in the first place.
If my answer has discouraged you from using turn time limits (and it should have), a good alternative is to tell your players that you would like to keep combat snappy and exciting, and suggest they pay attention during each others' turns so that they can plan their actions in advance. (This is easier if you allow players to speak when it's not their turn, so that they can participate in combat banter.) Provided that your players are responsible and self-disciplined adults, they'll most likely agree with your reasoning and co-operate. In my experience, this method provides all the benefits of turn time limits listed in your question, without any of the disadvantages listed in this answer.