I edited my post but just so you don't think I'm ignoring you - I think the key is to come up with what works for the party. If you have a smaller group and they're fighting one big monster and your players are responsive you can go player by player and it's just fine. If you have a bigger group than resolve multiple rounds at once - sure it's railroading but it gets the job done. Or you can do it your way and use the rolls as a general narrative. I used to have players all give me two round of combat in advance and resolve it all in one GM post. It got the job done.<br/><br/>Combat in 5e doesn't tend to last all that many rounds, if you have a party that knows what they're doing and has at least a few good damage dealers in it, so its much less painful than most other systems I've found.<br/><br/>Unless of course you're a maniac running a scenario with 8 NPCs, a friendly NPC and 30 enemies. :P Then you gotta do what you gotta do (and no I'm not trying to be snide here, that was the only way to avoid us all probably dying haha, 5e orcs are no joke at low levels).<br/><br/>I don't personally like trying to shoehorn rp into combat, unless something dramatic and deserving happens. I remembering seeing posts for games on old board while I was still looking around for an rp home bragging about how they write four paragraphs instead of 'the goblin swings its sword' but...that's silly and pointless to me. The drama comes from your characters if the goblin kills someone or they just barely manage to live. The goblin swinging the sword is not the part that needs to be prize winning material.<br/><br/>My random ramblings. Again sorry for off topicing. :)