D&D 5E There should be an option for 1 minute rounds.

Blackwarder · Oct 6, 2012

Six seconds rounds are just dumb, when I first started playing D&D I remember the DM telling me that the attack roll is an abstraction of your character hacking and dodging and feinting and trying to land a good hit that actually draw blood, and that having more attacks means that you just hit more in the same amount of time.

When I tried to say it to a new player in 3e and 4e his respons was that it doesn't make any sense with six seconds rounds, and he was right.

For me, combat is not the core of the game, I don't give a crap what happened every second of the fight nor do I like having a small skirmish takes up to three hours in RL but less than a minute in game time...

Mind you, movement and ranged attacks should get tweaked, but still I'm a huge fan of one minute rounds.

Also, it makes changing from turns to rounds easier.

Warder

B.T. · Oct 6, 2012

Why can I only move 30 feet in 60 seconds.

Blackwarder · Oct 6, 2012

B.T. said:
Why can I only move 30 feet in 60 seconds.

You don't, you should be able to move more, in 2e it was 120 feet for human size characters...

Edit: my bad it's 120 yards... I remembered there was a reason why I liked 2e msurment s so much, was easier to convert to meters.

Warder

Neonchameleon · Oct 6, 2012

Blackwarder said:
Six seconds rounds are just dumb, when I first started playing D&D I remember the DM telling me that the attack roll is an abstraction of your character hacking and dodging and feinting and trying to land a good hit that actually draw blood, and that having more attacks means that you just hit more in the same amount of time.

When I tried to say it to a new player in 3e and 4e his respons was that it doesn't make any sense with six seconds rounds, and he was right.

Why? You swing more than once every six seconds. Six seconds on the other hand is about long enough to cover an entire exchange. In the duel below I'd say the combat rounds are more like ten seconds than six - but each attack takes less than a second. And a one on one duel has longer rounds because you can afford to focus on one opponent rather than having to be aware of them all. A minute on the other hand is laughable.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC6dgtBU6Gs]Princess Bride Sword Fight - YouTube[/ame]

Blackwarder · Oct 6, 2012

Neonchameleon said:
Why? You swing more than once every six seconds. Six seconds on the other hand is about long enough to cover an entire exchange. In the duel below I'd say the combat rounds are more like ten seconds than six - but each attack takes less than a second. And a one on one duel has longer rounds because you can afford to focus on one opponent rather than having to be aware of them all. A minute on the other hand is laughable.

Princess Bride Sword Fight - YouTube

In my old group, that entire combat scene, with the banter and all, would have been probably 2-3 rounds with multiple attacks per combatant per round.

Would be the same outcome, wouldn't need to track every sex seconds the exact location of the combatants would be as fun and most defiantly would have taken a lot less real time.

Warder

GX.Sigma · Oct 6, 2012

Neonchameleon said:
They bring in my experience precisely two things.

They disengage the players by taking their ability to react to situations out of their hands so you can get combat out of the way faster

They make entering combat less desirable and so encourage it to happen less.

Even if that is correct (which I strongly doubt), those both sound pretty good to me. Why do you not want that?

Neonchameleon · Oct 6, 2012

GX.Sigma said:
Even if that is correct (which I strongly doubt), those both sound pretty good to me. Why do you not want that?

Because disengaging the players is a very bad thing. Especially disengaging them in life or death struggles.

What I would be happy with (and indeed have created for 4e) is a Quick Combat Resolution System which is fast and deadly. I use it in two situations:

1: The outcome is obvious before the battle starts and it's dealing with stragglers.
2: "Full surprise" - surprise is an orc patrol expecting trouble. You'll get a few seconds, which is dangerous enough. Full surprise is a group of orcs sitting down to eat dinner and play dice. It's going to get very bloody very fast.

B.T. · Oct 6, 2012

I'm fine with minute-long rounds in theory, but there would need to be a lot to make them work.

Why can I only attack one person in 60 seconds?
Why can I only shoot one arrow?
How long does it take to reload a crossbow?
How long does it take to retrieve an item in my pack?
What happens if I want to hunt through my inventory, retrieve a potion, move over to my unconscious friend, and it feed it to him?

There are ways to deal with this (most sensibly by giving characters more actions, though this can cause problems) but I really don't want to play with 2e's combat system.

Mattachine · Oct 6, 2012

Movement was always the part that didn't fit into one minute rounds in my AD&D games.

Since we have turn-based combat, a creature could get a full minute of movement after an enemy attacked. If that creature won initiative the next round, it got another full minute of movement.

In other words, why would the enemy stand still so long?

For this to work, there needs to be some proviso about what happens when enemies disengage from combat, etc.

Sounds like it makes combat more complex, rather than less.

Also, the idea of "what you can do in a round" changes greatly with 1 minute rounds. For instance, changing weapons, using gear, casting certain spells, and so on. The six-second round more accurately covered what had always been the per-round action economy.

Neonchameleon · Oct 6, 2012

Blackwarder said:
In my old group, that entire combat scene, with the banter and all, would have been probably 2-3 rounds with multiple attacks per combatant per round.

Would be the same outcome, wouldn't need to track every sex seconds the exact location of the combatants would be as fun and most defiantly would have taken a lot less real time.

Warder

OK. So you're changing the argument. No longer that six second exchanges being an abstraction of a flurry of blows is ridiculous (which I believe I've proved it isn't), but you find that one minute combat rounds can cover everything and fast.

The reason one minute combat rounds are horrible isn't shown by a duel. In a duel you don't need to refocus - which is when you really need to take control of your PC. Better would be Legolas vs the Oliphaunt (see clip below if you don't know the scene). Awesome scene, epic battle - and you want to make it into a single round with Legolas one-shotting everything in a single round. To me there are at least four separate decision points, three of which are unfolding as a response to what else happened.

1: Legolas jumped on the oliphaunt
2: Having swung to safety he shot the guards off the back. (And remember that those are separate targets).
3: Legolas cuts the howdah with his dagger.
4: Legolas shoots the Oliphaunt in the back of the head.

Now I take the idea that you shouldn't tie combat to set amounts of time. But I make that at least four major actions with completely distinct intent - or four rounds at a bare minimum. (It's entirely possible to argue for more). And the Oliphaunt should not be the victim of a one-shot attack. It's even clearer in skirmish fights such as in 300 or Troy.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMjkfZ3q8tE&feature=related]Legolas kills the Oliphaunt - YouTube[/ame]