Combat rounds -- one minute

[Ao the Overkitty]

I had completely blocked that memory and those arguments out of my mind, but now they have come rushing back.

I remember the whole minute a round thing. I also remember something about that combat rounds and turns were different from normal rounds and turns (the non combat ones were longer).

 

[rbingham2000]

One minute equals one round in AD&D?

Sounds to me like one minute of combat would be more of a sequence than a round -- and even the most inexperienced of characters are going to be delivering (or defending against) a lot more than one attack during that minute, let me tell you.

Unless you're going by the many-attacks, one-hit style of combat, which is quite dramatic when you're dueling someone, but isn't going to cut it when you're up against a whole bunch of critters.

 

[woodelf]

That was the biggest problem for our group too. We could buy the whole "multiple swings" bit with one or two real opportunities, but that never addressed bow fire or dagger throwing, etc...

We still have the same problem. That particular problem has nothing to do with the length of the combat round, and everything to do with the abstractions of AC, HP, and "hitting". In D&D3E, damage from a round of melee fighting might represent one big hit, lots of little hits, or even wearing down the opponent without actually making contact. Damage from a round of missile firing represent an exact number of missile attacks, one per attempted hit--though there's still the question of which truly hit, and which eroded hps in some other way.

 

[JustKim]

As much as I disliked one minute rounds, turns were what really bothered me. A turn to me is when you act; that is, when it's your turn. In 2E a turn is something completely unintuitive, a measurement of 10 minutes only used unnecessarily in spell durations and other obscure parts of the game. Worse was when the phrase "turns" was used in Baldur's Gate with no context, and spells that seemed like they should be brief lasted for hours.

I think the only purpose of turns was to confuse potential spellcasters.

 

[weasel fierce]

Back in high school, we never bothered to figure out how long a round was. It was whatever time it took to do something.

These days, I assume from 10 seconds to a minute, depending on what is going on at the time.

 

[Staffan]

As much as I disliked one minute rounds, turns were what really bothered me. A turn to me is when you act; that is, when it's your turn. In 2E a turn is something completely unintuitive, a measurement of 10 minutes only used unnecessarily in spell durations and other obscure parts of the game. Worse was when the phrase "turns" was used in Baldur's Gate with no context, and spells that seemed like they should be brief lasted for hours.

I think the only purpose of turns was to confuse potential spellcasters.

I think the purpose of the turn was mid-scale timekeeping. As in, when exploring a dungeon, keeping an eye open for traps and stuff. When you don't want to keep track of every round of action, but still want to have a measure of step-by-step timekeeping.

I do remember that in Basic D&D, any combat took a minimum of one turn, time-keepingwise. Even if the actual killing was shorter (and it generally was), the rest was taken up by catching your breath, looting the corpses, and so on.

 

[Kuld]

We never used rounds and turns or weapon speeds for that matter. Well, not in accordance with the regs. We would have spent the entire game session in argument.

We had many "house rules" in 2nd e. Almost 2 decades worth
My group of about 20 people, off and on, would probably have a hard time playing someone elses idea of 2e. They are all "experts"

Any way, a few of my old time players and I are playing 3.x now. No arguments as of yet, and we are all having fun. It's all the comforts of home with much needed unfamiliarity to keep us busy.

 

[Bregh]

You shock me, diaglo!

The 1 minute melee round was a sad artefact introduced in AD&D, it didn't exist in OD&D. We shunned it as evil from the word go, I'm truly surprised that you embraced such weirdness!

Cheers

Hmmmm,

...It takes ten minutes to move about two moves--120 feet for a fully armoured character. Two moves constitute a turn...

...Melee is fast and furious. There are ten rounds of combat per turn.

I think his old cells are still firing on this one, Plane Sailing.

 

[Quasqueton]

My original group started with Basic D&D, and when we moved "up" to AD&D, we didn't realize for a long time that rounds had changed to be one minute. When we did figure that out, I decided that combat took place in segments in my game.

Quasqueton

 

[Gentlegamer]

My original group started with Basic D&D, and when we moved "up" to AD&D, we didn't realize for a long time that rounds had changed to be one minute. When we did figure that out, I decided that combat took place in segments in my game.

Quasqueton

Did you adjust spell durations to be in segments, too?