Combat

[Xath]

I have an idea for combat that I will try to use if I ever run a game, but I wanted to see what you guys thought of it in general. Each round would have 5 phases. It's designed to not only expedite the combat in general, but to try to ease the number of 30min turns. I also thought it could make the combat a bit more "realistic," by requiring faster reactions from all parties.

Phase 1. Initiative is rolled by all parties (PCs and NPCs). The GM takes the highest and the lowest and begins an initiative countdown.

Example: Say the highest initiative is a 26 and the lowest is a 7. The GM begins at 26, and counts down during the subsequent phases. When your initiative number is called, you respond with the action appropriate for that particular phase.

Reasoning: I liked when we used to roll initiative at the begining of every round, and I think it makes it more interesting. It also sucks less to have horrible initiative rolls. Because of this, a combat "initiative keeper" isn't entirely practical. I've used the initiative countdown in games before and it works very well.

Phase 2. The GM begins an initiative countdown. In initiative order, all parties involved in combat give a brief explanation of what they intend to do with their round. If you intend to say anything "in-character," this is the time to do so.

Example: Player 1 says "I attack this guy" then Player 2 says "I will cast this spell."

Reasoning: In combat situations, people don't get the benefit of waiting for their turn to contemplate their actions. Initiative doesn't mean that people stand in formation and hack on their designated 6-second interval. It just means that in that designated timeslot, Player 1 acts a split second before Player 2. If you have something like Cleave, and you're attacking a group, designate your secondary and tertiary (if applicable) targets in this phase. If it becomes your turn to announce your action and you require more time to think on it, you may hold your action until the end of the round. If you say you cast a spell and after Phase 2, you realize that you didn't want to cast it, or it was a bad idea, you may choose to allow the spell to fizzle harmlessly, but you still expend a spell slot. Combat does not allow you that much time for contemplation.

Phase 3: Everyone rolls out their action.

Example: If you decide to do a full round of attacking, roll out your attacks and damage. If you believe you may have scored a critical threat, roll to confirm, and record damage for both a successful critical, and an unsuccessful. All dice rolls should be made in the open. Record all of your dice rollings on a piece of paper (or something). Do all math now.

Reasoning: While combat is lots of fun, watching other people roll dice can sometimes not be. I realize that this phase leaves a lot of room for cheating. I'm pretty sure I can trust you all not to do so.

Phase 4: The GM begins another initiative countdown. In order, the Players tell the GMs their total die results and the GM determines whether they hit, the spell goes off, they succeed, etc. (Note: Each attack roll should have it's own specific damage. If your 1st attack with max damage missed, and your second attack with crap damage hit, still apply the crap damage) At this point, the GM compares the NPC's actions with the ACs (or relative numbers) of the players.

Example: Player 1 says "I got a 24, a 17, and a 20 to hit." DM says "That's a hit, miss, and a hit." Player 1 had rolled 8, 12, and 10 damage respectively. Player 1 says "That's 8 and 10 damage." Then it's the next person.

Reasoning: Obviously, if you want to defeat your opponent, you have to do damage, or something. Voila. (Note: If you were casting a damage spell with a full round casting time at a specific character, and that character is no longer alive, it is up to DM discretion to determine whether that spell can be redirected. Area spells would not be effected. And in the event of multiple adversarys, standard action spells could be redirected. However if you are actively casting a spell when the last adversary is gone, you may choose to complete the spell, or to let it fizzle out, still losing the spell slot for the day.)

Phase 5: The GM compiles the round's events into a sucinct, if gory (maybe), description.

Example: DM says "Player 1 thrust his sword into NPC's arm, just as said NPC drove his spear into Player 1's shoulder. Fortunately Player 2 was there just in time to finish off NPC with a swift kick to the stomach."

Reasoning: This phase is optional, I suppose. But I really like description. And compiling the combat like this really enables things to move along more smoothly.

 

[JimAde]

What if I get an initiative of 10 and declare I'm going to charge opponent #1. But on initiative count 12 he gets whacked? Can I change my action?

Edit: Ack! I've done it again. I thought this was a general request for comment on an idea, not part of a private forum. I just followed the link from the "recent posts" box on the front page.

Sorry.

 

[Archon]

coolness. i am more then willing to give it a try.

 

[Xath]

What if I get an initiative of 10 and declare I'm going to charge opponent #1. But on initiative count 12 he gets whacked? Can I change my action?

Well, partially, the idea would be that you wouldn't charge an opponent that another PC was attacking. Because charging into melee combat is generally a bad idea. BUT, on the general principle that you had designated an attack on an opponent that died, it would depend. If there were other persons within your attack range, I'd say no problem. If not, it would depend on the situation.

Ex 1. If you were charging towards an opponant, but the instant before you get there, he becomes pincushioned with arrows from your party archer, I'd say your charge completes into the dead body before it falls, and you may spend the remainder of your round throwing a dirty look at the archer who yoinked your kill. (Since the archer would have declared her attack before you, in order to act before you, the more fool you for declaring a charge on the guy when you know how much the archer kicks butt.)

Ex 2. You and a buddy are surrounded by opponents and he whacks the one you want to attack, but there's another one right next to him. You turn your thrust into a swipe and slash at the other opponent.

I sort of talked about this in the event of cleave. I'd say that in a normal attack round, you should designate a close secondary target in the event yours gets whacked. If you're fighting with a long-range weapon, the location of your secondary doesn't really matter (though I'd say he shouldn't be behind you.) If you're fighting melee, and you rush off with 5 other PC's to a lone target, then if he kicks it, your turn sucks. Fortunately, using this system, it won't last that long. If you rush off to a group, and one of them kicks it, you can freely attack your secondary.

So common sense kicks in. If you run off to fight one weak guy with five other people, suspect that your character might spend his remaining move action rushing off to another target, as opposed to killing someone. Fight strategically, and these events should be minimized. That's why you get to talk IC during Phase 2.

 

[The_Universe]

This is reasonably similar to how combat is *supposed* to work, but generally doesn't because it's simpy not terribly expedient, and it essentially prevents you from coordinating actions with other members of your party, unless you happen to be psychic in real life.

You've broken up 1 pass of "turns" into at least three seperate passes - it works, and it's exhaustively detailed - but it's also slow.

It's reasonably more realistic than how things happen in the game in general (which can be a good thing) but I've generally found attempting to do the above merely prevents coordination and encourages "lone gunning" and slows down the already not-blindingly-fast combat of D20.

Still, there's nothing wrong with the first part in particular - rolling initiative every round is a fine way to do things. It just takes time.

 

[Xath]

This is reasonably similar to how combat is *supposed* to work, but generally doesn't because it's simpy not terribly expedient, and it essentially prevents you from coordinating actions with other members of your party, unless you happen to be psychic in real life.

You've broken up 1 pass of "turns" into at least three seperate passes - it works, and it's exhaustively detailed - but it's also slow.

It's reasonably more realistic than how things happen in the game in general (which can be a good thing) but I've generally found attempting to do the above merely prevents coordination and encourages "lone gunning" and slows down the already not-blindingly-fast combat of D20.

Still, there's nothing wrong with the first part in particular - rolling initiative every round is a fine way to do things. It just takes time.

I guess we've had different experiences. I've play-tested this idea several times with different groups and have found that it generally makes combat take 1/2 the time. Which in turn leaves room for more combat, more treasure and more XP.

Both the initiative countdown and the fact that everyone rolls their turn at the same time are meant to be timesavers. What do you see that would make this system take longer?

 

[AIM-54]

I guess we've had different experiences. I've play-tested this idea several times with different groups and have found that it generally makes combat take 1/2 the time. Which in turn leaves room for more combat, more treasure and more XP.

Both the initiative countdown and the fact that everyone rolls their turn at the same time are meant to be timesavers. What do you see that would make this system take longer?

The initiative countdown is annoying. I had a DM that did that and it really is unnecessary and annoying after more than say, once. It's much more efficient for someone to take down the order and go through the order that way, rather than counting down (did I mention how annoying that is?). The other stuff just seems to change things around rather than increasing the speed of combat. With D&D and d20, combat is also going to slow down as you increase in level. So it depends on what level your other groups were at...if they're significantly lower, the comparison of speed is less valid.

Finally, I can't see how it's a good thing to increase the likelihood that players will miss attacks/spells just because how the combat works out. Somewhat more realistic in some respects maybe, but from a game perspective of questionable value at best.

But maybe it works better than it seems at first glance.

Except for counting down initiative. That is just annoying.

 

[The_Universe]

I guess we've had different experiences. I've play-tested this idea several times with different groups and have found that it generally makes combat take 1/2 the time. Which in turn leaves room for more combat, more treasure and more XP.

Both the initiative countdown and the fact that everyone rolls their turn at the same time are meant to be timesavers. What do you see that would make this system take longer?

The fact that you have to pass through everyone thrice every round - 1x for initiative, 1x to declare actions, and 1x to actually do them, which (incidentally) may result in them re-declaring actions (a fourth pass), since what's happened in combat by the time it gets to them will likely have invalidated their initial declaration. Rolling ahead of time is fine and dandy - as long as you completely trust your players, but that's really the only actual time saver I see.

Jeremiah's point in particlar is valid - if you're comparing say, 10th level combat to 17th level combat (or 1st level combat to 6th, etc.), you're really getting apples and oranges - everyone has more actions to declare in the higher level combats, more stuff to roll, etc. Totals are going to be higher, harder to add, etc. as you go up in level (also a time suck).

A "regular" combat at 1st level vs. your system is going to be noticeably speedier - in fact, a regular combat where everyone is paying a reasonable amount of attention and is ready to declare actions when their initiative order comes up (just one pass, unless you're still rolling initiative every round - then it's 2) is going to be immensely speedier than having to check every person in the group 3-4 times before the round is over, no matter what level you are.

I think you've got some good ideas, and the aesthetics of what you're trying to do are completely valid - they're just not terribly practical in every case, and definitely not speedy.

EDIT: We've tried running combat a number of ways throughout the life of KoA, and settled into the current one after a lot of trial and error - including trials that very much resemble what you've proposed. We stuck to this one because it's about as fast as it can be (though it could be faster if people were paying attention to the battle at large, and READY to to declare on their order).

Secondarily, try imagining what this would be like with more than a couple of enemies at a time. Say a 5th level party vs. 8-12 orcs (a reasonably balanced combat). You're going to be declaring actions for all 12 of those orcs in the same fashion your PCs are (3-4 passes for all 12), which is going to slow things down even more. You *could* treat the orcs as a single strategic unit, but that puts the players at an immense disadvantage, since the orcs get to coordinate as if they have a hive-mind, but the players have to *guess* what the person next to them will do (rather than react fluidly, as is more generally the case).

 

[The_Universe]

What if I get an initiative of 10 and declare I'm going to charge opponent #1. But on initiative count 12 he gets whacked? Can I change my action?

Edit: Ack! I've done it again. I thought this was a general request for comment on an idea, not part of a private forum. I just followed the link from the "recent posts" box on the front page.

Sorry.

You must really like us. But Jim has a point - you're going to get more complete criticism/compliments on the house rules forum than you will just asking us.

 

[The_Universe]

But, thinking about it, it's more likely to be 5 passes than four, because you still have to go through the party every turn to determine who has the highest initiative. I may roll a 27, but I'm not going to just "know" that's the highest. I have to shout out, sort out, and THEN we can move to the countdown.

And then, if you have a tie, you have a half-pass as the tied party members compare their Dex scores, or reroll, or whatever. That means every round, you have to get input from EVERY person approx. 5.5 times before you can start over again. Compare that to maybe 1-2 passes per round, and you'll see why this is going to slow things down more than a bit.