Combat rounds -- one minute

[A'koss]

I find your math intriguing. A longbow has a range increment of 100', which means it can fire at a range of 1000' (10 range increments), with a -18 to hit (first increment is free - though you could make the argument that 1000' is where it flips to -20, but 995' is -18 anyway). Archers who are specially trained in long-range fire would likely have the Far Shot feat, which would increase that to 1,500'.

Heh, and just another FYI, the world record for distance (not trying to hit anything mind you) with a specially designed, uber-heavy pull longbow and an arrow designed for distance is <1,300' (IIRC) under ideal conditions. Note however, I believe the best modern compound bows will outshoot that by a good margin.

Actually hitting someone who isn't the size of a truck (and that's aware of you) much beyond 1 second's range relies more on the failure on the target's part (can't get out of the way) than the accuracy of the archer.

Cheers!

 

[woodelf]

Sure it matters, if you also have to track time for some other purpose.

A simple example might be "There's a bomb in the room that's set to detonate in 5 minutes. A squad of suicidal bad guys are determined to keep you in the room so that you'll die in the explosion. You have to fight them to escape."

One-minute combat rounds suddenly become extremely limiting in such situations.

Unless, of course, you say "There's a bomb in the room that's set to detonate in 50 rounds. ..." Or 5 rounds. Or whatever. For things of arbitrary duration, simply defining them in terms of rounds solves the problem. You only run into SoD problems when you try to compare game reality and relatively-fixed-duration real-world activities. So, frex, if you compare the movement rates as determined by the game with real-world speeds. [Which, for humans, were *way* too slow in previous editions, and are actually a pretty good match in D&D3E. The switchover point from mundane to magical movement for monks even occurs at about the worlds-fastest-[RL]-human speed. However, the speeds for mundane animals in D&D3E are way too slow, often by a factor of 2x-3x, and even moreso for birds.] In AD&D1/2, this was most likely to come up, in addition to movement, when someone decided to do something that we're relatively familiar with in RL, but the game rules didn't cover. Such as tying a complex knot and then securing a wagon. It also potentially came up WRT communication: you can say a *lot* in a minute, if you want to.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Back when I was playing, we pretty much went by the book with the combat rules (10 seconds), nowadays we follow the 3.5 combat rules as closely as possible (with 6 second rounds).

 

[Saeviomagy]

We had 1 minute rounds.

There was a lot of points where the DM would say "ok, that will take you two rounds" and I would say "Ok, lets all have a minutes silence... ... ... ... ...there, wasn't that quite a bit of time?" at which point most DM's would concede the point...

Edit: I'm making a point of pointing out that there were a lot of points I pointed out making my point...

 

[Falkus]

"There's a bomb in the room that's set to detonate in 50 rounds. ..." Or 5 rounds. Or whatever. For things of arbitrary duration, simply defining them in terms of rounds solves the problem

Dr Evil: You are too late, heros! The doomsday device has been activated, and will destroy the entire world in twenty rounds! Muhahahaha!

 

[woodelf]

Dr Evil: You are too late, heros! The doomsday device has been activated, and will destroy the entire world in twenty rounds! Muhahahaha!

I said "defined as", not "described as in dialogue". Point is, start with the game mechanics, and a lot of timing issues never even occur. And, when you *do* need a real-world duration, extrapolate it from the mechanics, rather than the other way 'round. It doesn't solve all the issues, by any stretch. But it solves a lot of them. There're still plenty left, but they have very little to do with a one-minute round in general, and very much to do with inconsistent definitions of actions in game terms. Saying a person can only walk 120' in a minute was the problem, not using 1 minute as the fundamental unit of game time.

 

[Gez]

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.

OK -- 10 minutes for 120 feet, so 60 minutes for 720 feet.
1 feet is about 30 cm, so 60 minute for 216 meters.
So a fully armoured character walks at 0.216 km/h. Impressive, most impressive.

For you Imperial Measurers out there, that's 0.1342162 mph.

Fast and furious, indeed.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Yes, we did. Man, that was one of the most ridiculous rules in there. It took 60 seconds to draw a sword. Heroes of legend indeed.

 

[diaglo]

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

well, the Chainmail turn was just too hard to implement most of the time.

edit: esp when using pg 11 of Chainmail based on exhaustion.

 

[jasper]

minute, 10 secs, 6 secs, can we all just say a GAME mechanic and fight about something more important say creating magic item rules as raw vs number of magic items found in treasure hordes as raw?
Please i having flash backs to my senior year. IT is a GAME. Sometimes the GAME rules do not make sense in REAL LIFE. Some of you would be arguing if I started making you pay taxes on $200 you get when pass go. After all you would have to pay taxes on money in real life.
Repeat after me.
Game is fun
Game has rules
Life is fun (mostly)
Life has rules.
Game rules Not = Life rules
Game is fun
Thank you