D&D 5E Declarations that start combat vs. initiative

[Bill Zebub]

Seems to me there are two conversations going on here: some people are talking about how D&D 5e works, and some are talking about how they wish RPGs in general should work.

 

[Lanefan]

And again, this is exactly what 5e says: "A round represents about 6 seconds in the game world. " (It was only 3e which was strict "Each round represents 6 seconds in the game world", even 4e used the word "about")

The flexibility is built in the system, it's only people wanting to introduce heavy constraints that make it fixed and end up in a totally inconsistent position.

Got it.

It's certainly a way to nerf casters, but it makes the game unfun for players, because that means that they basically skip turns. It's by the way completely contrary to the philosophy of 5e where everything has been designed so that people can play every turn (whack-a-mole healing, combat cantrips, etc.).

You can still have casting times without anyone skipping a turn. Caster's init is 17, spell takes 10 pips to cast, so you're in mid-casting (and thus largely defenseless) until your spell resolves on init 7, and any damage or significant disruption during that time will kill the spell, possibly producing a wild magic surge instead. Next round, if doing fully-cyclic initiative, caster's original 17 still holds.

As mentioned before, I've played inductive games where, in all actions, it's roll first and interpret later (and with very simple mechanics, high level resolution), and I think it has influenced the way we play at our tables.

This requires very clear narration on the part of the DM, so as to prevent the player expecting/imagining one possible set of outcomes and the DM expecting another. Believe me, having been in some I know just how nasty those arguments can get.

 

[Lanefan]

There is in my game. We've made a house rule that if initiative is tied, which is rare since it requires a tied initiative roll AND the same dex number as higher dex goes first, both get turns even if one dies. So a mutual death is possible, but I don't think has ever happened.

We use a d6 for initiative (no bonuses) so ties are far more common. As in, they happen every round!

 

[Maxperson]

We use a d6 for initiative (no bonuses) so ties are far more common. As in, they happen every round!

That WOULD make it much more common.

 

[Lanefan]

The problem with malleable rounds is spell length. Suppose your rounds are 30 seconds, but are malleable and you occasionally alter how long the round is. One day the party is on a ship and you decide that a round is going to be 5 minutes. Does a 5 round spell end in half a round or does it get an in credibly extended duration, lasting for 25 minutes instead of the normal 2.5?

Spellcasting in naval combat has, IMO, three problems; all of which I quite like:

1 - most of the time the other ship(s) is(are) going to be out of range of damage spells
2 - rolling heaving ship decks aren't a very stable platform from which to cast, affecting ability to cast and, when relevant, aim
3 - casting times and durations don't change in absolute time, thus something that would have had a duration of one round gets converted to six seconds (or 30 seconds in my game) and thus is likely almost pointless

Where it really falls apart is if-when the casters can just fly over to the enemy ships and blast away from the air, at which point those ships are pretty much hosed.

side note: all of this is relevant to me right now as our party in tonight's game just finished one naval combat and is probably standing into a few more before we're done. Wall of Force for the win!

 

[Lyxen]

You can still have casting times without anyone skipping a turn. Caster's init is 17, spell takes 10 pips to cast, so you're in mid-casting (and thus largely defenseless) until your spell resolves on init 7, and any damage or significant disruption during that time will kill the spell, possibly producing a wild magic surge instead. Next round, if doing fully-cyclic initiative, caster's original 17 still holds.

Good point. Note that I'm absolutely fine with that, and that this is the kind of thing that you get in more simulationist systems like Runequest, which I absolutely love. It's just that they are built on extremely different paradigms, combat is (more "realistically") extremely fast and deadly, and usually avoided by all parties unless extremely one-sided or there is no alternative, which allows roleplaying sessions to be structure very differently with, inherently, much fewer combats. D&D is built with more combat in mind, but it was my frustration with 3e and 4e, combat was really slow, which meant that it was harder to balance the pillars, with our groups preferring "exploration" and even more "social" than pure combat.

5e streamlined the combat system for us and is the perfect solution for extremely fast combat, in particular because of no declarations (which then need to be revised when the turn actully occurs), the immovable sequence (no delays) and very few interrupts (few applicable reactions), so that each player has no excuse to dither about what he is going to do. When it's his turn, he just explains what he intends his character to do, it's resolved, end of turn, next please...

This requires very clear narration on the part of the DM, so as to prevent the player expecting/imagining one possible set of outcomes and the DM expecting another. Believe me, having been in some I know just how nasty those arguments can get.

I agree that it's a question of mind set and trust, what you are saying is somewhat true, but it's limited by the fact that the roll has determined success or failure, and the player cannot change that. After that, the fun in that system is really about each player having the imagination and vocabulary to make fun descriptions of what happens, and this is where that kind of system fails more than the problem you outline, it does not support more passive gamers who are there mostly to play the game and let the DM describe things for them.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

That still leaves you in the 5-7 range. Any further than that and it's no longer "about" 6 seconds.

I don't really do the 'about' bit myself, but I don't think 'about' is limited to 1 as a range... since time can be 1 second through a million years, about has almost no range... I mean I hear people say that on the scale of the universe we (human history as a whole) are about a few seconds... so 30 seconds isn't a crazy amount.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't really do the 'about' bit myself, but I don't think 'about' is limited to 1 as a range... since time can be 1 second through a million years, about has almost no range... I mean I hear people say that on the scale of the universe we (human history as a whole) are about a few seconds... so 30 seconds isn't a crazy amount.

No. When talking about "about 6 seconds" time cannot be 1 second to a million years. That's a fallacy of some kind, but I don't feel like looking up which one. And it's absolutely insane to think that 30 seconds is "about 6 seconds" in length. It's literally 5x times longer.

"about" means "close to." When you are talking about the very short time frame of 6 seconds, going 33% farther away is not "about" that time frame. You have 1 second of variance to be "about" 6 seconds. If you go 2 or 3 seconds from that 6 second mark, you are too far away to be about 6 seconds.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I love cast times and interrupts in my MMOs. Not so much in my tabletop RPGs.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

No. When talking about "about 6 seconds" time cannot be 1 second to a million years. That's a fallacy of some kind, but I don't feel like looking up which one. And it's absolutely insane to think that 30 seconds is "about 6 seconds" in length. It's literally 5x times longer.

and 5 hours is 5x 1 hour and 40 days is 5x 8days, and 50 years is 5x 10years...

"about" means "close to." When you are talking about the very short time frame of 6 seconds, going 33% farther away is not "about" that time frame. You have 1 second of variance to be "about" 6 seconds. If you go 2 or 3 seconds from that 6 second mark, you are too far away to be about 6 seconds.

again, the idea of scale is weird with time... 'about 30 seconds' can be anywhere from 5 seconds to 2 minutes if you ask 'how long is the training test going to take? and no one will bat an eye at that 'rounding'

edit: even in the wild of real life I have seen people label teenagers as 'about 6 years old' but I have also seen early 20 somethings be said to be 'what like 5?' by older retired people...

the older you get the more the age 'kid' runs. When I was 14, 40 was 'old' and no one with 2 digits in there age was a 'kid' now in my 40's I don't think 60 is old, and if you are 25 you are 'just a kid'.

time is strange like that.