Distance and Time - also abstractions?

[RyvenCedrylle]

Consider a this set of actions in a combat round:

Something with 'Shifty' and a decent number of HP (or aided by a bunch of bad damage rolls) moves its base 6 squares, takes a Standard and shifts 1 with its Minor. It's hit with Positioning Strike (3), Tide of Iron (1), Curse of the Dark Dream (6) and, eh.. what the heck, Cause Fear (8, in this case) - given 2 Strikers (Rogue/Warlock), Defender (Fighter), and Leader (Cleric), all really freaked out, this isn't too cornercase, I think. Anyway that's a an amazing total of 25 squares, or 125 ft in 6 sec! Some quick conversions: 20.8 ft/sec --> 14.2 mph --> a 4.2 minute mile!!

So here's my question to the ENWorld Jury:
Is distance an abstraction in 4E? Is time an abstraction? Maybe both?
Or am I going too cornercase?

Discuss

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

It's like a pinball machine, if you line everyone up right! LOL

 

[Tervin]

First of all, Í don't really care. I have no problem with movement and time being game abstractions and not reality.

But if I try to be a bit simulationist, it actually still works. And it would work even if you replaced your standard action with a second move action. After all, if this is for six seconds only, I do think that an adventurer would be fit enough to to keep up with the speed that a good middle distance runner holds for 4-5 minutes.

 

[Rex Blunder]

Time is definitely abstract in D&D. Consider 20 people in a combat round: person 2 doesn't start his turn until he has total knowledge of how person 1's turn worked out. Person 3 has total knowledge of person 2's turn, and so on until person 20. And all in 6 seconds!

This abstraction makes D&D combat possible.

 

[Stalker0]

Definitely an abstraction. But even ignoring that, once you throw magic into the mix, the laws of physics go out the window.

For example curse of the dark dream and cause fear could make people move faster than they would normally be able to. For cause fear, you don't even have to stretch for that, people can often run much faster when under a fear state, and if its magical fear, well who knows what could happen.

 

[RyvenCedrylle]

nah, it's not a compaint - just something that I thought of looking through the collection of pregens. Kind of an "alright, let's say my players did this. Now how the heck am I going to deal with it in the storytelling.."

 

[Korgoth]

I think it has basically always been an abstraction. Going back to OD&D and 1E, the combat round was 1 minute long. Nobody thought that it took 1 minute to swing a sword. The attack roll didn't represent 1 swing... it represented a minute's worth of attacking.

Obviously, the court of public opinion has decided that they basically want one roll per attack, or something close to that. Classic D&D went this direction early on, and it seems to be the preferred approach. I like it too. But even then, D&D has never tried to represent all the feints and jukes and positioning of real combat. Even in sparring in martial arts you don't just go up to somebody and stand there and wail away... there's some footwork and fakeouts and sizing your opponent up.

4E is evidently trying to bring in more of that by deepening the tactical game. So specific powers will allow shifts, bursts of speed and so on. I see nothing wrong with that... "exception-based" is pretty much the only workable approach to simulate all of that, because otherwiseyou could never work up a rules set that would allow for it all and still be playable.

There's the same thing in historical wargaming. If you want to play a game with tanks, artillery and men all doing their thing, you have to fudge the distance and time scale or else it becomes incredibly complicated. And in naval gaming, especially in the Pacific... if you don't fudge the distance (especially relative to the models) you're either going to have to use nanites as minis or you're going to have to rent the Astrodome.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

First off, Curse of the Dark Dream is a (6)? In the PHB light it lists is as a 3 square slide.

Next remember that movement and distance is well beyond reality. Someone who has a six square movement rate can use move and standard action to walk 60 feet in 6 seconds. That's a walking pace of 6.8 MPH! That is one heck of a walking pace, but it is no different from 3e.

Regardless, it is abstract since in "reality" all this movement is happening simultaneously in a continuous flow. The way I rationalize these things is that since the target and PCs all all moving continuously to intercept each other and attack, not every square is actually stepped on. The target is moving forward to attack the fighter, who is also stepping up to meet the target. The target gets buffeted about as the fighter and rogue connect and at the same time the target begins to run away screaming and staggering due to the attacks from the cleric and warlock.

 

[Dausuul]

Consider a this set of actions in a combat round:

Something with 'Shifty' and a decent number of HP (or aided by a bunch of bad damage rolls) moves its base 6 squares, takes a Standard and shifts 1 with its Minor. It's hit with Positioning Strike (3), Tide of Iron (1), Curse of the Dark Dream (6) and, eh.. what the heck, Cause Fear (8, in this case) - given 2 Strikers (Rogue/Warlock), Defender (Fighter), and Leader (Cleric), all really freaked out, this isn't too cornercase, I think. Anyway that's a an amazing total of 25 squares, or 125 ft in 6 sec! Some quick conversions: 20.8 ft/sec --> 14.2 mph --> a 4.2 minute mile!!

So here's my question to the ENWorld Jury:
Is distance an abstraction in 4E? Is time an abstraction? Maybe both?
Or am I going too cornercase?

Discuss

Distance and time in combat are quasi-abstractions. There is a correlation between combat distance and actual distance, and combat time and actual time, but it's statistical, not exact.

In other words, on average, one square equals five feet* and one round equals six seconds. However, there will be some squares that are four feet and others that are six feet, some rounds that are five seconds and others that are seven or eight.

Also note that squares may change their size from round to round, and a round can be different lengths for different characters... gotta love that special relativity.

What you've got here is one of those rare statistical outliers. The 25 squares the creature has moved are quite small, averaging about 3 feet each. At the same time, all these events have taken place in an extraordinarily long round, about 12 seconds instead of the usual 6. So the creature actually only moved 75 feet in 12 seconds, at a speed of slightly over 4 miles per hour.

*This is not precisely correct; technically, the average square is six feet. Squares measured diagonally average seven, while squares measured orthogonally average five. Customarily, however, one uses the orthogonal average, since the usual reason for measuring squares is so the DM can announce "You're in a room 40 feet by 30 feet."

 

[Victim]

First off, Curse of the Dark Dream is a (6)? In the PHB light it lists is as a 3 square slide.

Next remember that movement and distance is well beyond reality. Someone who has a six square movement rate can use move and standard action to walk 60 feet in 6 seconds. That's a walking pace of 6.8 MPH! That is one heck of a walking pace, but it is no different from 3e.

A double move is more like jogging IMO.