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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BSF" data-source="post: 1693067" data-attributes="member: 13098">To-Hit, Damage, and DescriptionTo be honest, I am finding our combat to be a tad dry.  The RP is cool, and combat is cool, but why don't we try to merge the two just a little more?  What I would like is a little more focus on what your PC is doing as opposed to just how much damage you did.  As well, we need to speed up combat a bit more.  With this many players, we need to be very cognizant of how much time is spent on each person's time in the combat round.  Especially as we start to get into the realm of iterative attacks, we will want to keep the game moving quickly so we can have fun playing instead of waiting.  Oddly enough, I think these goals can work together and might make the game a lot more fun for all of us.  There are two changes we will be testing in the next few weeks to see how they work out.  The first is initiative cards.  The second is how you roll your attacks.  Initiative Cards:Initiative cards are simply an extension of using 3x5 cards.  People have used 3x5 cards for years.  Heck, we used them in the last campaign when I was prepped for them.  JD Wiker with The Game Mechanics formalized them in a PDF.  You can find the PDF at <a href="http://www.thegamemechanics.com/freebies/index.asp" target="_blank">The Game Mechanics Web Site</a>.  If you want to download the PDF and fill in the information for your character, that would be great.  However, I think I might be able to come up with my own layout for the initiative cards that will highlight everything just a little bit better.  Once we begin using Initiative cards, we will sort the cards out in order of initiative.  Then, we just go down the pile and when your card comes up, it is your turn.  Easy right?  The way people suggest using initiative cards is to tilt them to one side if somebody holds an action.  We won't do that.  If you want to ready or hold an action, then I will hand the card to you.  Once you are ready to execute your action, you will hand it back to me.  This will help me avoid the forgotten held actions when I am distracted by events in the game.  Basically, I am foisting it off to you so that if a held/readied action is forgotten, it is your fault.  This prevents me from feeling bad about accidentally skipping you.  If it comes to your turn and you are not ready to do anything, I will hand your card to you and treat it like a held action.  If you are using a new spell/power for the first time, please look up the details before it gets to your turn.  I think all of this will help us speed up combat and keep everything moving fluidly.  I do expect that we will have a little difficulty adjusting to the changes at first.  But it will get better pretty quickly.  Attack Rolls:When rolling your attacks, I would also like you to roll your damage die (dice) at the same time.  It would be cool if you can make some effort to describe your attack and I will describe the affect.  If you have a variety of damage, such as a flaming sword, please use different color dice to differentiate the damage and tell me what kind of damge you rolled.  Here is the issue.  Some creatures are tough and can just take damage until they fall over.  Others are skilled.  They might have class levels or whatever.  All of this is abstractly represented as hit points.  An attack that might eviscerate a commoner might not hurt a skilled fighter much.  This is not because the fighter's body can suddenly suck up more damage, it is because the fighter is better at avoiding the death blow.  Maybe that death blow is a near-miss instead.  It still ticks away HP, but did not disembowel him.  When you roll your attack and damage, I will describe the affect.  This might cause a little discomfort for you initially because you won't be sure if that near-miss was close to a hit and did no damage, or a hit that did damage, but did not kill the opponent.  I think this will be a good thing because it will allow you to focus more on the cinematic aspect of the fight rather than tediously tracking the AC and HP of your opponent.  By rolling the attack, and damage at the same time, I think we can speed up the combat as well.  Certainly there are a number of people that swear this will speed things up, so I want to give it a try.  The long-term goal is to speed up combat, focus on description, and improve out overall fun aspect.</blockquote>

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