Have We Lost Our Way? Two masters on combat and alignment

[Ourph]

Sounds like a spiked chain problem instead of a mechanics problem to me. Seriously.

Whatever. I'm not necessarily concerned about where the "problem" lies or how to "fix it", my point is that a system that accomodates the above situation is no more plausible than a system that allows one attack every minute. Personally, I don't see it as a "problem" in need of a "fix" it's just a feature of the rules. I don't require that my RPG rules be realistic or plausible. Just consistent.

BTW - I didn't say "he is guaranteed to get 26 attacks every round". My point is, the combat system allows for it to happen. Play long enough, and it WILL happen (with some regularity).

Others seem to have a problem with the 1 minute round, I was just wondering if they also had a problem with the Cleave/Combat Reflexes Fighter-blender.

Even if you throw out the spiked chain and give the same character a good old-fashioned longsword, you're still looking at the possibility of that character making up to 14 attacks in a 6 second round. Plausible? Again, not in my book.

That's also a nice way of looking at it. As long as we're going 100% by the book, I'd like you to show everyone where it says "a single attack roll equates to one swing of a weapon, and only one swing of a weapon". I don't remember reading anything like that. The fact that the feat is called "Cleave" should lead anyone to believe that you are in fact cleaving something. In the spiked chain example it's not too hard to simply assume that you are striking groups of opponents with each swing of your chain.

I don't remember reading the opposite either. However, the fact that the description of Cleave specifically says "an extra melee attack" makes it pretty clear that it's considered another attack.

I'm not complaining about anyone viewing the results of the feat differently. Far from it. I'm not interested in questioning either the plausibility of the 3e ruleset or how people fit the results of the 3e combat system into their view of the game world's reality. Like I said, I don't require my RPGs to be "plausible", just consistent, fun and above all CHEAP!

But what I see is people telling me that a combat system that allows 14-26 attacks in a 6 second round is more plausible than a system that allows 1 attack in a 60 second round. Come on! That's just ridiculous. Neither system is "plausible" in the sense that the results are realistic. Neither system is "plausible" in the sense that things happening in the combat round are more believably translated into actual real-world events. They're both abstractions. Pick your poison.

Just don't tell me yours is Kool-Aid.

 

[T. Foster]

Concrete?

Rubbish.

Just a suggestion: your post might have had a little more sting had you actually bothered to read the post you were replying to and seen that the person claiming 1st edition was "concrete" was not actually a 1st edition defender but rather was a 3rd edition defender attempting to draw a (specious) distinction in 3E's favor. Or were you laughing at how poorly most 3E fans actually understand the 1E rules that they're constantly criticizing? If so, then please carry on...

 

[Dogbrain]

Just a suggestion: your post might have had a little more sting had you actually bothered to read the post you were replying to and seen that the person claiming 1st edition was "concrete" was not actually a 1st edition defender but rather was a 3rd edition defender attempting to draw a (specious) distinction in 3E's favor. Or were you laughing at how poorly most 3E fans actually understand the 1E rules that they're constantly criticizing? If so, then please carry on...

I was pointing out the complete ignorance of the poster, regardless of said poster's bias.

 

[Old Gumphrey]

Ourph: I guess we can agree to disagree, but I'm still siding with the fact that an attack roll does not have to be one individual attack. You can make an abstraction of this. It's much harder to abstract a single telling blow in 60 seconds of fighting. It doesn't really work both ways.

So our elf with a longsword (who needs to be 6th level at the minimum for the requisite feats; and to avoid my own rules jockeying we can give him a greatsword) can drop 14 guys in one round. That's not implausible at all; this guy is a fighting machine, a warrior well on his way to becoming one of the greats. But the dropping of 14 opponents in one round is simply not even close to the guarantee you make it out to be, or the guarantee of the goofiness of the minute-long combat round.

Now if we say "He is making 14 separate attacks" then it gets a little silly. It's inhuman to swing a weapon that big that many times in 6 seconds. Now comes the cleaving part. Sure, you're making 14 rolls, but that's more for balance than anything else. The rule does not say "you have to swing your weapon as many times as you make attack rolls", so that leaves it open to interpretation. My interpretation is that the fighter is cleaving down 14 guys with maybe 4 enormous and well-placed cleaving swings; and when he's spinning about dealing death to everything around him, four huge chops doesn't seem like much of a stretch. You can cover a lot of area with a 5 foot piece of magical sharp metal.

Your example is incredibly specific, whereas the AD&D minute-long combat round happened every single combat, every single game. You'll be hard pressed to convince me that being surrounded by orcs (or other low-hp low AC enemies) en masse, chopping them down, and waiting to take your AO's until more bad guys fill the ranks is a regular occurence in any game (along with the numbers I provided showing that you'd have to be painfully high in level and never roll 1's for something like this to happen with any frequency). The combat rules are abstractions, and always have been. To take them literally invites silliness. I'm still convinced that the 3e combat system is a vast improvement over our earlier editions. I can easily justify my huge cleaving greatsword fighter as simply felling 4 and 5 opponents with one swing of his massive blade and then move on with the game. How do I justify the huge expanses of time that pass in AD&D combat rounds when I compare what a fighter is doing to what someone not engaged in melee is doing?

One poster mentioned that being able to throw 20 rocks shouldn't work in AD&D combat because you're trying to prevent other combatants from doing what they want to do to you. Well, what if nobody is attacking or molesting you? What, exactly, would stop my halfling thief in the tree from pitching 25 rocks at the big bad? I can justify the cleaving, and I've done so more than once. If someone can illustrate what stops this rock-pitching from happening or how one could rationalize in their mind why one would only be able to pitch a few rocks I'd be happy to hear it.

EDIT: Also, these situations have one thing in common: Cleaving. When we take the cleaving out we drop our number of attacks considerably, meaning that just being able to cleave can't possibly make you start moving at quadruple speed.

 

[barsoomcore]

As others are wont to say quite often around here, "Sounds like a player problem, not a rules problem to me."

Player problem? Point out the player problem. Unless you mean a player who doesn't cheerfully accept absurdities in the rules that pop up EVERY SINGLE ROUND. I mean, explain to me why this player SHOULDN'T be able to throw numerous rocks in the span of a minute. It would happen in a movie. It would happen in a fantasy novel. Why doesn't it happen in Dungeons and Dragons?

One-minute rounds are a problem, that's all there is to it. You yourself use 10-second rounds. If one-minute rounds are so great, how come you don't use them?

A system that accomodates the above situation is no more plausible than a system that allows one attack every minute.

Rubbish. If system A fails only in extreme cases that require not only very specific player choices to maximize in one area while minimizes in multiple others, AND depends on spectacularly good luck, it is no way true to say that it "is no more plausible" than system B, which every round presents players with an implausible scenario and asks them to accept it. Clearly A is, on the basis of this comparision alone, far more plausible than B.

Six-second rounds are just better than one-minute rounds because they result in less implausible scenarios, all other things being equal.

And I've seen no end of movie fight scenes where 25 bad guys go down in six seconds. Easily. I've seen very few where the good guy gets one good swing in every minute.

Look, I agree that a norm of 25 attacks in six seconds is as implausible as a norm of one attack per minute. But the former is NOT the norm in 3E, while the latter was in D&D. So if we're comparing the two systems on this basis alone, 3E is the clear winner for plausibility. No question.

 

[Ourph]

Ourph: I guess we can agree to disagree, but I'm still siding with the fact that an attack roll does not have to be one individual attack. You can make an abstraction of this. It's much harder to abstract a single telling blow in 60 seconds of fighting. It doesn't really work both ways.

I agree, it doesn't work both ways, depending on your biases. It seems to work one way for some people and one way for others. I find it very easy to envision an archer taking most of a minute to draw and nock an arrow, position himself for a shot, aim carefully, wait for the right moment to release and then make his attack (in addition to moving if he wants to). Others think that's ridiculous. Personally, I think making more than a few attacks (no matter how cinematically you think of it) in 6 seconds is ridiculous.

So our elf with a longsword (who needs to be 6th level at the minimum for the requisite feats)

:Sigh: :\ I thought we were through with accusing me of being ignorant of the rules. A 4th level Elven Fighter gets 5 feats (normal feats at 1st and 3rd, fighter feats at 1st, 2nd and 4th). To wield a spiked chain and potentially get up to 26 attacks in one round (if the dice fall the right way) he needs Exotic Weapon Prof - Spiked Chain, Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave and Combat Reflexes. That's EXACTLY 5 Feats. At 4th level he qualifies for every one of those feats assuming his Str and Dex scores are high enough. If we switch him over to longsword, he needs one less feat (no EWP) but still needs to be 4th level to qualify for Great Cleave.

My interpretation is that the fighter is cleaving down 14 guys with maybe 4 enormous and well-placed cleaving swings; and when he's spinning about dealing death to everything around him, four huge chops doesn't seem like much of a stretch. You can cover a lot of area with a 5 foot piece of magical sharp metal.

If we're talking about the longsword, 7 of those 14 attacks would be individual attacks (he's getting 6 from AoO due to Combat Reflexes).

Your example is incredibly specific, whereas the AD&D minute-long combat round happened every single combat, every single game. You'll be hard pressed to convince me that being surrounded by orcs (or other low-hp low AC enemies) en masse, chopping them down, and waiting to take your AO's until more bad guys fill the ranks is a regular occurence in any game (along with the numbers I provided showing that you'd have to be painfully high in level and never roll 1's for something like this to happen with any frequency).

1. Yes it's specific. There are numerous other examples in the 3e system of people performing actions in a 6 second round that aren't realistic. Listing them all would obviously be futile, because you obviously won't even admit the unbelievability of just this one extreme example.

2. You don't need to be extremely high level in order for it to happen with any frequency. Just assuming the Elf Fighter with his spiked chain has a Str of 14 (not unreasonable for a melee fighter), he's got a 60% chance of hitting your average orc, and a 100% chance of bringing them to 0hp with a successful hit. That's assuming this 4th level fighter doesn't have a magic weapon, hasn't had his Str boosted with buffing spells or magic items, isn't being affected by his party Cleric's bless spell, etc., etc. (BTW - Your original post was off in several places. The character in question doesn't NEED weapon focus, weapon finesse or a MW or magic weapon in order for this scenario to occur. Orcs have 4 hp, NOT 5, and since the character does a minimum of 4hp damage per hit (2d4 + 2) he will automatically get to cleave on any successful hit. ::edit:: Just realized that orcs have 4hp in 3.0 and 5hp in 3.5, so call them kobolds in 3.5 ::edit:.

3. I'm taking this example directly from a game I ran several years ago. No, it didn't happen all the time, but it happened several times in ~4 months of play. The player loved to engulf himself in mooks and I thought it was pretty cool too. But I don't think it's "plausible".

The combat rules are abstractions, and always have been. To take them literally invites silliness. I'm still convinced that the 3e combat system is a vast improvement over our earlier editions. I can easily justify my huge cleaving greatsword fighter as simply felling 4 and 5 opponents with one swing of his massive blade and then move on with the game. How do I justify the huge expanses of time that pass in AD&D combat rounds when I compare what a fighter is doing to what someone not engaged in melee is doing?

You don't have to, the DMG explains it for you.

However, your willingness to suspend your disbelief to accomodate an orc-blending fighter is no more reasonable than my willingness to suspend disbelief to accomodate a one minute interval where there's only 1 opportunity (despite numerous attacks, counter-feints, parries, etc.) to do real damage to an opponent.

One poster mentioned that being able to throw 20 rocks shouldn't work in AD&D combat because you're trying to prevent other combatants from doing what they want to do to you. Well, what if nobody is attacking or molesting you? What, exactly, would stop my halfling thief in the tree from pitching 25 rocks at the big bad? I can justify the cleaving, and I've done so more than once. If someone can illustrate what stops this rock-pitching from happening or how one could rationalize in their mind why one would only be able to pitch a few rocks I'd be happy to hear it.

The big bad is watching you, and your only hope of actually hitting him with a rock that will do any good at all (as opposed to simply striking him with no effect) is to wait for a moment when he is distracted and not looking at you and then bean him in the head. That moment occurs exactly once each minute.

And before you make your counter-argument, just let me say that I consider my explanation exactly as reasonable and plausible as I consider your explanation of Cleave, which is to say, not at all. Like I said, I don't care about plausibility as long as the rules "work". The rules for 1e and 3e both "work", which (if you'll go back and check) is the whole reason I commented in the first place; because someone claimed the 1 minute round doesn't "work". Not that it's not plausible or that it's not realistic (both of which I would have wholeheartedly agreed with) but that it's unplayable as a mechanic.

~20 years of gaming history prove that wrong.

 

[barsoomcore]

One note that might help to bring us all back together in a happy family -- we might be using different definitions of "plausible" -- it occurs to me that what I think is "plausible" in a fantasy story is quite a bit different from what I think is "plausible" in the real world.

I want my games to match the plausibility of the stories and movies I love. If Brigitte Lin can down 25 bad guys with one wave of her hand, such behaviour becomes plausible if I'm running a game that's meant to emulate the feel of Swordsman II. I suspect that Ourph is using plausible to mean "Like what real people can do."

The big bad is watching you, and your only hope of actually hitting him with a rock that will do any good at all (as opposed to simply striking him with no effect) is to wait for a moment when he is distracted and not looking at you and then bean him in the head. That moment occurs exactly once each minute.

The big bad is not watching me, he's casting a spell that has a listed casting time of 1 minute. So he's standing there casting a spell. So I pick up twenty rocks and throw them, one after the other, in an effort to strike him and throw his concentration off.

Let's, to make this even simpler, imagine that I'm not trying to hit a guy. I'm trying to hit a switch on the far side of the room. What, I have to wait until the lever isn't looking?

The problem isn't justifying in-combat actions -- I understand the justification and don't consider it implausible at all. The problem comes when characters attempt out-of-combat actions -- you either end up with characters doing a dozen things before the guy in the fight gets to make another swing (which frustrates the guy in the fight), or you have to arbitrarily limit a character's ability to act, which frustrates and confuses that guy.

My years of gaming experience have shown me that the one-minute combat round was never used anyway, and whenever we tried to enforce it, it fell apart. The only time it comes up is when players are attempting things out of combat and suddenly we'd all think, "Oh, yeah, it's a MINUTE. It's a LONG time. People watching this are sitting around for quite a while." We never used it after we put some thought into it.

 

[T. Foster]

One poster mentioned that being able to throw 20 rocks shouldn't work in AD&D combat because you're trying to prevent other combatants from doing what they want to do to you. Well, what if nobody is attacking or molesting you? What, exactly, would stop my halfling thief in the tree from pitching 25 rocks at the big bad? I can justify the cleaving, and I've done so more than once. If someone can illustrate what stops this rock-pitching from happening or how one could rationalize in their mind why one would only be able to pitch a few rocks I'd be happy to hear it.

This isn't really the "smoking gun" situation you would like it to be. The DMG specifies what kinds of attacks spoil a magic-user's concentration, including damaging attacks and spells that are not saved against. Thus, by inference, spells that are saved against and attacks that don't cause damage (which, remember, in AD&D doesn't necessarily mean they didn't "hit" as in make touch-contact) don't break concentration, which strongly implies that it takes more than just a little 'tap on the shoulder' or whatnot to break a spell caster's concentration. Therefore it's entirely reasonable for the DM to state that the halfling thief is up in the tree pitching a couple dozen stones at the bad guy spell caster, only the stones, whether they hit or not, aren't sufficient to break his concentration (note also the magic stone spell from UA which specifically gives a <100% chance of the stone breaking a spell caster's concentration on a successful hit, and that's for a "magic" stone!). Sure, there's a chance that a lucky hit from one of those stones will break the spell caster's concentration -- and personally I'd allow about one chance of this per minute of trying .

Any and all other "objections" to the minute-long combat round can be met with similar explanations/rationalizations. Whether you happen to find these explanations plausible or realistic or consistent with each other is immaterial, because we all know they're really just rationalizations for a game rule the intent of which was clearly explained by the author in the rulebook (and in the first post of this thread) -- that each round be long enough that activity can be abstracted and the process can be kept fast-moving without getting bogged down in excessive detail.

And lastly, to add a little more fuel to the fire, here's a couple of AD&D rules you may have forgotten: 1) against 'mundane' opponents (0-level humans and creatures with less than 1 full hit die) fighters gain one melee attack per level per round -- thus our Conan-type superhero who is only able to gain one potentially telling blow for every 40 seconds of trying against a similarly heroic opponent (or a big animal of equivalent toughness) is able to mow through men-at-arms, goblins, giant rats, and whathaveyou at a rate of one potentially telling blow every 7.5 seconds; 2) in a situation of surprise, the unsurprised party is able to make attacks upon the surprised party as if each segment were a full round (i.e. someone who normally gains a potentially telling blow once every minute will in a surprise situation gain one every 6 seconds). In other words, the rules recognize that there are exceptional circumstances in which the normal combat procedure shouldn't apply and a character should be able to gain potentially telling blows more than just once or twice in a minute's time, and provides guidance for dealing with them.

The problem is not the rules, but rather people's (mis)understanding of them.

 

[Ourph]

I want my games to match the plausibility of the stories and movies I love. If Brigitte Lin can down 25 bad guys with one wave of her hand, such behaviour becomes plausible if I'm running a game that's meant to emulate the feel of Swordsman II. I suspect that Ourph is using plausible to mean "Like what real people can do."

Exactly correct. Althought using a fantasy movie as a basis for defining the term "plausible" seems a little strange to me.

The big bad is not watching me, he's casting a spell that has a listed casting time of 1 minute. So he's standing there casting a spell. So I pick up twenty rocks and throw them, one after the other, in an effort to strike him and throw his concentration off.

I believe that in both 1e and 3e all combatants are assumed to be aware of all of their opponents unless those opponents have somehow managed to conceal themselves through magic, special abilities or battlefield tactics. So unless you've made yourself somehow unnoticeable to the caster, he's considered aware of you and your actions and you're therefore NOT able to simply attack as if you were not in combat. If you HAVE managed to make youself unnoticed, that's handled by the SURPRISE mechanic in 1e, which WILL allow you to make multiple attacks within a single round (1 or more per segment depending on your character's stats).

Let's, to make this even simpler, imagine that I'm not trying to hit a guy. I'm trying to hit a switch on the far side of the room. What, I have to wait until the lever isn't looking?

As T. Foster pointed out, that's something for the DM to adjudicate. IMO, it would depend upon whether your character is actually completely removed from combat or not. If you're attempting to hit a target while combat is going on around or near you, then you should be acting by round, and that extra time is assumed to be used up in maneuvering for a clear shot, waiting for openings, dodging blows aimed at you and generally "fighting" but without going into all the details. If you're completely removed from combat, then the DM should adjudicate the situation appropriately, probably allowing you to act once per segment instead of once per round.

The problem isn't justifying in-combat actions -- I understand the justification and don't consider it implausible at all. The problem comes when characters attempt out-of-combat actions -- you either end up with characters doing a dozen things before the guy in the fight gets to make another swing (which frustrates the guy in the fight), or you have to arbitrarily limit a character's ability to act, which frustrates and confuses that guy.

Again, we're back to player problems vs. mechanic problems. As a player, I"m perfectly willing to accept that combat is abstract and one minute encompasses a lot of fighting. I'm OK with the idea that someone not FIGHTING FOR THEIR LIFE, has a lot more time to do whatever it is they want to do, depending on how the DM arbitrates the situation. As long as the rules do their job (i.e. tell me whether I live or die) I'm not really that caught up in how detailed or abstract they get with the blow/counter-blow.

I'm not saying everyone should like one minute rounds. Play whatever system or use whatever house rules suit your fancy. But don't try to tell me there's a difference between the plausibility of a system that accounts for a character making 26+ attacks in 6 seconds and a system that accounts for a character making 1 or 2 attacks in 60 seconds.

 

[T. Foster]

Let's, to make this even simpler, imagine that I'm not trying to hit a guy. I'm trying to hit a switch on the far side of the room. What, I have to wait until the lever isn't looking?

This may come as a shock, but considering that this (trying to throw stones across a room to hit a lever) is a non-combat action it shouldn't be judged as one and therefore doesn't follow the combat procedure of one "attack" per round/minute. So, assuming the character has a ready supply of stones (as ammo for his sling, perhaps), I'd probably allow him to pitch one stone per segment (10 per combat round, one every six seconds -- which might seem a little slow but remember he has to aim a bit, and if there's a fight going on elsewhere in the room there's probably lots of noise and distractions, bad lighting (lots of moving shadows), etc. so this doesn't seem at all unreasonable to me). And there's nothing in the rules that suggests I should handle it any other way.

The problem isn't justifying in-combat actions -- I understand the justification and don't consider it implausible at all. The problem comes when characters attempt out-of-combat actions -- you either end up with characters doing a dozen things before the guy in the fight gets to make another swing (which frustrates the guy in the fight), or you have to arbitrarily limit a character's ability to act, which frustrates and confuses that guy.

This is only a problem if you view it as one. The rules clearly state that a combat round is one minute long, and that anybody involved in that combat is spending the entirety of that minute in abstract combat-related activity (trying to hit, trying to not get hit, carefully maneuvering so as to not open yourself up to being hit, etc.). Therefore it's patently obvious that characters who aren't involved in the combat will get to act "more quickly" than those who are, because their activities occur in "real time" and are not abstracted. The guy who's in the fight very well might get frustrated that the other character is "doing a dozen things" before he gets to swing again, but all you need to do is remind him that each combat round is a minute long and what his character has actually been doing in that minute (feinting, parrying, maneuvering, etc.) and he'll understand. Really, he will!

My years of gaming experience have shown me that the one-minute combat round was never used anyway, and whenever we tried to enforce it, it fell apart. The only time it comes up is when players are attempting things out of combat and suddenly we'd all think, "Oh, yeah, it's a MINUTE. It's a LONG time. People watching this are sitting around for quite a while." We never used it after we put some thought into it.

And that's the problem -- you guys were misinterpreting the rule, forgetting that each round supposed to represent not a single set of blows but rather a full minute of abstract combat-related activity, and then trying to enforce that compressed time-scale inappropriately onto non-combat activities, just like WizarDru's confused DM who forced a character to spend 5 rounds (5 minutes) performing simple non-combat activities that should've taken 1 or 2 rounds at most. You see something ridiculous like that and declare the system's broken but in reality it was the DM's mistake, not the system's. As long as none of the activities are combat-related, a character can do a lot of non-combat activity in the space of a single minute-long round, and there's nothing in the rules that says he can't! It's only in people's mistaken interpretation of the rules thinking of "a round" not as a minute of abstract activity but rather as "about the amount of time it would take for someone to strike one blow."