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

[billd91]

With all this discussion about the length of combat rounds in 1st edition (and I thought pegging the time at 1 minute was silly and arbitrary once you leave the environment of the wargame), you're lucky you didn't play Traveller or Mega-Traveller. The starship combat rounds were 16-20 minutes in those editions. You got off 1 shot (or more accurately, one combat roll) in that time with your weapon system.
Why were the rounds so long? To make maneuvering decisions meaningful in scales that could be measured in light-seconds. So the game suspended a certain amount of believability to enhance one gamist aspect of the combat.
And that's essentially why there was the hold-over combat round in AD&D. It was designed for a particular gaming aspect... that the game was slowly moving away from, no longer being a table-top wargame.
Reducing the combat round to 10 or 6 seconds just helps complete the transition for me. The main thing for me is that the timing of the combat round and the movement scores now seem in synch for me and that goes a long way toward having plausible action. And for me, plausible is just about anything that doesn't make you go "Aw, c'mon" too much.

 

[Funksaw]

I think that D&D 3.5 is too grainy to abstract combat, yet the rules tend to rely upon you abstracting combat.

Take, for example, two-weapon fighting.

If I want to fight with two-weapons, there's a very specific rule for that. I can't just say "I'm attacking him with two weapons" and make a *single* attack roll at no penalty. The tactical aspects of the game prevents me from much variance in my roleplayed descriptions of attacks.

Similarly, if I'm fighting with a quarterstaff, I can't say that I'm hitting the guy provoking an AOO from me in one adjacent square with one end, and the guy in the other adjacent square with the other end without a penalty. I have to describe my character hitting them with only one end of the quarterstaff otherwise I get a penalty.

This is in a situation where hitting the guy with the left or right of the quarterstaff makes no tactical difference other than the penalties involved.

I have no problem with tactical-oriented play, what I have a problem with is that D&D has gotten too granular. "Two Weapon Fighting" should really be labled "Double Attack" and Improved two-Weapon fighting should really be labeled "Improved Double Attack." The fact that you're weilding two weapons doesn't provide the advantage - the fact that you get to attack twice in the same round with less of a penalty is.

At the same time, Hit Points are highly abstracted - sometimes losing hit points means a scratch, sometimes it's a miss that takes you off guard, sometimes it's a close call, and sometimes it's an actual hit...

This does not mesh well.

It's the little things like that that make D&D a nightmare for me to visualize in my head when I'm playing. When you're using a combat map, you're not using the "headspace" - you're visualizing little pewter people on a map. But if you're trying to imagine what your characters actions look like and try to capture a feel of heroic action and epic struggle - it's a problem.

 

[barsoomcore]

It's interesting how many people try to defend their position by insinuating that the person taking the other side doesn't understand the rules.

As I have said, and I think as I have indicated, I understand the one-minute round. I understand its justification. I'm sorry if I gave the appearance of not understanding it.

My point is not that it's unreasonable to suggest that two combatants, in the space of a minute, only find one opportunity to get a telling blow against each other.

Nor is it that I don't know how to adjudicate a situation in which a character attempts an out-of-combat action while combat is simultaneously taking place. I thank you all for your advice, but I figured that out when I was 11.

I came to the same conclusion that everyone else came to -- he gets to throw a rock every segment. Logically, he gets ten tries per round. It's an arbitrary choice but it fits well with the game system and a player is unlikely to feel ripped off.

The POINT is that this introduces -- unnecessarily -- an uneven distribution of fun in the game. Rock-Thrower gets to make 10 tension-filled rolls while Stalwart Fighter gets to make one.

OF COURSE there are ways to adjudicate this to minimize its impact -- but the point is that if you have six-second rounds in the first place, you don't need to do anything. Since we all seem to be in agreement that for the purposes of combat, the actual length of the round is relatively immaterial, I propose that the fact that a one-minute round requires this constant adjudication is a point against it.

ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL, the one-minute round is worse than the six-second round because of the disparity with out-of-combat actions.

I'm not claiming that all other things ARE equal. But this is definitely a strike AGAINST the one-minute round. It's not resounding evidence that one is better than the other -- the fact that none of us ever used one-minute rounds is probably better evidence for that particular position -- but it simply is a check in the "Con" column for one-minute rounds -- "More trouble to adjudicate in conjuction with out-of-combat actions".

While we're on the subject, isn't it the case that "segments" come a little later in D&D's evolution? I don't recall the segments in the early versions (5th printing or so) of Basic D&D, but I WAS (as people have been kind (and eerily accurate) enough to point out) 11 at the time.

 

[Dogbrain]

If I want to fight with two-weapons, there's a very specific rule for that. I can't just say "I'm attacking him with two weapons" and make a *single* attack roll at no penalty. The tactical aspects of the game prevents me from much variance in my roleplayed descriptions of attacks.

This is because there are many players who feel "cheated" if they don't get another roll. They're the same group who insists upon adding "parrying" to the game but refuse to adjust the combat system accordingly. Instead of reducing hit points (which partly represent ACTIVE defensive actions), they insist upon just piling on another roll. If there is going to be an opion of "parrying" beyond simply taking an AC bonus for fighting defensively, then "parrying" should be mandatory if the system is to make any sense.

 

[Ourph]

the fact that none of us ever used one-minute rounds is probably better evidence for that particular position.

Just to be accurate, I've always used 1 minute rounds when playing AD&D, 10 second rounds when playing Basic D&D and 6 second rounds when playing 3rd ed.

AFAIC, there's never been any noticeable difference in terms of realism or ease of use between any of those three.

On a totally unrelated note, I've played Warhammer FRPG for almost 16 years and I have absolutely no idea how long a round is supposed to be in real time in that game.