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Message: <blockquote data-quote="T. Foster" data-source="post: 1619283" data-attributes="member: 16574">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. 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!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."</blockquote>

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