How long should a round represent?

[Ed_Laprade]

I voted for 6 seconds. But what this really means to me is: Somewhere around six seconds in combat so there can be more going on than just I-swing-you-swing. Out of combat it becomes totally abstract. Doing something takes as much time as it takes. (But in the case where the Evil Cult has to be stopped before they can finish their ritual, turns tend to stretch a bit. )

 

[delericho]

There should be ten rounds to a minute. That is almost, but not quite, the same as saying a round should be 6 seconds.

 

[enigma5915]

I believe a round should just be long enough to to make a quick attack and a short move. My vote is for 3 second rounds...
In 3 seconds an average human could supposedly walk one yard/meter and attack, or run up to 12 yards/meters and attack with a penalty, or sprint up to about 18 yards/meters and forego an attack.
With 3 second rounds weapon attacks per round would look different.

Ranged Weapons

ROF​

Hand X Bow

1/1​

Light Repeating X Bow

2/1​

Light X Bow

1/3​

Medium X Bow

1/6​

Heavy X Bow

1/10​

Short bow

1/1​

Horse Bow

1/1​

Long Bow

1/2​

Sling

1/1​

Throwing Axe

1/2​

This would make weapon use be a little more realistic feeling. I mean cross bows are not meant for standing there and firing in the middle of combat. You fire once then discard and draw a melee weapon or you fire from cover away from harm. But I digress.

…This makes combat faster (at least IME)
.

 

[MortalPlague]

I voted for 6 seconds. It's been 6 seconds for so long, it would be hard to wrap my head around a new measurement.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

10 rounds per minute is the easiest to convert, as anyone from a country that uses the metric system can tell you.

Yeah, where's my metric time? I want the day to be divided into 10 even hours of 100 minutes each and 100 seconds to the minute. It would make math so much easier!

 

[Sirot]

10 seconds seems ideal to me

 

[was]

Looking back, I believe 6 seconds is the standard. It dates back to older editions when you had 10 round turns which represented a full minute (60 seconds). It mattered more when you had spells that took more than one round to cast. I don't think a really short round makes much sense anymore though.

 

[am181d]

I've been playing D&D for 30 years now, and even when a round was a minute long, it was clearly only six seconds long. Nobody I ever played with imagined their character's actions as an abstract series of attacks, parries, and dodges. One die roll has always been one action.

When people look back on their favorite D&D battles, they don't remember the time they abstractly traded blows with their enemies. They remember the times they took specific actions that corresponded to the dice rolled (e.g. "Remember that time I swung across the room on a chandelier, dropped down behind the villain, and backstabbed him?").

And it's nice to say "make the round a variable length of time" but what do you do when one player wants to do something *fast* and one player wants to do something that makes more time? You've gotta have some basic standard, and then you can arm waive around the edges as necessary.

 

[saskganesh]

It depends. You can use 10 seconds for measurements, things like moving, spell durations, complex actions etc, but in game reality it's flex time. Rounds take as long as they need to be. Actions (complex versus simple) should be considered in relation to each other. Just have complex actions take longer. Length of combat should reflect combat chaos and unpredictability, not neatly ordered segments. Personally I am OK with some fuzziness.

 

[Andor]

I think 6 seconds is about right. The gurps 1 second combat round is too short, it should not take you more than one round to fall off a 2 story building.

10-12 seconds is too long. I can do a LOT in 12 seconds under the right circumstances. It gets annoying if my character can't.

But I do think that the 6 second round is about 6 seconds, not atomic clock 6 seconds. It has a bit of stretch in it. Maybe sometimes it's 4, maybe sometimes it is 10. Don't sweat it too much or your GM will put fiendish lice in your underwear.