Something Awful leak.

[the Jester]

How long a play session?

Six to eight hours- one long evening.

 

[n00bdragon]

Halve that and you are closer to what I'd like to see.

And that's for the first round. Optimally combat should accelerate as characters die and options grow fewer, so that once the outcome is no longer in doubt we don't have to waste time on it. As is, it mostly slows down as the number of conditions and hit point totals to keep in mind grows, except when there are a lot of enemies to start with. I fix this by having the enemy flee/surrender as soon as the combat seems decided.

I'd much rather have my thirty minute boss fight take ten three minute rounds than three ten minute rounds. That would mean players never have to wait long for their turn.

Three minutes is a real rush for any normal combat round. Assume you have five players and five monsters just for simplicity's sake. That's ten actors that need to all take a turn in 180 seconds. That's 18 seconds per person including time to pick up the dice, roll them, add up numbers, assess results, possibly roll a second set of dice for damage, assess the state of the target after the hit and record damage, don't forget to move the actor around the map a bit and declare any other miscellaneous actions taken.

This is all completely ignoring the need to:
- Ask other players if they'd prefer you to take X or Y action.
- Explain what an ability does to someone unfamiliar with it.
- Give people ample time to react with reaction abilities. D&D isn't Slapjack.
- Make any additional rolls like saving throws and the like.

And of course this all assumes your group is perfect and doesn't:
- Need a reminder that it's their turn.
- Decide what to do after their turn comes up.
- Need to look up any rules.
- Need to ask what the status of any other actors is.

18 seconds starts to look extremely tight. Having played every edition since I was 13 or so I'd say the average time it takes a player to finish a turn is around a minute in real life or 5 minutes online.

 

[the Jester]

Whut.

I don't have that many encounters in a session of playing Marvel vs. Capcom.

I remember finishing a module in an evening back in the 1e days (at least things like Ghost Tower of Inverness). I would really like to see that possibility return.

 

[Incenjucar]

Options run out quickly in Epic, but that's a decision someone made at WotC.

--

My sessions are 5 hours, with 2-3 encounters, and lots of very colorful roleplay and exploration in between. We could do more encounters, but the table is 50% newbies and people who have severe decision and attention span problems.

 

[Incenjucar]

I remember finishing a module in an evening back in the 1e days (at least things like Ghost Tower of Inverness). I would really like to see that possibility return.

Are you all the Micromachines guy? I don't think I could RP that quickly without spraining my tongue.

 

[KarinsDad]

While I realize that the 4E durations are complicated for some people, the effect they have on the game is tremendous. Removing them basically prevents entire tactical concepts from being available.

Could you give some examples?

It's one thing to say that "until start of the target's turn" has some real legitimate worth, but what is so wonderful about it that some other duration couldn't handle?

 

[KarinsDad]

Yeah, I play a bunch of leaders... and I've taken to handing people sticky notes, or using table tents, or writing on the map... because otherwise they won't know the bonuses I've given. Doesn't matter how often I say "Everyone has +6 to damage". They need to track it, one way or another, and mostly I'm still going "Did you remember my +6 to damage?"

So, yeah, the bookkeeping is there regardless.

Yes it is.

But, it's just as simple to cross off effects on a PC's temp sheet when told to do so as it is to do so at the end of the PC's turn.

In both cases, the player has to keep track of it.

In both cases, there is a point in time where players cross it off. In your example, each player does it on his own. In my example, the player who created the effect says "cross off my +6 to damage" at one single point in time and everyone does it.

There really isn't any gain one way or the other. The players who do not hand out effects and do not play more complex PCs do not have to remember to do this type of thing at the end of their turns. Instead, they are told when to do it.

I think this aspect of it is a total wash.


I think the gain that initiative doesn't effect one round durations is something that your preferred system loses. On a creature detrimental effect, it ends when the creature's turn ends with your system and that means that not all PCs get to take advantage of that. Dazed for one turn means that if the creature can be dazed only on its turn and due to init order, none of the PCs get an advantage because of it. They cannot move past without OAing because the creature is only Dazed for a moment on its turn, not on theirs.

If one round durations are a part of 5E, then "end of caster's turn" makes more sense because UNLIKE Save Ends, at least one duration in the game system is guaranteed to work for an entire round, not just part of a round.


So like you said, the bookkeeping is there regardless. Given that, I prefer a one round duration to last an entire round.

 

[keterys]

If you prone a creature, it gets up on its turn. If it goes right after you, then your friends didn't get to exploit the prone.

If you injure a cleric, and he goes right after you, he can heal before your friends can do their own damage and maybe finish him off.

If you move into flank, and the creature then moves before...

If a monster dazes a PC, and that PC uses an ability to become undazed, then the rest of the monsters didn't get a chance to...

You're arguing for _one_ thing in the initiative system to work differently than _everything else_.

P.S. Tangent suggestion: use side by side initiatives

 

[Hassassin]

Three minutes is a real rush for any normal combat round. Assume you have five players and five monsters just for simplicity's sake. That's ten actors that need to all take a turn in 180 seconds. That's 18 seconds per person including time to pick up the dice, roll them, add up numbers, assess results, possibly roll a second set of dice for damage, assess the state of the target after the hit and record damage, don't forget to move the actor around the map a bit and declare any other miscellaneous actions taken.

Ok, 18s is very fast, but I would take four players and two monsters as a baseline for my group. That's half a minute per turn, which is perfectly doable. If there are more than 1-2 monsters, some of them are likely identical and I can roll their dice at the same time, so they add less time. I let my players resolve all their actions at the same time, so even adding one more player shouldn't add much.

(I also roll damage with attack rolls for simple attacks. That only saves a few seconds per hit, though.)

This is all completely ignoring the need to:
- Ask other players if they'd prefer you to take X or Y action.
- Explain what an ability does to someone unfamiliar with it.
- Give people ample time to react with reaction abilities. D&D isn't Slapjack.
- Make any additional rolls like saving throws and the like.

IMC they should preferably ask others input before their turn, and definitely do it in character (6s rounds mean they shouldn't be spending minutes on it, although I don't use a stopwatch or anything;-).

Any saves and reactions should of course be counted against the time it takes to resolve something. I'd like the latter to be rare and the former to be 1-2/action at most instead of these "save ends" things you need to roll every round.

In any case, remember that for each time consuming action there may be a missed attack that only takes a few seconds to resolve.

And of course this all assumes your group is perfect and doesn't:
- Need a reminder that it's their turn.
- Decide what to do after their turn comes up.
- Need to look up any rules.
- Need to ask what the status of any other actors is.

If rounds are short you don't go into ignore-mode where you need to be woken up from.

In any case the three minutes was more of a lower bound. 3-5 minutes per round sounds about right, and would allow 3-5 round encounters in less than fifteen minutes.

 

[Shemeska]

I think that is a major weakness of 4E. You have this campaign world where the physical laws are such that humanoid PCs take advantage of spells and prayers and such via the arcane and divine and psionic and primal power sources, but a vast majority of the humanoid monsters (some of which can be PCs) are using "the monster power source". What the heck is that?

If there's something that I want to go away it's the use of "power source", and the arbitrary yet mandatory distinction between PC and "monster". If I want a "monster" to have spellcasting, let him have spellcasting, either as a supernatural ability not directly on par with having wizard levels, or as straight up wizard levels as seems to best fit the flavor of the particular thing's race or circumstances. For instance let's take arcanaloths. In my own campaigns I had them with by the book racial caster levels, and frequently then tacked on straight up caster levels, but in a few special cases with "named" arcanaloths, they typically learned spells as wizards and cast as sorcerers.

I'd like a hybrid, middle of the road approach to various editions of treating PCs and "monsters" as either under the exact same rules or wholly divorced.

But the whole parlance of "power source" needs to take a bullet in the head IMO. Too gamey for my tastes.