Streamlining Areal Combat

[azmodean]

How do you run areal combat in a resonably quick fashion? I had a game this weekend that included a minor combat between the party and a fighter on a griffon, and it ended up taking over half the game session. (Although I'm kicking myself now, the fighter was trying to seperate the party and didn't even use his longbow to draw the faster individuals out, I'm such a moron.)

In case it matters,
griffon, good manuverability speed 80',
Night Mare good manuverability speed 180' (horseshoes of speed)(correction, 120' he's not gonna be happy when I tell him that ),
Weretiger, good manuverability speed 60' (fly potion, ran out 1/4 of the way through the fight)
Summoned Fiendish giant wasps, good manuverability speed 60' (IIRC)
Flying large astral construct, average manuverability speed 20' (heh, whatever)
cleric, no flight ability
psion, no psps after creating the construct

 

[Percivellian]

I've only ever observed aerial combat between two opponents (two PCs, actually, they couldn't play nice). I can see how the scenario you've described would be a real pain to keep track of.

Something you might try would be employing the use of a white-board and eraseable markers, and having two separate 'battle mats' of the same scene drawn on it; one from the usual overhead view, and another "profile" rendering to keep track of altitudes. Having your players indicate what angles they ascend/descend at, along with how far they go makes trig functions easy to use. Also, reference points are good, particularly anything that's stationary. If everyone keeps their relative positions to a stationary object (or even an imaginary point) in mind, it's easier to calculate their distances from each other.

A squared + B squared = C squared is your best friend in these situations. Fortunately, my regular group consists of more than one engineer, so spatial calculations are resolved fairly quickly.

 

[kjenks]

A good way to make aerial combat faster is for everyone to figure out their actions before their turn. Make sure everyone knows who's at the plate and who's on deck, in the initiative order. If someone can't figure out his actions within a few seconds, you, as the DM, just say, "Okay, we'll delay your initiative until you can figure out what you're doing. Who's next?" Don't let them goof around.

Mounted combat can be more time-consuming to run because each mounted character has at least four actions (his move action, his standard action, his mount's move action, his mount's standard action plus various free actions for each creature). Aerial combat can be even slower if people aren't aware of the 3-D situation or if they don't know the rules.

Don't be afraid to tell players, "Okay, that's what you tried to do, but because of the way the rules work, here's how it actually works out."

But the best tip for making any combat run faster is to know the rules backward and forward. Try some mock combats ahead of time, all by yourself, taking the time to read over the rules.

 

[azmodean]

Here's what I did, and it still took forever:
The party began the encounter at a fixed location, a keep.
The opponent started 200' away and about 50' up.
For simplicity I kept all movement on a plane extending vertically from the line between the players and the opponent.
I tracked all movement as distance from keep + altitude
I dropped trigonometry alltogether, my players aren't quick enough to use it, and I'm not quick enough to use it for 5 individuals. (the wasps never had a reason to not move in a group thankfully), also I've used the pythagoraen theorem before in games, and every time I take a look at the result, take a look at my initial rough estimate, and kick myself for bothering.
Instead I just allowed everything to make their move both vertically and horizontally (adjusting for climbing and diving of course)

Like I said, it still took forever and then some. The only simplification I can think of is to reduce everything to 10' units, which makes the various speeds equal: 8, 12, 6, 6, and 2, which is much more manageable. I'd reduce them to 20' units, but that would make things complicated when climbing, as there would be half units :\

This just isn't going to go away, since two of the characters have very fast flying mounts (Nightmares), and they're going to want to use them to the utmost.

 

[iwatt]

I've attached a small spreadsheet chart in which you can convert vertical and horizontal movement for anygiven speed/angle of attack. It's rounded to 5' increments for ease of use.

For example, for a 30º angle off attack and a speed of 60' means you move horizontally 50' and vertically 30'

For angles of attack xº( greater than 45º) you just need to take the complementary angle (90º-x) and invert the horizontal and vertical displacement

For example, the same 60' speed at a 60º angle implies 30' Horizontal 50' Vertical.

 

[azmodean]

Thanks, I should have realized long ago that I shouldn't be calculating them on the fly, but using a table. A slide rule would be ideal of course...

 

[iwatt]

Thanks, I should have realized long ago that I shouldn't be calculating them on the fly, but using a table. A slide rule would be ideal of course...

Yup, this would also help, if you remeber how to use a sklide rule quickly

Something you might try would be employing the use of a white-board and eraseable markers, and having two separate 'battle mats' of the same scene drawn on it; one from the usual overhead view, and another "profile" rendering to keep track of altitudes.

I've used this + my table for movements and it works pretty fast. Though I use a plan view and two profile views for better grasping the positions. The only problem is when you run out of space, and you end up having to repositioning everthing. The best is to choose the most centric of the aerial combatants and placing evrything relative to him.

 

[kjenks]

You shouldn't be using those calculators unless they're calibrated to D&D movement rules, especially the 5-10-5 diagonal rule. The description that iwatt gives sounds like he's using some different rules, like standard trigonometry.

 

[iwatt]

You shouldn't be using those calculators unless they're calibrated to D&D movement rules, especially the 5-10-5 diagonal rule. The description that iwatt gives sounds like he's using some different rules, like standard trigonometry.

Thta's correct. I use trigonometry and rounding out at 5' increments. The 5-10-5 rule works pretty well for 45 degrees since sqrt(2) is aprox 1.42 which rounded to 1.5 provides an easy rule. But then you'd have to make a similar ruling for different angles of attack, which to me seems overly complicated. You'd still end up having to make a table though.

Anyhow, any difference in using trig instead of the 5-10-5 is really negligible when you take into account the necessary error of rounding to 5' increments for the relevant distances used. i.e ) rounding 22.49' to 20' and 22.51' to 25 is enough of a margin of error to make the differences due to using trig non important)