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<blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5200431" data-attributes="member: 80487">&quot;A reasonable amount of time&quot; means different things to different people.The &quot;requirement&quot; comes from a preference (which I share) for faster action, combined with a determination (which I do not share) to use a set of rules designed to produce prolonged combats.It would likewise take a &quot;kludge&quot; to make a 1st-level fight in OD&amp;D take as long. Combatants with one hit dice are typically 90%+ likely to be out after two hits. With even a mere 20% chance, that's an average of 2 hits per round for 10 combatants. The basic rules do not stipulate a lot of bonuses for this and penalties for that -- and even a fair bit of such elaboration doesn't slow down a game much unless the factors have to be recalculated frequently. Moreover, &quot;grind&quot; is harder to come by when you've got morale factors.To resolve an attack takes just a few seconds. Players can roll at once, but even doing one at a time in sequence doesn't add up to much. At a minute or two per round, even a 10-round fight takes but 10 or 20 minutes.&quot;Why must I kludge my combat&quot;, someone might ask, &quot;to have it not be so suddenly and seemingly randomly resolved, with such a high casualty rate among beginning characters?&quot;The answer, again, is because it was designed to be that way. To slow it down, one could add hit points, reduce chances to hit, add rolls beyond the standard two per attack, throw in modifiers that change from round to round (or even attack to attack), use individual initiative, allow and precisely track a lot of movement even in a melee, and so on.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ariosto, post: 5200431, member: 80487"] "A reasonable amount of time" means different things to different people. The "requirement" comes from a preference (which I share) for faster action, combined with a determination (which I do not share) to use a set of rules designed to produce prolonged combats. It would likewise take a "kludge" to make a 1st-level fight in OD&D take as long. Combatants with one hit dice are typically 90%+ likely to be out after two hits. With even a mere 20% chance, that's an average of 2 hits per round for 10 combatants. The basic rules do not stipulate a lot of bonuses for this and penalties for that -- and even a fair bit of such elaboration doesn't slow down a game much unless the factors have to be recalculated frequently. Moreover, "grind" is harder to come by when you've got morale factors. To resolve an attack takes just a few seconds. Players can roll at once, but even doing one at a time in sequence doesn't add up to much. At a minute or two per round, even a 10-round fight takes but 10 or 20 minutes. "Why must I kludge my combat", someone might ask, "to have it not be so suddenly and seemingly randomly resolved, with such a high casualty rate among beginning characters?" The answer, again, is because it was designed to be that way. To slow it down, one could add hit points, reduce chances to hit, add rolls beyond the standard two per attack, throw in modifiers that change from round to round (or even attack to attack), use individual initiative, allow and precisely track a lot of movement even in a melee, and so on. [/QUOTE]

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