Wrong facts about D&D3 combat?

[Bullgrit]

Do you perhaps not narrate combat?

What kind of narration would cause such a slow down?

* * *

Player: "I hustle over to this ogre and chop him with my axe." <roll> "I get . . . 14 AC, and . . . 12 damage."
DM: "Your axe blow is absorbed by the ogre's armor."
or "Your axe cuts the ogre at the hip, making him growl in anger."

* * *

I mean, really, do you do much more narration than that? And how many seconds does it take you to say all of the above -- it takes me 10-12 seconds to read all of that between the asterisks, giving a slight pause at the ellipses.

Bullgrit

 

[Mournblade94]

*shrug*

I'm skeptical that you accomplish this in an average of 36 to 60 seconds. I believe that you accomplish the occasional 36 to 60 second turn. I do not believe that it is the average, or even the norm if you are playing at mid to upper levels of the game. Your average should be demolished by the occasional four minute turn while something gets looked up, and the regular social rituals of human interaction and of combat narration should demolish your 36 to 60 second baseline.

Either your numbers are wrong, or you are playing the game in an atypical manner. Not atypical for 3e, but just plain atypical for any RPG. Do you perhaps not narrate combat?

With my job I LIVE by the clock. I am a science teacher so everything I do is timed. You would be amazed what can be accomplished in a minute.

I would not necessarily count the lookup phase as a reason to call 3rd edition combat slow (Not that you were specifically). Looking up a rule is independent of the actions of combat built into the rules.

Most of my players know what high level spells they are casting even before the round starts... unless I change something that alters the tactics.

I have not seen any difference in the speed of a combat round between 3rd and 4th edition. I have not experienced high level 4th edition play so I cannot specifically comment. My high level combat in 3rd edition however was fun and epic, and no one cared how long it took.

For high level encounters I hit 25 minutes or so.

 

[Celebrim]

I basically agree with the OP, and will say that one of the things that first turned me off to 4e was the WotC designers talking about 3e as if everyone was playing it in exactly the same way and what they described just didn't resemble my experiences.

I think 3.0 has a sweet spot between 2nd and 12th level.

I have no idea how much time turns were actually taking, but I enforced 6 seconds to state what your plan for the round was. You weren't allowed to cast a spell if you couldn't summarize what it did without looking it up during your turn, and all normal modifiers were added up and maintained by the DM. Any special modifiers would be reported to the DM when they became effective. All the PC's were expected to do was report the results of their dice throws, and it only takes a glance for me to see if the total beats the targets AC.

I didn't experience slow combat, which in my experience was generally the result of dithering and hesitation by the players as they tried to figure out the exact best strategy in a given situation. Combat was generally fast. I had some initial grumbling, but generally once a player saw how much faster and how much tenser things were at my table compared to other DMs the grumbling went away.

 

[drothgery]

I would posit that if a Player can't roll 6 attacks in 60 seconds -- all the modifiers should be already written down, no? -- then that Player is really sloppy.

... except for situational buffs, enemy debuffs, and positional modifiers (mostly flanking), and power attacking (my fighter pretty much always power attacks when he moves and so can't full attack, but never does when he can full attack, because the math says making his lowest-modifier attacks hit helps more than adding extra damage to his highest-modifier attacks). And generally when you've got a lot of attacks, you can't just pre-roll all of them because there's a very good chance of dropping the bad guy at some point.

 

[Bullgrit]

... except for situational buffs, enemy debuffs, and positional modifiers (mostly flanking), and power attacking (my fighter pretty much always power attacks when he moves and so can't full attack, but never does when he can full attack, because the math says making his lowest-modifier attacks hit helps more than adding extra damage to his highest-modifier attacks). And generally when you've got a lot of attacks, you can't just pre-roll all of them because there's a very good chance of dropping the bad guy at some point.

First, (in case I need to say it) note I am not arguing, or trying prove anything.

Second, if all this is what comes with levels 13+, I'll concede that I don't have much experience up in those levels.

But in levels 1-12, I just don't see this as a big, time consuming problem.

I have a war-cleric who routinely fights with 1 spell buff up, sometimes 2 and 3 spell buffs (for the big fights), uses the Smite and Strength domains, and he charges when he can, flanks when he can, and occasionally has some penalty ("debuff") imposed. I tend to write down the spell buff mods right next to my standard attack bonus, so I don't have to remember them in my head. The situation mods aren't very often, and either last only one attack (charge) or are readily seen on the battlemat (flank), so I don't have to remember them in my head.

Another Player in our group has a druid with a wolf (with trip). His main gimmick is throwing out dire wolves (with trip). He routinely has 3-5 creatures on the board, plus a buff, plus some ongoing spell effect.

My cleric and his druid probably take the most amount of time among all of us (not counting the DM). The spring attacking fighter takes maybe 10 seconds per round.

Even with all this, it just doesn't take us all that long to resolve our actions. I'm not saying we're especially fast. We're not trying to be fast. None of us are rushed, by the DM or by other Players. I'm just saying I don't see why it would regularly take someone more than ~60 seconds to take their actions (assuming levels 1-12) in a round.

If your game has especially lots of extra Players or creatures or special abilities at higher levels, sure, I can see it taking longer. But why paint *all* D&D3 combat *in general* as taking that long? Why complain about all of D&D3 combat just because levels 19 and 20 are time consuming?

Bullgrit

 

[Festivus]

I can't recall ever saying *all* 3.5 was slow, just the high level stuff. But the high level stuff is ultimately where things head. A cap of level 12 would solve 3.5 problems for me, sure, but then we would never get to fight Kyuss

 

[Bullgrit]

I'm just saying I don't see why it would regularly take someone more than ~60 seconds to take their actions (assuming levels 1-12) in a round.

Let me rephrase all this:

It doesn't take my group as long as many people says it is taking them to run a round of combat. But I don't see that we've got all that less complicated PCs, and I don't see what we're doing that's especially efficient. When I see that it easily takes us less than 60 seconds to decide and resolve our (multiple and complicated) actions, it staggers me to hear others say it takes them 2 to 5 times longer for them.

Either we're super Players (and that I don't believe), everyone else is just sloppy and terribly inefficient, or everyone else totally misjudges how long they actually take. I've seen some sloppy and inefficient Players, but I don't believe they are the norm. My money is on that many people are misjudging their timing, by a lot.

Bullgrit

 

[Ourph]

I would posit that if a Player can't roll 6 attacks in 60 seconds -- all the modifiers should be already written down, no? -- then that Player is really sloppy.

We have a druid in our current game, who often has 2-4 summoned creatures in a fight, and he can finish his rounds in around 60 seconds.

I play a war-cleric who is often buffed for fights, and has special abilities -- smite, strength -- that add modifiers to attack rolls, but I can still finish my rounds in less than 60 seconds.

It sounds like you and your players are the S.W.A.T. team of D&D-playing, whereas the folks I usually game with are more along the lines of the Police Academy characters. Nice folks, but suggesting that they actually write down the modifiers that might affect their character so they can remember them on their turn (rather than asking "Do we have Bless up this encounter?" each and every time their turn comes around) just draws a blank stare.

If your experience leads you to believe that the people you play with are the norm and the people I play with are rare exceptions then you should count your blessings!

 

[drothgery]

First, (in case I need to say it) note I am not arguing, or trying prove anything.

Second, if all this is what comes with levels 13+, I'll concede that I don't have much experience up in those levels.

Well, the fighter in question is 14th level (and actually Ftr 14/Knight 2). And neither of the caster PCs in that campaign (a sorcerer and a psion) use many buff spells/powers.

In another campaign that made it to 20th level, I was running a warmage for levels 13+ specifically because we needed an arcane caster and I wanted something that was easy to manage and limited the number of buffs in play (my bard, who had relied almost exclusively on buff spells and abilities, had died, and I wanted to make things simpler for me). But by 20th level I was casting two spells for the first three rounds of a serious combat, the fighter/barbarian had five attacks (and had multiple swords with different properties, both when she was raging and when she wasn't), the cleric had a cohort, and the soulknife had up to five attacks per round and situational psychic strikes and other stuff.

 

[malraux]

IME, characters had more buffs going at one time. Each additional buff take more and more time to deal with, as you have to check stacking vs overlapping for a larger number of spells and effects.