Topic: Rounds.... Length and actions

[jdale]

This classic duel is 3 minutes in duration... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3gfFVmw0kA    That's a lot of rounds no matter how long your rounds are.

I don't think movement in combat is bad, but it should be interesting. When the characters are fighting in an enormous 100'x100' room but can move 200' per round (average Sprint speed in RMU), movement isn't interesting. They can move to any point in the room every round. They can move from out-of-range of any thrown weapon into melee range in a single round. They can move from out of range of a short bow or long bow in just two rounds. They can move from out of range of typical offensive spells (100') into melee range with the caster in half a round. Spells and ranged weapons are much less potent unless you break the round up into phases so you can target people partway through their movement. But if you're going to have to complicate things with phases, you might as well just have shorter rounds.

With a 5 second round, you can sprint 100' per round (dash 125'), so at least you are taking some penalties but you can still cover an awful lot of ground. You can probably move to support any of your allies with one round of movement. You need to dash to get from beyond spell range into melee range of the caster in one round; that means a caster needs melee protection and can become vulnerable really quickly, at least to a quick, lightly-armored combatant. It will take you multiple rounds to close with an archer, so you'll want to use cover or concealment to close safely.

With a 3 second round, it would be 60' sprinting (75' dash). At that level you can probably move to support any of your allies, but if you are spread out it may take more time. You will need two rounds to go from out of spell range into melee with the caster, so you need cover to run down the enemy mage, and it will take you quite a few rounds to close from out of long bow range. Conversely, the mage may be able to defend himself, especially if he has Leaving or other movement type spells in addition to offense spells. Indoors, you will often be able to cross the room in one round.

With 2 second rounds, 40' sprint (50' dash), you often will need multiple rounds to move to support your allies, and closing with an enemy mage will take 3 rounds, making it dangerous (to say nothing of bows). You can still cross small rooms in one round.

With 1 second rounds, 20' sprint (25' dash), you will almost always need multiple rounds to move to support your allies, unless you fight in close formation (becoming fireball fodder). Closing with an enemy with spells, much less missile weapons, is extremely dangerous or even foolhardy. The mage is definitely capable of defending himself. You will almost never be fighting in a space that you can cross in one round.

These assume melee attacks every round and spells are cast every 1-2 rounds. Missile rate of fire is its own debate...  Personally I think it best (for balance purposes) if the rate of missile fire is approximately the same as the rate of melee attacks, or at worst half of that. (Could be lower if there are skills and talents to speed it up, just as you can use skills like multiple attacks to get multiple melee attacks.) I would take extreme speed-shooting rates as extremes, requiring special skills and talents (e.g. quickdraw, adrenal speed) to achieve.

Missile weapon ranges are at least loosely rooted in real weapon performance, but the considerations about spellcasting can be mitigated by changing typical spell ranges (100' is the default, is it a good number?) and how many rounds spellcasting takes. Both of those are totally arbitrary, there's no realism aspect, only fun and balance to consider. With 5 second rounds, I might extend typical spells to 120-150', personally, I think a mage ought to be able to get at least one spell off against a charging melee combatant. With 3 second rounds, I like 100'. Judgment call, though, depending on how dangerous you want your mages.

(Side note, I would address the crossbow issue by redefining a Light Crossbow as a crossbow that can be reloaded without use of a crank. That way it will be slower than a bow, but not ridiculously so. A Heavy Crossbow will probably still be ridiculously slow and require a crank, but at least you can use your crossbow skill with something and have a decent rate of fire. The attack tables, rate of fire, and range in RMU imply something only slightly lighter than a Heavy Crossbow. I mean, the Light Crossbow hits about as hard as a Long Bow, that's not Light. For reference, I can, just barely, load a 105 lbs draw crossbow without a crank or even a foot strap. Poundage is not directly comparable to bows, it's certainly not on par with a long bow made for war, probably closer to a 50-60 lbs bow, which I think puts it between short bow and long bow in power.)

[markc]

  I use a house rule on movement that does not let you just jump to dash speed,so you have to spend some time at the movement speeds in between highest speed and lowest speed.
MDC

[Warl]

OK, we've gone through this discussion a number of times, but I am specifically looking at 1 aspect.


Round length...
For me rounds need to be so short that movement during a round is almost meaningless, but that also means that with reload weapons or spellcasting the actions need to take longer than 1 round to do.  Unfortunately then when you mix in melee combat attacking every round, you certainly don't want to be a spellcaster trying to get off a spell when someone is nearby.  Even between RM and HARP we have a difference in how things are handled.


For my mind, I am thinking 1 round = 1 second.
Once in melee you can attack pretty much every round (even more frequently if you want to incur penalties), but movement to get into melee may put you at risk.
Spellcasting will almost always take 2 rounds to complete - except the basic cantrips.
Missile combat (unless multi-loading) is generally no more frequently than every other round.


Movement really becomes the issue.  If your companion is 20 feet away and needs help, it's going to take rounds of movement before you act in round 3.  I guess that's where the heroic warrior throws his long sword and has the blade suddenly appear protruding out his enemies chest.... 


Thoughts?

To me our speaking of Ceats. Which is basically what I do. A modified version of Ceats, but basically that. My players love this style of tracking rather than the noral Combat round most game systems use.
As for movement being nearly meaningless? It actually means more to the players to be able to account for movement every second than to track it by by 6 to 10 seconds of time on a "movement" phase. it always felt a lot more unrealistic that way, especially with Range weapons, Distance can change quite a bit during the time to draw, load, aim and fire, but not always the same amount as full movement during the 10 second round. Nor the same as those games that have missile fire (phase) happen before and after movement.

[Thom @ ICE]

Keep the comments coming. Great stuff here. 

Rick - I'll get back to your questions/comments later today when I am not typing on such a tiny keypad.

[jdale]

  I use a house rule on movement that does not let you just jump to dash speed,so you have to spend some time at the movement speeds in between highest speed and lowest speed.

If your rounds are short enough that could make sense. But considering the classic 50 yard dash is run in ~6 seconds, I don't think I would bother worrying about acceleration time in 5 or 10 second rounds. That said, an acceleration requirement is an alternate way of limiting maximum movement during a combat round.

[Hurin]

  I use a house rule on movement that does not let you just jump to dash speed,so you have to spend some time at the movement speeds in between highest speed and lowest speed.
MDC

I do too. I break down actions into 20% chunks (each player getting 5 action points per round). The first point they spend in movement get them 2 hexes (10') of movement. If they spend a second to continue movement, they can move twice that (20' more). the third gets them 30', the fourth 40' and the fifth 50'. So you can move a maximum of 150', but only if that is continuous movement (this represents momentum and building up speed).

I've tested it quite a bit (2 campaigns) and it works quite well to simulate the fact that you need to build up speed to move at maximum rates.

[markc]

 I think that could make a good basic article and chart for TheGuildCompanion.com that a lot of people would use in there games.
MDC

[Thom @ ICE]

Which movies are you thinking of?  Many of the great movies of the 30s and 40s have swordfighting sequences, but they don't generally last 1 or 2 seconds.  Watch The Legend of Robin Hood, or Captain Blood, or The Sea Hawk, a good fight scene is a minute or more. 

Which movies....
300,  Gladiator, The Eagle, Spartacus, Centurion, Braveheart, Red Sonja, Conan the Barbarian (x2), Conan the Destroyer, Lord of the Rings (all 3), Hobbit (all 3), Troy, Alexander, The Last Legion, Kingdom of Heaven, Robin Hood (Costner, Crowe, Flynn), Excalibur, 13th Warrior.... I could probably come up with more.

TV Series....
Vikings, Game of Thrones, Rome, Spartacus...  Unfortunately that's about all I can think of.

The key here is that with few exceptions, individual combat is ended in 1 or 2 blows, and those come within a second or two of engagement.  Yes, Legend of Robin Hood has a couple of long, drawn out combats where everyone fights nicely, with lots of parrying, and no one else steps in as those 2 individuals fight each other.    In my game, that classic Robin vs. Sheriff battle would be lots of highly defensive attacks until someone finally makes a mistake, then an aggressive attack would push for a quick end.  In RM, a single round of combat is a combination of a large number of those routine strike and parried blows.

Aside from that, how much activity do you think you can accomplish in 1 second?  The current longbow speed shooting world record is 23 in 60 seconds.  That is accomplished with just enough draw to hit the target.  To nock an arrow, take a full draw, select the target and shoot would have to take several seconds.  I would think 10 seconds is a bare minimum unless you want to start assessing penalties.  Even with melee weapons 1 second is so little time.  Maybe with a foil one attack per second from an expert might happen.  But what about the guy with the great axe or two handed sword?  How fast do you think someone can swing that?  Even if every PC is Arnold Schwartzanegger, are all the NPCs equally overmuscled? 

Using a 1 second round, firing a bow would require 1 round to load, and another to strike.  Trying to do it in one round would definitely include a penalty.    10 seconds to fire a bow?  Combining that with the speeds jdale's reporting and you'd be lucky to fire your bow a second time.  On Melee, go back to my movie/television list and watch the actual combat.  Most battles include  a strike every 1-2 seconds, with a few exceptions (mostly when the leader of good and evil fight each other). Your position regarding the 2-handed weapons does make some sense.

To touch on movement...is the idea that movement in combat is somehow bad?  I don't get that.  In battle accounts back to Roman times I read of combatants throwing down their weapons and shields and running away.  I would think in your 1 second round that would be impossible.  All combat would become a battle to the death.  Is that what you are looking for?  If so, why?  What is wrong with movement in combat?  Even in a group setting you are probably not fighting like sardines in a can.  Unless you are in a formation like the phalanx people need room to maneuver to fight.  If you finish off your guy what is so unreasonable that you can move 30 feet to engage the next guy?  That's about the length of my living room, I can walk that in a few seconds, let alone if I was running to help a friend in combat.

Drop a shield and run away in 99% of the cases leaves you dead....   It's actually normally, turn and run, then drop the shield as you run to reduce encumbrance.  To avoid getting hacked down from behind, running from combat is straight running. Running and engaging in combat should be no more than 50% activity on the run (except charge attacks) therefore with two equal runners, the one who runs away will get separation and then dropping the shield reduces their encumbrance enough for them to extend their separation.

Kill someone in round 1, then run 30' and attack someone else in round 2...  While the 2 guys who were already fighting each only got 1 attack in during round 1 before this new guy shows up and attacks during round 2.   Not something I would ever want to see happen.

I'm all for looking at alternate methods, but like many of your ideas I'm really not understanding the reason behind it.  This, for example, seems like an answer to a problem that doesn't exist, at least to me.  What is the problem that is being solved, or the sub-optimal result that can be improved by changing the duration of the combat round?  Even if its just an intellectual exercise there should be some benefit you see from it.  I'd really like to know, not to criticize, but to understand what the result of the change is supposed to be.

I have a concept for a system in mind and some aspects are either still up in the air, or I want to handle them in a way that is vastly different from what this group of gamers have used (in ICE games).  While I don't expect a welcome reception to these concepts on the whole, I am hoping to get some really good feedback to either reinforce my decisions, or help me make them.  As for what is going to happen with this system I'm playing with... frankly, nothing is going to happen with it other than my using it in some personally run games. I am not looking at this for ICE game in any way.

[jdale]

The key here is that with few exceptions, individual combat is ended in 1 or 2 blows, and those come within a second or two of engagement.

I think that tends to be true when you are looking at a battle between a skilled character (usually a hero) vs mooks. Mooks do usually go down in a single strike. I think the speed of those attacks can be handled as multiple attacks (since the hero is skilled and the mook is not, so taking a penalty for extra attacks is not big deal) rather than speeding up round.

It's the epic confrontations between two skilled characters that take a long time.

If you want to be really cinematic (and I think the speed of attacks here is already cinematic to begin with), you can adopt a rule like D&D 5E where the mooks don't even have a hit point tally, they die immediately when taking a good enough hit (either >X damage, or maybe any critical). That makes it really easy for the GM to throw tons of them at the PCs, there is no tracking required.

[Thom @ ICE]

As a result of this feedback, and reviewing all of it over a few times, my current leaning is to go with:
* 2 second round
* movement during a round when you attack is limited to 5'
* movement in a combat zone is done at half normal speed (to account for remaining aware of the situation) with a min of 5' otherwise the individual forfeits any defense
* move and attack results in
   - Init is halved
   - movement is limited to half speed (as above) and restricted to half time = quarter normal distance
   - attack is done at a penalty
* attack and move does not reduce the init, but still involves the quarter movement and penalty.
* movement pace is limited to accelerating up 2 pace rates per round

[Thom @ ICE]

As far as mooks go - no, I don't go for that kind of concept as if I did then why wouldn't the PC be a mook to certain foes.
Creating a whole new rule for combat against certain foes just because your own rules don't work well, that only shows a poorly designed system.   


In my opinion, the rules should be consistent and simple, not applied by the GM as they see fit to kill off mooks.  If your character should be able to cut through mooks with a single attack, then the rules should cover that....   the rules should let your skill bonus go up sufficiently high against your foe that they don't stand a chance against your attack and almost every shot will be lethal - but at the same time, if you go up against someone of equal skill the combat should last many rounds until someone makes a mistake (or gets caught by a miracle shot).  I think my concept does both of these things without creating a new bogus mook rule.

[RickInVA]

Well I have to say it is an interesting concept.

It seems, to me, that the biggest conceptual change is that you will view an attack as, literally, a single blow.  I view a combat round, and an attack, as representing more activity than that.  If I were to play in such a game I wouldn't expect my single blow to take out much but untrained fodder.   I would expect that if an attack represents one blow, that the damage and criticals obtained from that one blow would have to be much less than that of an attack that is supposed to represent the sum of damage from several times as long a period of combat.

From the list of movies you gave I think I better understand the kind of cinematic battle you are looking at.  To me, movies, and especially those you selected, are not to be taken literally as example of combat.  I have always felt that when the particular character is killing foes in 1 or 2 blows it is supposed to be a cinematic way to represent that his skill is exceptional, not that such is how actual combat occurs.  That is just my opinion.

Now I fully understand that all players are different, so what I am about to say represents my personal opinion only.  I personally don't like my gaming experience when it is too easy to win battles.  I want my victories to be tough, hard fought, near run, pull out all the stops, kind of affairs.  I guess I'm not in the Heroic camp, so I think that is an additional reason why I don't see an advantage or improvement to the shorter round.

Regarding the bow, again as a personal opinion, I think it is unrealistic to think that you can be within 50 feet of the melee, the opponents have extra fighters to the party, and expect that everyone is just going to figuratively stand there and get shot at. 

One last point.  As was said by others, there really isn't any practical difference between a 1 minute round and a 1 second round.  If I can attack once per round the only difference is that at the end someone can say, "Hey, that only took 5 seconds", instead of five minutes.  The only exception  to that I see is in movement.  In which I sense a relationship between those that want a short round and those that feel there is too much movement during combat.  This really intrigues me, as this has never come up as an issue in any game I have played.  Can anyone elaborate on the issue here?  What happens, or doesn't happen, as a result of fighters being able to move 30 feet and attack in the same round?  It works the same for both sides, so I'm really not seeing the issue.  I would find an explanation of why this undesireable very interesting.

Thom, I appreciate the time you took to answer my questions. 

[Cory Magel]

Which movies....
300,  Gladiator, The Eagle, Spartacus, Centurion, Braveheart, Red Sonja, Conan the Barbarian (x2), Conan the Destroyer, Lord of the Rings (all 3), Hobbit (all 3), Troy, Alexander, The Last Legion, Kingdom of Heaven, Robin Hood (Costner, Crowe, Flynn), Excalibur, 13th Warrior.... I could probably come up with more.

TV Series....
Vikings, Game of Thrones, Rome, Spartacus...  Unfortunately that's about all I can think of.

The key here is that with few exceptions, individual combat is ended in 1 or 2 blows, and those come within a second or two of engagement.  Yes, Legend of Robin Hood has a couple of long, drawn out combats where everyone fights nicely, with lots of parrying, and no one else steps in as those 2 individuals fight each other.    In my game, that classic Robin vs. Sheriff battle would be lots of highly defensive attacks until someone finally makes a mistake, then an aggressive attack would push for a quick end.  In RM, a single round of combat is a combination of a large number of those routine strike and parried blows.

It depends on what you call 'blows'.  There's a WHOLE LOT of attacks and parries going on there.  You seem to be indicating actual mortal blows, which are a small percentage of most fights.  Most rounds are considered at least partially abstracted.  If you think EVERY SINGLE swing should be represented as an individual round... then you want a second-by-second system.

If you are using those movies and TV shows as your baseline for how combats go, I've got to ask: Are you more interested in creating a Hollywood style combat instead of a realistic one?  There's no wrong answer to that, but it changes the perspective on your mechanics.  It seems like you should be designing a CEATS style round, but also want to simulate heroic/fantastic combat rather than realistic.

[jdale]

One last point.  As was said by others, there really isn't any practical difference between a 1 minute round and a 1 second round.  If I can attack once per round the only difference is that at the end someone can say, "Hey, that only took 5 seconds", instead of five minutes.  The only exception  to that I see is in movement.  In which I sense a relationship between those that want a short round and those that feel there is too much movement during combat.  This really intrigues me, as this has never come up as an issue in any game I have played.  Can anyone elaborate on the issue here?  What happens, or doesn't happen, as a result of fighters being able to move 30 feet and attack in the same round?  It works the same for both sides, so I'm really not seeing the issue.  I would find an explanation of why this undesireable very interesting.

It depends a lot on the kind of battles you fight. Movement controls the number of missile/spell attacks you are subject to while closing with the enemy. That's less important if all the PCs also have ranged attacks, in that case the combat will be heavy on the missiles but closing isn't a big deal. It also won't be important if you typically enter combat already close to the enemy, e.g. dungeons tend to be full of smaller chambers, melee inside buildings, even typical urban battles tend to be close range. It matters a lot if you are fighting outside in the open.

If you are using long rounds, with relatively high movement, it may never have occurred to you that this mattered because you never needed to spend multiple rounds closing with the enemy.

[markc]

 It would be nice if you could model both realistic and cinematic style combats with one system, ie just change some of the numbers so you attack slower or sum such thing.
MDC

[Thom @ ICE]

It depends on what you call 'blows'.  There's a WHOLE LOT of attacks and parries going on there.  You seem to be indicating actual mortal blows, which are a small percentage of most fights.  Most rounds are considered at least partially abstracted.  If you think EVERY SINGLE swing should be represented as an individual round... then you want a second-by-second system.

If you are using those movies and TV shows as your baseline for how combats go, I've got to ask: Are you more interested in creating a Hollywood style combat instead of a realistic one?  There's no wrong answer to that, but it changes the perspective on your mechanics.  It seems like you should be designing a CEATS style round, but also want to simulate heroic/fantastic combat rather than realistic.

Cory, as you and Rick have both mentioned, I'm not looking at 10 seconds of combat yield 4 glancing blows that total X damage.  For me, it should be 1 attack = 1 strike.  The knife thrower threw 1 blade... the spellcaster cast 1 spell.... the swordsman gets 1 strike....  That's where I get the 1 second round, but based upon the posts here I think worrying about things in 1 second rounds just goes overboard.and ends up with a CEATS type system, which is far too detailed for my likes.  I think with 2 second rounds I can still retain heroic/fantasy combat but have enough realism so that we don't move fully into narrative play where the GM is making many decisions and there is a sense that they are controlling it.

As for realism, realistic combat and realistic roleplaying....
There's a reason why popular movies and books use heroic/fantasy and not detailed realism.  It's more fun and more exciting (for the majority of people).  This needs to be fun for the players, and for me that means that they need to be able to achieve the heroic - not just mirror real life medieval society.  Keep in mind that for the majority of non-academic historians, the combat that they see in movies and read about in books = Realism.

As Cory always says....   Fun > Balance > Realism   

[Witchking20k]

Funny- my view of a combat round is this....a round is as long as it's longest combat action. This is one of the reasons why I always like the static initiative from MERP (and RM2 I believe)- Spell, Missile, MMs, Melee, Movement, Static Action (you could call this a 6 second round or a 12 second round).  But basically if you start performing actions and no one has an action after the melee phase then the round ends- it might take 8 seconds (of a 12 second round) or sometimes more or less depending on the Action being performed.  But the time increment is directly tied to the actions actually being performed.  This nicely demonstrates the real problem with a balanced combat round too- which is have do you merge instant actions with complex actions.  Using the above example you can see that after the melee attacks are performed there is another 4 seconds (of a 12 second round) that nobody in their right mind would be sitting there doing nothing for...just to accommodate the possibility of using spells or picking locks in combat.

So, in game design you have 2 options you can assign static time increments to performing actions like casting spells and picking locks....36 seconds to cast a spell (2 rounds prep, 1 round casting from MERP) or 12 seconds per Difficulty for picking a lock for example....or you can ignore time and resolve rounds as being actions only....it all boils down to being a matter of style as I think we have all already identified.

I will say that adjusting the action round is one of the easiest ways to change the "style" of a game.  Using a Free Action, Minor Action, Major Action round for example with a set list of which skills slot in to which action (with penalties when necessary) is fun- particalrly when you don't assign a set sequence of actions- so you could draw a dagger as a free action, tumble as a major action, attack as a minor action in a heroic, swashbuckling style of game for example: but is a more gritty style you could make drawing a weapon a minor action....

[Thom @ ICE]

While I understand the concept, I am not a fan of that method.  It is a bit too abstract for me.


That being said, the Free/Minor/Major concept definitely gives me an idea for simplifying the scaling of actions so that the documentation can be clear and concise. 

[Cory Magel]

Keep in mind that for the majority of non-academic historians, the combat that they see in movies and read about in books = Realism.

Very true.  For example, I like Fencing, but it's really not much fun to watch... everything is happening so fast in the modern sport style of it you really can't tell what's going on even if you know what you're doing.

[RickInVA]

One last point.  As was said by others, there really isn't any practical difference between a 1 minute round and a 1 second round.  If I can attack once per round the only difference is that at the end someone can say, "Hey, that only took 5 seconds", instead of five minutes.  The only exception  to that I see is in movement.  In which I sense a relationship between those that want a short round and those that feel there is too much movement during combat.  This really intrigues me, as this has never come up as an issue in any game I have played.  Can anyone elaborate on the issue here?  What happens, or doesn't happen, as a result of fighters being able to move 30 feet and attack in the same round?  It works the same for both sides, so I'm really not seeing the issue.  I would find an explanation of why this undesireable very interesting.

It depends a lot on the kind of battles you fight. Movement controls the number of missile/spell attacks you are subject to while closing with the enemy. That's less important if all the PCs also have ranged attacks, in that case the combat will be heavy on the missiles but closing isn't a big deal. It also won't be important if you typically enter combat already close to the enemy, e.g. dungeons tend to be full of smaller chambers, melee inside buildings, even typical urban battles tend to be close range. It matters a lot if you are fighting outside in the open.

If you are using long rounds, with relatively high movement, it may never have occurred to you that this mattered because you never needed to spend multiple rounds closing with the enemy.

This is interesting.  So lets say the encounter starts with your group some 900 feet from 4 longbowmen.  You need to close with them and kill them.  If you are Usain Bolt you can cover that in about 30 seconds.  A professional fighter in light (but movement restricting) armor, what 60-90 seconds?  From my (limited) research a proficient medieval longbowman would get 8-10 arrows off per minute.  So if it took you 90 seconds to cross that space you would have to suffer 12 to 15 arrows (at decreasing range and penalty) before you reached the archers. 

In game...If I use a 10 second round (which is what I have generally used) and I am -15 encumbered so that I have a BMR of 35 and a max pace of Sprint, then I can cover the 900 feet in say 7 rounds (and have to take a fatigue check after 6).  In 7 rounds you suffer from 7 arrows.  So I conclude that:

• The Combat round is too long and perhaps 6 seconds is more realistic, or;
• The Encumberance rules are too liberal, or;
• The BMR is too high.

All are possible, and, as in many things, likely a combination of more than one.  If my fighter was actually -30 encumbered, with a BMR of 20 and max of Run then she would take 15 rounds to cover the distance and suffer 15 arrows.  Much more "realistic" (if I may loosely use that term).  Or if the normal BMR was 40 then my prior example would be an adjusted BRM of 25 with Sprint as max and I could cover the distance in 9 rounds. 

My bias is that the system has characters be less encumbered by their stuff than their real world counterparts, and so PCs (especially) have higher than appropriate movement rates.  You may conclude something different! 

I'm glad that I worked through this.  In the future as a GM I will pay more attention to the players gear and encumberance to ensure that their movement is not excessive.