Topic: RMU combat

[Thot]

Here's a list of things I do to speed up combat in RMU:

• Roll Initiative only once, at the start of combat.
• No declaration of actions.
• Only use one Action Phase, wherein all 4 AP are spent. So each player does everything they want to do in this phase, then it's the next player's turn, and so on.

Things I consider to use in the future:

• "Mook rule": Unimportant NPC's automatically go unconcious whenever a critical of at least class C is rolled. (Counterargument against this: It robs the players of the opportunity to roll a critical, which usually has a rewarding effect.)
• NPC's retreat early, even if that does not really make sense for them in-character, as soon as some serious wounds are inflicted upon them. (Counterarguments here: We want combat to happen, and also, we want NPC's to act credibly. They guy who wants to take over the world won't try tpsave his mooks just because some adventurers show up and cause some trouble.)

What are your lists?

There is one hing that I find a bit unwieldy, and that is the bookkeeping phase. The bookkeeping is obviously needed, but for instance, substracting a stun round at the end regularly leads to confusion in my group, because having to keep track of whether the stun round was inflicted before or after it was the player's turn. That's maybe a bit of an artifact of using only 1 action phase, but even with 4 action phases, I can see this to become a problem. I am currently leaning towards just have each character do their bookkeeping when they have just had they action phase, before the next player... what are other ideas?

[jdale]

If your initiative order is fixed, then doing upkeep just after each character's action should work fine. (But personally I go for automation to track everything.)

No declarations is RAW, and a single action phase is the "faster rounds" optional rule (which I also use). I like the chaos of rerolling initiative every round (and initiative order is hidden) but it's definitely faster if everyone knows when they are going to go, so I think that's a reasonable choice if you want to go that way.

I do full crits and effects even for unimportant combatants but only if a PC is involved. If there are ally NPCs fighting unimportant enemy NPCs (mooks), without a PC in that melee, then I just assign a chance each of them has been defeated each round, and worry about the details after the fight. That has been helpful when I do relatively large engagements (especially when the battle gets split between different areas or rooms). (I do try to avoid NPCs traveling with the party.)

Another thing to speed things up is that my NPCs rarely parry. That allows the PCs to set the intensity of the engagement. If neither side is parrying, the end will come a lot quicker one way or another. If the PCs parry a lot, that ends up reducing the net OB on both sides, so it extends the engagement. When the NPCs do parry, that extends the engagement even further, so the combat will take more rounds. So, my NPCs tend to parry only if they are important, or if they have a tactical need to delay. Otherwise they fight all-out.

On the other hand, in my current campaign the NPCs often have healing magic, so that tends to extend battles, and also provide more opportunities for foes to escape after they have fallen. (That may also help justify their recklessness in combat.)

[Pete_Keller]

If your initiative order is fixed, then doing upkeep just after each character's action should work fine. (But personally I go for automation to track everything.)

What automation do you use?

Pete

[jdale]

Personally I have homebrew software. ERA might be the only generally-available option currently for RMU.

[Hurin]

If your initiative order is fixed, then doing upkeep just after each character's action should work fine.

That works fine. I actually do the upkeep at the start of each character's turn (I subtract any bleeding, stun, etc.), and find that works even better if you are just keeping the same initiative round to round (which I also do). For Stun, I cross off one round from the effect but still keep it in effect for the rest of that character's turn. It just helps me not to forget to deduct it.

Subtracting blood loss at the start of each character's turn also leads to some epic moments when the troll raises its club to crush the party Druid only to collapse from blood loss a heartbeat before the club comes down.

[MisterK]

I use a 4 AP-like round (actually 5 APs, because you can overspend), but no initiative : actions that occur in the same AP rank are simultaneous.

No roll on GM side : players roll when their characters act, and they also roll when their characters defend against aggression. If something occurs between NPCs, I just narrate what happens.

No combat or critical tables (or, actually, I've changed the system so that everything can fit on a couple of A4 pages).

Single roll integrates casting, attack and resistance for offensive (non-elemental) magic.

Next things to think about
- remove the damage roll - have everything determined by a single roll
- change melee system so that you only have to roll once, not once to attack and once to defend.
- tweak the action system to see if I can make it flow more organically (or even if I can remove rounds entirely, that would be the best outcome).

[jdale]

I use a 4 AP-like round (actually 5 APs, because you can overspend), but no initiative : actions that occur in the same AP rank are simultaneous.

That's interesting. I've considered removing initiative. One argument for doing so is that every player can decide what to do at once, since they can't wait to see the result of other actions. But it seemed like determining the outcomes of results and only applying them later was going to be too much hassle (without rewriting the software we use).

[MisterK]

I've also added haste and slow mechanisms - including acting hastily and deliberately. Basically, you can get up to three levels of haste or slow (levels of haste cancel levels of slow and vice versa). A standard Haste spell is 2 levels of haste (and a slow spell would be two levels of slow). Acting hastily provides 1 level of haste, but you get a -30 to your action. Acting deliberately provides 1 level of slow, but you get +10.
You can act hastily on actions that do not require rolls (such as non-manoeuver movement), but in this case, the modifier is pushed back to the next action you take.
The levels of haste and slow modify the AP cost of the action(s) you undertake.
If you end up the round with 3 AP spent, you gain focus : your next action can be performed hastily without the corresponding malus.
If you end up the round with 5 AP spent, you are reeling : your next action must be a recover action, which takes 1 AP and cannot be hasted.

Add the list of standard actions with their AP cost (and the AP cost for levels of haste and slow applied), and there we go.