Longer combat rounds.

[NorphTehDwarf]

GURPS has one-second combat rounds. I personally feel that they're too short to allow a combat encounter to run quickly. If you dislike the one-second round, then this is the thread for you. ITT we shall discuss reasons for disliking or liking the one-second round and our own houseruled alternatives, if we have them.

Here's an idea that I've been putting together for the past little while:

A combat round lasts five seconds. The number of actions a character can take in those five seconds are determined by the character's basic speed. I picked a round time of five seconds because that matches the BS of an average (IE all stats=10) character. To make fractional BS values useful in this system I'd say that a character receives free actions equal to their nonfractional BS plus any fractional value they have divided by .25.

Example: Average Abner has a BS of 5.00, so he can take five actions in five seconds along with five free actions. Bumbling Bert has a BS of 2.75, so he can only take two actions and five free actions. Oddly-Quick Quinn has a BS of 5.50, so he can take five actions and seven free actions in those same five seconds.

I don't think my way's perfect yet, so I'd love to have y'all poke it full of holes or explain how you do it.

[Maz]

I'm not sure by what you mean by "they're too short to allow a combat encounter to run quickly" but I assume you mean the amount of time it takes in real gaming time to finish a combat? Well that has nothing at all to do with the length of the rounds. You could say a round was 6 sec and it would still take the same time.

Your proposal actually gives people MORE action per second than in the current rules so I don't see how it fixes anything. Speed 5 is the default, most combat characters have above speed 5, 6 is pertty common. So most combat-character would have 6 actions in 5 seconds.

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If you feel your combat is taking too long then it has nothing to do with the length of the rounds but a lot of other factors the most important probably being players who are inexperienced with the system and/or indecisive. If you search the forum for "fast combat" or something similar I think you wil find more help to make things go faster.



If however you are not really talking about "length of combat" but what you really mean is that you feel players can't do enough when it's "their turn" and that the combat is too static and/or you want more leeway for cinematics and descriptions then you need to make longer combat rounds. And this idea I can follow. I have done so myself several times with one-shot scenarios. It's a radical change of the rules though and there are many ways to do it. (i'll make a second post).

[Maz]

Idea 1.
What I do when I want faster less detailed combat is that I go about it in a more storyteller-like way instead of using static "combat rounds".

I say each round is 1-10 seconds long and then let players state their intent for this round.
For instance player A might stat: "I pull my gun dive for cover behind the parked car and start shooting at the bad guys".
While player B state: "I'll draw my sword and charge right into the middel of the group of badguys killing as many as I can".

When doing stuff like this I only use the rules as guideliens. So in this case were both players actions are roughly the same "draw weapon, move and attack" I just let them do just that and make an attack roll each.

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This way of using the ruels works best for combat-light games. But is very usefull when you play with people unfamiliar with GURPS.

[Maz]

Idea 2.
Another thing I've done before is to say that a round is roughly 3 seconds long and then make some assumptions on behalf of the players. For instance I will assume that ranged attacks always take an Aim action. I will assume players always use at least 1 sec to move.
I let stuff like "change posture", "draw weapon" or "ready action" be part of what happens automaticly.


So basicly a character can make a move and an attack in "his round".
If he is in melee and just attacking he can make 2.
If his standing still and shooting, he gets +1 for aiming.
If he is all-out running he acts as if "move and attacking".

At the same time I assume some default range penalties. Short, medium and long range. Adn some default number of rounds it takes to run that same distance. (I can post the numbers I've been using if interested I just have to find them first).


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Again ,these work great with peopel nto ver yfamiliar with GURPS. For people who knwo the ruels well it might take a bit getting used to. But they soon find out that you can actually do the same as you can in the normal ruels.

[NorphTehDwarf]

By saying "they're too short to allow a combat encounter to run quickly" I meant... actually I'm not sure what I meant by that either. I felt that it was reasonable enough to allow people with high Basic Speeds to do more in a round since they have faster reaction times than people with low BS.

The reason my players aren't too happy is because they feel kind of short-changed by one second rounds since they don't get to do enough stuff during their turns, so I'd love to see your solutions for longer rounds.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by NorphTehDwarf

GURPS has one-second combat rounds. I personally feel that they're too short to allow a combat encounter to run quickly.
[...]
I don't think my way's perfect yet, so I'd love to have y'all poke it full of holes or explain how you do it.

I give each player until 3 seconds after their turn comes to say what they are doing. If they can't decide, I decide for them and keep going. They are free to communicate this to me ahead of time, even in the sense of brief contingency. "I'll keep fighting my current opponent unless he goes down, in that case I will draw a gun and fire on their leader."

[copeab]

Originally Posted by NorphTehDwarf

A combat round lasts five seconds. The number of actions a character can take in those five seconds are determined by the character's basic speed. I picked a round time of five seconds because that matches the BS of an average (IE all stats=10) character. To make fractional BS values useful in this system I'd say that a character receives free actions equal to their nonfractional BS plus any fractional value they have divided by .25.

I'm not sure if this would work well with modern firearms, especially automatic weapons.

[Ultraviolet]

About changing the initiative system to 5 second blocks, with an amount of actions equal to Basic Speed:
How would this work regarding reacting to an opponents actions? Would this mean fighter A with his 6 actions gets 6 consequetive attacks on fighter B (who is allowed to defend, of course), before fighter B does anything? In this case, winning the initative becomes really, really important! And how would this work regarding the "number of parries/blocks per round"? Normally, you can parry/block once per round, but is this 5 per 5-second segment? In that case, you're royally screwed, if you fight with e.g. axe and shield. You rely on a good block, with the DB of the shield, but the parry with the axe is next to uselss, if you want to attack. Fighting against someone with more actions than you...

[Kyle Aaron]

In any game system, combat turn length only matters in two respects:

• ticking bombs
• movement vs number of actions

Ticking bombs are an obvious issue. If a grenade explodes 3-5 seconds after the pin is pulled, with a 1 second combat round you can run away, with a 5+ second combat round it goes off at your feet.

Movement vs number of actions is a more complicated issue. How much do combatants get to move compared to how much they can shoot, swing or jab? If it's just one hex or step, then combats become static slug-outs. If it's 50 hexes or steps, combats become ridiculous as someone shoots, runs around the guy and then shoots him in the back again.

Exactly where that ratio of movement to action is best set is really up to your own taste. GURPS' rough ratio of 5 move : 1 action is good in some respects, but in melee combats can lead to a bunch of one-on-one duels, since by the time PC A finishes with Foe X and rushes over to help PC B against Foe Y, the B-Y fight is over.

This comes down to GMing style, whether you painstakingly play out every single combat round, or gloss over some things...

[Agemegos]

The things in RPG combat systems that chew up real time, and therefore make the fights run slowly, are

• players making tactical decisions
• die rolls
• dealing with rules procedures (eg. looking up scores, looking up rules, checking tables, doing calculations, performing condition tests, communicating results).

Increasing the length of a combat turn and the number of actions per turn will not reduce any of those things. It will still take just as many hits to end a fight, scoring that many hits will take just as many attacks and just as many attempts at defence, so the number of die rolls, condition tests, calculations, and rule or char-sheet look-ups will be just the same. Indeed, the suggestion would probably slow fights down by introducing more tactical options to choose between, and extra procedural rules to administer (those concerning action sequencing within a turn).

If you want to make your fights run faster, I suggest that the first thing to do is to stop using optional rules option such as hit locations, tactical combat, and combat techniques. That will reduce the number of options your players face when their turns come, and they will make faster decisions. It will also reduce the time required to resolve each action as there will be fewer rolls to make and fewer rules to apply for each action.

If that is unacceptable or insufficient, what you have to do is to reduce the number of attacks that have to be made in order to end a give fight, which means increasing the proportion of attacks that land, or increasing the damage that successful attack deal out as a proportion of targets' hit points. Raise attack skills. Reduce Dodge scores and penalise blocks. Increase weapon damage. Reduce armour DR. Reduce HP and HT scores.