Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Solwynn 11-21-04, 02:18 AM	First the Slow: :raincloud Combat in v3.5 takes waaaay too long. Oh sure it's fine if you are first level - but what the heck can you DO at first level anyway? You've got virually no options - just like being back in 2nd edition D&D. As you get more feats, spells and more attacks you have even more to do and keep track of in each each round which slow combat even more. Want more proof? Try having your character tumble through a mass of enemies. You have to make a roll every five feet and incur attacks of opportunity over and over again as you pass new foes. Then you have to wait while they attack you, roll damage, resolve any special types of attacks (poison for example). Slow. Slow Sloooooooow While combat is cool and everything and IS a major part of the game, it's nice to be able to sqeeze in some PLOT in your evening session now and then. Too much time is taken up with resolving combat actions. At least WotC seems to have noticed some of these problems as well and has fixed some of them since 3.0. Go back to a 3.0 PHB and check out what a pain in the butt the Dark Tentacles spell was. Man. Thanks for fixing that god-awful mess! The release of version 3.5 fixed some of these time-wasters but no doubt there are others still lurking in there. Found any others? The unrealistic bit: Here's what I find unrealistic about D&D combat: Surround a high-level martial-type (12 lvl ranger?) character with a good dexterity wearing nothing but his skivvies and fighting with a normal weapon of your choice and surround that character with some elite guards (say 2nd or 3rd level warriors) with heavy crossbows. 3-deep on all sides. Now have them all fire at your PC. With no armor you're going to get hit some of the time. But because of all the hitponts you possess you would probably live and if you could make those pain in the butt tumbling checks you could even run away and live to tell about it. No way. In nearly ANY movie (a medium where characters tend to get away with MORE than we do in real life) that character wouldn't even THINK about trying to "soak up" several close range bolts. They would surrender. It doesn't mean they are wusses, they are just out-matched. BUT NOT SO IN D&D! :noway: Ok, Ok, Ok.... I KNOW that hit points are an abstract measure of overall health and what-not. Blah, blah freakin-blah. But if the rules are not set up to take into account for the fact that overwhelming numbers are just that... overwhelming!... then the rules aren't good enough in my opinion. Lastly, combine these two problems and get a character that has many attacks and can last several rounds or more in heavy combat, get a bunch of his buddies with him and have all of them fight even MORE foes that will last multiple rounds and there goes your evening. God forbid they all should have good tumbling skills. :gah: You KNOW I'm right. I'm sure you've been there before.
Neofish 11-21-04, 03:17 AM	Theres bound to be a couple of Crits that will put him down, not to mention hes flanked, so almost every bolt will hit him, hes dead, no way around it, Remember rule 0. Anyway, use the Vitality/wound system, that way when one bolt crits there is a good chance that hes on the ground bleeding.
Silimaure 11-21-04, 04:00 AM	If you want speed and realism, go paintballing.
Kyaran 11-21-04, 04:16 AM	I'm perplexed. What would you have us do? I think any improvements that can be made, will be made. Look back at the combat system for 2E, or even earlier. There are now specific rules for many more options that are generally fairly simple to resolve, and tend towards common mechanics. Specific responses: Combat can take a long time, but is most commonly (IMX) lengthened because of an abundance of participants, a need to look up rules, or player(s) that have trouble deciding what to do. If the only thing that slows you down is the sheer number of actions to resolve, you may want to consider making some house-rules to streamline combat. Possibly removing attacks of opportunity, if you find you spend a lot of time making tumble checks, resolving attacks, and dealing damage because of them. (Not that I would ever do this, but it may help with your 'sluggish' feelings.) If a PC is facing "overwhelming odds," they should recognize this. If a PC thinks they can escape from a dozen crossbow-wielding guards, it might be because they can. There are times in movies where the protagonist seems to be facing an impossible situation but finds a way to escape, and sometimes without even getting scratched. I'm thinking of Luke vs. the rancor or any number of scenes in Bond movies; I'm sure you can think of others. When the odds truly are overwhelming, the PCs will either surrender or die (be captured, etc.), by definition. If you're having PCs escape from overwhelming odds, they aren't truly overwhelming. ;) If you want speed and realism, go paintballing. :ayyyy!:
angryman 11-21-04, 04:25 AM	High level combat is not slow. Damage scales with hit points. A level 3 "fighter" (insert martial class here) doing 2d6+4 with his greatsword to a creature with 25 HPs takes as long to kill an equivalent monster as a level 17 fighter dealing 2d6+18+2d6 (and iterative attacks) against a creature with 200 HPs. Perhaps even less time. High level spells waste creatures as quickly, or quicker than lower level spells. Add instant death, banishing, paralyzing etc, and you'll find that high level battles last roughly as long as low. As for D&D being unrealistic- DUH! if you want realistic, play Call of Cthulhu for all of the two hours it takes for your character to die from falling off a chair.
Vaelan 11-21-04, 05:09 AM	I don't see the HP system as unrealistic, but I also see my level 12 characters as heroes(or villains) capable of feats well beyond that of a normal person and not bumbling fools who survived many harrowing experiences more through luck than any actual competency. Also, the scenario you outlined ends with the Ranger's death. Go ahead and do the math yourself. The Warriors end up dealing a little over 100 points of damage to the 81 hitpoint Ranger(assuming Elite Array ability scores are used, average damage is rolled, and average hitpoints are rolled after getting max at 1st level). As for combat being slow, at times it is. It helps a lot if your players all have a very good idea of what they're doing and the mechanics involved well before their initiative count.
BrianJKelley 11-21-04, 05:56 AM	Unrealistic? That may be so, but I have two words.... HEROIC FANTASY
Gold Katana 11-21-04, 10:15 AM	Hey, thanks for the griping. Too bad you offer nothing for fixing. Why don't you give us all a rant on how taxes stink next time? It will be just as informative. :rolleyes:
salamander 11-21-04, 10:19 AM	Try having your character tumble through a mass of enemies. You have to make a roll every five feet and incur attacks of opportunity over and over again as you pass new foes. Nobody ever does that unless their char stands a good chance of succeeding at least most of those Tumble checks. Incurring AoOs 'over and over again' isn't exactly likely to happen (especially since by the time those kinds of odds become commonplace, a character who tumbles a lot should be close to or over a +15 to Tumble). And unless you have a high base speed, how many opponents are you going to be able to tumble past - your speed is halved while doing so. The problem with situations like this isn't the mechanics anyway (especially since these situations are so rare). Combat is always slow whenever a lot of characters are involved. Just use some sensible tricks to keep it under control, like rolling init once for every NPC except possibly the BBEG. Ask you players to determine their char's actions on what they want to accomplish, not on the mechanics - it's deciding a course of action that usually takes most of the time, with a bit of experience and decent knowledge of the rules figuring out the mechanics of something doesn't take any time at all. When using large groups of opponents, use pre-generated rolls instead of rolling three dozen dice at the beginning of every turn. Be assertive enough to make the calls a DM should be able to make now and then instead of wanting everything to be exact all the time. Above all: be prepared. Know what rule issues will come up under specific circumstances (if you're going to be using a slippery floor or fog or something else, make sure you know the rules for difficult footing/balance checks or concealment or look them up on beforehand). If you know your stuff, you should be able to answer any questions your players might have without needing to look anything up. If they do have questions, give them your answer, stand by it and move on with things: no discussions during the game, save those for afterwards.
Shadowfax7 11-21-04, 10:55 AM	I don't disagree with the subject of this thread, but there are variant rules which resolve some of these problems. However, I wanted to point out a possible error you are making . . . Try having your character tumble through a mass of enemies. You have to make a roll every five feet and incur attacks of opportunity over and over again as you pass new foes. Then you have to wait while they attack you, roll damage, resolve any special types of attacks (poison for example). Once you reach a square you are attempting to tumble past or through and incur an AoO which hits and damages you, you are stopped in the square you were in right before you attempted to tumble past or through the opponent's square and your turn is over.
ClementWillowbreaker 11-21-04, 10:59 AM	Under the ideal conditions, D20 is rather quick. It's usually much faster than say...WoD. But then again, there are those times when everything catches up to you. A few weaks ago, a fairly balanced party of 3 lvl 5 and one lvl 6 characters (all with GREAT stats and several trained animals) I was DMing for fought a juvenile Black Dragon in its lair. Its CR7+1 for the boggy terrian and swamp suited for the dragon. Everyone is frightened (the players, I mean, which is good), and very cautious because they know they are in over their head. Combine that with the fact the sorcerer blew all his second level spells earlier in the day (can you say Scorching Ray with an touch AC 13 points lower than normal AC?), you have a six hour battle. For about a 2 minute fight. Too bad this problem is going to be chronic. The sorcerer this week wasted all his brand new Lightning Bolts against BoneClaws and their is a swarm of Allips waiting outside for them...
Sucineri 11-21-04, 01:25 PM	Well, you need to look at it INSTEAD of just "combat is taking to long and it's unrealistic..it doesn't take that long, blah blah blah.".. 1 round of combat (meaning everyone gets to do their thing) in REAL TIME is 6 seconds total. Everyone in reality is moving at the same time doing things at the same time. You COULD "shorten" combat time by having everyone in the combat roll at the same time to do there thing but then the DM will hear everyone say "I hasdf hsdfknnndfl ksar 10 hp fsadfkjhg gahhdn doom hasdfaj"..so then he will have to say "okay, now one at a time" which in reality makes it the same exact length of time as normal. So basically just shut the hell up, this is a fantasy game where everyone gets a turn, it's not just about having the best guy being the only one to move in combat.
Tsuul 11-21-04, 03:17 PM	Instead of many low level npcs to build an unescapable encounter, use a few (1-3) higher level ones of the same CR. With 49 x-bowmen, you could have just used averages to figure out how many bolts hit the PC and then rolled damage. You could have even figured out on average how many x-bow men would get hit by being soft cover. My encounter math has always been off. 49 critters of level 2.5(avg) would have been a CR 12-13, but the CR charts break after you get groups greater then 13 critters. 1 fireball centered on the ranger would have cleared it with minor fire wounds to the ranger. That was by no means an "unescapable" encounter.
Wolf72 11-21-04, 07:00 PM	If you want speed and realism, go paintballing. ain't that the truth!
Kainy 11-21-04, 07:57 PM	"Hitpoints are stupid! I'm going to ignore what they represent, and just say that they don't represent something that they don't, and that makes them dumb!" A lot happens in a short time in combat. That's why, to roll out the results of random actions, combat takes a lot of real-world time. Go play Diablo or something.
Hairfoot 11-21-04, 08:43 PM	Better yet, play Rolemaster. Nitty-gritty combat, with instant death in combat always a risk. But to manage that, a single encounter uses more tables and charts than the entire WotC library put together. D&D is older now than many of its players, and dozens, if not hundreds, of different combat models have been tried and discarded over the years. In the end, "hit points are an abstract blah-blah-blah" is the neatest way of keeping the game mechanics from squeezing the life out of the game-play.
The_other 11-21-04, 10:50 PM	Click here for more HP complainers! (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=292681) :rolleyes:
Jarlaxle_The_Rogue 11-21-04, 11:31 PM	Hitpoints are unrealistic, huh? Well, think about this: 99.9% of people on Earth would be considered lvl 1, now, keep in mind that people don't receive max HP like many adventurers in DnD do, they would have to "roll" for it, more importantly, d6 or d8 would be their HD, leaving people with an average HP of 4 at most. Now, what is unrealistic is 12 level characters, and the fact tha daggers only do 1d4 (1d6-1d8, would probably work better). Also, if you note, many times people do survive being stabbed or what have you.
Dyne 11-22-04, 12:22 AM	Hitpoints are unrealistic, huh? Well, think about this: 99.9% of people on Earth would be considered lvl 1, now, keep in mind that people don't receive max HP like many adventurers in DnD do, they would have to "roll" for it, more importantly, d6 or d8 would be their HD, leaving people with an average HP of 4 at most. Now, what is unrealistic is 12 level characters, and the fact tha daggers only do 1d4 (1d6-1d8, would probably work better). Also, if you note, many times people do survive being stabbed or what have you. Actually, 99.9% of people on Earth would probably be Commoners, with a HD of d4 (average HP: 2). The average stab with a dagger would leave a commoner badly wounded.
Monteblanco 11-22-04, 08:01 PM	All you said is true and it seems to me that your problem is being playing the wrong game. If you're looking for something more realistic, I suggest you to look at Chaosium's Dark Age Cthulhu or Call of Cthulhu + Dreamlands. If you're looking for gritty high fantasy, I suggest you to try Chaosium's Stormbringer or Games Workshop's Warhammer FRP. All those game are very simple in terms of rules and combat goes very quickly, although much more lethal than D&D. Notice that a second edition of Warhammer, developed for Games Workshop by Green Ronin, should be out next Autumn. Finally, Green Ronin is releasing a d20 sourcebook based in Glen Cook's Black Company novels, which is much grittier than D&D. Although it should be at sale only next month you can read the designer notes at Green Ronin's site (http://greenronin.com), which includes several easy to implement suggestions to a more lethal version of d20.
Admiral Yi Sun Shin 11-22-04, 08:43 PM	I would say the duration of combat is based on three main factors... 1. Rolls 2. Difficulty 3. Knowing your character First, rolls, now by this i don't mean luck but how high the rolls are. If everyone rolls low, its not necessarily unlucky cuz they aren't hitting you either, but the combat just lasts a long time. While high rolls leads to a quick combat where there are frequent hits and high damage. However, we can assume that through probability, the average is achieved. Next, the difficulty of the encounter, if you are 4 5th lvl characters fighting 4 6th level characters, it may last a while because it'd be fairly even matched and the party math either die or barely make it out a live as PCs are naturally better equipped than the NPCs and the PCs are usually more resourceful. For instance, a few sessions back, a party of 2 10th level characters and 2 9th level characters fought 4 fire giants (CR 10) and a level 11 barbarian which took about 3-4hrs (1 session for us). Fortunately we has some dust of disappearance which helped us win the combat but it was none the less a very long combat with 1 member dying and the other 3 being severely injured. Finally, is how well one knows his character. If you know all your abilities and spells perfectly that you can recite them at a moments notice. Then it'll make time elapse more quickly as when its your turn, you know exactly how to use your abilities, and your actions are somewhat predetermined. However, if you don't know what your abilities are, much time might be spent figuring out what to do or looking up what something does. This of course will slow the combat down significantly. In conclusion, if you want to minimize the durations of combat, optimize the 3 above, the first being the least controllable but you can assume average from that category. Now the second thing can only be controlled by the DM so as a PC you have little influence in that category. So as a PC, the best way to enhance combat is to just know your characters abilities front to back.
devinmdp 11-22-04, 09:23 PM	First: I don't think you have to stop moving when tumbling if you take an AoO. Second: There are many grittier systems out there. You could even look at old Runequest, which is about the best combination of simple and gritty ever made. You roll a % chance to hit based on skill. The other guy has a % chance to parry or dodge based on skill. Armour negates damage. Your hit points basically equal your Con score and almost never goes up. In Runequest, a single lucky hit by anything can kill your PC. But such a system requires a sea change in the campaign style most D&Ders are used to. Combat becomes a dreaded thing....something to avoid unless absolutely necessary. You also have to get used to rolling up new PCs all the time.
Kainy 11-23-04, 05:37 PM	Another point, tumbling is one check per 15 ft. of threatened area, as a move equivalent action. One (two if you're feeling generous) roll a round. Yep, that takes FOREVER!
Solwynn 11-25-04, 04:27 PM	First let me say that I posted this thread as an intentional rant in order to get responses. I was looking for solutions from others so I offered none. It worked. Second, paintball totally sucks. Kyaran said: "If a PC is facing "overwhelming odds," they should recognize this. If a PC thinks they can escape from a dozen crossbow-wielding guards, it might be because they can. There are times in movies where the protagonist seems to be facing an impossible situation but finds a way to escape, and sometimes without even getting scratched. I'm thinking of Luke vs. the rancor or any number of scenes in Bond movies; I'm sure you can think of others. When the odds truly are overwhelming, the PCs will either surrender or die (be captured, etc.), by definition. If you're having PCs escape from overwhelming odds, they aren't truly overwhelming." Good point. Thanks for putting that ridiculous situation in perspective for me. My example was not one of true overwhelming odds in DnD. But it IS in the real world. I tried to make the example as extreme as possible to get across the point that your average city guard in most DnD products is way too weak. In my campaign I have made them 5th level fighters. If the law cannot overwhelm the average semi-experienced adventurer it does little to protect the city from such potentially destructive individuals (C'mon we've ALL blown up an inn with a fireball at some point, right? HEROIC fantasy my buttocks!). Hit points are abstract and have to be. No one I know wants to roll on a body chart to see where you got hit. I've always been fine with the concept of hitpoints. I'm NOT fine with the overall power level of your typical DnD city. I take it in DnD that a navy-seal elite-type would be, say, a 3rd level fighter compared to a typical officer of the watch who is a 1-2 lvl warrior. This is ridiculous. Navy seals (or insert other elite real-world warrior here) should be extremely high level. They would be the best a nation has to offer - many times they may be better than PCs. And would YOU trust YOUR fantasy family in DnD to a 1st level warrior?!? Come on. You need to have a sense of scale here. The sense of scale that is offered in most DnD products is what I find unrealistic. It makes even a low level PC too tough when compared to the powers that be. So perhaps I should have reworded the title for my original post to read: How can you overwhelm your PC with the wussy guards WotC put in this city? Kyaran said: "Combat can take a long time, but is most commonly (IMX) lengthened because of an abundance of participants, a need to look up rules, or player(s) that have trouble deciding what to do. If the only thing that slows you down is the sheer number of actions to resolve, you may want to consider making some house-rules to streamline combat. I play with a small group of 4-6 characters. We're pretty good on the rules. Decision making can take a little while but that's OK with the group (they feel combat is too slow as well and LIKE to take a little time to strategize, etc.). So the last viable option is house rules. If I am making up rules to accomodate a slow system doesn't that just mean that the system needs to be improved? DnD has been improving by leaps and bounds since v.3.0 came out and good for it! I think the next thing that they should concentrate on fine tuning is combat speed. The new mantra for Eberron is "Seach slow, fight fast." but the system itself is slow to resolve actions even with a small, well-versed group. Search slow, fight fast is a good goal to shoot for but the combat system needs to be streamlined so that that is actually possible. I have heard rumors that a stripped down fast and furious version of the D20 system is being put out in December and am very interested to see what improvements are being made by 3rd parties to a system that I like. I'm not about to take up RuneQuest or some other non-D20 system I have to learn from scratch. That would slow things down even more, I think. Of couse all of my fights WOULD be pretty fast if I only put my PCs up against the typical DnD guards...
salamander 11-25-04, 06:22 PM	(they feel combat is too slow as well and LIKE to take a little time to strategize, etc.) Typically, there are three things that take up time in D&D combat: deciding what to do, figuring out how to do it and finally making the rolls. The first almost always takes up the most time, the second is most easily limited (knowing the rules well basically does the trick). Rolling is pretty much constant, unless you eliminate it by using pregenerated rolls. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that the strategizing mentioned above is usually the biggest factor in slowing down combat. You can't have it both ways.
Dyne 11-26-04, 01:57 AM	If you don't like the city guards being wusses, just make them all higher level. All the guards in my campaign are at least 5th-level.
Chaser 11-26-04, 02:23 AM	I don't see the HP system as unrealistic, but I also see my level 12 characters as heroes(or villains) capable of feats well beyond that of a normal person and not bumbling fools who survived many harrowing experiences more through luck than any actual competency. Also, the scenario you outlined ends with the Ranger's death. Go ahead and do the math yourself. The Warriors end up dealing a little over 100 points of damage to the 81 hitpoint Ranger(assuming Elite Array ability scores are used, average damage is rolled, and average hitpoints are rolled after getting max at 1st level). While I do not particularly doubt that the ranger is in trouble, the situation is complicated. There are a lot of issues like cover, firing into melee, and AoOs to consider. Also, although someone mentioned it, flanking is not necessarily involved. I would like to see how you ran the scenario to come up with this answer. The initial poster has certainly made a difficult scenario to run, that would probably take a while, unless you had done it before, or until you ironed the mechanics out. The combat goes better that more you use the system. Our group complains that high level combat is not dragged out like it was in 2E, meaning you have less time [fewer rounds] to save your own rears when things go poorly.