Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;884123If your RPG game has rules for combat rounds that your group plays by, and you do have combat during a game session, expect the majority of your game session to be a long hard slog with little to no amount of role-playing or anything else getting done.

The answer is 1 here.


Now if you treat combat like any other task in the game, a group can get at least 3 or 4 or however many good combat scenes done in real-time during a game session. And still while role-playing.

The answer is several here.

Sorry, but that's just flat out wrong. It's entirely possible to have combat rounds, use them, and have extremely fast combat.

Quote from: Sable Wyvern;884126Sorry, but that's just flat out wrong. It's entirely possible to have combat rounds, use them, and have extremely fast combat.

I have yet to see it. Is there any RPG session on YouTube where this is true?

Usually 2-3 fights for a 4-5 hour session regardless of the system. I like it gritty. Not too many fights, but the ones that are got to be tense.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;884127I have yet to see it. Is there any RPG session on YouTube where this is true?

I have no idea, as I don't watch RPing sessions on youtube.

But I know from experience that a small fight in AD&D/OD&D/BECMI etc takes a few minutes and a big fight with 20 - 30 combatants a side can easily be resolved in 20 - 30 minutes. The main rule you need for expediting combat is to allow fighters, instead of rolling a number of attacks equal to their level against 1HD creatures, allow them to roll 1dLEVEL kills.

This also assumes you're treating "the melee" as a bunch of people in a general area attacking the closest target at any time (determined randomly, as per the AD&D DMG) and not worrying about precise positioning unless there's a specific need for it.

Quote from: Sable Wyvern;884132I have no idea, as I don't watch RPing sessions on youtube.

But I know from experience that a small fight in AD&D/OD&D/BECMI etc takes a few minutes and a big fight with 20 - 30 combatants a side can easily be resolved in 20 - 30 minutes. The main rule you need for expediting combat is to allow fighters, instead of rolling a number of attacks equal to their level against 1HD creatures, allow them to roll 1dLEVEL kills.

This also assumes you're treating "the melee" as a bunch of people in a general area attacking the closest target at any time (determined randomly, as per the AD&D DMG) and not worrying about precise positioning unless there's a specific need for it.

That's still not fast enough. Characters in movies kill a lot more in less time.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;884134That's still not fast enough. Characters in movies kill a lot more in less time.

Characters in movies aren't really fighting. They are following a scripted series of actions and moving at a pace the director wants.

You could do combats really fast this way but there isn't much of game left. The GM simply describes how fast foes die and how much the PCs get hurt while killing them.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;884147Characters in movies aren't really fighting. They are following a scripted series of actions and moving at a pace the director wants.

You could do combats really fast this way but there isn't much of game left. The GM simply describes how fast foes die and how much the PCs get hurt while killing them.

This was part of the logic for mobs and background characters in Metahumans Rising. The rules allow heroes to take a single action and impact multiple low level foes. This was also inspired in part by the Conservation of Ninjutsu.

Quote from: Certified;884193This was part of the logic for mobs and background characters in Metahumans Rising. The rules allow heroes to take a single action and impact multiple low level foes. This was also inspired in part by the Conservation of Ninjutsu.

As middle schoolers, we used to joke that this was what the combat systems of games we turned our noses up were like:
If a monster attacks you, roll to see if it manages to hit. Then roll to see how much it reduces your mountain of hit points, but has no other effect until you run out.
Then roll to attack - roll dice and that's the number of monsters you kill.

More extreme was the "free game"/joke published in Interplay called "One Tub Bilge", a game about a heroic US Navy ship attacked by wicked Communist warships. Every result for the heroes would generally destroy various numbers of enemy warships. Every result for the attackers was either a miss, a near miss, or do "serious damage" which actually had no effect. This seemed a thinly-veiled parody of people who would force outcomes or never let their PCs die.

Now here we are in the 21st Century, and there are published RPGs where PCs explicitly are not allowed to actually die or even fail to eventually achieve whatever the goals of the campaign are, only temporary setbacks. A lot like many computer RPG's, where if you die you just restore a saved game, pretend it didn't happen, and try again from some point along your successful story.

Quote from: Skarg;884200A lot like many computer RPG's, where if you die you just restore a saved game, pretend it didn't happen, and try again from some point along your successful story.

Are you saying the way I played Age of Mythology was badwrongfun?

Quote from: Skarg;884200As middle schoolers, we used to joke that this was what the combat systems of games we turned our noses up were like:
If a monster attacks you, roll to see if it manages to hit. Then roll to see how much it reduces your mountain of hit points, but has no other effect until you run out.
Then roll to attack - roll dice and that's the number of monsters you kill.

More extreme was the "free game"/joke published in Interplay called "One Tub Bilge", a game about a heroic US Navy ship attacked by wicked Communist warships. Every result for the heroes would generally destroy various numbers of enemy warships. Every result for the attackers was either a miss, a near miss, or do "serious damage" which actually had no effect. This seemed a thinly-veiled parody of people who would force outcomes or never let their PCs die.

Now here we are in the 21st Century, and there are published RPGs where PCs explicitly are not allowed to actually die or even fail to eventually achieve whatever the goals of the campaign are, only temporary setbacks. A lot like many computer RPG's, where if you die you just restore a saved game, pretend it didn't happen, and try again from some point along your successful story.

Oddly, Metahumans Rising has a bit of the later as well. The goal was to emulate comic books or comic inspired stories. In superhero comics taking down four or five normal gang members might be a single splash panel. Something to wet your appetite as the reader gets into the meat of a story.

Mobs of background characters allowed us to easily group 3 or more non-central NPCs together, increase the over all challenge as they function as a group, but have the conflict resolve quickly. This significantly cuts down on the die rolls and prep time GMs need. Actually, in the From Myth to Reality episode of Three Rivers Academy I had misplaced some of my notes and ended up having to recreate villains stats on the fly.  We ran two fights, back to back, and the background mobs served as a solid challenge even knocking out one of the heroes.

That brings me to your later comments. Because Metahumans Rising is trying to emulate superhero comics and not what superheroes would look like if they were real, the threat of death is very low. However, it's possible to knock out or otherwise be staggered or stunned instead. The control is put in the players hands, after being hurt, do they want to have the character become knocked out, or fight on and risk possible death. This isn't for any hand holding reason, but more that it is a convention of the genre.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;884147You could do combats really fast this way but there isn't much of game left. The GM simply describes how fast foes die and how much the PCs get hurt while killing them.

My group still used dice for their task checks and damage.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;884134That's still not fast enough. Characters in movies kill a lot more in less time.

Ok, well your original post wasn't saying that you have a preference for super-fast combat resolution, it was making the objectively false assertion that if anyone uses combat rounds they will end up doing nothing but combat for the vast majority of the session.

With 6 players, I am noticing I can only fit in 2 combats in a 4 hour session of Feng Shui 2. Which is less than I would like. I will have to trim down my max number of players when I run one shots.

Quote from: Sable Wyvern;884262Ok, well your original post wasn't saying that you have a preference for super-fast combat resolution, it was making the objectively false assertion that if anyone uses combat rounds they will end up doing nothing but combat for the vast majority of the session.

Well, actually, the players might just end up sitting around the table doing much of nothing when it's not their turn. See long-ass boardgames. Any YouTube video with D&D or Pathfinder fight scenes will take up most of their game session time.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;884275Well, actually, the players might just end up sitting around the table doing much of nothing when it's not their turn. See long-ass boardgames. Any YouTube video with D&D or Pathfinder fight scenes will take up most of their game session time.

The players might smear mashed banana on their faces as well. Your point?

If you can't distinguish between Pathfinder and any other game the uses rounds for combat, there is certainly no point trying to have a sensible discussion with you on the topic.