Speeding Up Combat

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Hotrod
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Speeding Up Combat

Unread post by Hotrod »

I originally wrote this up as a reply to the discussion of called shots and attacks under RUE and RMB.

1. Reducing the number of attacks per melee has little effect on the length of combat.
You still wind up rolling dice the same number of times for attacks, defensive moves, and damage. The only extra rolls you take are the occasional initiative rolls with each new round. Mathematically, if you have to do damage until your opponent dies, the only way to speed this up is to do more damage or to make the opponents weaker. Frankly, I see better approaches.

2. You can dramatically speed up combat without overhauling shooting mechanics at all. Disabling and distracting techniques from magic and psionics can end many fights without firing a shot. So can a variety of techniques for bypassing armor.

3. The best way to end fights quickly has nothing to do with game mechanics of any kind. Most RPG fights seem to be to the death, and this adds a lot of wasted time to a lot of fights. In any normal fight, the folks involved are more interested in survival than victory. People like that, when they realize that they're losing, will disengage, back away, break and flee, play dead, desert, switch sides, or surrender if they think they can't win. While some supernatural predators and monsters may give no quarter and fight to the death, they don't tend to live long. Most villains should accept a surrender, because doing otherwise wastes their resources and denies them future subjects. Just implementing this idea into your games will cut your combat time by more than half.

Applying these techniques to speeding up combat also tends to make adventures more interesting, because it leads to more interesting scenarios and dilemmas. What do you do with prisoners and their belongings? In what scenarios do you give quarter, and at what point is it too late? Is it OK to shoot enemies who are fleeing for their lives? What do you do with wounded enemies? If an enemy saves your life and exposes him or herself to do so, is it OK to take advantage of the situation and kill that enemy to get free? This makes games more interesting and more fun.

What do you think? What kinds of tricks do you use to shorten combat?
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ITWastrel
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Re: Speeding Up Combat

Unread post by ITWastrel »

Multiple players with 4-8+ actions each, going one action at a time by initiative also has a detrimental effect on game mechanics.

Bio-Regeneration heals 2d6hp per melee? OK, when the melee ends we'll apply that. Monsters (10) have 5 attacks each, Speedster has 12, Captain Acceptable 8, JoJoBlaster 7, the Special Twins have 6 each, and Dave the Wizard has 5. One real time hour later, the fight is over, the baddies are dead or surrendered, and some players still have actions left. Here's your 5 HP, Baddie. Glad I wrote that down.

Any effect that happens once per melee becomes much less useful, and probably won't impact any combat mechanically.


Here's what I do.

Every player at the table has a physical counter for each melee attack they get. I use aquarium rocks.

Every action uses a rock. Significant movement? Spend a rock. Shoot once? Spend a rock. Dodge? Rock. Power punch, that's two rocks.
Aim and fire a sniper rifle, two rocks. Move, aim, fire sniper rifle, 3 rocks.
Spellcasting? Two rocks, and anyone can spend a rock to attempt to interrupt you.

Where this speeds things up is, I allow players to spend as many rocks as they want, as long as they only make one attack.

I also allow a player to state an action, "I cast fly as an eagle and fly up to the cliffs. Can I make the shot from there?", then add up the actions (2 spellcasting, 1 significant movement, 1 aim, 1 shoot). I reply "Yes, Dave, but it'll cost you 5 rocks."
Dave spends 5 rocks, has a chance of being interrupted when casting (if he is, he only loses the two rocks already spent), moves to the cliff, aims, and fires.

I also allow for reactions, such as "parry his sword and stab him!", and interruptions on someone else's initiative.
"Baddie swings at you" "parry, and punch back!" OK, one rock please. (0 Parry, 1 attack)
"Baddie is casting a spell" "Eye lasers! Stop him!" OK, one rock please.
"Snipermage is flying over you" "Fire the death ray!" one rock.

I also allow actions which take more rocks than they have to carry over into the next round.
"Mage cast Spell!", OK, 2 rocks. "Mage only have one rock. me sad." OK, spend one, and next round you can spend the other, that's when the effect goes off.

Players love to find ways to spend rocks, in groups. They get sad faces when they run out of rocks. When everyone is out of rocks, combat ends.

The rocks system has worked for us for years now, combat is faster and more fun.
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Hotrod
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Re: Speeding Up Combat

Unread post by Hotrod »

ITWastrel wrote:Multiple players with 4-8+ actions each, going one action at a time by initiative also has a detrimental effect on game mechanics.

Bio-Regeneration heals 2d6hp per melee? OK, when the melee ends we'll apply that. Monsters (10) have 5 attacks each, Speedster has 12, Captain Acceptable 8, JoJoBlaster 7, the Special Twins have 6 each, and Dave the Wizard has 5. One real time hour later, the fight is over, the baddies are dead or surrendered, and some players still have actions left. Here's your 5 HP, Baddie. Glad I wrote that down.

Any effect that happens once per melee becomes much less useful, and probably won't impact any combat mechanically.


Here's what I do.

Every player at the table has a physical counter for each melee attack they get. I use aquarium rocks.

Every action uses a rock. Significant movement? Spend a rock. Shoot once? Spend a rock. Dodge? Rock. Power punch, that's two rocks.
Aim and fire a sniper rifle, two rocks. Move, aim, fire sniper rifle, 3 rocks.
Spellcasting? Two rocks, and anyone can spend a rock to attempt to interrupt you.

Where this speeds things up is, I allow players to spend as many rocks as they want, as long as they only make one attack.

I also allow a player to state an action, "I cast fly as an eagle and fly up to the cliffs. Can I make the shot from there?", then add up the actions (2 spellcasting, 1 significant movement, 1 aim, 1 shoot). I reply "Yes, Dave, but it'll cost you 5 rocks."
Dave spends 5 rocks, has a chance of being interrupted when casting (if he is, he only loses the two rocks already spent), moves to the cliff, aims, and fires.

I also allow for reactions, such as "parry his sword and stab him!", and interruptions on someone else's initiative.
"Baddie swings at you" "parry, and punch back!" OK, one rock please. (0 Parry, 1 attack)
"Baddie is casting a spell" "Eye lasers! Stop him!" OK, one rock please.
"Snipermage is flying over you" "Fire the death ray!" one rock.

I also allow actions which take more rocks than they have to carry over into the next round.
"Mage cast Spell!", OK, 2 rocks. "Mage only have one rock. me sad." OK, spend one, and next round you can spend the other, that's when the effect goes off.

Players love to find ways to spend rocks, in groups. They get sad faces when they run out of rocks. When everyone is out of rocks, combat ends.

The rocks system has worked for us for years now, combat is faster and more fun.

This sounds like a fun and effective way to go. I imagine it's fairly chaotic, but then, that's probably how combat should be.
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Re: Speeding Up Combat

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

Hotrod wrote:I originally wrote this up as a reply to the discussion of called shots and attacks under RUE and RMB.

1. Reducing the number of attacks per melee has little effect on the length of combat.
You still wind up rolling dice the same number of times for attacks, defensive moves, and damage. The only extra rolls you take are the occasional initiative rolls with each new round. Mathematically, if you have to do damage until your opponent dies, the only way to speed this up is to do more damage or to make the opponents weaker. Frankly, I see better approaches.


Agreed.
This also affects various spells and effects that do damage (or healing, or anything else) on a per-melee level or a per-attack level.
If you're standing in a fire that does 2d6 MD to you every time your attack comes up, you'll take less damage over the course of a melee if you have 2 attacks instead of 6 attacks.
Likewise, if you're standing in a fire that does 2d6 MD every time the person-who-made-the-fire's attack comes up, the fewer attacks they have in a melee, the less damage that fire will inflict before it dies out or ends.
And if you have a healing spell that kicks in every melee or every attack, that matters two. Like if your enemies bio-regenerate Xd6 MD per attack, they'll regenerate more during an attack the more attacks they get in a melee. If they regenerate Xd6 MD per melee, then they'll effectively heal faster the fewer attacks they get.
It's possible that by dropping the number of attacks per melee, you could make combat last longer in some situations.

2. You can dramatically speed up combat without overhauling shooting mechanics at all. Disabling and distracting techniques from magic and psionics can end many fights without firing a shot. So can a variety of techniques for bypassing armor.


YES.

3. The best way to end fights quickly has nothing to do with game mechanics of any kind. Most RPG fights seem to be to the death, and this adds a lot of wasted time to a lot of fights. In any normal fight, the folks involved are more interested in survival than victory. People like that, when they realize that they're losing, will disengage, back away, break and flee, play dead, desert, switch sides, or surrender if they think they can't win. While some supernatural predators and monsters may give no quarter and fight to the death, they don't tend to live long. Most villains should accept a surrender, because doing otherwise wastes their resources and denies them future subjects. Just implementing this idea into your games will cut your combat time by more than half.


Agreed.
One of THE most common mistakes in TTRPGs is for GMs to have every NPC and monster act like a fanatic who will fight to the DEATH every time.
When, really, most people and creatures will turn tail and run if they're significantly wounded/hurt/scared.
I bring this up a lot when it comes to SDC vs Mega-Damage conflicts; whether or not a SDC firearms can damage a monster, the sound and stinging impact alone might well chase off many creatures that are unfamiliar with firearms.
Predators try not to expend a lot of energy if they can help it; they're just trying to eat, not break a sweat or die.

What do you think? What kinds of tricks do you use to shorten combat?


As a GM, one thing that I do is to use lower-quality gear/vehicles for most NPCs.
Random bandits, for example, are likely to have Plastic Man armor, or worse. And maybe the armor is damaged, if that's realistic for the scenario.
CS Soldiers are decked out in the LIGHT CS armor unless there's reason to assign them the Heavy.
Same deal with monsters; not every hatchling dragon the party fights should have max MDC. Sometimes it's safe to just assume that dragon rolled a 1 and only has 100 MDC or whatever.
Generally speaking, it's better to lowball an encounter than to accidentally kill PCs or drag combat out a long while.
Players like a challenge, but they mostly like to feel like badasses. Giving them easy encounters helps them have fun with some pretty easy victories. Really, virtually any fight which isn't a plot point where the characters are in serious trouble, should be low-balled.
People usually want a kind of Action Movie feel, and that feeling is NOT accomplished when it takes 5 minutes to take out a lone sentry when you're breaking into an enemy compound, or when a random mugger kills one of your superheroes, and so forth. Most action movies are a bunch of fights that are easy for the main characters, along with a mix of tougher battles to keep things interesting.
It's one of the challenges of Rifts; the game's got a hefty Star Wars vibe, but that doesn't work when you have to shoot every disposable enemy cannon fodder trooper like 5-6 times before they drop.
I say, just use weaker enemies whenever you can. It's faster and more fun as a rule, as long as you don't overdo it.
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ManDrakeTWise
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Re: Speeding Up Combat

Unread post by ManDrakeTWise »

Actually there are several rules that people don't use that speed up combat a lot, but make the game more realistic (which mostly sucks). MDC armor is very powerful, but the human underneath it is vulnerable to all sorts of secondary damage. It was on page 12 in the original Rifts book and was moved to page 355 in RUE. Basically characters in MDC armor should be taking damage under certain conditions straight to their SDC or HP as appropriate. Not to mention the Knockdown rules based on damage in MDC armor as well. A human in MDC armor hit by a mini-missile for example may have plenty of MDC to survive the attack, but they could take SDC damage in their armor from it and likely be knocked down by the attack losing an action and initiative. Instead most people treat those wearing MDC armor as invincible Borg like creatures which they are not supposed to be. If a creature with supernatural strength is punching your character in the face, there should be consequences inside the armor and most GM's don't play it that way. Making combat more long and drawn out.

I've also experimented with a system that spreads out actions based on the maximum number of actions available of the combatants. Giving people with more attacks combat actions an advantage with non-action rounds for those with less. It made spellcasters slightly more vulnerable. It looks something like this.

Combat Round 1
Combat Action 1
Init: 8 Cyberknight
Cyberknight hits Iron Golem with Psi-Sword (11), doing 11 MDC to Iron Golem's Iron Body (149).
Init: 7 Iron Golem
Iron Golem hits Cyberknight with Right Fist (19), Cyberknight fails to parries blow with Psi-Shield (10) , doing 11 MDC to Cyberknight's CyberKnight Plate (109).
Combat Action 2
Init: 8 Cyberknight
Cyberknight critical hits Iron Golem with Psi-Sword (21), doing 18 MDC to Iron Golem's Iron Body (131).
Combat Action 3
Init: 8 Cyberknight
Cyberknight hits Iron Golem with Psi-Sword (14), doing 12 MDC to Iron Golem's Iron Body (119).
Init: 7 Iron Golem
Iron Golem hits Cyberknight with Right Fist (15), Cyberknight fails to parries blow with Psi-Shield (7) , doing 7 MDC to Cyberknight's CyberKnight Plate (102).
Combat Action 4
Init: 8 Cyberknight
Cyberknight hits Iron Golem with Psi-Sword (18), doing 12 MDC to Iron Golem's Iron Body (107).
Combat Action 5
Init: 8 Cyberknight
Cyberknight hits Iron Golem with Psi-Sword (18), doing 14 MDC to Iron Golem's Iron Body (93).
Init: 7 Iron Golem
Iron Golem hits Cyberknight with Right Fist (19), Cyberknight fails to parries blow with Psi-Shield (16) , doing 12 MDC to Cyberknight's CyberKnight Plate (90).
Combat Action 6
Init: 8 Cyberknight
Cyberknight triple critical hits Iron Golem with Psi-Sword (23), doing 21 MDC to Iron Golem's Iron Body (72).
Combat Action 7
Init: 8 Cyberknight
Cyberknight critical hits Iron Golem with Psi-Sword (22), doing 24 MDC to Iron Golem's Iron Body (48).
Init: 7 Iron Golem
Iron Golem hits Cyberknight with Right Fist (16), Cyberknight fails to parries blow with Psi-Shield (7) , doing 9 MDC to Cyberknight's CyberKnight Plate (81).


Verses the more traditional

Combat Round 1
Combat Action 1
Init: 19 Iron Golem
Iron Golem hits Cyberknight with Right Fist (14), Cyberknight fails to parries blow with Psi-Shield (6) , doing 8 MDC to Cyberknight's CyberKnight Plate (112).
Init: 11 Cyberknight
Cyberknight hits Iron Golem with Psi-Sword (14), doing 17 MDC to Iron Golem's Iron Body (143).
Combat Action 2
Init: 19 Iron Golem
Iron Golem hits Cyberknight with Right Fist (15), Cyberknight fails to parries blow with Psi-Shield (11) , doing 9 MDC to Cyberknight's CyberKnight Plate (103).
Init: 11 Cyberknight
Cyberknight hits Iron Golem with Psi-Sword (13), doing 11 MDC to Iron Golem's Iron Body (132).
Combat Action 3
Init: 19 Iron Golem
Iron Golem hits Cyberknight with Right Fist (19), Cyberknight fails to parries blow with Psi-Shield (12) , doing 3 MDC to Cyberknight's CyberKnight Plate (100).
Init: 11 Cyberknight
Cyberknight hits Iron Golem with Psi-Sword (17), doing 9 MDC to Iron Golem's Iron Body (123).
Combat Action 4
Init: 19 Iron Golem
Iron Golem hits Cyberknight with Right Fist (13), Cyberknight parries blow with Psi-Shield (20) , doing 1 MDC to Cyberknight's Psi-Shield (59).
Init: 11 Cyberknight
Cyberknight misses Iron Golem with Psi-Sword (4).
Combat Action 5
Init: 11 Cyberknight
Cyberknight misses Iron Golem with Psi-Sword (4).
Combat Action 6
Init: 11 Cyberknight
Cyberknight hits Iron Golem with Psi-Sword (12), doing 8 MDC to Iron Golem's Iron Body (115).
Combat Action 7
Init: 11 Cyberknight
Cyberknight hits Iron Golem with Psi-Sword (16), doing 12 MDC to Iron Golem's Iron Body (103).


Normally you end a round with the person with the most amount of attacks, wailing on the enemies with no answer. This smooths the combat round and keeps everyone involved throughout the round to make there less down time. But the extra vulnerability for spellcasters can suck, but I've mostly been using PPE Channeling rules from Rifter 21, which makes up for most of the problems.
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narcissus
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Re: Speeding Up Combat

Unread post by narcissus »

ITWastrel wrote:The rocks system has worked for us for years now, combat is faster and more fun.


This sounds really fun and like much less of a grind, but how do you manage your NPC's actions?
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ITWastrel
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Re: Speeding Up Combat

Unread post by ITWastrel »

narcissus wrote:
ITWastrel wrote:The rocks system has worked for us for years now, combat is faster and more fun.


This sounds really fun and like much less of a grind, but how do you manage your NPC's actions?


Checkboxes on my stat block.
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narcissus
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Re: Speeding Up Combat

Unread post by narcissus »

ITWastrel wrote:
narcissus wrote:
ITWastrel wrote:The rocks system has worked for us for years now, combat is faster and more fun.


This sounds really fun and like much less of a grind, but how do you manage your NPC's actions?


Checkboxes on my stat block.


I tried this out with my players today. It was definitely a win. I don't know that combat necessarily moved faster (it still took quite a while to play out a couple of melees), but it was definitely more cinematic, and the players were much more engaged. We're going to stick with it for now and see how it goes. Thanks! :)
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