Speeding up combat suggestions?

[arosslaw]

Howdy. I was a Champions junkie from 1st ed through the BBB, but for some reason the BBB just didn't click with me or the group and we moved on to other systems (gasp).

Anyhow, after resisting for months, I finally broke down and picked up the 5th edition and was VERY impressed, enough to pick up the rest of the new books. After all these years I'm seriously thinking about running with the Hero System again, but . . .

The one thing that does not appear to have changed is the slow pace of combat. Granted we used to run with 6-8 people, but even with everyone very familiar with the rules and combat notesheets, the fights still took forever.

My question (finally) is, for those using the 5th edition on a regular basis, any particular tricks you've found useful for speeding things along. I always liked the Hero System because I could make anything and instantly know how it balanced against anything else, but we also tend to run a combat-heavy game and I'm worried about the slow pace.

Right now I'm down to considering using either Hero 5th or Mutants and Masterminds for our new game. Input appeciated. Thanks.

[Lord Liaden]

To begin with, I'd suggest you look at the sidebars on P. 252-54 of the Fifth Edition rulebook, "Nine Ways to Speed Up Combat." Exactly what it says.

As an addendum to the book's suggestion that players pre-roll for Attacks and Damage, I'd strongly suggest that you as GM do the same for your relevant NPCs.

[Snarf]

When using other RPG systems, I would often plan so that there was only one major fight per game session. That didn't speed things up but at least it left enough time for role-playing.

[dbsousa]

OK here is dbsousas patented list for speeding up combat

• Prepare, Prepare, Prepare Have everything you will need to run any likely combat that night at your fingertips. this includes a Combat order chart with every Villian and Hero on it, STUN/BODY/END charts for all villains, with checkboxes to make the counting of damage quicker, and a List of rules that you expect might come into play. Fighting near or under water? have the enviromental movement rules handy. Defending the city from Grond? have the thrown objects rules at your right hand...
• At Bat, On Deck, In the Dugout When announcing combat, let the players know whose turn is next. If Speedy goes first, say "Speedy is up, and then it's the Slugger's turn". When Speedy has taken his turn, ask the Slugger to declare his action while Speedy is counting his damage dice, and let the Slowpoke know that he is on deck.
  
• If Possible, Involve a Computer... a simple spreadsheet can do all of your die rolling for you ( I will be uploading my super spreadsheet soon...) and keep track of your NPC's. The computer can always total dice faster than you...
• Less variety in DEX and SPD Race If you have PC's going at SPD 5, 6, 7 and 9, you have a lot of confusion over who goes when. Pick a set SPD (I like 5) and have your fast characters go 6, and your slow characters go 4. A vast variety of DEXes have the same effect.
• Everyone Fudge Let your players make stuff up, and don't worry about the rules. If your PC's are in a hardware store, tell them not to ask you whether they are standing near the hammers. Instead encourage them to assume there is a hammer nearby and say "I throw a hammer from the bucket full of half-off hand tools at my side"
• He Who Hesitates is Holding Give Speedy a reasonable time to make a decision. When he exceeds that time, tell him "You are holding your action. Slugger you are up". You can return to Speedy after Slugger has declared his actions.

I'm tired... I'll think of more later...

[TheEmerged]

Simple stuff?

1> Use a tape measure and miniatures instead of hex maps. You'd be surprised how much faster this makes things. My only gripe is that turn modes are harder to figure.

2> Preroll sheets. Easy to make if you have access to a spreadsheet & a printer. Simply create about 100 or so results for any dice result variation you know is going to come up. Read the result, mark that result off, and move to the next one. Works best for the larger number of dice (6d6 and up), chances are you'll have too many 3d6 rolls for this method to really help much there.

3> Disallow Hurry & Hipshot. Just my experience, but these two optional maneuvers are causing more trouble than they're worth.

4> Egg timer/stopwatch. Cruel, but if you have someone in the group that is regularly taking more than 4 minutes for each of their phases you gotta do what you gotta do.

[jtelson]

While there are things that you can do to take the edge off combat times - ultimately hero combat is still time consuming. Any system with this level of complexity and wargame like feel will be.
Almost all combat delays come from character and GM decision making - this is true in any game - I had to sit through a torturously long combat session in d20 last night because the Gamemaster took more than 10 times longer than the players combined to act. I've seen it in Hero, in d20 even in Vampire where the combat system is designed to be quick and brutal. Maybe play a few sample combats - it helps familiarize everyone with the system and lets you see where you get bogged down. You might even consider taking notes and times for the last few samples so that you can look back and see what caused the slowdowns.

[Yamo]

KNOW THE RULES, BUT DON'T BE AFRAID TO FUDGE

You should know ALL the basic system rules. Consulting the rulebook in-game to find an obscure detail of how Multipower Attacks work is understandable. Consulting it to find out how Dodge works is usually not. You're the GM, the players are counting on you to know at least the majority of your stuff.

At the same time, never be afraid to fudge. If a player wants to try to determine if a NPC is carrying a gun, it's perfectly okay to simply ask for a (possibly modified by common sense) PER roll if you don't feel like opening up the rulebook and familiarizing yourself with the often rarely-used object concealment rules.

Stopping the game should always be a last resort!

MOOKS ARE MOOKS

This isn't D&D where you get experience points for body count and every "kill" should be scrupulously "earned." If a character is supposed to be a speed bump, treat him like one. If Powerman punches a VIPER thug, it should be all over for that particular VIPER thug. Period. Same goes for cannon fodder in other genres. Don't make Beergut the Dwarf use five axe swings to bring down a common orc or Steve Steele, private eye use four bullets to drop a single disposable mob goon. Dramatic sense and genre emulation are two other equally valid reasons to adopt this approach. Screw the dice!

WRITE DOWN WHO GOES WHEN

I can't emphasize that enough. Have that info in front of you at all times.

BALANCE ATTACKS AND DEFENSES CAREFULLY

The important heroes and villians should be able to hurt each other at least a little with virtually EVERY successful hit. Defenses should help against damage, not mitigate it completely. It's fine for narrative purposes to have Powerman bounce some random thugs' bullets off his chest, but his archenemy Sinister Sam's RKA should HURT (at least a little). Try to avoid EB 8d6 against 30 ED situations.

Don't create attacks and defenses in a vacuum. Create them carefully in tandum. I believe that mistake in this area are a big part of the old "Champions HERO combat takes forever" complaint.

YOU DON'T NEED EVERY OPTIONAL RULE

Self-explanitory. If it's not going to actively and SIGNIFICANTLY help the kind of game you want to run, why bother with it?

FOR "HIGH-POWERED" GAMES, ENCOURAGE (OR REQUIRE) THE STANDARD EFFECT RULE AND/OR AVERAGE DAMAGE

For anything that uses double-digit numbers of dice, these come in REAL handy. If you don't want anything too predictable, you can always do something like roll 1d6 with 1-2 being 75% of average effect, and 5-6 being 33% more than average.

NO NON-PREGENERATED VPP POWERS

UNTIL Superpowers Database is good for these. No matter what, don't let PCs stop the game to build new VPP Powers UNLESS it's obvious to all involved that there's no chance the Power's specifics would violate any of the Pool's limits (Flight 12" for a 60-point VPP, for example, can just be announced and used on the spot).

[JohnOSpencer]

My number one rule:
When villians go out, let them stay out! I used to waste a lot of time giving downed villians recoveries, and having them get back up.
If you use a board and miniatures, either take the mini off the board or turn it face down when the are out. This saves you time of PCs worrying about unconsious villians.

John Spencer

[lemming]

Originally posted by JohnOSpencer
My number one rule:
When villians go out, let them stay out! I used to waste a lot of time giving downed villians recoveries, and having them get back up.

I'll second that.
My rules for speeding up combats which is mostly repeating what others have said:

• Have the speed chart accessible by all. It does give extra info to the players, but having them know who moves next helps the game flow faster.
  Villians only get recoveries if it's needed for the story.
  If it's a good dramitic time for the villian to go down, have them fall. though you might not want the players to know that.
  Agents: Use mook rules. If someone hits them by a large margin, have them go down.
  Agents: When a large number of them fire at a target, treat it as an autofire attack. I give a +1 OCV per doubling the agents. 2 agents +1, 4 agents +2, 8 agents +3, etc...
  If the villians are losing, have the rest give up. This is especially for the more theif/merc types.
  Keep things moving. Sometimes, the combats just seem slow if everyone is just waiting for the next person to move.
  Get people used to counting up dice. It's amazing how fast people can do it with a bit of practice. (I did 1000 dice a round once with a speedster without slowing down the game. Though I was just rolling dice and reading off results... 12 spd, 24d6, multi-moveby.)

[zornwil]

Originally posted by lemming
<good advice snipped>
Get people used to counting up dice. It's amazing how fast people can do it with a bit of practice. (I did 1000 dice a round once with a speedster without slowing down the game. Though I was just rolling dice and reading off results... 12 spd, 24d6, multi-moveby.)[/list]

As I've said - POWERGAMER...

(just assailing you in multiple places today)

The only thing I can probably add to this and it's just a variant on what else has been said is LET YOUR REMAINING VILLAINS RUN AWAY if it's a stalemate and doesn't damage the storyline. Remember that first of all it's a better rationale for them to come back later. Also, don't be afraid if it's appropriate just to say "they're way ahead of you" or "you just don't know where they went" if that's both appropriate and not unfair. Sometimes PCs really want to hunt down the runaways, and that can get old and, if inappropriate, a time-waster. Don't know if this applies for the person who asked, but I've seen it hapen and made the mistake of encouraging it myself.

[lemming]

Originally posted by zornwil
As I've said - POWERGAMER...

Yea, as if I haven't heard THAT before.

Actually, it might be good for practice to have a quick power gaming combat game. Buy up that dice counting skill!

[Captain Obvious]

Counting up dice can be quick and easy. Just group them by 10's (a 6 and a 4 together, a 5 and a 5 together, etc). Count the 10's and whatever was left over and didn't fit into a 10 group and you're done.

For counting BODY on normal attack dice, group 8's and 1's together, take out any leftover 1's, and count up the number of dice, making sure to count leftover 6's twice. Actually, you should know how many dice you rolled to start with, so just add one for every leftover 6 or subtract one for every leftover 1.

This is all quite obvious (that's my schtick after all). Other than that, I honestly don't know why people think Hero combat is so damn slow. Granted, I've never been really into any rules-light game where three die rolls determines the whole combat, but even so, Hero is at least as fast as d20, where you spend low levels rolling again and again just trying to get the one hit it will take to kill the enemy, and you spend high levels hitting every time for a miniscule fraction of the damage it will take to kill the enemy....

[zornwil]

[i]This is all quite obvious (that's my schtick after all). Other than that, I honestly don't know why people think Hero combat is so damn slow. Granted, I've never been really into any rules-light game where three die rolls determines the whole combat, but even so, Hero is at least as fast as d20, where you spend low levels rolling again and again just trying to get the one hit it will take to kill the enemy, and you spend high levels hitting every time for a miniscule fraction of the damage it will take to kill the enemy.... [/B]

I just posted something on M&M in another forum stating something similar, I don't see how you can say M&M or, as you state, "standard" d20 is so much simpler when you've got all these modifiers and on top of that, in the case of M&M anyway, there's a number of inconsistencies between different types of attacks, so you have to remember whether a power has a saving throw, what it is, what affects it.

So I'm totally with you.

[Paragon]

Originally posted by arosslaw

My question (finally) is, for those using the 5th edition on a regular basis, any particular tricks you've found useful for speeding things along. I always liked the Hero System because I could make anything and instantly know how it balanced against anything else, but we also tend to run a combat-heavy game and I'm worried about the slow pace.

Right now I'm down to considering using either Hero 5th or Mutants and Masterminds for our new game. Input appeciated. Thanks.

I'm not using 5th yet (I've been off doing other games for the last couple years) but one conclusion I came to over the years of running Hero was that it wasn't the actual combat resolution that took so much time; it was distraction and indecision.

Distraction: Fact is when you've got any decent number of people playing, there are going to be distractions; people will be looking things up in the book, working on a new character on the side, going to the restroom, making a snack...whatever. You can try to be draconic about controlling it, but usually all that really serves to do is tick people off.

Indecision: One of Hero's strengths is it has a very rich combat system; there's a lot of actual, meaningful decision you can make in a fight. In Champions there's often even more, as doing things like managing a multipower or otherwise chosing from a repetoire of attacks for the situation can take some thought. Some people can do this in a snap second; some can't. Again, pressuring people rarely has overall benign effects.

There is one solutiond to both these problems, and it's already in the rules: Holding an Action. Currently, Holding is a little too rigid to solve this; you have to specify situations and so on. But if you let people Hold to a later time and declare when convenient, there's often no need to pause and wait for them to make up their mind, come back from the restroom, get up to speed on what happened while they were distracted, or whatever; you can just give them a short response time, and if they can't come up with it, say "Okay, you're Holding, let me know when you decide what you want to do."

95% of the time this is harmless; the player decides a moment later and acts, and you move on, or decides to interrupt a bad guy, you make the contest of Dex rolls , resolve events and move on. And it cuts out astounding amounts of time wastage.

[Demonsong]

Just drop the speed chart altogether. It’s how I do it. As the book states it requires a few house rules. But just going in DEX order all PC’s and NPC’s gets a phase then start over, once people run out of speed they are done and the faster charters get 1 or 2 extra actions. It has a few flaws but it speeds thing up a lot!