WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

[nexus]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

And really people... long games? Warhammer at 9 hours? Try playing a single game of Axis and Allies.

 

Or a major fleet action in Star Fleet Battles.

[nexus]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

I see restricting the time to make a desicion but I do like to give players, particularly new ones some slack. They are playing characters who are probably more tactically savvy than they are.

[Mentor]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

Or a major fleet action in Star Fleet Battles.

 

So true. Longest games ever.

[Spence]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

Actually' date=' I have almost the opposite question; almost, because I'm asking about duration in game terms rather than real-world wall-clock time. How do you make combats last longer? Very few combats IME last even three full turns, so that Charges and END issues (which should limit the effectiveness of certain things) never really come into play. The answer ought to be stronger defenses and/or DCV's so that attacks are survivable, but Active Point caps and similar campaign restrictions seem to push everyone out into the "eggshells armed with hammers" limit.[/quote']

 

Only if you set Active Point caps and campaign restrictions to achieve that goal. I really don’t know how you have yours set, but if you turn on the “real-world” settings it will be egg-shell with hammer. In most real world combats, if someone gets hit, stabbed, etc, they are down. In my supers games I go for a sweeping action oriented cinematic style. So I don’t use many of the options at all and the game runs great. When I ran a Fantasy Hero game I used the combat options and combats were fast, furious and vicious. Few PC’s or NPC’s could survive if they took a hit.

 

Try tweeking your options.

[Spence]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

Or a major fleet action in Star Fleet Battles.

 

Actually, if you play the basic game with only the basic options it really isn't that bad. We used to take 4-5 Federation cruisers against a like number of Klingons and wrap things up in 2-3 hours all the time. But a lot of people just don't understand the word option, and have to add the other 300 pages of stuff. Then the game can get so bad it takes 3-4 hours just to plot the movement.

 

Kinda like Hero. If you just play the game it is the same or faster than any other game out there. But if you insist on using 100 options it really slows things down. I always get a chuckle when someone insists that something in Hero is broken, and then cite a supplement like the Ultimate Brick or Dark Champions.

 

Hero 5th is the rulebook everything else in an option.

[BNakagawa]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

And really people... long games? Warhammer at 9 hours? Try playing a single game of Axis and Allies.

 

Axis & Allies the game you're looking for is World In Flames.

 

I can finish a game of Axis & Allies in the time it takes to set the board for WIF.

 

(in some circles, it's called weekend in flames, but that's insanely optomistic. nobody I know can finish that game in only a weekend.)

[SableWyvern]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

Axis & Allies the game you're looking for is World In Flames.

 

I can finish a game of Axis & Allies in the time it takes to set the board for WIF.

 

(in some circles, it's called weekend in flames, but that's insanely optomistic. nobody I know can finish that game in only a weekend.)

 

Barbarossa could probably be played out in a weekend, if you really dedicated the entire weekend to it. A full, global campaign? America wouldn't even have entered the war yet.

[Shigeru]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

I have run (and played in) games where combat was the main attraction. WHere the roleplaying happens during combat and between combat. And by "between combat" I mean a few minutes of character development and plumbing...for as long as it kept everyone entertained.

 

The math is what it is : math. Get used to the normal calculations to reach to-hit numbers and damage calculations and its not so bad.

 

My biggest issue was always with maps. I love a good map, so I literaly create my own problems. But maps tend to limit the imagination of flying characters' or teleporting characters' capabilities. It would be great to play without maps, but it never worked out to well (or too often) in my games.

 

Combat took a little while because we always wanted it to be as cinematic as possible (hence the maps and the many combats) but it was never so long that we hated it.

[Guest steamteck]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

Id.

 

My biggest issue was always with maps. I love a good map, so I literaly create my own problems. But maps tend to limit the imagination of flying characters' or teleporting characters' capabilities. It would be great to play without maps, but it never worked out to well (or too often) in my games.

 

.

 

 

Interesting, Maps always seen to spark my players imaginations and really get teleporters/flyers going. getting people in each others line of fire , crazy coll use of terrain etc.Maybe you need different maps.

 

 

Try some at these sites

http://www.dundjinni.com/forums/forum_topics.asp?FID=6

 

http://the-holocron.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=36&func=select&id=1

 

http://www.basecontact.com/

[Shigeru]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

Interesting, Maps always seen to spark my players imaginations and really get teleporters/flyers going. getting people in each others line of fire , crazy coll use of terrain etc.Maybe you need different maps.

 

 

Try some at these sites

http://www.dundjinni.com/forums/forum_topics.asp?FID=6

 

http://the-holocron.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=36&func=select&id=1

 

http://www.basecontact.com/

 

 

Some great maps there! But my issues, specifically with flying characters, is the size of the maps...they are not always wide/long enough. OR the characters with loooong range abilities can only maximize their skills when the map is very, very large (nor nonexistant).

 

I fully endorse maps for creating the atmosphere and "setting the stage". But they can also limit things by their sheer mechanical nature.

[The Main Man]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

Some things that I do:

1. I created two new Optional Combat Maneuvers: Standard Effect Attack and Average Effect Attack. I recommend Searching for the thread that made about them.

 

2. I also prefer the "snappy decision or hold your action" approach. I prefer a count to 10, but 15 is starting to sound better.

 

3. The alternate attack roll is generally better because it requires less book keeping for the players.

 

4. Minion combat is a must.

 

5. Environmental hero rule as mentioned earlier, except that it is based off PER rolls; obviously there are some things that will not appear to a PC, no matter how well they rolled.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

Some things that I do:

1. I created two new Optional Combat Maneuvers: Standard Effect Attack and Average Effect Attack. I recommend Searching for the thread that made about them.

 

If you want to encourage its use, bumping standard effect to average results (3.5 per d6) is a good start. Losing an average of 14.3% of your roll to have stability isn't a good tradeoff, in my view.

 

2. I also prefer the "snappy decision or hold your action" approach. I prefer a count to 10' date=' but 15 is starting to sound better.[/quote']

 

This depends solely on how fast you count.

 

3. The alternate attack roll is generally better because it requires less book keeping for the players.

 

bah! I have a player who put OCV and DCV on a chart, rolls his 3d6, checks the chart and says "I hit DCV X". It's not tough to work with either, in my experience.

 

4. Minion combat is a must.

 

Well, combat certainly does go faster if it's a cakewalk. OTOH, it goes very fast when you pit Dr. Destroyer against a team of 25 + 25 point characters, too. Neither is very exciting.

[Kenn]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

WARNING - the following reflects the jaded viewpoint of an old gamer and older comic fan and should be taken with a grain of salt that has a STR min of 17.

 

 

 

Because, the original designers of the Hero System were fans of Marvel Comics at the time. At the time, the comic book stories published by Marvel were 4 pages of story and 17 pages of fighting (conversly DC stories at the time were 17 pages of plot and 4 pages of fighting). As such, the system was designed so 80% of any given session would be the combat.

[ghost-angel]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

WARNING - the following reflects the jaded viewpoint of an old gamer and older comic fan and should be taken with a grain of salt that has a STR min of 17.

 

 

 

Because, the original designers of the Hero System were fans of Marvel Comics at the time. At the time, the comic book stories published by Marvel were 4 pages of story and 17 pages of fighting (conversly DC stories at the time were 17 pages of plot and 4 pages of fighting). As such, the system was designed so 80% of any given session would be the combat.

 

That's the silliest thing I've ever heard.

 

The only time 80% of any session is combat is because it was specifically planned to take up that time.

 

I see it more like 1/3 of any session is combat, and that can be two combats.

[Adventus]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

One thing I do to speed up combat is to get rid of the maps and figs. I am running a role playing game not a miniatures game. I have found this frees up character to be more creative, not less. I also use the if it fits the scene the bad guys drop when I want them to not when the rules of STUN END and BODY says they should. This eliminates the counting of hexes and making sure someone is facing the right direction and is in range. It allows the combat to be more creative. In real life you don't know exactly how far someone is from you. You don't know exactly how fast they are moving. It adds in a certain uncertainty that is missing if you use the maps and figs.

[Spence]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

One thing I do to speed up combat is to get rid of the maps and figs. I am running a role playing game not a miniatures game. I have found this frees up character to be more creative' date=' not less. I also use the if it fits the scene the bad guys drop when I want them to not when the rules of STUN END and BODY says they should. This eliminates the counting of hexes and making sure someone is facing the right direction and is in range. It allows the combat to be more creative. In real life you don't know exactly how far someone is from you. You don't know exactly how fast they are moving. It adds in a certain uncertainty that is missing if you use the maps and figs.[/quote']

 

I still use a map, but I don't lt the players count before announcing their move plus I use the "if you dink around you are holding your phase" rules. The we move them on the map and I count everything. It leads to the action cinematic event of heroes falling just short of the target and such. A LOT more fun than games where everyone counts and never makes a mistake IMO.

 

As a qualifier, with new players in the first couple of sessions I am forgiving and there is a little advance counting so they can get a feel for the system.

 

But after that it is gone

[nexus]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

Actually' date=' if you play the [i']basic game[/i] with only the basic options it really isn't that bad. We used to take 4-5 Federation cruisers against a like number of Klingons and wrap things up in 2-3 hours all the time. But a lot of people just don't understand the word option, and have to add the other 300 pages of stuff. Then the game can get so bad it takes 3-4 hours just to plot the movement.

 

I know you could scale things back and we often did. I said major fleet actions which were big battles, with over 10 ships, sometimes on a side, fighters, drones, etc. and those took awhile. They were also allot of fun so it wasn't a critisim. My old group played Star Fleet battles for years. It was practically our go to game when no one felt up to gming the evening.

[Spence]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

I know you could scale things back and we often did. I said major fleet actions which were big battles' date=' with over 10 ships, sometimes on a side, fighters, drones, etc. and those took awhile. They were also allot of fun so it wasn't a critisim. My old group played Star Fleet battles for years. It was practically our go to game when no one felt up to gming the evening.[/quote']

 

I remember those games too. Ah those were the days

[GamePhil]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

I've generally found most of it comes from the attack to defense ratio rather than the complexity of the system. If the target does not go down quickly, it's a longer fight than if he does. Conversely, when I send a small horde of 25 point characters against Heroic ones, the fight tends to end much faster.

 

Edit: Didn't realize we were on the 7th page, I'm sure someone's said something to that effect. So, me, too.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

I've generally found most of it comes from the attack to defense ratio rather than the complexity of the system. If the target does not go down quickly' date=' it's a longer fight than if he does. Conversely, when I send a small horde of 25 point characters against Heroic ones, the fight tends to end much faster.[/quote']

 

This can be a real issue in many groups. Player A envisions his character as "hard to hurt", and he's not happy with the average 12d6 attack putting 17 STUN through his 25 PD. So he wants to buy his PD up to, say, 35. Now only 7 gets through.

 

But it previously took 4 average hits to drop his 60 STUN below 0. Now it takes 9, and he gets more recoveries in the meantime. Longer fight for him.

 

But the other players are annoyed that they spend a lot of time KO'd while this character is still in combat. They're bored. So they buy up defensive abilities to keep them in the game, and they're KO'd slower.

 

The GM now notices his player's characters last much longer than the NPC's, so their defenses have to be increased to stay competetive.

 

Before you know it, average attacks get 2 or 3 STUN through average defenses, so of course combat lasts forever.

 

One way of dealing with your attack/defense ratio being too low is to take all those villains with the same average attacks and same average defenses as the PC's, drop their defenses by 10 and boost their attacks by 3 DC's. Now they take, and inflict, abouut 10 more stun per attack, on average, and combat ends faster.

 

Of course, Player A still envisions his character as "hard to hurt", and now he's not happy with the average 15d6 attack putting 17.5 STUN through his 35 PD. So he wants to buy his PD up to, say, 50... The group essentially needs to agree that combat drags too long, and agree that characters should be built to take significant damage from average attacks in order to speed things up.

[Shigeru]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

Our standard solution to the attack/defense ration argumnents was a drastic one....

 

No resistant defenses allowed.

 

Sure, Normal damage attacks exist. But once push comes to shove and the kid gloves come off, combat doesn't last so long.

 

Its also a lot easier to say that an NPC is out of the fight when he takes an impairing/disabling injury to an extrmity versus takign a lot of STUN. When your leg's broke, uits time to say UNCLE.

[archermoo]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

One thing I do to speed up combat is to get rid of the maps and figs. I am running a role playing game not a miniatures game. I have found this frees up character to be more creative' date=' not less. I also use the if it fits the scene the bad guys drop when I want them to not when the rules of STUN END and BODY says they should. This eliminates the counting of hexes and making sure someone is facing the right direction and is in range. It allows the combat to be more creative. In real life you don't know exactly how far someone is from you. You don't know exactly how fast they are moving. It adds in a certain uncertainty that is missing if you use the maps and figs.[/quote']

 

My experience has been that removing maps and figures can sometimes speed things up a very small amount. But it certainly hasn't enhanced the creativeness in any game that I've ever played or seen. It is hard to creatively use the scenery if you don't know what it is. Most of the time, again in my experience, it tends to devolves to "I move to the closest bad guy and punch him".

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

My experience has been that removing maps and figures can sometimes speed things up a very small amount. But it certainly hasn't enhanced the creativeness in any game that I've ever played or seen. It is hard to creatively use the scenery if you don't know what it is. Most of the time' date=' again in my experience, it tends to devolves to "I move to the closest bad guy and punch him".[/quote']

 

It can also slow things down if the player wants to get a sense of his options. If I have a 4" radius area effect attack, I want to have some idea of the placement of the opposition before I lay that down. I'm not talking about conting out the hexes to catch the maximum number of VIPER agents on the fringes of my AoE, but about knowing where MightyMan and NinjaLad are in relation to those clusters of agents.

[archermoo]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

It can also slow things down if the player wants to get a sense of his options. If I have a 4" radius area effect attack' date=' I want to have some idea of the placement of the opposition before I lay that down. I'm not talking about conting out the hexes to catch the maximum number of VIPER agents on the fringes of my AoE, but about knowing where MightyMan and NinjaLad are in relation to those clusters of agents.[/quote']

 

Agreed. With a map, I can just take a quick look and see where everyone is during someone else's turn so that I'm ready to go on mine. Without one I've got to wait until it is my turn, and then start asking a lot of questions about where everyone is in relationship to everyone else to figure out what I can do. Or just settle for being less creative and just punch/shoot someone.

[Frenchman]

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

 

1) CV calculations: There always seems to be at least one guy in the group who just has to work out every single modifier that could apply to the roll. So, the rest of the group sits idly by while the number-crunchers go at it. This includes hex-counting, which I noticed someone mentioned. My attitude (as a player) is to look at the GM and simply ask, "Did it succeed or not?", or (as a GM) to come up with a number partly based on how cool the maneuver is and tell the player to go ahead and roll it. This latter method has been known to bring the number-crunchers to tears of rage.

 

Theres nothing that I hate more than being expected, or required, to keep track of every characters CSLs, CVs, PSLs, and maneuvers so that the lazy players don't have to wrack their delicate minds with basic math - I know I'm good with numbers and I don't mind helping out once in a while, or helping new people keep track of everything - but after a year or more of gaming in a group every week, you can't say that you're "new," and there's no excuse for not using at least one of the methods that have been suggested to make tracking those things easier...

You may be able to tell - I've got more than one of them in my group.

 

This can be a real issue in many groups. Player A envisions his character as "hard to hurt", and he's not happy with the average 12d6 attack putting 17 STUN through his 25 PD. So he wants to buy his PD up to, say, 35. Now only 7 gets through.

 

But it previously took 4 average hits to drop his 60 STUN below 0. Now it takes 9, and he gets more recoveries in the meantime. Longer fight for him.

 

But the other players are annoyed that they spend a lot of time KO'd while this character is still in combat. They're bored. So they buy up defensive abilities to keep them in the game, and they're KO'd slower.

 

And this is where the GM grows a pair and tells them no, finding a different way to make them useful or giving them something else to do in the extra 5 minutes that the other guy is concious.