Speeding Up Combat

[MrAgdesh]

6 hours ago, Tywyll said:

 

Being out for 3-4 turns seems a terribly long time in HERO. One of my players got stunned and basically didn't get to do anything for 45 minutes (I know because he timed it and I barely heard the end of it). How do your players handle losing their actions for long stretches? I mean I remember Pathfinder and I wasn't a fan of getting hit with a spell that meant I didn't get to act for an hour or more while the fight dragged on.

 

Way back, I think that it would have been quite a while, but that was may years ago in early days of playing the game and not really understanding the system. These days a Turn might take about 7-8 mins to resolve, max. So, a player might be out for half an hour at most. That's easily the length of time that players 'would be out of it' if say just one or two of the party went to see an NPC about something. I don't have younger players so they don't tend to lose interest in that short a period, or get easily distracted elsewhere (phones..?).

If somebody is out for awhile I make it up to them by focusing on their character a bit more in downtime and story progression etc. It seems to balance out.  Then again, myself and my Adversarial GM once kept a player waiting on IRC in 2000 for four hours, on Christmas Eve. Just to have to tell him that actually, he was dead. That player still plays in my games and we often laugh about that one.

Well. I do.

[ScottishFox]

7 hours ago, Tywyll said:

Being out for 3-4 turns seems a terribly long time in HERO. One of my players got stunned and basically didn't get to do anything for 45 minutes (I know because he timed it and I barely heard the end of it). How do your players handle losing their actions for long stretches? I mean I remember Pathfinder and I wasn't a fan of getting hit with a spell that meant I didn't get to act for an hour or more while the fight dragged on.

 

This is a good point.

 

One thing to keep in mind as a GM is that players are at the table to play and making them do nothing for extended periods gets old FAST.  So make sure your use of crowd controls is not too frequent and that they tend to be short in duration.

 

It's one of the reasons I ignore the ridiculous restrictions on recovering from being stunned.  If you're stunned you recover on your next phase - full stop.

 

I'll generally have magic items in the campaign to reduce the effectiveness of CC's as well.  A cape of magic resistance can be made to be a small number of points of power & flash defense along with a bonus die or two of damage to break out of entangles.

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

It never bothered me much to be out of a fight like that, because I would just watch and enjoy the talk as a player, but I know it is usually very annoying and frustrating for players -- or they get out their distraction box and stare into it instead of paying attention to the game "dude, I'm unconscious, I won't know what is happening and besides I gotta respond to this text and watch a cat video!"

[Tech]

On 10/31/2019 at 11:03 AM, Doc Democracy said:

 

It is a problem in every game.  It is important for the GM to find ways to keep players involved, even if characters are not.  I have found that handing one of the players, whose PC is hors de combat, a villain to run for the duration of the combat keeps the player very much engaged.  I am content for those players to see the powers and skills of my villains (though I keep some of the the complications hidden) and I find that those players play that villain far more effectively than I would have.  There is obviously nothing more satisfying than driving your friend's hero through 6" of battleship plate armour...  🙂

 

As GM, I haven't had a player character KO'd that long in... well, been so long I can't remember. However, this is very interesting, Doc, should such an occasion arise.

[BoloOfEarth]

On ‎10‎/‎31‎/‎2019 at 12:03 PM, Doc Democracy said:

 

It is a problem in every game.  It is important for the GM to find ways to keep players involved, even if characters are not.  I have found that handing one of the players, whose PC is hors de combat, a villain to run for the duration of the combat keeps the player very much engaged.  I am content for those players to see the powers and skills of my villains (though I keep some of the the complications hidden) and I find that those players play that villain far more effectively than I would have.  There is obviously nothing more satisfying than driving your friend's hero through 6" of battleship plate armour...  🙂

 

I've tried this, and some players just don't want to face off against their friends. 

 

(Though it did work great when a PC was temporarily replaced by a mimic.  I asked the player to run the mimic and said he could drop subtle clues so long as they weren't too numerous or blatant.  The other players didn't catch any of the clues, and the looks on their faces when he finally turned on them was priceless, even moreso when he pointed out all the clues he had dropped.)