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View Full Version : [3.5 and others] How do you work abstract rounds into "realtime"?



randomhero00
2010-09-01, 06:24 PM
Even though we take turns everything is supposed to be happening in a fluid manner. But sometimes its hard to imagine how something is supposed to work. For instance...

Say someone falls ~350 ft up. Do they instantly plummet on their own turn or does it take a full round? Not that it would necessarily take a full round (~6-10 seconds) to fall, but aren't things supposed to be happening all at once? So say I have some ability that will let me save my falling friend. Shouldn't I be able to use that on my turn? This came up during a game but my DM argued that it required an immediate action to save him.

Shadowleaf
2010-09-01, 06:42 PM
I believe a round is, what, 6 seconds?

First of all - it makes no sense. Period. Don't try to wrap your head around it. If you have the lower iniative, the bad guy can run at full sprint for 6 seconds before you notice - every round. Unless you can somehow do an action in his turn.

Imagine a D&D melee combat: A hits B 5 times. Then B hits A 5 times. Then A hits B 5 times. Then B hits A 5 times. There are no parries, although this is an important part of duelling with swords.

MightyTim
2010-09-01, 06:56 PM
Turned based combat is an [in some cases, gross] simplification.

Various threads have shown ways where the 6 second combat round rule can be exploited to ridiculous implications.

Personally, I don't care for adhering to the letter of a rule when it gets particularly ridiculous. I'd say, if you've got an ability to help a fellow PC, you should be allowed to do it, assuming he wasn't immediately teleported or something like that.

It sounds to me like you got into one of those situations where the DM really wanted to inflict something on you guys, and just didn't like the idea of you being able to stop it from happening.

mucat
2010-09-01, 07:00 PM
I disagree strongly with Shadowleaf.

The rules have each character move in turn because it would be prohibatively complicated to simulate perfect real-time action...but that doesn't mean it's actually happening that way in the game world. Characters don't take turns moving; everyone is acting at once, though some of them might get a fraction-of-a-second jump on the others...but when the dust clears, the outcome is the one you got by following the turn-by-tuen rules of the game.

I wouldn't think much of a DM who described the action as if each character acted in turn. Wait and see what happens in a given round, then spin a tale which gives the right result without making it sound like the characters stand around waiting for one another to act.

This is easier in PbP games, but I would call it an essential DM skill in tabletop games as well.

And Shadowleaf, of course there are parries! That's what hit points represent: how many potentially lethal blows can you somehow avoid -- by dodging, parrying, or being lucky enough that the sword thrust that might have taken you through the heart glances off your ribs instead -- before your luck finally runs out.

Math_Mage
2010-09-01, 07:03 PM
The only reference I can find for taking time to fall is what happens when a flying creature stalls, in which case it falls 150' on its turn in the first round, and 300' in each round after that. You may wish to houserule this into the game. Alternatively, use physics--6 seconds of falling drops you ~550', 12 seconds drops you ~1500' total, and after that you're at terminal velocity, falling at ~175'/second, so 1050'/round. You can simplify by just using 500' in the first round, and 1000' in subsequent rounds. Watch out for falling catgirls.

And no, it doesn't make sense. You'll need to build some houserules if you want it to.

EDIT: mucat, let's not get into what hit points represent, because ultimately they represent whatever the DM wants them to. And also because last time we did that we got a fairly heated thread of 10+ pages.

Shadowleaf
2010-09-01, 07:58 PM
I disagree strongly with Shadowleaf.

The rules have each character move in turn because it would be prohibatively complicated to simulate perfect real-time action...but that doesn't mean it's actually happening that way in the game world. Characters don't take turns moving; everyone is acting at once, though some of them might get a fraction-of-a-second jump on the others...but when the dust clears, the outcome is the one you got by following the turn-by-tuen rules of the game.

I wouldn't think much of a DM who described the action as if each character acted in turn. Wait and see what happens in a given round, then spin a tale which gives the right result without making it sound like the characters stand around waiting for one another to act.

This is easier in PbP games, but I would call it an essential DM skill in tabletop games as well.

And Shadowleaf, of course there are parries! That's what hit points represent: how many potentially lethal blows can you somehow avoid -- by dodging, parrying, or being lucky enough that the sword thrust that might have taken you through the heart glances off your ribs instead -- before your luck finally runs out.
This is how it should be, but it doesn't really hold up if you think about it. Let's say Villain moves away from Hero, then casts a spell in his original square, which triggers when anyone enters the square.
The Hero will then get to react - the spell is now in effect in the square, which means it cannot happen as you describe - otherwise, the Hero would have simply followed Villain, not allowing the spell to have any effect.
While you can possibly explain most things, it doesn't really hold up if you look too closely.

Volos
2010-09-01, 08:20 PM
Even though we take turns everything is supposed to be happening in a fluid manner. But sometimes its hard to imagine how something is supposed to work. For instance...

Say someone falls ~350 ft up. Do they instantly plummet on their own turn or does it take a full round? Not that it would necessarily take a full round (~6-10 seconds) to fall, but aren't things supposed to be happening all at once? So say I have some ability that will let me save my falling friend. Shouldn't I be able to use that on my turn? This came up during a game but my DM argued that it required an immediate action to save him.

The DMG states that you fall at a rate of 150ft per round. So regardless of how your DM said you had to react to save him, you could have atleast tried to fall after him! Or used dimention door or something.

mucat
2010-09-01, 09:04 PM
This is how it should be, but it doesn't really hold up if you think about it. Let's say Villain moves away from Hero, then casts a spell in his original square, which triggers when anyone enters the square.
The Hero will then get to react - the spell is now in effect in the square, which means it cannot happen as you describe - otherwise, the Hero would have simply followed Villain, not allowing the spell to have any effect.
While you can possibly explain most things, it doesn't really hold up if you look too closely.

You're absolutely right, of course...yet I still disagree with you. :smallsmile:

In a case like this, I think the game is more immersive if both the DM and the players simply rearrange the order of events a bit in their descriptions...the outcome is exactly what the rules indicate, but the way it happened is slightly different.

In the example you give, a would probably say that the villain didn't make his full 30-foot move before casting the spell: he started moving, got a step or two ahead of the PC, cast the spell just behind him, then continued his move. The game rules don't let him split his move like this, but the in-game world doesn't know that. The end result is the same: the villain ends up 30 30 feet from his original position, the square just north of the PC is trapped, and the PC either gives chase (and ends up right behind the villain in the end, just as he "realistically" should) or balks at the trap.

Or, if the PC spent last round doing something unrelated to the villain, just say he was still finishing up that business as the villain moved away from him.

Or these are probably dozens of other ways to describe the events...all of which are more satisfying than "PC stood there gawking while his enemy moved away", while still yielding the same result.

Knaight
2010-09-01, 09:11 PM
Of course, other systems do a better job. Many actually have simultaneous action resolution, so a Burning Wheel fight looks fairly real afterwards, as does one using simultaneous action in Fudge. Smaller rounds also help, the 1 second round of Gurps still doesn't quite hold up to realism, though blocks and parries and such make it much better, as does the smaller discrepancy between reaction time and time per action. Plus, it avoids the stupidity of things like not actually moving out of the way of giant explosions with reflex saves.

Short version-abstract rounds can usually be translated easily enough, D&D just sucks at it.

Math_Mage
2010-09-01, 10:26 PM
The DMG states that you fall at a rate of 150ft per round. So regardless of how your DM said you had to react to save him, you could have atleast tried to fall after him! Or used dimention door or something.

Citation? I'm having trouble finding it in the descriptions of movement and falling. Like I said before, all I've found is what happens to a stalled flying creature, which does fall 150 in the first round but not in subsequent rounds.