Time in 3.5/PF Combat.

[Squirrel_Dude]

How time passes in combat has always been an interesting (read: nonsensical) thing, to me. Specifically how, no matter how large the conflicting party gets, a round in combat always takes 6 seconds, but characters always have the same amount of time to act (same number of actions).

So, a couple quick questions to the playground:
1. What would be the gameplay effects from making it so that a round was no longer uniformly 6 seconds long, but some time multiplied by the number of characters acting in the combat?

The time wouldn't be 6 seconds (that would probably be too long), and it may be better in later instances to switch it to being multiplied by initiative counts (for squads of hobgoblins for example)

2. Am I missing something when it come to understanding the passage of time in combat?

3. Does anyone else have some idea for how to address or explain this perceived problem?

[holywhippet]

In 2nd edition each round was always 1 minute of time which didn't make sense given how few actions were being taken each round.

1. Not sure I get what you are saying. Do you mean a round should be longer if there are more combatants? That doesn't really make sense as everyone is theoretically acting all at once.

2. No, that seems about right. It's an odd abstract system since everyone is acting all at once, but in the order determined by your initative rolls. Second edition was more random since you made initiative rolls each round and each action had an initiative value assigned to it. So stabbing with a dagger was faster than swinging a two handed sword.

3. I've never looked into it much, but I think the Hackmaster system doesn't so much have rounds as time units taken for actions. So doing X might take 5 time units and initiative Y might take 10. I believe combat is treated as being more like real time, so if you don't declare an action the DM keeps increasing the number of time units that have passed (ie. your character is hesitating) but once you declare an action you must carry it through or get a time unit penalty for changing it.

[Hamste]

What I have never liked is trying to explain movement in combat. Everyone is assumed to always have their weapon in movement and damage is from those attacks that get through. This however gets odd when your fighting and someone moves away. You are assumed to get 6 seconds worth of attacks (and an additional one from AoO) but then they somehow get 6 seconds worth of movement away from you which you don't follow? It get really weird and hard to imagine in such a way that actually makes sense.

[bekeleven]

1. Not sure I get what you are saying. Do you mean a round should be longer if there are more combatants? That doesn't really make sense as everyone is theoretically acting all at once.
What are you talking about? I went into the city the other day and it took me 4 and a half hours to open a door.

The next day I walked through the australian outback over lunch.

[holywhippet]

What are you talking about? I went into the city the other day and it took me 4 and a half hours to open a door.

The next day I walked through the australian outback over lunch.

Are you referring to having to spend a lot of time moving through crowds just to get to a door wheras in the outback there are no obstructions? Not really the same thing IMO as that would be comparable to two armies clashing and you want to get to an enemy several ranks deep. You'd still need to cut your way through a heap of enemies to get to them.

[rexx1888]

i was thinking about that earlier today actually :)

you could just remove the arbitrary six seconds from a round. Any spells with time limits, just convert it to that many rounds etc. The problem comes in when you start running timed encounters... but heres the kicker. If you removed time out of the rounds equation, you can just tell your players you are actually timing them. Each round takes however long it needs to take (since everyone still only has a move, a standard and a swift/immediate). Plus, it makes talking less confusing. Always does my head in when the players have a ten minute conversation and then site talking as a free action as their excuse(now they actually have that conversation, just yelling, while everything is trying to eat them) :\

[OldTrees1]

Characters take turns nearly simultaneously. Players take turns describing their player's turn that round. 10,000 Orcs do not take their turn sequentially, they charge en mass. However for non homogenous groups, some individuals are slightly faster than the others. Thus the rules resolve their actions first despite them overlapping the actions of the actions of the individuals to follow.


An alternative way to untangle this brawl would be to give each action a [speed] stat. Determine the success of the action based on when it was initiated but have it take effect after [speed] initiative has been counted down. Movement and full attacks would of course be broken into parts.

[Psyren]

3. Does anyone else have some idea for how to address or explain this perceived problem?

"Don't perceive it."

It's a game (a turn-based game at that), therefore at some point it will fail to model real life and some abstractions need to be made.

[TuggyNE]

Are you referring to having to spend a lot of time moving through crowds just to get to a door wheras in the outback there are no obstructions? Not really the same thing IMO as that would be comparable to two armies clashing and you want to get to an enemy several ranks deep. You'd still need to cut your way through a heap of enemies to get to them.

I think it was some extreme sarcasm.

After all, in most cities it does not in fact take noticeably longer to open a door just because there's a few hundred thousand people around, and the lack of people does not make hikes speed up all that much.

[KillianHawkeye]

"Don't perceive it."

It's a game (a turn-based game at that), therefore at some point it will fail to model real life and some abstractions need to be made.

I agree. The whole idea of taking turns is an abstraction designed to make processing combat actions possible without melting people's brains. Your characters are not really taking turns.

[Squirrel_Dude]

"Don't perceive it."

It's a game (a turn-based game at that), therefore at some point it will fail to model real life and some abstractions need to be made.Unfortunately unlikely. The speed and progression of time seems to just be something that I have an issue ignoring. For example, here are some other complaints about shows/games I like, that I can't imagine too many other people have.

1. Legend of Korra (not having seen the second season yet): How old was Aang when he died, and or why did he die so young? Katara was older than him, but is still alive, how did the Avatar die to where he never met the new Avatar. It just seems like Tenzen is rather young (*checks*, bull**** he is 51 years old and still having kids) for his dad to have died.... /cutting myself off

2. Naruto: When is this happening? Is this feudal japan, or feudal japan with TVs? How is it that the first hokage is Tsunade's grandfather, and yet still everything from that generation is completely lost to public knowledge (ignore Uchiha derpyness). The timeline from the founding of the village, to the current events can't be longer than 150 years. That's a long period for a human life but not for a complete loss of historical knowlegdge... /cutting myself off, again.

3. D&D/Fantasy games. There should be very few things lost to the history of the world, when 95% of major events of the past 500 years should have a still living, elf, eye witness to tell everyone what happened. One of most frustrating things to me is when fantasy setting decides to base its historical timescale on humanity, one of the worst options available.


I could probably go on, but those are the things that first come to mind. Now if you'll excuse me I'll go watch some pro wrestling. The entertainment with the most consistent timeline and characterizations ever.

[KillianHawkeye]

To be honest, those issues seem entirely different from the issue of simultaneous versus turn-based time in a combat scenario. I really don't see how one has anything to do with the other.

[Psyren]

Unfortunately unlikely.

No one can tell you how much or how little to think about something but it seems like a waste of energy, particularly once you begin to devote additional resources to trying to "fix" the "problem."

I'm not sure what any of your points have to do with 6-second rounds but I'll address them anyway:

1) Wiki says Aang died relatively young due to (a) his near-death experience during the avatar state at Azula's hands and (b) suspended animation in avatar state prior to the events of the show. Both of these shortened his lifespan considerably, though 66 honestly is a decent lifespan anway.

2) Don't know a thing about Naruto as I never watched any of it, someone else can field this one.

3) My understanding is that long-lived elves and other such races are the only reasons we have what history we do. Dragonlance and Faerun in particular credit the elves for our knowledge of the world's creation and the roles played by the gods. In Ravenloft and Dark Sun, very few elves (or anyone really) dies of natural causes. In Golarion, the elves were absent for a pretty large chunk of the world's history. Not sure about Eberron, though the Aerenei are pretty secluded there.

[Squirrel_Dude]

No one can tell you how much or how little to think about something but it seems like a waste of energy, particularly once you begin to devote additional resources to trying to "fix" the "problem."

I'm not sure what any of your points have to do with 6-second rounds but I'll address them anyway:I'll try and explain how my brain works. It's weird sometimes, and I should know that by now. The 6 second rounds, and the other events all relate to passage of time, and how it's portrayed by the medium. Specifically how in many cases large amounts of events happen either unrecorded or extremely quickly within a relatively small amount of time.

1. Rounds: All characters are able to act, and more importantly make decisions based on what happened before them, within 6 seconds. This means that as the number of people acting within a combat increases, characters are acting and processing the information more quickly.
2. Aang lives and dies a very short life, but that may be more of a complaint with how the show deals with age (rarely, if ever, mentioning it).
3. The history the ninja world happens in a very short amount of time, but it is lost to the past.
4...

The things I am explaining are closer to being the opposite of what I was describing with rounds. :smallannoyed

By brain is dumb.

[Psyren]

Well again, 66 isn't really a "short" life, particularly for the pseudo-feudal-barbaric era where the show took place.



1. Rounds: All characters are able to act, and more importantly make decisions based on what happened before them, within 6 seconds. This means that as the number of people acting within a combat increases, characters are acting and processing the information more quickly.

Just because there are more actors in a combat doesn't mean they should have perfect knowledge of everything that's going on. This is however hard to enforce in practice due to metagaming, and the ability of the PCs to coordinate out of game (such as dying/debilitated characters able to call out to their friends for help) or even smaller things like being able to take longer than 6 seconds to decide how your character takes 6 seconds worth of actions.

Not all actions rely on the knowledge of what happened before either. For example, an archer who is busily filling the air with arrows will likely do so even if his target(s) are doing different things round over round. And a caster who is buffing his allies or focusing on a summoning spell is likely doing so no matter what anyone else in the fight is doing. So you can mentally consider such actions to be taking less than the full 6 seconds, while other actions that do depend on changing circumstance take more, but that the whole things normalizes or averages out to the 6 second window.

But in the end, what it comes down to is that you simply have to let some things slide.

[Squirrel_Dude]

But in the end, what it comes down to is that you simply have to let some things slide.Nope. Fix everything.

[Psyren]

Nope. Fix everything.

Have fun with that then :smalltongue: