Combat in smaller increments

[molten_dragon]

I found myself today wondering how to go about replicating something cool I read in a book in D&D. After thinking about it for awhile, I came to the conclusion that it simply wouldn't work, because the length of a round is too long for it to really work.

So that got me thinking some more. Has anyone ever made an attempt to break combat time in D&D into smaller increments? Say 1 second instead of 6?

I realize that this would make combat take a lot longer, but it's not something that I would intend to use all the time, but I can think of situations where it could make things work a little better.

I was thinking about how it might work, and what I ended up thinking was that you could do any of the following things in 1 second.

Move half your speed
Attack once (maybe with a penalty at lower levels that could be negated by spending 1 second to aim first)
Take any swift action

Casting a spell would probably take at least 3-4 seconds, weakening spellcasters significantly by giving far more opportunities to disrupt their spells.

[koboldish]

I don't know about 1 second, but I think 3 seconds could be doable. You can take 1 move or 1 standard each turn, with a 1 round cooldown on standard actions. You can take an immediate action once every 2 rounds. You can take a swift action once every 2 rounds. Attacks of opportunity would need to change, but I don't really know how. Full round actions would either be split in half in terms of effect (for things like full attacks), or have either a 1 round chargeup or cooldown. It would take some work, but I think it could work. Have you looked into GURPS for it's 1 second combat round?

[NichG]

7th Sea has a system where each round is broken up into 10 units, and you can act a few times during the round at random points. I found it to be a lot of book-keeping when I was running it though.

[AzureKnight]

I personally feel that the 1 second system would cause fewer players to want to play casters. After all, why would i only want to get a chance to go once every 6 turns when as a character with melee or ranged combat would be able to act more than they could?

As far as the concept goes, not a bad idea but would get harder to manage as players got higher in levels, expecially fighter types with more attacks and the mage with 1 or 2 depending on feats and spell casting time. So again the mages get the short end of the stick.

[Flame of Anor]

But...why?

[koboldish]

But...why?

It makes combat "more realistic". In real life, you don't wait for someone to kill you. You strike back. I do think it hits casters too much though. I think it would be fun though. Perhaps another stat could come in called "speed" or something, where you would have a percentage chance based on it to get extra actions. Like, I could take an additional 1 second turn if I rolled high.

[Lord Vukodlak]

It makes combat "more realistic". In real life, you don't wait for someone to kill you. You strike back. I do think it hits casters too much though. I think it would be fun though. Perhaps another stat could come in called "speed" or something, where you would have a percentage chance based on it to get extra actions. Like, I could take an additional 1 second turn if I rolled high.

No matter how much you break down the combat rounds your still "waiting" on someone else.

[Darcand]

Waaaay back in the 90s I played in a friend's home brew where he made us all declare our actions, and then everything was resolved at once. Turned sort of chaotic, but fun. Also meant a lot of wasted actions as enemies moved out of range/ area of effect after you declared an action.