1 min = 2 rounds

[Arael666]

A friend of mine is implementing this rule in his campaign, his reasoning is "buffs are too powerfull, this way they'll end sooner and will be used when they are needed". I strongly advised against it, since tinkering with time in dnd is never a good idea and people always find a way to abuse such houserules.

The thing is, aside from the obvious problems, like a 10 round battle happening in 5 minutes and 1min/lvl buffs becoming useless, I can't find a way people can abuse his rulling.

Am I wrong in my assumption? If not, what should he watch out for?

[OldTrees1]

Out of combat:
Buffs with their duration in minutes remain just as long.
Buffs with their duration in rounds just got 5x longer.

So while buffs with duration in minutes are shortened in combat, your friend should expect the party to be buffed more on average prior to combat.

[Necroticplague]

Well, for one thing, while he's shortened the duration of minute/CL spells in combat, he's actually extended the durtation of round/CL spells outside of combat. That's certainly an angle that can be worked.

Ignoring, of course, that the rule can be trivially ignored by Persisting buffs.

[Arael666]

Well, for one thing, while he's shortened the duration of minute/CL spells in combat, he's actually extended the durtation of round/CL spells outside of combat. That's certainly an angle that can be worked.

Ignoring, of course, that the rule can be trivially ignored by Persisting buffs.

No persist, he's fine with DMM quicken though.

[Divide by Zero]

"Buffs are too powerful" is one of the more minor offenses when it comes to the magic system's brokenness, with the exception of a couple spells like Polymorph (and even for those, the problem is with the spell itself more than the duration). So he's not really nerfing magic in any significant way, and in exchange he's breaking verisimilitude in half and setting the pieces on fire. How many actions do you think the average person can take in 30 seconds?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I think they only mean spells with a duration of n minutes now have one of n*2 rounds. Anything else about rounds does not change, as battles would end up looking kind of weird that way.

[Yahzi]

Measuring buffs in rounds is one of the dumbest things D&D ever did. It makes ambushes even more deadly, since they are buffed and you are not; and it makes the best response to every single attack to be running away for 10 rounds and then fighting; and it encourages the 15-minute adventuring day. Ugh.

All buffs should last 24 hours. The caster trades a spell slot for an ability. Fine, why not?

[weckar]

Because the Invokers need their gig too...

[AvatarVecna]

So what you're saying is that your DM took the weaker buffs (the ones whose duration is measured in minutes per level or similar) and made their duration shorter...leaving the powerful round per level buffs untouched? That's...interesting.

[ekarney]

I've been throwing various enemies at my players who are level 12 and we have a Bard, an Artificer and a Wu Jen/Arachnomancer (We ignored certain requirements)

And from what I've noticed when you have individual enemies, that combat rarely goes for more than 5 rounds, not including rounds that you waste getting in range which is 1 - 3, your buffs only end up being applicable for 2 rounds, due to range and circumstances when they're useful.

So if you buff at the start of a combat, where you're not going to provoke an AoO, which is the tactically sound thing to do and a large part of the games power play, then by the time your buffs actually matter they won't be in effect if they're only lasting for two rounds.


Diagnosis: Your DM is either
A. A control freak
B. Doesn't actually understand the game
C. Think you're over optimized or has a vendetta against tactical gameplay
D. 2+ of the above.

[Arael666]

So what you're saying is that your DM took the weaker buffs (the ones whose duration is measured in minutes per level or similar) and made their duration shorter...leaving the powerful round per level buffs untouched? That's...interesting.


I've been throwing various enemies at my players who are level 12 and we have a Bard, an Artificer and a Wu Jen/Arachnomancer (We ignored certain requirements)

And from what I've noticed when you have individual enemies, that combat rarely goes for more than 5 rounds, not including rounds that you waste getting in range which is 1 - 3, your buffs only end up being applicable for 2 rounds, due to range and circumstances when they're useful.

So if you buff at the start of a combat, where you're not going to provoke an AoO, which is the tactically sound thing to do and a large part of the games power play, then by the time your buffs actually matter they won't be in effect if they're only lasting for two rounds.


Diagnosis: Your DM is either
A. A control freak
B. Doesn't actually understand the game
C. Think you're over optimized or has a vendetta against tactical gameplay
D. 2+ of the above.

He's not my DM, I would never play in a table with those rules. He is indeed very green about rules and doesn't have a deep system mastery, but thats not what I'm worried about. It's his first campaign and I'm afraid people would find a way to abuse the 1min=2rounds rulling, but since the playground didn't find any obvious way to abuse this, I think he actually did what he wanted, nerfed buffs somewhat without serious implications in the game.

[AvatarVecna]

He's not my DM, I would never play in a table with those rules. He is indeed very green about rules and doesn't have a deep system mastery, but thats not what I'm worried about. It's his first campaign and I'm afraid people would find a way to abuse the 1min=2rounds rulling, but since the playground didn't find any obvious way to abuse this, I think he actually did what he wanted, nerfed buffs somewhat without serious implications in the game.

Ultimately, there isn't a huge abuse: it doesn't make any buffs more powerful, exactly (in fact there's several that are less powerful now), but the problem is that most buffs, particularly the more powerful ones, are completely unaffected, meaning he hasn't actually accomplished much.

[Quertus]

He's not my DM, I would never play in a table with those rules. He is indeed very green about rules and doesn't have a deep system mastery, but thats not what I'm worried about. It's his first campaign and I'm afraid people would find a way to abuse the 1min=2rounds rulling, but since the playground didn't find any obvious way to abuse this, I think he actually did what he wanted, nerfed buffs somewhat without serious implications in the game.

Did what he wanted? Encouraged a whole party of dark whisper gnome rogues who ambush everything, or just sneak past and grab the loot?

I'd need to import a whole 'nother tanker of vitriol to express my feelings about GMs who don't know what they're doing, but feel the need to butcher the system with house rules anyway. Nerfing buffs and banning persist, how many character concepts has he killed off?

[Arael666]

Did what he wanted? Encouraged a whole party of dark whisper gnome rogues who ambush everything, or just sneak past and grab the loot?

I'd need to import a whole 'nother tanker of vitriol to express my feelings about GMs who don't know what they're doing, but feel the need to butcher the system with house rules anyway. Nerfing buffs and banning persist, how many character concepts has he killed off?

I'm not saying he is right, but it's way easier to convince someone when you support your argument with "look, your rulling is not good, in fact it can even blow up in your face because X" than with "look, your rulling is not good, you did nerf a few buffs, the the really powerfull ones are unnafected". In the second case, all I'll acomplish will be he making another ridiculous rulling.

[Zancloufer]

So while the whole "Nerfing the buffs that don't need nerfing" thing has been mentioned, there is a MUCH larger issue at hand here.

Movement speed. See 30 ft/round with 1 round = 6 seconds meant that characters could traverse about 5km (or 3.4 miles) an hour. Now with 1 minute = 2 rounds they move at 1/5th speed. Characters literally move at about 1 KM/hour (or 0.6 miles/hour). This massively effs with travel time and makes cross country travel literally take forever.

Here is an example that might help it make sense. The farside of the Alps in Italy to Rome is about ~600 KM. If you travelled at a decent pace for 12 hours it would take 10 days (little more than a week) with the standard 10 rounds = 1 minute. At this 2 rounds = 1 minute it would take 50 days, almost 2 entire months. Trips between small towns that would take a day or two become weeks of travel. If you look at the Movement section on the SRD it assumes an 8 hour day, but characters moving at 30 ft/round end up moving about 3.5miles/hour in a 'days' travel.

Heck even a flying Dragon that Hustles for a day goes from crossing countries in 2-3 days to taking a good ten-day to do so.

EDIT: This is also super abusable for crafting. Normal trips that would take 8 hours mean 8 hours travel, 8 hours rest and 8 hours of downtime [for crafting]. Now that same trip takes 5 days, which gives an entire 40 hours of downtime instead. Also spells and skills that use to take 1+ minute to cast are ACTUALLY CAST-ABLE IN COMBAT!

[Arael666]

So while the whole "Nerfing the buffs that don't need nerfing" thing has been mentioned, there is a MUCH larger issue at hand here.

Movement speed. See 30 ft/round with 1 round = 6 seconds meant that characters could traverse about 5km (or 3.4 miles) an hour. Now with 1 minute = 2 rounds they move at 1/5th speed. Characters literally move at about 1 KM/hour (or 0.6 miles/hour). This massively effs with travel time and makes cross country travel literally take forever.

Here is an example that might help it make sense. The farside of the Alps in Italy to Rome is about ~600 KM. If you travelled at a decent pace for 12 hours it would take 10 days (little more than a week) with the standard 10 rounds = 1 minute. At this 2 rounds = 1 minute it would take 50 days, almost 2 entire months. Trips between small towns that would take a day or two become weeks of travel. If you look at the Movement section on the SRD it assumes an 8 hour day, but characters moving at 30 ft/round end up moving about 3.5miles/hour in a 'days' travel.

Heck even a flying Dragon that Hustles for a day goes from crossing countries in 2-3 days to taking a good ten-day to do so.

EDIT: This is also super abusable for crafting. Normal trips that would take 8 hours mean 8 hours travel, 8 hours rest and 8 hours of downtime [for crafting]. Now that same trip takes 5 days, which gives an entire 40 hours of downtime instead. Also spells and skills that use to take 1+ minute to cast are ACTUALLY CAST-ABLE IN COMBAT!

Ok, this is what I wanted to point to him, thank you very much. He'll probably just make bad rulling on top of bad rulling to "fix" the issua, but that way he'll realize much sooner that some thing you just do not mess with (it was the way I learned too :smallbiggrin:)

[Necroticplague]

It also means that those with Fast Healing or Regeneration heal up significantly slower than before. Where a troll could go from being on death's door to completely fine in about a minute and third, to taking a whopping 6 and 2/3rds minutes. Also, since the time to regrow limbs is measured in minutes, this extension of time means there's a distinct possibility it'll have regrown arms before it's at max HP.

Now, there's no real way to directly abuse these rules, because they are strictly a nerf (except maybe by extending the duration of round-based buffs and conditions outside of combat). However, there are going to be a whole sh***** of unfortunate side-effects of nerfing something by altering the basic way that Time works. Seems like it would be way easier to just say "any buff that lasts for a minute for CL now only lasts for 2 rounds per CL", instead of changing the definition of a round.

Incidentally, since movement is measured in round, this makes everything really, really, slow moving. So a human running now moves 120 feet in 30 seconds. That simplifies down to 4 feet per second. This is, in turn, 2.7 miles per hour. According to Wikipedia, your average person's walking speed, on the lower range (lower range of elderly walking speed), is 2.8 MPR. People in this setting literally sprint all-out slower than people in real life walk. A cheetah using it's sprint ability now moves at a plodding 11.3 miles per hour, contrasted to real life, where we clock there sprints at over 60 miles an hour.

EDIT: Oh hey, someone actually saw an abuse with the minute-long casting time spells. Nice catch.

[Willie the Duck]

He's not my DM, I would never play in a table with those rules. He is indeed very green about rules and doesn't have a deep system mastery, but thats not what I'm worried about. It's his first campaign and I'm afraid people would find a way to abuse the 1min=2rounds rulling, but since the playground didn't find any obvious way to abuse this, I think he actually did what he wanted, nerfed buffs somewhat without serious implications in the game.

I'm not clear on whether he did what he wanted either. I don't see how accomplished his aims. He nerfed... minute/level buffs... in that short window of caster levels where minute/level used to ensure that the buff lasted all combat. Given that combat rarely goes above 8 rounds, the minute/level buffs still last "all combat" after level 4. So this fix effectively nerfs a small selection of not especially important buffs for a slice of the character levels where magic is the least abused. So um, yeah. Check back with this guy in 3 months and see if he feels his changes have had any effect.

As far as abuses, no. I don't think there will be. As was pointed out, except for travel distances, whether rounds last 6 seconds or 30 barely matters. In earlier editions of the game, they lasted a whole minute. Rarely ever came into play.

[OldTrees1]

Ultimately, there isn't a huge abuse: it doesn't make any buffs more powerful, exactly (in fact there's several that are less powerful now), but the problem is that most buffs, particularly the more powerful ones, are completely unaffected, meaning he hasn't actually accomplished much.

Completely unaffected?
Let's say you are fine with fighting an encounter with only half the duration of your rd/cl remaining. Previously this meant you could cast those buffs (presuming caster level 10) 30 seconds in advance of a combat. Now you can cast them 2.5 minutes in advance of combat. The pre combat buff period just quintupled for the more powerful buffs. Well surely that is merely a numeric increase right? Not quite. Given the longer time allowed for pre combat buffing, it now takes much fewer spells to have everyone buffed "just in case". Since the cost dropped so dramatically I would personally expect many more buffs to already be applied "just in case".

[killem2]

Stupid change, just another gm who thinks they know better than the designers. Id leave.

[Zombimode]

To the people pointing out the time distortion effects: what I think this house rule means to do is to change all spells with a duration of 1 min/level to a duration of 2 rounds/level.
At least that's my principle of charity reading. This house rule is still rubbish.

[Troacctid]

Most domain feats are nerfed into uselessness by this rule. Law Devotion, Good Devotion, Fire Devotion, Chaos Devotion, Strength Devotion, Animal Devotion, etc.—all pretty much dead. War Mind is hit very hard. Divine Favor is dead, Fist of Stone is dead, Giant Size is dead...

Basically, the minute/level stuff is barely affected at all unless you're CL 1, but the stuff that lasts 1 minute exactly is ruined.

[OldTrees1]

To the people pointing out the time distortion effects: what I think this house rule means to do is to change all spells with a duration of 1 min/level to a duration of 2 rounds/level.
At least that's my principle of charity reading. This house rule is still rubbish.

Ah "1 min/cl => 2 rounds/cl" instead of "1 min = 10 rds => 1 min = 2 rds".

Ok, that rule does have some potential. Just like 1 min/2cl duration, 1 min/cl duration is long enough that one can expect some of the buffs to be applied before anyone is aware of the combat. By dropping it to 2rds/cl one would expect more in combat buffing instead of out of combat "just in case" buffing.

Sure it still misses a lot of information but it is a targeted nerf that would cause a qualitative change.

[Fizban]

It is quite common for DMs to know the game better than the designers, after all many have been playing for more than a decade with the help of the internet when the "designers" wrote a book and then moved on. Someone who tries to fix spell durations by warping time itself is not one of these people.

If you want to truncate the power of magic, this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?210623-3-5-Magic-Remix-The-Philosopher-s-Stone) set of fixes is what you want. Duration changes, caster level is removed from durations of min, hour, or day/level, so they're just 1 minute, hour, or day. Round based buffs are left alone. But that ruleset is pretty harsh and probably not for people that don't know what they're doing.