How long is each action?

[Kaiwen]

1 round is 6 seconds, and has at most 1 standard action, 1 move action, 1 swift action, and some arbitrary number of free actions.

How long does a standard action take? Move action? Swift action?

Context: I'm trying to homebrew a Shadowrun-ish initiative system for 3.p and I need to know the relative time taken by each action. I was thinking something like std = 10, mv = 8, swf = 6, free = 1 where 1 round = 24, but I want to know what you all think.
Edit: This means a standard action is 2.5 seconds, a move action is 2 seconds, a swift action is 1.5 seconds, and a free action is 0.25 seconds.

[Unavenger]

This isn't ever specified in the rules. However:

A standard action takes at least as long as a move action because you can trade it for one, meaning that neither of them can be longer than 3 seconds.
A creature who takes a single move action per round to move is considered to be walking, which is consistent with the average human walking speed (about 3.5 mph, which is just over 30 ft/6 seconds), which means they must be spending their entire turn walking.
Therefore a creature who moves and attacks must be spending six seconds moving and attacking concurrently.

A free action takes no seconds, because it's, well, free. That doesn't mean that it doesn't actually take any time, but it means that it doesn't consume any time - swinging a weapon around limits how fast you can move, but talking does not.

Swift actions are interesting because they can't be traded up or down - for a spellcaster truenamer, your swift action is vital compared to your move action; for a fighter, your swift action is almost useless and you'll be trying to sneak pounce on your build because it's equivalent to an extra move action. The fact that they can't be traded also means that action types clearly don't represent amounts of time.

A full-round action requires that you spend both a move and standard action, but it allows you to move further than move+move and potentially attack faster than standard+standard. The implication here is that move-swing-move-swing-move-swing-move-swing is harder than move-move-move-move-swing-swing-swing-swing, even though you are moving and attacking concurrently when you move.

So clearly, the question isn't one of how much time an action takes, so much as what else an action stops you from doing at the same time. If you want to make a time-based system, and you want it to be analogous to D&D, and you want to make it somewhat realistic to boot, you could have separate action tracks for different parts of the body - each tick, you might be able to move five feet, and every six ticks you can swing your sword, and every tick you can say a couple of syllables, but there's nothing you can't spend six ticks moving 30 feet and swinging your sword and rattling off a sentence.

(tl;dr actions in D&D do not represent lengths of time at all)

[Albions_Angel]

You will struggle to get an answer. The books dont say anything about this as far as I know, and for good reason. The actions are supposed to delineate specific things you are doing, while a round being 6 seconds is supposed to indicate approximately, for role play reasons, short periods of time in a chaotic fight.

If you really want to do this, then the best you can get is to split 6 seconds up into ~3 seconds of movement, ~3 seconds of action, potentially ~1 of "swift" action, and the ability to use your movement to extend your ~3 active seconds.

But even that breaks down almost instantly. Consider the following.

You run 30' and hit someone with a sword. Thats one move action and one standard action (assuming you dont full action charge, that is). Now, D&D characters arnt olympic athletes, but by level 4, most of them are close enough that its a nice benchmark. The 100m races are currently done in just under 10 seconds. Thats nice. Thats 10m a second. Or, if we are loose with metres and yards, 30' a second. Cool. So we have 5 seconds for our standard action, which is... to hit the other guy once with a sword. Yeah, that doesnt take 5 seconds. So where does the rest of the time go? On all the other stuff you dont see in a D&D game. The trading of blows, the shuffling of feet, the hits that bruise, graze, or simply miss. Your standard action represents your best chance within that 6 seconds to alter the outcome of the encounter. You can still fail at doing anything, but that was your best shot.

On the other end of the scale, you have spells, many of which only take a standard action. In that standard action, you are rummaging through thousands of components, essentially speaking in sign language, AND possibly saying enough words that when written down, fill multiple pages of a spell book, and entire rolls of parchment. And all that leaves you enough time to also move 30' WHILE DOING NONE OF THOSE THINGS.

Then there are swift/immediate actions which range from standard actions you simply take out of turn, to things that arnt really actions at all, but mental thoughts or one word commands.

If you want to shift to a more stamina based system, go ahead, but you cant really think of this as a time based system at all.

[Biggus]

You can't take two standard actions in a round, but you can take two move actions. You can't take even a 5ft step in addition to two move actions. So, a standard action must take just over 3 seconds, and a move action just under 3 seconds. Perhaps 3.1 and 2.8 seconds.

Free actions probably vary from about 0.1 to 0.25 seconds, for those which aren't done simultaneously with other actions.

And this more or less made sense, with only a small amount of handwaving, until they introduced swift actions. Unless you assume they're done simultaneously with another action (which doesn't seem to be the intent) there isn't enough time in the round for all of the actions to happen, and for all the rules to still apply. My impression is that swift actions are supposed to take around 0.5 seconds, FWIW.

[Crichton]

It doesn't directly change any of the attempts yet made here to break it down, but to further muddy the waters and make it more difficult for you to come up with your answer, remember this:

A 6 second round includes not only your actions, but everyone else's actions too. Yes, you can say that the actions of your turn can take up to the full 6 seconds, and they can by the rules, but don't forget that if you're trying to make some strict definition of action times, you're gonna have to explain how 8 or 10 participants' actions all add up to 6 seconds of overlapping yet mysteriously well-ordered events. (This is what Initiative order does, and it only works because it's an abstraction. Things break down fast when you have to reconcile how everyone's actions -particularly their movements- all happen both sequentially and simultaneously, and yet also take specific, finite amounts of time per action)

[Deadline]

The last version of Shadowrun I played had several types of actions, and they kinda match up somewhat to the D&D actions:

You could take, on your turn, 1 Complex action or 2 simple actions, move your movement speed, and perform any number of free actions (within reason). In D&D you've got a standard action (which is roughly equivalent to the Shadowrun Complex action), a move action, and any number of free actions (but a limit on swift actions, which are a special type of free action).

I'd shoot more for matching action types than "how long" each action takes. Heck, they don't even take the same amount of time in Shadowrun (a Shadowrun combat round is 3 seconds, and depending on your initiative roll, you may be to take several turns of actions in that 3 seconds).

[Hellpyre]

I'd recommend looking into the (somewhat obtuse) speed rules from AD&D. They should give you a start.

[Biggus]

The definition of a swift action is that it "consumes a very small amount of time, but represents a larger expenditure of effort and energy than a free action". So it doesn't necessarily take longer than a free action, but may require more concentration.

I think your estimate of 6 out of 24 for a swift action is too high, I'd put it at more like 2 or 3 if a free action is 1.

Swift actions are in a weird category however, in that while they're clearly meant to take less time than a move action, you can't take two in a round, even if you do nothing else at all that round. So again, they don't really make sense in terms of time.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Here's something to muddy things further; apparently a full-round action is the equivalent of two standard actions.


Start/Complete Full-Round Action
The "start full-round action" standard action lets you start undertaking a full-round action, which you can complete in the following round by using another standard action. You can’t use this action to start or complete a full attack, charge, run, or withdraw.

SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/actionsInCombat.htm#startCompleteFullRoundAction)