Quote from: jhkim on June 20, 2024, 12:57:19 AM<snip>

Quote from: Fheredin on June 19, 2024, 05:38:11 PMHowever, if you don't have enough rounds, then the entire array of delayed gratification mechanics don't work right. Consider a damaging attack vs a bleed-inducing attack which causes damage over time. Assuming the two are balanced to be roughly comparable, the direct damage attack must cause more damage on the first round, or else it becomes redundant. In actual games, it isn't unusual for these damage over time mechanics to take 3 ticks just to equal the effect of a comparable direct damage attacks.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 19, 2024, 05:38:11 PMHence my conclusion that encounters should have 5-10 rounds in them minimum and that each round should take significantly less time. /Soapbox

That's a fair point, but continuing damage over time mechanics are uncommon spell effects in D&D5 - and even rarer in many other gamea, like Savage Middle Earth that I'm running currently. I don't think a few spells should be the center for determining how the game is run.

The length of combat should be set for what is the most fun for players in general. Based on how that works, bleed-inducing spells should be adapted to be balanced.

If your group really like combats running more than 5-10 rounds, then you should do that. When I've been running or playing in combats 10 rounds and more, it's usually felt like a slog. If my players enjoy shorter encounters in general, I'm going to run them shorter - and if I have bleed-inducing spells, I'll adjust those to be more balanced for the length of typical combats.

My point is that the short round count forces these mechanics to get dropped. It isn't exactly that designers chose to drop these mechanics and then that the round count dropped, but that these mechanics are pointless in a low round-count environment and do not survive playtesting.

In my experience, the slow combat feeling is actually caused by long time gaps between turns and not the objective time measurement of "this combat took an hour and fifteen minutes." You mention Savage Worlds Middle Earth; I have done several Savage Worlds experiments with other health systems and Savage Worlds can at least handle combats of 10 rounds and an hour total time if you add extra wounds or Halo overshields and such. I actually think the limit is closer to 15, but that depends on interactivity and taste. However, the health mechanics are designed for 2-5 rounds. Savage Worlds doesn't let you know exactly how long it will be until your next turn and it isn't that long a wait, anyways.

If your turn takes 5 minutes to complete, it will take at least 20 minutes to cycle initiative. If your turn takes 2 minutes to complete, it can take less than 10. That's the real cause of slow and monotonous feeling combat right there.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 22, 2024, 08:28:23 AMIf your turn takes 5 minutes to complete, it will take at least 20 minutes to cycle initiative. If your turn takes 2 minutes to complete, it can take less than 10. That's the real cause of slow and monotonous feeling combat right there.

Very much this. I push hard for faster turns and faster action declarations.

Savage Worlds is an interesting case because it's usually fast, but I have seen it grind to a halt sometimes. The general danger is players taking forever to chew over what they should do; the two ways they get there are being too used to other systems (especially the Pathfinder/3.5/4e/5e family), and just facing combats that are too hard too often.

In the latter, the more that PC death or failure is likely in any given combat, the more it's immediately rational to stop and think carefully rather than rattling off a trick or an attack and moving on. Sundered Skies had this problem with a lot of strong monsters in the setting book, and a GM could stumble on it on their own by trying to make every combat challenging. Its better to look for ways to make them interesting while still keeping them winnable, and save the really tough ones for rare and obvious boss fights.

Obviously, much of this has come up already, but more lethal, but easy to use critical tables are a simple fix. You can also expand the crit range (as in DCC) for certain classes.  Our system looks like this:

Crit Ranges for Fighters & Barbarians
Levels 1-5: 19-20
Levels 6-10: 18-20
Levels 11+: 17-20

Natural 20 is normal a crit.  Roll another d20:
Critical Table
1-15: x2 damage
16-17: x3 damage
18-19: x4 damage
20: x5 damage

Roll hit location die & describe your critical.  For damage causing spells, if the foe rolls a 1 on their save, it's a critical.  This is super fast in play as there are no charts to consult.  Plus, it's total damage multiplied, not some lame ass extra dice thing.  So if you've got a +3 katana and a strength bonus and that first attack does 15 points of damage and you roll a 20 for your crit roll, you just did 75 points of damage.  We had a 15th level samurai take out a dread linnorm dragon once with multiple crits from his magic daikyu.  It was epic and totally bad ass.

You can also use exploding dice mechanics.  Another house rule we have is that if you take more than 50 points of damage from any single attack, you must roll a Con check or you're dead.  This could be house-ruled to whatever figure you like (50% of total HP, etc.)

In my previous post I forgot about a couple other things we do, particularly for low level foes.  Allowing fighters to cleave in whatever way you want is one thing.  We allow for additional foes within a reasonable range up to the fighter's level until they miss.  Another thing is the total damage inflicted gets spread amongst small and/or swarming foes.  So if you're fighting against a horde of goblins that have 3 HP each and you do 15 points of damage, you just killed 5 goblins.  Cinematic and speeds things up quite a bit.