Quickening the Pace- D&D combat needs to be faster

[OgreBattle]

On iteratives there's still something satisfying about rolling an additional d20... as long as those iterative rolls are still on RNG. I like how Trailblazer replaced iteratives with:

* +6 BAB gives you the option for two attacks at -2
* +11 BAB gives you two attacks at -1
* +16 BAB gives you two attacks at no penalty

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Would changing from a hitpoint to a hitbox system (everyone has 10 hitpoints) save much time? You roll attack, if you succeed your opponent rolls soak.

[Chamomile]

So now instead of two rolls for attack and damage we have two rolls for attack and soak, and also that second roll is made by a different person. Why would you expect that to make things faster?

[ishy]

I think iteratives can be condensed into a single roll too- maybe something like each iterative you would normally get gives you a +2 to your roll, and for every 2 by which you exceed their AC you deal an extra attack worth of damage to a max of the iteratives you'd normally get.

So a 6th level full BAB character gets +6 to their attack, plus another 2 on full-attacks, and if they beat their enemy's AC by 2 or more, they deal (weapon+str)x2. If they beat it by four, they still only deal (weapon+str)x2.

Not really, no. Pretty similar to the pathfinder variant, so here:

The Pathfinder Unchained one-roll attack routine is basically gibberish. It doesn't really interact properly with stuff like Two Weapon Fighting or Rapid Fire, it screws people who prioritize damage bonuses over to-hit bonuses (like sneak and power attackers), it completely fucks anyone who tries to defend themselves with armor class, and it makes rending beasts like the Girallon into inescapable death blenders.

If that sounds like it pretty much takes every viable weapon-based character to the woodshed for punishment beatings... you're almost right. I think the San Diego Supercharger doesn't much care. But the shield fighter, the archer fighter, and the ninja all cry tiny tears.

It wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea to make a new edition where people rolled one attack roll on their turn like 4th edition D&D. But you do have to rewrite all the warrior archetypes around that premise. Like the Tome of Battle, and not at all like Pathfinder Unchained.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

So now instead of two rolls for attack and damage we have two rolls for attack and soak, and also that second roll is made by a different person. Why would you expect that to make things faster?

rolling a single d20 vs a TN instead of 6d6 fireball damage, AC and Ref/Will saves working with the same mechanics, everything being standardized to 10 hitboxes, that sort of thing.

[Neurosis]

Different gamers place different priorities on fast versus deep when it comes to combat. For instance, HERO is fast enough for me where D&D generally isn't deep enough. I point this out because D&D or any game where each character gets one turn is lightning fast compared to any game where each character gets a variable number of turns each turn (HERO, Shadowrun). As somebody who's designed both kinds of games (one turn per round versus variable turns per round based on speed) I can attest that "one turn per man" is always substantially faster.

All but the most elaborate D&D combats can be resolved easily enough in an hour or less, as long as no one at the table is being "that guy" who doesn't know what he wants to do when his turn comes around, and is still pouring through rulebooks looking for the best spell to cast or whatever. (And personally, as a GM, I am a fan of the "ten second shot clock" rule for PC turns.)

D&D 3.0 is the first RPG I learned, and it's near-dungeonpunk take on fantasy has greatly informed my tastes and expectations. Generally speaking, I prefer D&D for fantasy, possibly because I'm not aware of another Iron Age fantasy game that even comes close to be as not bad as D&D 3.X, except maybe Pathfinder (it's worse than 3.x, but better than everything else).

If someone said "pick a system, I'll run a fantasy game with it" I would probably actually pick Mutants and Masterminds with a couple variant rules because it's even more flexible than d20, what with being point buy. But I know one person who runs M&M and he moved to San Diego last year.

So in absence of a better fantasy rpg, I work on tweaking D&D, even if it's just academic. D&D 3.X is not the best Iron Age fantasy game, it's the least bad and has a lot of problems that need to be fixed, like 30 second scuffles taking 30 minutes to resolve.

I completely agree with the jist of what Prak said in this post. D&D 3.X is simultaneously the "least bad" option AND "perfectly adequately", IMHO.