Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
1981 Basic/Expert D&D has a 10 second combat round. It was another differentiator from AD&D, which retained the one minute round into 1989's 2nd ed, as you say.
AD&D- Overpowered Magic Items
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tomsonn2015
Villager
I found the idea of combat rounds representing time in practice always breaks down. At best it's a rough guide.
PHATsakk43
Last Authlim of the True Lord of Tyranny
When PO:C&T was released, one thing that stood out was just how arbitrary the length of time was. It really didn't have any objective value, or at least the previous objective value being removed didn't seem to affect gameplay whatsoever.
One thing that it did highlight was just how ridiculous a 1-minute combat round was when you think about it. If combat rounds were 1 minute each, you would really think that you would need to start applying some serious fatigue rules or something for fights that were more than a couple rounds.
I mean, I know that D&D was never expected to be a realistic combat simulation, but even three or four minutes of life-or-death physical struggle is debilitating, even for trained combatants.
Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
Truth. I used to LARP, fence, dance, and do some martial arts when I was younger. I had pretty good stamina then, and I'm ok now, just lifting regularly, and doing cardio and dancing occasionally, but I tried out soft kit sparring for armored combat league recently, and a three minute round is frickin' exhausting. With a fast pace of strikes, between armor and sucking wind through a heavy helmet I was already pretty gassed about 1.5-2 minutes in. I'm sure if my cardio was up where it was when I was younger I'd have been fine for multiple rounds, but fatigue is definitely a thing if you're going to be fighting for more than a couple of minutes. In ACL and in boxing and MMA you see this come up even with pro fighters- the difference in performance in the later rounds between fighters with superior conditioning and those without becomes obvious. And leaning/inflicting your body weight on your opponent to tire them out more becomes an actual tactic.
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Gus L
Adventurer
I don't disagree with the facts here - it has been my experience as well that fighting or fencing, even when one is young and has trained some is exhausting.
For D&D though, I just assume a 1 minute combat round one is not pressing aggressively the whole time, I take it to represent a sort of passage of arms, where many blows are exchanged and one party comes off better than the other... Now I don't think it's very realistic, and don't consider any time in RPGs to be exact. A round is essentially a round, a combat turn, because the game isn't structured around minutes and hours, but around turns.
At the same time it's obviously that the 1 minute round is effectively a legacy of abstracted war game combat - a minute of combat between units seems perfectly reasonable, but when you move it to skirmish combat or a duel it gets a bit long. At the same time I appreciate the abstracted combat it implies. I don't want my D&D combat to be blow for blow, because that just tempts additional complexity. People will want to pull off fleches and disengages, to have mechanical effects added to their choice of faints or efforts to bind. That won't work either (at least not with the existing system), so abstraction that is easy to understand feels about right.
Once one commits to the level of abstraction it becomes reasonable to add some tactical variety - but it's also at high level. Going on the defense, attacking aggressively etc.
Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
Yeah, completely fair. The one minute round does seem better suited to full scale battles with lines of combatants and formations in movement, which necessarily move more slowly than individual skirmishers. I've definitely seen a slower pace like that in large scale LARP and SCA battles.
One of the sticking points for embracing the abstract action in a one minute combat round is, of course, ammo tracking. Knowing how many sling stones or arrows you've expended makes the number of attacks discrete and concrete.
One of the many interesting tweaks in Metzger's The Nightmares Underneath is that a combat round is defined as "generally less than a minute", and that the quick reference sheets tell you there are 1d6 rounds in a minute.
I'm sure you've also read and enjoyed Ben Laurence's article digging into the abstractions of D&D combat and addressing and trying to problem-solve for ways in which D&D contradicts itself with different bits which seem more concrete vs more abstract, but I'm always going to link it because it's so good.
PHATsakk43
Last Authlim of the True Lord of Tyranny
Yeah, this is the why of the 1 minute round and it really made no sense to retain it. Again, it seems that it had been removed from B/X without issue and it could be just as easily removed from AD&D likewise as shown by the optional rules presented in the middle of the 2E era.
Granted, it is far from the only legacy item from wargamming that managed to hang around for the first 25 years of the game. The whole gaining followers and a stronghold likely stemmed from the RPG being, at least initially considered an off-shoot of wargamming instead of totally an end unto itself. The over emphasis on polearms as well, which make great sense if you're outfitting a unit of infantry but much less for a solo combatant. All the rules regarding charges and setting to receive them, while technically still functional for a 1-on-1 melee, really are best suited for mass combats and units in formation.
As to the "good" that came from it, and was subsequently tossed is probably the morale rules which were removed from the game at the end of 2E, except as DM fiat. Morale rolls are something that probably should have stayed in the game, IMHO.
Gus L
Adventurer
See that's where we might take slightly different paths...
I think that it makes no sense to have rounds measured in actual time units at all, but I do want a high level of abstraction in my "rounds" I don't think it needs to be a minute, but I certainly don't think it should be "six seconds" or whatever oddly exact amount of time has been cited in recent editions. Abstracted combat time, like abstracted exploration time ("The Turn") are to me useful in that they model a period where the players and the world (though the referee) can act. They're necessary as a tool for playing the game. Arguments from reasonableness or reality don't make much of an impression on me when I'm trying to run a game that includes dragons and walking dead. In my experience they too often become something like those arguments about how sharp a katana is (1980's preteen logic: they can cut through ANYTHING...) When one appeals to reality then one's players can appeal to it as well - and there are lots of arguments about pre-modern combat that aren't worth having, and lots of times one needs to simply say "No you don't get to stun/kill/do triple damage to an enemy because you watched some weird youtube video."
How granular the combat round is though is another question. It strikes me as very much a design question of how focused one want to be on combat. If each to hit roll represents a single swing of a weapon then one will likely be pretty combat focused, the descriptions in play will be detailed and specific, while the mechanics can expand to cover what one might do in an individual moment during a fight... I personally don't want a combat focused game, so the idea of a round as a longer exchange of blows works for me. I guess an analogy would be a video game where you press the attack button to swing a sword vs. something more like an auto battler. Since I want to focus on dungeon exploration and overcoming obstacles through unpuzzling them and risk management it makes sense to keep combat fairly abstract. I mean I should make quivers only hold 5 shots and allow a roll after combat to pick up arrows or something, but nah. Missile weapons aren't especially useful in dungeon combats once one adopts a solid "shooting into melee is bad" rule.
That's just my experience though.
Gus L
Adventurer
Absolutely - it's a great post! I've dipped my own toes into the "D&D combat how it should be" pool as well.I'm sure you've also read and enjoyed Ben Laurence's article digging into the abstractions of D&D combat and addressing and trying to problem-solve for ways in which D&D contradicts itself with different bits which seem more concrete vs more abstract, but I'm always going to link it because it's so good.
1) It should have followed the rules of Strategos (or DUNGEON!)
2) I like ranks and files ... but hate grid combat ... sorta? Hate having to have a battlemat?
I actually use this second one in my games - and it makes hallway fights really treacherous.
PHATsakk43
Last Authlim of the True Lord of Tyranny
I suppose I agree, to a point.
There has to be some delineation of objective time duration because rounds also measure movement and duration of effects—everything from spells to clockworks to poison and splash damage.
While a non-fixed arbitrary duration for pure combat exchange would be fine, it’s the other things that are being accounted that make it somewhat difficult to simply ignore.
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