Rolling less dice, Some ideas to makes stuff faster Options

[Eryk the Red]

I ran my first big combat last week. There'd been fistfights and firefights (and a fire elemental setting a gang hideout ablaze) previously, but this was the first one I ran with real firepower against the group. About 10 mooks with Uzis, 3 security hellhounds, one inexplicably fast Yakuza lieutenant with a monowhip and one creepy blood mage.

It took too long.

Part of it was time spent looking things up, but there wasn't all that much of that. I just find that combat requires an awful lot of dice to be rolled and I'd like to cut down. I even resolved crowds of mooks shooting as a single roll (4 mooks shooting short bursts is just like 1 one them shooting a long burst, but with short burst recoil).

I have a few ideas for cutting down dice rolls, and I just want to see what everyone thinks, and if anyone has any other ideas.

I like the concept of attacks being opposed rolls, but in practice it's more work than it's worth (to me). I'll go with the suggested optional rule in the book that makes ranged attacks unopposed, but with a Threshold equal to the range penalty.

I've thought long and hard about how to make melee unopposed, but I can't do it without invalidating the Dodge skill (which would be okay if my players didn't already have the skill). So melee stays opposed, which is okay because it's a complex action anyway.

Mooks don't roll for damage resistance. They have three damage boxes (hurt, more hurt, and out). They take one damage if the DV is less than their Body plus Armor/2. They take two and fall down if the DV equals or exceeds their Body plus Armor/2. They die or get knocked out or fall off the building or something else dramatic if the DV equals or exceeds double the Body plus Armor/2.

Also had a crazy idea that I might just give characters all of their actions from all IPs all at once, in one mega-IP, simply because we kept forgetting what IP we were on.

So, right. Any input? Suggestions?

[Jeremymia]

One thing you could do is simply turn every 3 dice into a hit, and then have the players roll what's left over (which will be just one or two dice.) I wouldn't do this, but it would surely speed things up.

[jklst14]

I was thinking about having characters roll Initiative just once and then having them keep that number for the rest of the combat.

[Eryk the Red]

J, my primary goal, really, is to just break each action down to one or maybe two rolls, and gloss over minor actions with a single roll (like having groups of mooks shoot as one).

I don't take issue with the number of dice rolled in a given roll, just the number of dice rolls it takes to do some things.

And I've already stopped rolling initiative every round.

[Zen Shooter01]

A little technique I use and find effective is that I don't wait for the players to roll. By which I mean:

PC: I'll try to leap to the next rooftop.

Me: Jumping, threshold 2.

And while the player is counting and rolling his dice, I'm already calculating the damage he'll take from the fall. If he makes it, fine, moving on. If he falls, I don't have to stop to calculate damage.

Or-

Me: You're hit for 6. Roll Body + Ballistic -1.
PC: Okay.

And while the player is counting dice, I'm already rolling the Pistols dice for the NPC's second shot and making a note of the hits.

PC: I'm going to shoot the NPC Hacker with my shotgun.
Me: Longarms and +2 smartlink.

And while the player is counting and rolling, I'm already rolling the Hacker's reaction and Body dice and making a note of the hits. If the PC misses, fine, moving on, but we don't have to stop for me to roll damage resistance.

Another little trick is to roll initiative for identical NPCs as one roll only, so they all get the same result except for wound modifiers.

And let me say that all my notes are designed to be fast-handling. Years ago - Christ, years and years and years ago - I developed this system.

2/4 Human Ganger #1 8/2=
5, 4 Arves 6/4
Predator 5P-1, 15+1/3, dp 9
-1 P: 3/10, M: /10

That's a human ganger with 2 out of 4 edge points remaining, intitiative 8 and two passes.

He's got reaction 5, Body 4, and is wearing an armor vest.

He's armed with a Predator and rolls 9 dice to attack with it after including smartlinks
and lasers.

He's got ten physical boxes and ten stun boxes. Three physical boxes are full so he suffers a total of -1 dp modifier.

You can fit six or eight of these on a piece of 8.5x11 inch paper. I keep the Ganger's full stats on my laptop for when I need them, but these are the most used combat stats.

[Ki Ryn]

Would it be feasible to replace the defense roll (either ranged or melee) with a fixed number based on the number of dice they would normally roll divided by 3?

I like the idea of taking all of your IP's at once. Maybe you could just replace the extra IP with an extra complex action (or equivalent). Removing the chance to walk/run those extra times will make it seem less silly than the current system. You'd have the old 1st edition problem of the wired guy going 3 times before the normal guy could go even once though.

(it is my understanding that one can move in each IP. If that is wrong, let me know as I'd rather on couldn't do that :) ).

[James McMurray]

You move in every IP, but your movment rate is still limited to your total speed for the turn, divided by the number of passes. If you don't get an actual IP yourself, you move at the end and can't change your movment mode (i.e. from running to walking).

[Eryk the Red]

I realize that there would definitely be a big balance problem with the one mega-IP idea, since the sammy with high initiative and wired reflexes 35 kills everyone in the room before they have a chance to move. That just means I have to hit them harder. I'd probably start rolling initiative every turn again, then, also.

I like the idea of having each extra IP you have then be a free Complex Action (which could in turn be split into 2 Simples, which each could be used for a Free Action, if you wish). So you would only get one free Free Action (which really aren't free at all).

I may actually do this. It should be interesting to see what happens.

[James McMurray]

Anyone who has played SR1 knows this is a horrible idea. Characters without high initiative never get to do anything in combat because by the time their action gets around the rest of the battle has already been fought. Basically you force every character to find a way to get an insane initiative score if they want a chance to do anything meaningful in the non-mook encounters.

[Eryk the Red]

I'm well aware of the problem with taking your actions all at once, before others have their turn. I have some solutions in mind. One of them would be an initiative penalty based on the number of IPs you have. So you can forego one or more of your bonus IPs (chosen when rolling initiative) to negate some of that penalty. I'd be looking at something like -2 or 3 per extra IP. Or stage it up, like -1 for the first extra, an additional -2 for the second, and so on. (-1, -3, -6, -10)

The difference here with the SR1 problem is that high initiative does not necessarily give you extra actions. The same problem can come about as was in SR1, but it wouldn't necessarily be as pervasive.

[James McMurray]

So the faster you are (more IPs) the slower you are (lower initiative)?

[Eryk the Red]

It's a tradeoff. I'm not saying that it well represents a particular part of reality. It's a balance issue. Plain and simple. I'm not saying everyone would like it, but I think it could make my game flow better.

[Eryk the Red]

I never really thought of Initiative as being anything to do with speed anyway. It's response. Your ability to anticipate events and act accordingly, before someone else has really figured out what's going on. It's not actual speed of movement in any way.

[James McMurray]

Reaction is a physical attribute, so initiative is partially based on speed of movement. Most characters will have a higher reaction than intuition, so their initiative will be more speed than anticipation.

[Eryk the Red]

Initiative doesn't let you do more or move farther or in any way affect the rapidity of your actions. Just the order of their resolution.

I agree that there is obviously a physical component, but that is just the other half of response. I figured out what's going on (Intuition), but how efficiently and quickly can my body act on it (Reaction)?

It's a semantic argument, and I'm not really trying to be antagonistic. I just mean that Initiative is not really about being faster, in a raw speed sense, but rather about responding quicker.

[James McMurray]

And I think that responding faster is raw speed (at tleast the physical part). Reaction isn't tied to movement rate, but it is physical. I'm not trying to antagonize either, just make sure I'm understood. :)

[Ki Ryn]

[UndeadPoet]

If reaction is plain physical, why is it used for mages, who can react in combat without any physical action(killing you with their mindpower)? :D

[James McMurray]

They can't kill you with pure mind power because magic is not psionics. If it were, it wouldn't be noticable via perception.

[UndeadPoet]

You know that there are no definite rules about the magic in Shadowrun. A psionic is using the same mechanisms to cast his spells as any other shaman or hermetic.
A fact is magicians in Shadowrun can set you on fire and do not need to move a muscle in order to do so.

[Dv84good]

[fool]

actually they kill you with a physical action (casting a spell) just because they don't have to move to do it doesn't mean its not physical.
Also I tend ot think of agility as how fast your body moves and reaction more of how fast your mind processes information.

[FanGirl]

I feel that it's very important that you consider the alternative to actual, physical dice. For example, I like to use my trusty graphing calculator to generate a random number sequence instead of rolling a bunch of clunky, noisy dice. If you don't have access to a fancy calculator like mine, you can use the many dice roll generators found on the Internet, or even code your own as a friend of mine is doing. No matter what kind of random number generator you use, you can be certain that it will give you a nice, simple readout in seconds. Also, you no longer need to wait while a player spends an eternity shaking the dice before throwing them, or reroll a die that fell off the table, or deal with any of the other attendant hazards and setbacks of real dice.

[eidolon]

Shadowrun without dice: :silly:

[FanGirl]

"Do not try and throw the dice; that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth."
"What truth?"
"There are no dice."
"There are no dice?"
"Then you will see: it is not the dice that are thrown, it is only yourself."