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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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 ).

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).

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)?

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

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.

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.

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.

Shadowrun without dice:

"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."

Nope. Nah. No, I'm pretty sure there are dice, and that it's fun to roll them.

or atleast let the mooks and hellhounds come in waves so that there isnt as many people in play at ones. even feng shui gets bogged down when 10+ mooks are trying to do stuff.

The only game I've ever seen that *doesn't* get bogged down with that many combatants is Savage Worlds. And a combat that size in SW could take less than five minutes, if everyone knew what they were doing and kept lookups to a minimum. If you want fast combat, no edition of Shadowrun really fits your bill, let alone SR4.

I agree with Cain on this one (albeit without the "let alone SR4" jab at the end).

but then savage world is all about standing or fallen, no counting of HP or anything like that. ok, so you have a similar mechanic in feng shui, but there the real bog is the counting of when a NPC next steps up to the plate and do something...

by the looks of it, savage world have more in common with a miniature game then a rpg, but thats my take on the story.

Feng shui doesn't really get bogged down if you're rolling properly. I can handle the actions of 5-10 mooks in under 30 seconds by rerolling the 8 or so dice they've got 5-10 times, and letting people know what happens. "Duke, the bodyguards over near the door are just unloading on you as you roll for that table, and one of them grazes your thigh. Resist 11 damage." That's it for the mooks that shot...

As in any RPG, it's all about the dichotomy of "fast play" versus "realistic play."

I've played a (never-will-get-published) game that had damage effects so detailed that whenever you got hit, the attacker rolled to see what location (head/neck/chest/right arm/left arm/abdomen/right leg/left leg), if he hit bone (percentage chance based on location), and if he hit a critical spot (eyes/throat/heart/right hand/left hand/groin/right foot/left foot), which would incur additional effects. If bone was hit, then you have to check if it was broken or if it helped reduce the damage. Then you have to keep track of any significant bleeding as a damage-over-time. Oh, and cumulative damage penalties are tracked separately for each hit location and your current fatigue level.

That amount of detail would be awesome in a computer game, but it was a sluggish bitch and a half to run on dice and paper.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I've played checkers.

.... Obviously neither extreme is going to be very satisfying (and everyone's tastes will vary), so it's every RPG's goal to find a good (read: "marketable") balance between speed and realism.

For those of us who are PDA-enabled I would suggest putting it to good use. I have a program called DicePro for my Plam that has helped me speed things up a lot. It's the best dice-roller program I've ever seen, as it includes pretty much every kind of dice rolling system in existence when it was created (like SR3 and the Rule of Six, or Star Wars D6's Wild Die!).

It has several "pages" that can be labeled (Goon, enemy Sam, Mage) then several "slots" on each page that can also be custom set and labeled (SMG Attack, B Resist, Drain). It also allows you to keep slots "generic" so if you need you can just roll x Dice vs. y TN (which, of course, is always 5).

I'm not sure if its available for Pocket PC, but for those of you with Palm's I highly recommend it.

Honestly, the mooks weren't what was slowing down my game. They did come in a couple waves (a few different patrols) and since I resolve a group of mooks' shots as one action, they really didn't slow anything down especially. More difficult were the spirits the player mage was commanding and just sort of the general flow of things.

I know SR has never had quick combat. I'm a compulsive tweaker with RPGs (I not long ago, before 2nd Edition came out, took it upon myself to completely rewrite the combat rules in Exalted). I prefer to try to adapt whatever system I use to my current needs.

It's all really a big experiment for me, I have a bizarre fascination with game rules themselves (I get really excited about basic overarching rules concepts that I think are good and clever).

So, yeah, I'm breaking the system a bit to make it do what I want. That's just what I do, and I wouldn't bother if I didn't on some fundamental level like the system.

Yeah, Mdynna, I'm totally in love with using a PDA or laptop to do all the dierolling and NPC sheet tracking. It keeps everything in one physical place, makes IP tracking easier, keeps the players from (even subconsciously) counting how many dice you're throwing, and effectively includes a GM screen.

Mind you, it's a fairly expensive GM screen, but such is the price of technophilia.

DV84good:

I know it was a while ago that you asked , but the 15+1/3 notation for the Predator means that the weapon has 15 rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber, and that the character is carrying 3 extra magazines.

Thanks, I going to use that systems.