Man, combat is running a lot slower than I would like. What techniques do you folks use for speeding up combat without house-ruling custom systems and streamlines? Printouts, initiative trackers, computer programs, etc?

Combat is getting to the point that I just want to avoid it altogether, sheesh.

Honestly, combat is faster than 3rd ed. in my opinion. The only thing I like of the old combat system is the fact that a little kid with a hand gun could kill you if you rolled right. You could stage up the dmg. to deadly if you rolled right. In 4th ed, it seems less likely to do so as the only way to "stage up" damage is net hits and that usually isn't enough to kill somebody in a single shot. I just liked the constant fear that any second you could die by anyone. But i digress, 4th ed. combat I think is faster...it's just a matter of any other RPG and thats getting used to the system so you can use it quickly. I really can't think of any other way to make combat faster, do you really think it to be that much of a chore?

If everyone agrees, a combat turn tracker that rolls initiative can help a lot. I wrote one for SR3 that we use, and it helps immensely as the GM doesn't have to roll initiative for every NPC or collect initiative scores that the players rolled; if the system has a damage tracker, that helps also. It cut the average combat turn from a 10 minute event to about 2 minutes.

Haven't actually done it for SR4, but after looking at the rules, I imagine it would help a bit less, but still be helpful.

Check Arron's page out, it may have something you'll like.

For all of the games my group runs, we use index cards.

Write down the name, quick skill list, stats and a combat meter. We have laminated blanks that I can fill in with a wet-erase marker for the goons since they change regularly and non-laminated ones for the players.

Keep the cards in order and go through the list until everyone is out of passes. Then re-roll initiative, re-order your cards and you are good to go.

ANother thing that I find helps is for the players to know what they plan on doing and reference the book for any odd rules and modifiers before their turn. That way they just need the modifiers that the goons bring in (armor rating for called shot etc) and they are ready to go.

You could just make up a skill "Attack" and another "Defend" and have attackers and defenders roll their respective dice. Whoever has the most hits wins - either killing the target or not even getting a flesh wound.

Once you master that, you can move onto the "Shadowrun" skill and the "GM Opposition" threshold, so you don't actually have to roll more than once during a game, and you can skip all that annoying "role-playing."

Some ways to speed up combat:

1) Players total up their dice ahead of time. This means both having the number written down (Agility+Skill+Smartlink/Laser+Specialization) AND having the dice counted out ahead of time. As GM, you should be prepared to do the same for your NPCs.

2) No cross talk. When players get distracted while combat is going on, they lose focus on the game. That hurts several ways: you have to repeat descriptions to them or other players who didn't hear the first time, they need time to process that info before they make up their mind, they don't have rule references ready, etc. If everybody is listening to the GM and/or the active player then you can be planning your next move before your turn comes up. That helps out with Number 1 a lot.

3) Know your facts: spell drain codes, grenade scatter and especially DAMAGE CODES (I don't know how many times I've had players have to open the book to figure out what damage they're doing). This stuff should be either memorized or written down (on the character sheet or an index card).

4) WING IT! You don't need to get every single +1 or -1 exactly right on every shot. You can be off by quite a bit, but unless the fight is between guys of exactly the same skill level it's all coming out in the wash, anyway. This saves a lot of time flipping through the book - you can do that at home.

5) Time limits. This one is real controversial, especially if your players like to sit and figure things out. Tell them that they've only got 30 seconds from when you call on them to have their dice rolled - it's over TEN TIMES the amount of time that their character has. You should be prepared to move awfully fast with your NPCs if you want this rule to work, though. If the player can't figure out what he wants to do skip him and move to the next person - if the player can't figure out how much damage he does just rule that it was a freak graze that did no damage at all. You should only need to do this a couple of times to get their attention and get things moving a lot quicker.

I know you didn't want house rules, but I will report that our group will be trying the "Don't roll damage resistance" rule tomorrow. I'll let folks know how that goes if anyone's interested.

How eloquent of you. Have you ever considered a career in statecraft? Or perhaps someone's looking for a good stump somewhere?

Write down the modifers for tests on a note card so you don't flip around a lot.
In fact copy all summry charts down.

OK, as promised a report on subtracting armor instead of rolling damage resistance.

We played about six hours, got in two fairly short runs. Overall, I didn't notice any real difference in how easy or hard it was to take guys down. It did speed things up a bit - although it could be somewhat tough running all that math around. Definitely favors ranged combat over melee, though, because it's hard to damage unarmed against a guy with 6 impact going on - our 7 Strength Ork with Unarmed 4 and Agility like 5 did a piddly 1 damage to a Triad mage. Definitely not his high point.

But overall, I like how it worked out. It also has the side effect of equalizing APDS and EX ammunition.

What ratio did you use? If it's 1:1 the value of armor just shot through the roof.

Admin post: James Mc, Emo, SL James, while I have been very tolerant of off-topic stuff as of late, but if you'd confine it to threads that are already pointless, that would be appreciated.

During Combat the GM is always busy, the players aren't. Make it clear to the players that when it isn't their action, that is the time for them to be looking up the rules that apply to the action they intend to make. Don't make the GM look up something they can lookup themselves.

If after a very short reasonable time to decide on an action and the player still can't decide what to do. Impose a "Held" action and get back to them after the next person. After seeing a prepared player get more attention, it's amazing what happens the next time around the IP cycle.

The players that weren't paying attention during someone else's turn when things were being described and ask for a replay. Make them use an "Observe in Detail" action.

Get one of those little hourglasses out of a boardgame like Pictionary and tell your players that that is the amount of time they get for their action(s). If they fail to declare anything IRL, then their character is left gawking and indecisive in game. Also as GM you can do a bit of delegation, let somebody else track initiative order and passes. I havent come up with a way of dealing with the "extra long dice shake yet" but I am going to try Aaron's colorcoded EasyDice trick next time our group gets together to speed up counting.

I have some beginning players and a guy with diagnosed ADD & Dyslexia so I'm a bit more generous with the time, I want everyone to have fun even if it means taking 2-3 sessions to finish a run most groups could finish in one night.

In SR3 you can default to an attribute if you have no skill. IIRC it's +2 to the target number.

In both systems a little kid killing you is pretty hard to have happen, but possible. Combat in SR4 is faster to me because you don't have to portion out your combat pool, making decisions with every single roll as to how much you should use and how much you should save. Also SR4 tends to be deadlier IMX. It's harder to flat out kill someone with a single shot unless you're really geared towards doing that, but it's also harder to totally avoid damage unless you're really geared towards doing that.

Ah, that's right...attribute defaulting - forgot about that...but I think it was more like +4 or +6 to the TN. SR4 is still much more risky.

How much or little having a combat pool slowed things down really varied by player. But for players who have to carefully weigh the use of every combat pool die they have and who went out of the way to develop huge combat pools, and then had Karma Pools of 10+ on top of that, those could create major delays. Edge topping out at 8 for a Lucky Human reduces the number of times those decisions have to be made (I haven't figured out how to increase the decision making speed yet). As for SR4 being deadlier, I haven't noticed that yet but I have noticed that three entire classes of weapon (hold-out, light, and machine pistols) are no longer useless pieces of dead weight.

I too have (so far) found SR4 combat is slower. However, the plain and simple fact is that SR4 combat has more rolls than SR3 did. The addition of the "bullet dodge" test for ranged combat means there's one extra roll that SR3 never had, so that's going to slow things down. I'm looking seriously at the "no reaction test, range is now a threshold" optional rule.

On the "don't change rules" side. Players should know their skills/rolls. Make sure they know what skill they're rolling, what its related attribute is, and the total Dice for both. One thing I did with SR3 and am starting to do with SR4 is "assign" certain modifiers to players and others to the GM. For instance, I can't always remember what gear a character has so I have told my players that the modifier for their gear (smartlink) is their responsibility to keep track of. Injury modifier is another one. Then all I need to tell them are the circumstances when those don't apply for whatever reason. Also, since the player's are keeping track of their skills, when it comes time to make a test I will just tell them the "net situational modifier." This speeds things up as it doesn't put all the responsibility on the GM.

huh? SR3 has a dodge test. it's optional, sure, but it's there.

As in SR3, you don't dodge the bullet. You dodge the shot.

Inconsistent. Tests in SR4 are always opposed test if two entities (shooter, target) working against each other are involved.

Even though "Buying Hits" (SR4, pg.55) doesn't seem like it was made for this purpose, you could use that option in place of rolling for any tests your group finds the least exciting to roll.

If they get a kick out of rolling attack, ditch & damage dealt checks, then you could buy hits for damage soak checks to help speed things up a tiny bit.

Not sure how it will actually play out, but it seems better (to me, at least) than the alternate combat (pg. 69) armor reduces attack DV idea.

We also noticed that our mage didn't really need to roll when casting low force Heal spells outside of combat, because he had so many dice for casting and drain resist. This seems like a good application of the Buying Hits as well.

You could also not roll at all, but use the buying hit rule for every roll in combat . . .

I recall reading somewhere about trading in dice for hits. Does anyone else read something along those lines?

@phasmophobic:

Rules need only 20% of combat time. GM and players desicions need the rest. If the GM wants to speed up combat, he has to press the players. Do not let them think 1 minute about what the want to do. Calculate the combat modifiers for them if they cant do it in 10 seconds. Do not let them "celebrate" every dice roll, there is nothing left to think about (no combat pool to distribute), they just have to roll.

In my expereince, a good GM can accelerate combat by a factor of, say, 3 if he wants to and is prepared. The most important things are fast combat modifier calculation and to spend no time on figuring out who can act next (write the complete sequence from first to last down, in the heat of battle just the initiative and passes wont do).

@mrcartman: I just wanted to show, that there is a reason why something is rolled. It is kind of unfair to let the shooter roll, but not the defender.