I'd definitely extend it. But as always, it depends on the group.
I have, on occasion, implemented a "game time is real world time" rule, but that has usually been when there has been some time sensitive puzzle or activity going on and I wanted the players to feel a sense of urgency. I don't think I've ever done it in combat.
One thing I've done is ask one of the players to be the "set-up GM" and his job is to be one step ahead in the initiative order making sure the next person is ready to go when it is their turn.
If a player habitually delays the game in combat I will take them aside and work out what is causing the delay. I see this mostly in relatively new players playing spellcasters who can't decide what spell to use. I tell them that frequently if they are really having trouble figuring out what spell to cast, maybe they shouldn't cast a spell at all.
It's probably more appropriate to make it a Delay as opposed to Dazing the PC, since they're standing there figuring out what they want to do. They can still go later in the round once they've made up their mind. They'll soon figure out to Delay when they don't know what to do and can jump back in at some point before their next turn would be up.
Seconded with as much enthusiasm as I can muster at 2 in the morning.
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I do much the same thing in my game. When we do initiative, I call out the person who is up as well as the one who is next. If they have that deer-in-the-headlights look after 10 seconds, I start counting down from five. If I reach zero, their character holds their action until after the next player/monster.
The exception is with very new players. Instead, we take the time to talk through their options. Once they look like they are doing OK on their own, I will introduce a slow five count. I do the same for PFS games.
What's funny is that players have a remarkable ability to decide an action before the count ever reaches zero. I don't think it's happened yet.
In a 4 player game, each player generally has 2 to 3 minutes to consider their options for their next move...and although the conditions of combat can change suddenly, a player that knows his character can usually adapt.
I sometimes also do a quick count during surprise events (like quick time events) where I might give the player 2 or 3 seconds to respond to a situation. If they can think on their feet, they essentially get a free action.
Short answer: 6 seconds is a really small amount of time. The pcs knows theirself really better than how the players knows them. So it seems a bit unfair adjudicate just 6 seconds to players. The real life - game life 1:1 translation is not so good for me. I'm agree though that some players make Their turn an eternal pain. So I'd rather give them 1 minute, so they can valutate a bit more. While a barbarian don't need, in most cases, to think so much, seems a bit strange that a Wiz that plans his moves can do something too much instinctive.
Kazaan, I think you may be painting with far too broad a brush. There are different reasons for a turn taking a long time; pondering strategic options is a LOT different than saying, "Uh, maybe I'll cast something... (reads character sheet)... "I think I know 'explosive runes,' what does that do? (opens book and starts looking for spell description)..."
In the former case, especially if the other players are involved ("Yeah, then we can..."), I'd cut them some slack. In fact, in running Wormcrawl Fissure, we broke session right before the big boss fight, and the players spent the week before the next session planning their tactics.
In the latter case, unless the player is a total newbie, I'd rule that he's dazed after 60 seconds of messing around (not 6 seconds!). Basic game etiquette says that wasting others' game time due to your own lack of thought/prep/attention is unacceptable.
Kazaan, I think you may be painting with far too broad a brush. There are different reasons for a turn taking a long time; pondering strategic options is a LOT different than saying, "Uh, maybe I'll cast something... (reads character sheet)... "I think I know 'explosive runes,' what does that do? (opens book and starts looking for spell description)..."
The solution to this is to tell the players that they should be looking that stuff up between their turns. It also helps if, when you announce someone's turn, you declare who's after them, so there's no doubt that you'll need to get your stuff together ("It's the ogre's turn; Bill's on deck.")
The solution to this is to tell the players that they should be looking that stuff up between their turns. It also helps if, when you announce someone's turn, you declare who's after them, so there's no doubt that you'll need to get your stuff together ("It's the ogre's turn; Bill's on deck.")
Doing so tends to alleviate the problem, but not eliminate it completely. Yes, you should do both of the things you recommend, but sometimes an additional nudge is also needed.
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yup, my ability to pretend like I have a 24 intelligence or wisdom is really great when I have 6 seconds to figure out which of my PC's 30 spells would be best to use, especially since I can't see what is actually going on like the PC I am emulating can see.
Stupid rule. If this was in instituted in any games I was in I would only play melee types because people with more varied abilities get punished worse than the easier classes.
I could see a 30 second or a 60 second rule, but a 6 second rule is just crap to me.
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I would really hope that the players had some sort of idea of what they were wanting to do before it was 'suddenly' their turn to act. Now the first round of combat, and especially the first PC, might get some leeway, but otherwise I am with the OP in expecting that the players might think of their forthcoming action in the time they are watching the others act.
I'm happy if a player starts to describe his action narratively but needs more time to actually work out the mechanics, or suddenly realises that what he wanted to do was now not possible because of what occurred in the preceding round, but to just sit and require a few minutes to catch up on what has just happened is rude - it shows that they haven't been paying attention to the game. Again, leeway if that lack of attention is because they were looking up a rule or spell that they were intending to use.
We are also far more tolerant of one player who is still new enough to the game that she needs help.
I do get impatient with players who think that their character's turn is the time to suddenly come back to the game and then require a précis of what has just happened so that they can decide what they want to do. I have used plenty of methods to combat this if it is extreme or a constant habit, ranging from having them delay to having them lose their turn entirely. Usually, I ask them to pay attention next time and ask them to decide whether or not they are playing the game.
I do something similar in my games. When their turns come up, players must within a few seconds state what they are doing. "I am going to go over there an attack him", or "I cast fireball here" *points*. However long it takes to work out is fine, but they have to state their intentions quickly. Its makes it neccessary to pay attention and ask questions about circumstance before their turn, instead of waiting to even start thinking until their turn comes up.
Reward instead of punish. When someone comes in under a limit, say thirty seconds, toss them a redeemable poker chip ... For things including gaining some extra time.
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To all the posters saying "Six seconds is nowhere near enough, to decide what your character will do in those six seconds!", I have two responses:
1) That's self-evidently contradictory. If the round represents six seconds, and you take the whole six seconds to decide what to do, the actions would have to take zero seconds to perform. Take seven seconds, and you perform them in minus one second.
Take ten minutes to decide what to do, and your actions took place ten minutes before you began acting.
Congratulations, Marty McFly, you just broke the laws of physics. Keep that up, and your PC could go back in time and date his mother at the high school prom.
2) Regardless of 1), you can relax, because no-one's asking anyone to do that.
The players aren't expected to make a decision 'in only six seconds'.
They have six seconds, plus the time it took to resolve the previous player's turn, , plus the time it took to resolve the previous player's turn, plus the time it took to resolve the previous player's turn, .
That could easily be ten minutes or more since the last time you were expected to give your last instructions, even in a game where these restrictions were in place.
This thread reminds me of how Mrs Gersen beats me at chess. On her turn, she pulls out her smart phone and starts checking all her friends' Facebook statuses. Then she might text her sister about lolcats. Eventually she gets up and fetches a bowl of serial, then cleans out the pets' litter boxes, and goes and works out on the elliptical. Eventually I go do something else, and come back the next day to find that the game is over; it's mate in 2.
If I put her on a 10-minute-per-turn timer, I whallop her every time.
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There should be exceptions to the six-second rule, for any player who has spent their time since last turn, looking up rules for other people, or finding statblocks for summoned creatures (because we all know from the recent 'Bring your own books' PF Society threads, that it would be wrong to expect the player who actually summons a creature to have any idea what it does, right?).
They actually have an excuse for staring at the table and asking "Why am I surrounded? When did they come in the room? Is that miniature accurate, or a proxy?"
"Yeah, those devils d-doored in while you were showing Jim how to apply celestial templates to his triceratops."
"Well, that sucks. I guess I'll have to jump on the back of the triceratops next to me and ride off."
"No, Bob. Jim's triceratops is the Marmite jar. That's their fiendish triceratops next to you."
"Well, that doubly sucks."
"Do you want a minute, to figure something out?"
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Wow, do you have any idea how wrong you are? Most of us that play the game aren't highly trained warriors, thieves, or wizards. We have to put more thought into things than the characters themselves would (who could arguably be running mostly on reflex). It also takes us more time to gather information about the battlefield, and none of our characters have to look up crap in the rulebook either.
No you don't.
Your characters are operating under fog of war, only able to see what's immediately around them.Players are sat round a table, with an unobstructed bird's eye view of everything that happens, even stuff their character wouldn't know about, and which they ought to ignore, yet very often don't.
Characters are wounded, dazed, dazzled, poisoned, diseased, fatigued and hungry.
Players are sat in comfy chairs, with tea and biscuits.
Characters have to make split second decisions.
Players get several minutes to make decisions, and even then, they expect to be given several minutes more, as well as several minutes playing '20 Questions' with the GM, to wrangle microscopic details the character wouldn't know.
Players have it easier than their characters.
They should get their act together.
I'm on my mobile so I can't provide a link, but I was having trouble with drawn out combats and waning interest from players. I picked up (read: google) Faster RPG Combat that was an excellent aid.
I'm a fan of positive reinforcement as opposed to negative. For example, the guide suggests small bonuses to players (or the GM). If you act within 6 seconds, get a +1 to the attack. If everyone acts that fast, the enemy might be demoralized by the group's coordination and decisiveness!
It made combat much more fun and exciting.
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They should get their act together.
Yes they should. Some players are coddled too much.
Combat is fast and chaotic. Allowing a player five minutes to figure out what his character is going to do for 6 seconds is silly and shows the sign of a GM who has no backbone. I sure as heck am not going to run a 6 player game where two rounds of combat could take an hour.
I'm definitely not a fan of a hard-capped 6 second rule. Like others have said.. It's a whole different game from a Barbarian to say.. "I go smash face", to a caster who needs to analyze the whole battlefield, choose from his dozens of spells, and find the perfect area template and positioning to avoid disaster.
This problem is compounded further if the caster goes directly after say, group of 8+ npc monsters go. "Well I was going to fireball the lot of them but now they're scattered among the players. Let me find a Plan B."
And, I fully disagree with what snorter says. It is entirely easier for someone actually in that scenario and trained for it to come up with 6 second decisions than it is for someone who jotted down some stats on a paper viewing a (mostly) poorly drawn 2D depiction of a 3D world.
I'm not the character on that sheet. I sometimes need more time to think as if I was that character on that sheet.
Now, I fully understand that it can be taken way to far. 10 minutes to decide an action is ridiculous. But so too can be 6 seconds on an ever changing battlemat.
I would suggest a "Time Out" system to go with the OP's 6 second rule.. Each class is awarded a certain number of "Time Outs" that can be used during an encounter. The more complicated a class can be the more time-outs they get per encounter.
For our group, it isn't necessary. Most all players decide their actions in under a minute or two. What slows us down, is the non game related talk ;) That's a whole 'nother animal.
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Usually I see extra-long turns for one reason, and it has nothing to do with weighing tactics. That reason is simple lack of prep. Stopping to calculate Power Attack modifiers for each attack (instead of calculating them in advance and jotting them on the character sheet), for example, is a major offender. Spells are especially bad: "Let me see how long it will take me to cast... no, I don't know what the area is, let me see..." That kind of stuff. I'd have a lot more sympathy for a newbie or devoted tactician, to be honest, but when you have an experienced player who still stops the game every turn to look up what his spells do -- at some point you have to tell him to make flash cards or else start losing his turn.
On the other hand I've had players like Jess Door, who apparently had the entire Core Rulebook stored in her frontal cortex and could access it at will, and houstonderek, who could resolve six attacks in as much time as it took most other people to roll one die ("Well, the green d20 goes with the green d6 for my first rapier attack, and the blue d6s are for the sneak attack damage if that attack hits, and the purple d6 is for..." His turn came up, he'd throw something like 50 dice at once, quickly sort them into 2 piles, and announce results. Players like them make combat go really quickly, much to everyone's great appreciation.
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The characters have six seconds...what annoys me is spellcasters who will count out squares to get the uber optimized area of effect...you are in Combat...make a snap decision where the spell goes and live with the results.
As a GM I prefer not to allow too much time wasted on placing area of effect spells...tell them to pick a spot by their eyeball in 6 seconds and then place the template...allows fog of war effects
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It's a whole different game from a Barbarian to say.. "I go smash face", to a caster who needs to analyze the whole battlefield, choose from his dozens of spells, and find the perfect area template and positioning to avoid disaster.
Not really. Would the caster be able to do that if he was real? No. So why give that option to the player? Like Uklbuck said...make a snap decision and live with it.
Yup, I think it's important to emphasize that you're not giving them six seconds to make a decision. You're giving them six seconds to tell you what they decided on during all that time they had while everyone else was taking their turn, when hopefully they were paying attention and not playing a game on their phone or something.
Obviously that means being somewhat more lenient with the first person in initiative order ;)
You can always make a house rule that makes a higher wisdom modifier earn them more time to think about their actions. If they can't then in that time then "sorryyousucknext"
lol
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As I said, next time you're in a life-or-death situation, run a stop watch and compare the time it reads at the end to the time you thought it took. I guarantee you thought a lot more than a normal 6 seconds worth of thoughts in those 6 seconds of pulse-pounding, adrenaline pumping, life-threatening action. If you find a way to replicate that frame of mind for players sitting around a table looking at character sheets and miniatures, by all means, limit them to 6 seconds on the clock. Also, regarding casters, it's directed by their raw willpower; they only need glance at the battlefield and they know where to place their fireball so it hits the optimal number of targets. They also have experience on their side; it literally takes them a few nanoseconds to do what it takes a player a good 10 seconds to measure out. The two are incomparable.
Players also have alot more metagame knowledge than their characters would, including a bird's eye view of the battlefield. As for casters...most are powered by intelligence, wisdom, or charisma. While those are good for the strategic planning portion of combat, they're largely non-factors in the thick of battle, when quick reactions and the ability to make snap decisions, even if they aren't optimal, are far far preferable.
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As I said, next time you're in a life-or-death situation, run a stop watch and compare the time it reads at the end to the time you thought it took. I guarantee you thought a lot more than a normal 6 seconds worth of thoughts in those 6 seconds of pulse-pounding, adrenaline pumping, life-threatening action.
If I ever find myself in a life or death situation, you can be sure I'll be doing my best to deal with that.
The last thing I'll be thinking is "Ooh, now would be the perfect time to fish out my stopwatch, to win an argument on a gaming messageboard!".If you find a way to replicate that frame of mind for players sitting around a table looking at character sheets and miniatures, by all means, limit them to 6 seconds on the clock.
Well, I could try "Make up your mind, or you delay your action."
Given the palpitations that seems to have caused in this thread, I'm sure that will be just the frightening apocalypse scenario, to get their hearts racing and their palms clammy.
Sounds like you're agreeing it's the perfect reason to do it.
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I had a GM who has getting tired of how long combat was taking so he decided time how long it took everyone to take their turns.
He discovered that HE was the one taking the most time. By a good 10 minutes or so a round, most of the players clocked in at around one minute to declare their actions, roll their dice, calculate the results, and end their turn. With six players, that meant that he was taking twice as long as everyone else combined to do his turn.
He has since stopped complaining about how long combat takes.
The GM gets more leeway, because he doesn't have any downtime.
The GM is on duty all night. He has to be listening and adjudicating every player's decisions and actions, and only when they have finished can he begin deciding what the NPCs and monsters do.
He's also likely to be running multiple creatures, of differing types, who he may have only begun using this session.
The player has ONE character to control. Plus maybe a companion.
They play the same character every session. They should be intimately familiar with its capabilities.
They have the freedom to sit back and plan their next move, while the GM works with all the other players, and runs the opposition.
Therefore, players should make their decisions faster then their GM.
I have found just threatening to use a 2 minute egg timer gets them planning their next move while others are acting. Bonuses to hit and damage for being ready is a great idea. It's always best to use the carrot and the stick.
As I tend to run a lot of complicated fights, the final one of the last session involved 20-ish combatants and a burning ship, I tend to give the players about a minute if they need to ask a question or make a complicated move. And I will pull the plug, (well, bump a character back in the initiative order) if a player stalls. I will admit to shortening the time for more experienced players, but they often have the intricate things they want to accomplish.
In the above instance, a Spring Attack oriented Ftr ran onto the ship, burst through a wall of flame (burning sail), bull-rushed a foe to seize a fallen comrade and dive out a missing wall. This is followed by the Ranger shooting a rope arrow for the Ftr to be pulled to shore with, then things got complicated. Even with a minute, there was no way to do this fast. I felt bad for the newby Sorcerer that was using bull strength to 'land' the Ftr. "I pull Shawn to shore" round after round. Granted, she directly saved two lives (Shawn was -18 on his Swim skill), but...
As I said, next time you're in a life-or-death situation, run a stop watch and compare the time it reads at the end to the time you thought it took. I guarantee you thought a lot more than a normal 6 seconds worth of thoughts in those 6 seconds of pulse-pounding, adrenaline pumping, life-threatening action. If you find a way to replicate that frame of mind for players sitting around a table looking at character sheets and miniatures, by all means, limit them to 6 seconds on the clock. Also, regarding casters, it's directed by their raw willpower; they only need glance at the battlefield and they know where to place their fireball so it hits the optimal number of targets. They also have experience on their side; it literally takes them a few nanoseconds to do what it takes a player a good 10 seconds to measure out. The two are incomparable.
I have over 2000 games of experience on League of Legends. I still mess up my skill shots from time to time.
Note: A skill shot is an ability that targets an area on the ground. Similar to fireball targeting.
Unless it's the biggest cavern in the dungeon, smart casters center it on the back wall. In the town square, center it 35 feet up so it will burn off the head of the monster without frying NPCs.
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Which do you consider worse: A GM with no backbone or one with no players at his table?
A GM with no backbone is worse. I am not one of those people who will play in a game just to play. If it's a choice between no gaming and crap gaming, no gaming is my call. A low quality game isn't worth the time...so as a GM, I am not going to subject my players to crap gaming either. I tell my players ahead of time that whining and complaining about the game mechanics and rules will get them nowhere...but they are welcome to share their opinions in a reasonable conversation and I will consider what they have to say.
I bowed out of my last group because our GM had no backbone. He is the nicest guy, but he let several players ride roughshod over him. They wouldn't be ready when it was their turn and he'd let them take several minutes to research and decide their action. They would whine when they made a mistake, and the GM would let them take back their full action. Combat would take forever. It eventually turned into long, boring sessions.
I had several conversations with him and asked him to consider some more aggressive approaches to GMing. He just didn't have it in him. He was sorry to loose me, but we still remained good friends.