Continuing from the previous session.
Date: 11/9/2025
Game Date: 10/5/2025
Weather: Warm and mild.
Characters
Chop, human cleric (362 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (346 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (347 points)
Rogar Thane-Blood, human barbarian (250 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (368 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)
Bullet points to cover the action in the continuing big brawl:
- the enemy continued to pull back into a large "C" facing the PCs, and laid down three smoke nageteppo after Vlad shot one of the "Gith" axemen.
- Chop cleared the smoke with Purify Air and the PCs charged.
- Rogar fought his own little war with a couple of Norker Brutes and a quartet of axemen, eventually felling the two norkers and wounding one axeman.
- Thor rushed the main core of the enemy and got hit with Slow by a Gith they supposedly hit with Magebane, so that wasn't as effective as it might have been.
- Percy bashed down a few thorkers.
- A few fallen thorkers got back up, after having been put down rather harshly earlier.
- Vlad landed a few eye shots on Gith Lichtors and put them down.
- Hannari crippled the foot of a Gith Lichtor and found the guy have Levitation on and didn't fall. They decided that's probably why they don't worry about the Deathtouch floor.
We ended it at second 31 of the fight, havign resolved a good 10 seconds or so of combat. Slow, yes, but people kept a move on. It's a big fight and the VTT helps a lot but also slows things down a bunch, too, when we hit issues that it doesn't do well.
Notes:
- MVP was Vlad for the nice eye shot criticals.
- I really need token statuses for - "off balance," "unready weapon," "Slowed," "Hasted," Crippled Limb, and a few more. Oh, and different ones for Blur, Shield, Armor, and other buff spells.
Wow, only 10 rounds of combat in an entire session. How long was the session? I realize there are a lot of combatants and you guys use all the options which means more detail, less speed but I also thought you spend an entire weekend day playing, so 6-8 hours, and your players are experienced both with the system and their characters. That seems like the slowest combat I've every heard of. How long do you think is spent on the typical round and what are the biggest obstacles to a faster combat round?
ReplyDeleteA full set of PC/NPC turns - a second - took around 30-40 minutes apiece. It's a mix of:
Delete- complex PC actions (Hannari, Percy, I'm looking at you two)
- a new player learning the ropes of 4e GURPS DF (Rogar)
- VTT issues taking time
- and the GM running, uhm . . . . around 3 dozen active combatants by the end, down from close to 4 dozen at the start.
It just takes a bit of time. You'll notice I don't have any gripes - at all - about players taking forever. People have generally been decisive and act with reasonable speed. It's just a large, cluttered fight. I'd love a way to speed it up, but I can't blame anyone at my table for being too slow.
I'll note that the math works out to less than sixty seconds per turn. In reality, the PCs and major NPCs take a bit longer, the mooks tend shorter (limited volition, movement, and simpler actions), but by and large, we ran through something like 40-45 combatants, 10 times, in seven playing hours (we broke for lunch). That's (call it) 420 actions over 420 minutes ... about one minute per token. During which four of the six PCs each have 2-3 actions due to Rapid Strike or Extra Attack, and the baddies do get defense rolls vs all of that. So honestly things really do rip along pretty well (except, as Peter notes, when they do not, as Foundry hiccups, we discover a new bug, or certain magical or mundane effects make us adjust character sheets or take the time to decide "how do we effectively track this status."
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