Missile fire in a 1 minute combat round

[dicebro]

Okay, I’m cool with a one minute combat round.  I appreciate that combat is abstracted.  But here’s where I need help:  The fight total five rounds and the party wins. Some engaged in melee and others fired arrows.  I assume more than 1 arrow can be fired in a full minute.  But you only get one possible hit per round. How do you handle this?

example: Does the fighter, with a bow on the front row of combat, fire a bunch of arrows with the understanding that the player gets one to-hit roll? If so, how many arrows can he fire in a minute? If he has 20, then when does he run out?

[Finarvyn]

Think of the fighter's quiver of arrows holding NOT 20 arrows, but instead 20 rounds worth of arrows.

[dicebro]

Hmmm, same with Magic Arrows?

[waysoftheearth]

Good question dicebro

I think the central challenge is that rate of missile fire versus melee blows doesn't quite work when you have "abstract" melee but "one for one" missile shots. Which is why Finarvyn's suggestion (to also abstract missile fire) is a neat solution.


It might also be helpful to think about CM combat for a moment.

CM has a one minute TURNs. During his TURN the player can do a number of things; move, fire missiles, and/or fight in melee. These are called move/turn segments, as in: it's your move/your turn, and: during your move/turn you can do certain things. FWIW, D&D continues to refer to move/turn segments; e.g., U&WA p8 "THE MOVE/TURN IN THE UNDERWORLD", and p9 "surprise gives the advantage of a free move segment".

While the one-minute TURN works for bodies of troops moving at the CM/outdoor scale (1" = 10 yards), it's not so great for individual figures moving at the indoor scale (1" = 10ft). Having zoomed the ground scale by a factor of three, perhaps the time scale should also be scaled to one-third, or to 20-second-indoor-combat-turns (as distinct from D&D's 10-minute indoor-exploration-turns)? Or else just acknowledge that everything--including missile fire--is happening in slow motion?

That aside, in the melee segment of a one-minute-CM-TURN there can be as many ROUNDS of combat blows as are required to get an outcome. The same logic might be applied to D&D combat, in which case a ROUND of D&D-melee would be of variable, and frequently sub-TURN/one-minute, duration. Some folks prefer 6 second or 10 second D&D-melee-ROUNDs. For me, I've come to prefer D&D-melee-ROUNDS of undefined duration that fit whatever action is taking place.

The point of that ramble is: you'll need to account for fewer arrows with shorter TURNs, and (presumably) even shorter melee-ROUNDS. (which, in CM, are for resolving melee only; missile fire happens in a different turn segment).


Finarvyn's suggestion is likely the easiest to implement, and works regardless of timescale. But whatever your turn and/or round duration you may still want to track arrows. Assuming your players want that extra detail, another option is to double or triple the rate of bow fire (or scale to whatever works with your turn duration), but then have each hit do only 1-3 or 1-2 hp damage. You'd also adjust the number of magic arrows found accordingly. The justification could be something like: whereas in melee a "hit" is an abstraction over a number of real blows, with missiles we're tracking each arrow and hit individually...


Hope that's helpful or, if not, at least a vaguely interesting diversion...

[dicebro]

Thanks for the analysis, but I want to keep the one minute combat round. A better question might be “how many arrows can your average medieval bowman reasonably aim and fire in one minute?” 5-10?

[waysoftheearth]

There are lots of answers to this one on the internet (e.g., www.quora.com/What-was-the-rate-of-fire-for-a-medieval-archer-England) which inform us "it depends", but 8-12 arrows seems to be a reasonably common suggestion.

Ammunition supply was a factor

[dicebro]

“For me, I've come to prefer D&D-melee-ROUNDS of undefined duration that fit whatever action is taking place.”

I like this the best. At the end of the combat turn, the survivors are going to be resting, eating, tending wounds, stretching, along with gathering arrows. So it may be better to calculate the time spent “over all” rather than round per round. I.e. don’t worry so much about the details and let the players fire those arrows! Thanks friends.

[delta]

I agree with waysoftheearth, and it's one of my Top 5 fixes to OD&D, for exactly this issue, as well as others. I play keeping the Chainmail 1 minute turn and shorter rounds.

[gemini476]

Alternatively, rather than going with "everyone moves in slow motion" you could consider "time moves a lot faster" - that is to say, with triple speed one day might just be eight Earth hours. I feel like I read something similar before about some kind of Dying Earth that is literally running out of time, but might be remembering wrong.

Really, though, one turn being specifically ten minutes doesn't matter all that much. All the durations and such are directly tied to the turn system rather than minutes and hours, rations are bought in weekly chunks (i.e. 1,008 turns!), and since you're generally underground it doesn't matter much that eight hours have passed and it's now night. As far as I'm aware the one thing that gets strange is the once-every-six-turns rest, i.e. ten minutes every hour, but since that's a known quantity you can either leave it as-is or change it or do whatever else you want.

Similarly, having it be specifically ten rounds of combat for every turn of movement isn't particularly important. Feel free to change that as you will - as far as I'm aware the major change would be that overly long combats risk wandering monsters and very long combats exhaustion, but those can be handled through other methods.

[talysman]

Let's keep in mind two things:

1. Firing volleys at massed enemies on a battlefield is not the same as aiming at an individual moving target,
2. Firing at distant targets is not the same as firing into a melee.

The maximum rate of fire for an archer is usually based on either estimates based on volleys in battle (as in the Quora link from waysoftheearth) or on archery competitions. Firing at a single, closer target in a dungeon setting that is either moving in an evasive pattern or occasionally behind one of your allies is going to require more careful shooting. One good shot per minute isn't an unreasonable limitation, maybe two per minute if the archer doesn't take the standard move segment.

Another way to look at it is that The archer might actually fire more than once or twice, but only one or two of those shots actually had a chance of hitting, same as melee involves many attacks in a minute, but most are deflected, dodged, parried, or turn out to be feints, so there's only one actual attack roll in a minute. This is why my solution is now just have archers roll once or twice a round for attacks, then at the end of combat, roll 1d6 per missile attack. That's how many arrows to deduct if the party had to flee the area after combat. Halve that number if they have time to recover undamaged arrows, halve it again if they take an extra turn for recovery.

[Zenopus]

I was mulling over mentioning something along the lines of what talysman elegantly wrote.

Also keep in mind that Chainmail states that "If Archers or Longbowmen do not move and are not meleed at the end of a turn they may fire twice" and the LBBs don't actually supersede this. (AD&D also gave the ROF for arrows as 2 per round). So two arrow attacks per 1-minute melee round is not an unreasonable interpretation.

I personally use the Holmes interpretation of OD&D that uses short rounds of 10-seconds (which he probably got from Warlock), which was retained in the later Basic/Expert lines, and resurfaced as the 6-second round in modern D&D (3E to 5E).

[dicebro]

I’ve read somewhere that Arneson was asked about the rules and he once answered something to the effect of “there aren’t any.” Rob Kuntz stated in an interview once that Gygax thought the game would be a way to “generate stories.” Kuntz, in his interview, also implied that the boxed set rules were intended to appeal to the chainmail war gamers because they were an identifiable market for the game. Imagine being an avid miniatures war gamer in 1974 and being asked to purchase a “war Game” that had no rules! Anyway, the LBBs are a great set for “thinking out of the box.” Thanks everyone for contributing to this query.

[talysman]

Jul 20, 2019 15:32:23 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

I was mulling over mentioning something along the lines of what talysman elegantly wrote.

Also keep in mind that Chainmail states that "If Archers or Longbowmen do not move and are not meleed at the end of a turn they may fire twice" and the LBBs don't actually supersede this. (AD&D also gave the ROF for arrows as 2 per round). So two arrow attacks per 1-minute melee round is not an unreasonable interpretation.

I was aware of AD&D's ROF, but I chose that rate in OD&D based on an interpretation of the infamous movement rules in Underworld & Wilderness Adventures:

Movement (distances given in Vol. 1) is in segments of approximately ten minutes. Thus it takes ten minutes to move about two moves -- 120 feet for a fully-armored character. Two moves constitute a turn, except in flight/pursuit situations where the moves/turn will be doubled (and no mapping allowed).

(U&WA, p. 8)

My reasoning went like:

• There are two moves per turn,
• In combat, there's a move phase and an attack phase,
• One interpretation of this would be that the attack or action replaces one move,
• SO if an archer skips a move, they can fire twice.

I had no proof of this, other than the way it lines up with other versions of D&D/Chainmail combat. But that makes things easier in many ways (you can allow characters to delay their move until after their attack, or take two moves instead of an attack to evade/escape.)

[waysoftheearth]

It's easy (and virtually ubiquitous) to conflate D&D's underground ten-minute exploration turn with the combat turn.

On the other hand, it's not a wild stretch (given U&WA's copy editing/typesetting) to read the one pivotal line at the bottom of p8 as: <<There are ten rounds of combat per combat turn>> where "combat turn" refers to the (inherited) CM one-minute combat turn.

Whether or not this was intended is moot.

However, this reading does enable a lot of stuff to "just work better"; Combat actually becomes "fast and furious". Movement rates in combat (and flight/pursuit) become believable rather than glacial. EW p7 (each 1" of movement rate = 2ft of ground covered per melee round) becomes viable. The number of blows and/or shots per round no longer require hand-wavy arguments about abstraction.


YMMV of course

[gemini476]

Of course, if you decide to use the Chainmail combat turn you run into another strange thing: you get two bowshots for every ten rounds of melee combat. And one spell per ten rounds of melee combat, for that matter, although I've never been clear on where those sit in Chainmail's turn structure. Artillery?

In any case, it's a quite foreign structure to the modern one and would definitely give a unique feel to a pre-Greyhawk OD&D. You can still see echoes of this turn structure in later products, in fact: look at how in AD&D you can only charge into combat once every ten rounds!

[waysoftheearth]

In my experience many "straight up" D&D combat encounters have the same basic outline:
1. missiles/magic/turning,
2. melee (maybe 4-8 rounds before...),
3. morale check/result.

Occasionally I see longer fights (usually when only a few fight at a time while the rest wait in reserve), or fallback actions which are about avoiding melee and involve more shooting/moving. If one side is outclassed or surprised it can go quicker.

That said, I don't find the (seemingly) arbitrary "ten" rounds per turn to be especially useful (S&S p17 suggests 1, 2, or 3 rounds per turn, which has been more practical IMC).

The main case I see for a fixed number of rounds per turn is to enable determination of a movement rate per round (being a fraction of the movement rate per turn). The issue is that most melees will not be resolved in exactly N rounds, so you end up writing off the remainder of the turn and spoiling the movement rates anyways.

As far as reconciling D&D missile fire with the CM turn sequence (having discrete movement, artillery/magic, missile, and melee segments) goes, one option to consider might be to separate wargame-like massed missile fire from D&D-like individual missile fire so that:
1. A CM-like sequence could be used to handle massed missile fire; integrating movement and long distance missile fire, and
2. A D&D-like melee sequence could be used to handle individual missile fire; integrating melee combat and short range missile fire.

It seems kinda reasonable (to me) that ultra-short range shooting/throwing in dungeon rooms is simply part of "a melee". BtPBD suggests something similar under <<Melee with Bows>> which has: <<Some players (especially Elves and Hobbits) may wish to use bows of some kind rather than hand weapons. ... NOTE: ... If a player must drop his bow for a hand weapon, the opponent will get a free chop, and the player will hit second in the melee round>>.

All possible

[jeffb]

Though it does not help with the ROF interpretation....

The "usage die" mechanic from games like The BlackHack is a fun system for the "how many X do I have left?" issue. Basically items like torches and arrows start with a usage die - Lets go with a d12 for arrows . after using the item you roll the die-if you get a 1 or 2, it goes one step down to a d10. Next combat after using your bow, roll again- 1 or 2, it goes down to a d8, and so on. if you get down to a d4 and roll a 1 or 2, you are out.

Different items would start with different die codes. d6 for torches, etc.

[Zenopus]

Jul 21, 2019 5:08:22 GMT -6 gemini476 said:

Of course, if you decide to use the Chainmail combat turn you run into another strange thing: you get two bowshots for every ten rounds of melee combat. And one spell per ten rounds of melee combat, for that matter, although I've never been clear on where those sit in Chainmail's turn structure. Artillery?

This depends on how you interpret D&D combat using Chainmail. A Chainmail turn is "roughly equivalent to one minute", and there aren't a set number of "rounds" in a Chainmail turn; there are as many as needed to resolve the melee. Some interpret the Chainmail turn of 1 round as equalling a D&D combat round of 1 minute, with Chainmail "rounds" being the multiple blows of the abstracted D&D round. In this case, the two bowshots are per single D&D round (Chainmail turn).

[Zakharan]

This particular quirk is one reason I've hummed and hawed on using the "Fighting Capability" stat as damage dice (like Arneson's old Hit Dice). That way the number of arrows fired in a minute is 'as many as necessary' rather than precisely one. Not a perfect solution, though.

[gemini476]

Of course, if you decide to use the Chainmail combat turn you run into another strange thing: you get two bowshots for every ten rounds of melee combat. And one spell per ten rounds of melee combat, for that matter, although I've never been clear on where those sit in Chainmail's turn structure. Artillery?

This depends on how you interpret D&D combat using Chainmail. A Chainmail turn is "roughly equivalent to one minute", and there aren't a set number of "rounds" in a Chainmail turn; there are as many as needed to resolve the melee. Some interpret the Chainmail turn of 1 round as equalling a D&D combat round of 1 minute, with Chainmail "rounds" being the multiple blows of the abstracted D&D round. In this case, the two bowshots are per single D&D round (Chainmail turn).

I generally interpret D&D combat using Chainmail as "the D&D round is step 7 in Chainmail's turn sequence", what with that being where Chainmail's round takes place. This is notably different from when missile fire takes place (step 2/3 for declaration, step 5 for resolution) and artillery (step 4 for resolution).

Of course, in Chainmail melee rounds are just something that happens when two groups of figured touch each other and only end when one side either retreats or else is defeated. Not that infinite rounds are particularly likely, though, since the morale numbers for continuing melee are fairly small (0-19 difference) and three rounds of melee are enough to bring on fatigue.

[Zulgyan]

It's one of the parts of the game I prefer not to think too much about.

[retrorob]

@zenopus

I don't know about "Warlock", but "Warriors of Mars" has individual combat turn of 10 seconds (additionally, "there will be two rounds of melee fought each turn" - not sure what that means exactly).

to begin with, I used 1 minute combat round, but I found difficult to explain it to my players just because of the missile fire I tried to resolve this dilemma by allowing 2 bow shots per round as in Chainmail, but I think a mass volley is a different story than individual shooting. And what about magic arrows and hand-hurled weapons? So I shifted to 10-seconds round that suits me perfectly.

[sixdemonbag]

For me, a round isn't really a set in stone period of time. It's simply the amount of time it takes for everyone to move around a little and perform some type of effortful action. Whether that takes a minute or ten seconds isn't really that important.

[clownboss]

In my game, they really do take a whole minute to shoot an arrow - or two if they stand in place. Hey, they're just trying to focus really really hard, okay?

[hamurai]

The way I explain the 1-minute combat round to people is:

1.) The damage you deal on "a" hit is actually the damage you deal over the course of a minute. Depending on your weapon and fighting style, and on the situation, this damage may be dealt by one good hit or several hits that barely have an impact, but they do combined (wearing the enemy down, as HP loss is also fatigue, even more so in fact than actual ability to withstand a cut to your shoulder or arm, for example).

2.) In the case of missile fire and ammo counting, 2 options are available: Either your character actually takes that long to get a good aim on an enemy and is able to fire only 1 arrow (that's likely when the target is engaged in melee, running up and down the battlefield being hidden by other combatants etc). If the line of fire is clear, the character may actually be shooting several arrows to get the damage done (again, wearing down the enemy by firing while the target has to dodge a lot and gets exhausted; maybe some arrows even hit the shield or leave a small wound). The player still only marks off 1 arrow per round as the rest are recovered after the fight, so the 1 arrow/round is an abstraction of ammo use rather than a reliable count.

3.) In case of magic projectiles the character probably takes very careful aim to make the precious one strike the target, so the character actually only fires 1 of these per round instead of wasting them.

[aldarron]

Jul 19, 2019 19:47:56 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

For me, I've come to prefer D&D-melee-ROUNDS of undefined duration that fit whatever action is taking place.

A thousand times yes. The "One minute combat round" wasn't cemented as a feature of the game until Gygax made it so for AD&D and I can tell you that Arneson and the Blackmoor group never treated combat like it was such a glacial dance, but rather as a blow by blow contest. Arneson's approach was cemented in his AiF rules as 20 second rounds, but as WotE suggests, allowing short but variable round lengths solves all kinds of issues with the game.

Be that as it may, for a one minute round you should allow two attack rolls for bows and slings - at least for characters that only use the weapons occasionally. A house rule you could try would be to allow one shot per level for characters who consistently and constantly use the weapon - a kind of Robin Hood rule.

[Fearghus]

Another thread got me thinking to playing War Hammer tabletop war games years ago, and it very generally followed the multiple rounds per turn. In that rule-set a turn involves each player taking their set of actions: very similar to Chainmail's move/shoot/melee.

Turn 1, player 1's action
Player 1 charges into Player 2. Player 1's initiative is higher so he resolves attacks first, then player 2 resolves attacks.

Turn 1, player 2's action
Player 2 decides to continue the melee. Player 1's initiative is higher so he resolves attacks first, then player 2 resolves attacks. Player 2 possibly having nothing to resolve if unit is destroyed/routed.

I am assuming that in D&D, if using something like the Chainmail move/counter-move then we just stay in step 6 until melee is truly "resolved" to the point of unit destroyed/routed, not everyone makes their one attack and we are back to step 1 in the turn order (roll and determine who will move or counter-move).

[Scott Anderson]

Stochastic Combat Rounds

treasurehuntershq.blogspot.com/2019/08/stochastic-combat-rounds.html?m=1

[christopher]

I forget where I heard this, but went something like this:

Roll d20 and d6 together when character is shooting arrows.  The d6 result is the number of arrows that were used, regardless if they hit. One could always just roll a die at the end of combat for each combat round and the result indicating number of arrows used.  

I find it a somewhat satisfying solution.


But, like Zulygan, this doesn't bother me too much.  Being a game and not a simulation, I'm comfortable abstracting this out in D&D.

[graelth]

Jul 20, 2019 17:32:46 GMT -6 talysman said:

• In combat, there's a move phase and an attack phase,

I hadn't heard of this before! Do you have a page number that talks about this?

Jul 19, 2019 18:15:48 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

Think of the fighter's quiver of arrows holding NOT 20 arrows, but instead 20 rounds worth of arrows.

Yep, that modification works fine.

Aug 21, 2019 11:23:57 GMT -6 Scott Anderson said:

Stochastic Combat Rounds

treasurehuntershq.blogspot.com/2019/08/stochastic-combat-rounds.html?m=1

That's a good one too. You could also do a "mini-stochastic combat rounds" modification where each round represents 1 minute, as per page 8 of Book III, but only 10 seconds (say) of that round happens during the actual combat and the other 50 seconds are spent after combat is already over just resting and recovering. So a 6 round combat actually represents a minute of fighting and 5 minutes of recovery after the fact. But the stochastic combat you mention makes an important point. If you keep a very close track on the time in the dungeon (for things like resting and usage of torches), then combat really messes things up... you have to break into fractions of a turn. Suddenly, tracking time goes from being really simple (i.e. you can keep track of time with a single six-sided die) to being something that is really complex. I have the same complaint about the rules for time spent searching etc. I mean, ESP uses a quarter of a turn... what is that, two and half minutes? Really?? Now I have to carry a fraction of a turn with all my time calculation for the rest of the adventure! Extremely inconvenient! Stochastic turns (which could be applied to searching too, of course) rounds things off nicely and makes it much easier for the referee. In fact, when I last ran a game, this is effectively what I did... at first I tried to run it "straight" with fractions of a turn and all. Very quickly, however, I started just folding events into each other into nice, even turns. The party could explore for 240 feet per turn, but if they ran into a small room after just 50 feet, I might say that moving down the 50 feet of hallway and exploring the small room all constituted a single turn. If it was a big room, or they fought a battle in that small room, I might call it two turns. Whatever seems reasonable and makes tracking time more simple!

In terms of "arrows per round"... Personally, I am OK with the idea that you only get to shoot a bow once per melee (I don't use Chainmail, so there is no shooting twice rule for me!). If you look at the movement rates during a dungeon fight, they are painfully slow. The absolute fastest that a human can move in underworld combat is 12" or 120 feet. That is a whopping 2 feet per second! The combatants are basically shuffling around a lot, groping in the dark, getting confused, running away, charging forward, hiding behind their shields and shouting to their allies. Given that chaos, I am OK with 1 shot per round. For the same reason (and again, because I don't use Chainmail), I don't penalize things like heavy crossbows. It doesn't matter if you have a bow or a crossbow or an arquebus... you get one shot per round!

Now in a wilderness fight, this is somewhat harder to justify as the battlefield is usually much less crowded, better illuminated and perhaps ultimately less chaotic than a fight in a dungeon.

Personally, however, I have no problem assuming that the greater ranges require greater precision. As talysman mentioned above, firing at a single target and firing at a mass of enemies is completely different... how many shots does a modern-day bowhunter take in a given minute of hunting?

My personal preference is to stick to the wording of the books. That said, I am totally fine with modifying the rules as written where it is either 1) fun or 2) necessary to do so. And, besides, most of the rules are so open to interpretation that you can infer many different things from them. So if you don't like my answers, of course, then it is easy enough to take the suggestion of Finarvyn and assume each arrow represents a "unit of ammo" (and in the case of magical arrows, it could be assumed that the character literally takes a minute to fire because he wants to make absolute sure he doesn't miss and waste the shot). Ultimately, one must remember that most missiles can also be recovered after the fighting. If you have a quiver full of arrows and the battle lasts 5 rounds, that needn't necessarily mean that you only fired five shots. In those combat rounds, you may have fired many shots, but recovered all but five arrows after the battle (the latter being broken in the dungeon or lost in the wilderness, as appropriate).