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Roundtime

From the same text as CombatFromOtherMud

Attack maneuvers all incur some amount of RT, which varies with the weapon, the maneuver you use, and your stats. For instance, a claymore is slower than a rapier, a lunge takes more time than a jab, and a burly Kaldar can swing an axe faster than an anemic Elothean. You also can't attack as quickly when you're tired.

-- PumaN - 07 Feb 2003

One presumes that if you perform something that takes 5 seconds to perform while your opponent does something that takes 1 second then he can do it 5 times during your command?

We'd need some form of command queuing system for round time to be properly implemented - but we need that for lots of other things too...

-- FantoM - 10 Feb 2003

Using the ad&d rules.

Each round is not defined in amount of seconds at all. The time it takes for the round to finish is dependant on your own action aswell as the ememies action. When the players run out of actions to take the round is resolved and the time left is cut off.

Bob the thief armed with a fast dagger decides to stab Dustin the huge ogre warrior armed with an enormous war hammer.
Stab only takes 2 seconds to resolve so the round ends in 2 seconds. That means Dustin has two seconds to react within the round. If Dustin does have time to react (He can have triggers on) he will swing his war hammer at the end of this round, because his weapon is slower than the dagger. But still he has reacted within this round.
If Dustin didn't react means that Bob got a free hit. Lets say dustin responds in three seconds then his attack will be in the next round. The warhammer is a slow weapon so it will take 7 seconds to blow. So now in round two Bob has 7 seconds to counter. If Bob react his weapon will take only two seconds so anything within 5 seconds will make Bob swing his attack before Dustin. If Bob reacts 6 seconds into the second round Dustin will swing first and Bob after. If Bob reacs too late, after the round has been resolved, then his attack will be the first in the second round (which will now only take 2 seconds if Bob is still using that nasty dagger).

In this system the round time is determined by various extern factors. The speed of players and weapons aswell as terrain. As soon as the round can be resolved it is resolved, no need waiting for the time to end (with some kind of minimum like now). A stab cannot be performed five times in a row while Dustin swings his hammer (unless Bob is extremely good with the knife and very agile and has an ability to swing five times in a row, which in turn would be a balance issue). The attacks are resolved at the end of the round. Here we can kick in stamina aswell. A player armed with a huge weapon as the war hammer will automaticly drain alot more stamina if the rounds are only 2 seconds long (but it does makes sense, he doesn't just sit there when he see Bob attack again and again and again, he will try his best to parry those attacks, or launch a counter attack himself when Bob is the most vulnerable, ie while Bob is attacking). Commands are the same as normal attacks and determine the length of the round.

Each round you get a number of swings, only one of these can be effective attack. Experienced players might be able to get more than one attack. There is also the need of "abilities". An alternate version of commands. Example of ablilties can be "double swing", "two handed weapons" etc. Much borrowed from ADnDCombatRuleBook.
One ability can be to hide your combat reactions; For each swing you enter the enemy will have a chance not to detect it, and therefor get is a much worse situation where rounds can pass without him noticing it.

This makes good usage with fast weapons and strong players a leathal combination. Abilities are like commands learnt from the guild wheel so it will be very hard for a pure fighter to get the ability "double swing" that is a rouge ability (its up to the guild wheel balance design). If hes after that kind of ability he will automaticly move towards beeing a thief/rouge instead of fighter, so there will be no preasts with steal and stab etc (again, unless the design is in that manner or there exists a nonguild form of steal somewhere or if the player has 10000 billions of levels and reach the other side of the wheel).

Multiple enemies attacking poor Dustin: This is no problem, since all enemies that are not engaged with Dustin are concidered to be on his flank, and will get their rounds for free. Dustin can't parry attacks from behind so they just continue to hit however slow/fast their attacks are. Its only the engaged opponent that Dustin can parry, counter with his war hammer.

TO PONDER:

• If Dustin is disturbed after having someone stabbing him from behind while fighting with Bob.
• Should attacks that are longer than one round be allowed? - For very long commands like certain magic spells (in those cases the enemy will have the opportunity to swing more than one leathal attack againts his spell casting target, which I don't like unless its controlled by skill and abilities).

-- FreD - 12 Oct 2004