A Few Ways to make combat faster.(House Rule)

[Commander]

I ran a Rifts game months ago and one of my players were being a stickler for the combat rules. One attack action for everyone. I happen to prefer a much faster combat system that allows fair balance of attacks and rp.

So if you have a party of four people and they have nearly five to six attacks normally. Using the normal combat rules of one attack each it will take forever. Literally most of the combat would be four people using each action.

My house rule is to speed up combat by not actually adjusting the rules for any Palladium game. Just allowing all attacks and such to be handed out at once. So if you are going to all out attack and not doge ect then the reality is you were going to expend those attacks.

Thus if a person has five attacks they simply spend three attacks hold back two to doge move ect. As the combat flows much faster. If you have a much bigger party this method can be useful when you have five to six players or more. Still the same rules just people have to think ahead.

The other reasoning is that if you have limited time or wish to get far in an adventure. Then this simple adjustment is the way to go.

Example of how this works. Bill the Glitter Boy pilot has five attacks. Instead of doing one attack then moving onto the next player his initiative was the highest. He will use one attack to put pylons into the ground. Second attack firing third attack firing. Fourth pulling up pylons and fifth moving.

Then it would be the next highest as stated in the rules. One at a time is good when you have smaller party and you want to spend tons of time doing it the regular way.

Then the enemy doges as the GM deducts the attacks from the pool they have. So bigger combats would need this kind of rule modification. I personally feel this allows players to do all the same things you would do one attack at a time and yes if the enemy has multiple attacks allows them to respond.

So players should think ahead some. But this is not required. Unless you want your adventures to take months when you meet once a week i suggest this method for combat.

[Spinachcat]

I retreated to earlier rulesets (particularly Mechanoids:Invasion and Homeworld), but when I run Chaos Earth, I use the earlier Rifts Main Book combat rule where there isn't the +2 attacks/actions for existing. Thus, instead of 5-6 actions, everyone has 3-4. Then I give everyone colored beads. On their turn, they can spend as many beads/actions as they like, and save as many as they like to respond to the NPC actions. It's imperfect, but quick.

[Nekira Sudacne]

Have you considered giving Giga-Damage weaponry to all PC's and NPC's? That should make combat faster.

[Hunterrose]

I was thinking about this at the second meeting of my new HU campaign. I'm working with a bunch of actors and artists so we're coming at this from a more "collaborative story" angle than from a "Game to beat" angle. One of my players likes to chain powers together. So for example, he has Density and Kinetic Manipulation so in one case he used his power to pick up a car (density manipulation), threw it, sped it up (kinetic), and finally reset the density so it hit at well over full force and full weight. (5 actions his full melee round)

Later he was in melee combat with two regular thugs, there was some debate about how to debilitate them with out killing them, so he reached out and grabbed both guys by the shirts (roll to strike for each) and then used density manipulation to make their clothes 50lb. (3 actions)

In both cases I allowed it because he was playing in character, thinking outside the box. Both myself and the other players reacted like WOW! cause it sounded like something that would happen in a comic book.

This wouldn't have worked if he had to wait for 5 other characters in between each action (especially when the objects were in flight).

Going forward we will be using this process similar to what Wanderer and Spinchat mentioned. If you can chain actions, then you can use more in one turn.

I also like the bead idea a lot. (we used cardboard counters from an old Talisman boardgame)

[eliakon]

There is a system in use in the Chatroom called the 5 pass system...
basically you have 5 'passes' of 3 seconds in each turn. you divide your APM up evenly with left overs going in any pass you chose (no more than one left over per pass though)
so if you have 7 APM you might have 1/2/1/2/1 or 2/2/1/1/1 or what ever.
Then in each pass you spend all your APM for that pass at once. So you can do combinations, cast high level spells, make power punches ect.

[drewkitty ~..~]

For the GM to read and understand all the rules & have all his notes pre-written and do not allow discussion of the rules while combat is going on.

In other words, Do all the pre-work and keep things moving.

[eliakon]

For the GM to read and understand all the rules & have all his notes pre-written and do not allow discussion of the rules while combat is going on.

In other words, Do all the pre-work and keep things moving.

That works in theory...
...but rarely in practice.
Unless your game is highly restrictive the chances that you as a GM will know every rule in all its permutations and how they interact with every rule is miniscule.

If your group is good enough to allow the "okay, GM can just wing it as needed now, and make a formal ruling later" that's good...
...but far to many groups have the person(or people) who will insist that every ruling is setting a formal locked in precident... and that the GM will have to make sure that anything they rule on will be how they want it to be at the table for ever and ever amen.

And of course I have seen far to many players who demand that everyone else be ready to keep moving and not allow discussion...
...who then want to argue when what ever cool idea they have is shot down as not plausible. Because to them they are not 'arguing the rules' they are just 'explaining how the rules really work' to the GM...

[RainbowDevil]

One thing that helps our group is using playing cards for actions. I've given each character a little zip-lock bag with counters for HP, SDC, ISP/PPE, etc and a few playing cards - one for each attack. If they have 5 attacks, I'll give them an Ace, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Then as they do their turn, they flip over the most recent card used. Also, that way when they do reactions like dodging, they have a reminder of which action they can next act on. ie my cards are up to 4, so I can't act until everyone else is at their fourth action.

Plus, using the rules about stunning and being knocked down when it comes to firearms helps speed it up a lot - especially in our AtB game where firearms are pretty common!

[ShadowLogan]

I ran a Rifts game months ago and one of my players were being a stickler for the combat rules. One attack action for everyone. I happen to prefer a much faster combat system that allows fair balance of attacks and rp.

I do not see how this will make combat faster. All you do is alter the in-game time for the battle and increase the number of times you have to roll for initiative

If you want to make combat faster:
-reduce the amount of protection NPCs have
-increase the amount of damage inflicted (I'd apply a static modifier either one single one to everything or different values depending on the nature of the attack, but I would avoid individually tailoring everything)
-the GM gives a PC only a certain amount of time to state what they are doing for their action (be reasonable) or they are assumed to be doing nothing/stunned/etc and move on to the next, this could speed up real-world game time
-balance the actions of NPCs to be similar/identical to the PCs (this cuts down on rolling for initiative every cycle, though might be difficult if you have some classes with bonus attacks and such with others that don't)
-have each 15second/melee period gives a fixed number of actions (3-5 I'd say), and treat the Attack/Actions by RAW as "Regular Dodges" you can employ in that period or actions that normally cost more (like Power Punch), IF you want to have everyone's actions as a fixed amount of time

[drewkitty ~..~]

if playing around a table…minis and dry-erase markers. so evey one can see what is happening.