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I find most combats don't last that long for my group either, generally 2 or 3 rounds would be my average. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, and for small group-skirmishes with high-tech weapons, it seems true as well. The higher number of attacks characters typically have these days makes rounds last longer, but there are fewer of them.

Injundon wrote:

Talavar wrote:I find most combats don't last that long for my group either, generally 2 or 3 rounds would be my average. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, and for small group-skirmishes with high-tech weapons, it seems true as well. The higher number of attacks characters typically have these days makes rounds last longer, but there are fewer of them.

Not enough at all. GM's don't role-play combat properly. They treat combat and role-playng as 2 different entities. Every combat seems to always ben run as everyone is wide out in th open andit's just pulling the trigger in each others direction.

The way I run combat some players hate. but Most love. I get maps quick notes on terrain details. where everyone is..e.tc. A Samas making a strafing pass will not be getting his 6 attacks/melee other wise he'd be able to strafe by, turn around and make another pass every 2.33 seconds.. I thinks not.

In your example, the Samas should still be getting his six actions, regardless of whether he's able to attack in each one. If he's making strafing runs at least every other attack should probably be a re-manuevering action, depending on how fast he's moving and how far away his targets are.

I suppose it would be more "accurate" to have combat go lots of rounds of characters shooting wildly at each other from behind cover so that hits are few and far between, but that's also pretty tedious.

I run a lot of HU2 and I find the fights can drag out quite a bit.

This is mostly design philosophy though. bad guy fights should be, in some part, epic. Minion battles should be smaller.

A first level character used his shaddow powers to sneak up on a group of ninja, bushwacking the first and then using a lot of defence for the next few rounds before landing any more blows.

The fight took 11 rounds, and ended with the character running away. to be fair, had he been more gung ho and less cautious he would have cleaned up in the time.

a fight between Streetwise and the PC group lasted a lot longer 46 rounds, and ranged all over a junkyard.
the typical reasons for fights lasting too long in these instances are
* a predisposition to be cautious (on both fronts)
* wasting time with pointless combat actions (i try to pull his eyes out of his head with my adhesion power)
* wasting time on complicated manoevres that arent really so pointless (disarming over and over until the opponent is unarmed)

fights are dynamic, changing environments. I like to throw in a random encounter every round or two to keep things interesting. Players getting creative can be fun, but will bog down the game as well. I can expect any epic fight to take 10-30 rounds with occasional scene changes throughout.

Batts

Iczer wrote:I run a lot of HU2 and I find the fights can drag out quite a bit.

This is mostly design philosophy though. bad guy fights should be, in some part, epic. Minion battles should be smaller.

A first level character used his shaddow powers to sneak up on a group of ninja, bushwacking the first and then using a lot of defence for the next few rounds before landing any more blows.

The fight took 11 rounds, and ended with the character running away. to be fair, had he been more gung ho and less cautious he would have cleaned up in the time.

a fight between Streetwise and the PC group lasted a lot longer 46 rounds, and ranged all over a junkyard.
the typical reasons for fights lasting too long in these instances are
* a predisposition to be cautious (on both fronts)
* wasting time with pointless combat actions (i try to pull his eyes out of his head with my adhesion power)
* wasting time on complicated manoevres that arent really so pointless (disarming over and over until the opponent is unarmed)

fights are dynamic, changing environments. I like to throw in a random encounter every round or two to keep things interesting. Players getting creative can be fun, but will bog down the game as well. I can expect any epic fight to take 10-30 rounds with occasional scene changes throughout.

Batts

Forty-six rounds! My god man, did that session last a week?

Another big factor on how long combats last is the number of opponents. If you have one big baddy, the players are all concentrating their damage on a single target. That adds up quick. But separate them on a battlefield in 1:1 combats and it can sometimes take much longer, depending on their combat skill, tactics, gear, etc.