So, Power Combat aside, I'd like to ask for people's ideas about speeding up combat. In games I run, combat takes a -ridiculously- long length of time, and usually, someone has to go to sleep for work in the morning before getting out of the artful maiming onslaught. (Get it? ;P)
One of the few I've come up on my own is gathering the dice before making the attack, and planning out what the hell you're going to do on your turn before you actually get there...
anyone else?
kaoticrequiem
__________________
Poet, Dreamer, Geek.
Loves teh Exalted MA. Loves them good.
Please consider checking out my blog: I Blog With My Face
Give out NPC soak scores so that the players can pre-calculate damage scores in advance.
Also, have them roll damage and attack at the same time, when possible.
Use tokens for counting Essence. It speeds things up a lot when you shuffle them around instead of scratching and erasing tick marks or whatever.
Use the Extras rules as much as possible. Remember that folks don't need to roll damage with Extras. You might up it even more and say "if you do 3 dice or more of damage after soak to an Extra, it's out of the fight."
The Exalted combat system is extremely fiddly because the game is built around the premise that combat should be detailed and exciting. Unfortunately this means it doesn't work well in a time-crunch environment.
For that, I'd consider some alternatives... such as WUSHU, or if you prefer something less completely high concept, you could wait for Weapons of the Gods (which is what I'm doing, though for different reasons) and adapt the mechanics to Exalted's milieu.
__________________
Charter Member: TEAM SEASLUG! The Azumanga Daioh fanclub of rpg.net! Show your azuluv!
The thing that works best for me has been writing down all my die pools for all my common attacks, as well as jotting down my pools for various actions with all of those. It really helps cut down on simple calculations, and ensures that I never leave out my accuracy bonus or anything. If I know I want to make 4 attacks with my melee weapon, it requires no actual thought on my part, just checking my notes.
Make your players write down their totals. If their math sucks, make them write down common multiple action patterns.
Roll your NPCs defences while your players are stunting (this works best with the highlighting dice trick, which lets you read dice with minimum cognitive overhead). If you roll five defences against five attacks, roll them all at once during the stunt, and just knock off a couple of successes from the end ones if wound penalties rack up.
Don't have your PCs fight people in their own league every session.
Stunt like maniacs, so most of the content of the fight is interesting narrative. It'll still take a while, but you won't mind so much.
If the players haven't already, writing down all of the appropriate dice pools is VITAL. If they're adding their dext and dodge and essence and +3 for the bracers and +2 for the hearthstone... every time they dodge, it lengthens combat a bit. Same for initiative, attack and parry pools for their weapons, and their base damage. If they have an attack spell they use a lot (Death of Obsidian Butterflies, Flying Guillotine...), those dice pools should be noted as well. This also goes for any NPCs, obviously, especially if they're expected to live more than one round.
I've been too lazy and/or stupid to use them, but people seem to like those Charm Cards that ... er, someone whose name I forgot... made. If I recall correctly, the Solar and DB ones can be found on the WW site.
If it's taking forever to chew through extras, there are a variety of ways to speed things up. One I've found nice is if a mook is wounded and not killed, mark them as wounded; if they're hit again, they're killed without rolling.
Although it doesn't entirely please me in this respect, Power Combat's Essence ping speeds up combat a lot. Any weak characters who often find opponents' armor reducing their damage pools to one die would likely appreciate it, too.
Outside of that, I'd welcome any advice as well.
~me
"Who wins, First and Forsaken Lion or Wood Godzilla?"
One thing we do to cut down on die rolling is to utilize an optional auto-success system. You may trade three dice from your pool for an automatic success. In this fashion, many combats have been cut from a crapload of die rolling to a matter of simply trading auto-succcess numbers with the occasional die roll. It's very liberating to be able to say "he only got three successes? I dodge it."
Of course, with this system, you can still opt to roll dice, and many still do, especially when the success ratio needs to be higher than one in three.
__________________
The 'Take a Point" meme makes baby Kal-El cry.
Extras have no business rolling any dice other than attack. Give them a defensive value for when they're attacked and they haven't been yet. This is typically 1 or 2. If they're hit, they go down (either surrendering, unconscious, playing it, or dead, but regardless, out of the fight)
Multiplying health levels by 2.5 and not rolling damage at all (just applying it) speeds things up significantly - however, it also entails rewriting not-insignificant parts of the game (Charms with a health level cost in particular). This also changes the feel a little bit.
Narrate away extras on occasion. Keep enemy Exalted thin-- not that every martial encounter with them should be a significant event, but opponent(s) capable of fighting the entire Circle to a fair fight should be really frigging rare, especially if they're Celestials. As ST, you should have a sheet with an enemy Exalted's relevant dice pool ready at all times. Calculate available essence (before and after they toss up the scene-longs) ahead of time, and simply subtract every time they spend essence. Move quickly yourself-- your players will learn from you. If they're still having problems, start memorizing their character sheets and calculating for them, if you're good with math. To really speed things up, get a dice roller if everyone's OK with it.
__________________
A long political thread on Tangency should leave you degraded, yet satisfied, like a good S&M session.
- Moochava
Pre-printed dice sheets helped my group out a lot. I don't roll a single thing for NPCs anymore, I just tick off the dice from a randomly rolled sheet. My players are ok with it (I wouldn't have started that without asking them), and it means that I can take care of everything a lot faster.
I plan on highlighting my dice for successes, and maybe implementing Andrew Tatro's 3 dice = 1 success system to speed things up even more.
__________________
When death comes, I die bleeding oil and sparks like my metal brothers. When death comes, I die in steam.
~Man-O-War Deidric Harkinos, WARMACHINE
My love for you is like a truck, BERSERKER
~Karchev the Terrible (attributed), WARMACHINE
Linear Mode
