Binding Combat Turns With Time in a Round

 

"But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this — we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws." 

Whewell: Bridgewater Treatise.

 

The abstraction of time in a 5th edition combat round reared it's ugly head when the Reaver intended to blow a horn sounding alarm and J.A.S. wanted to know how much time his PC had to stop it. 5th edition combat rounds combatant turns (apart from a reaction) each fully occur prior to the subsequent actions of the next combatant's turn in initiative order.

On the one hand a result of taking full-round turns sequentially in order, rather simultaneous turns, is that game play is easier. The counter-intuitive abstraction is that there is potentially an infinite amount of time within each 6 second round bounded only by the number of combatants taking turns that round (i.e. in our combat with the Reavers the first combat round there were 13 sequential 6-second periods action, 6 PCs + 7 Reavers, in total 78 sequential seconds of time had elapsed). The rules abstract the turns as simultaneous, however the is no simultaneous effect.

I have been working on assigning time duration to actions/movement/bonus actions/extra attacks using 3-second half-rounds to reintroduce a combat round being governed by time and the idea of simultaneity to combatants' turns within a round.

Below are my ideas I was intending to introduce first in my in-person Wilderlands game, but since these ideas were briefly touched on by J.A.S. during our combat Saturday night, perhaps we'll attempt the  new rules first in Psychedelic Deadlands / Dreamer of Dreams campaign (or not, Dr. John PhD is DMing the next 2 sessions).

These ideas regarding how the game abstracts time for events have been a source of debate between Midwest and West Coast D&D from the earliest days of the game.

D&D evolved from wargame rules by members of the Castle & Crusade Society, founded by Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz as a chapter of the International Federation of Wargaming, itself founded by Gygax, Scott Duncan and Bill Speer in 1966. These gamers got together around a sand table (usually in Gary's basement) ordering miniature armies into mock battles. Abstract combat was simple and made sense.

Conversely, the Society for Creative Anachronism was founded in Berkeley in 1966 with armored members going outside to fight mock battles with padded weapons. Their point of view was not that of a military commander with a bird's eye view of battle, but as a common soldier who has felt the heft of their shield and the sting of a (padded) sword. Combat seems abstract if you aren't the one fighting. The reenactors saw something missing in abstract combat and created their own rules and games to fill those gaps.

(More history here: California Gaming Part I - Steve Perrin's Conventions)

Anyhow, here is my take thus far...
----------------------------------------------------------
Rounds are an abstraction of 6 seconds.

During combat in the 5th edition (2024 revision) of the World’s Most Popular Role-Playing Game here is how a 6-second round of a combatant’s turn is divided:

• Action (cost is 3 seconds)
• Movement (cost is 3 seconds)
• Brief Communication (cost is 0 seconds, duration is less than 6 seconds)
• Interact with 1 object or feature of the environment (cost is 0 seconds)
• Ready Action/Movement (cost is 0 seconds)
• Bonus Action (cost is generally 0 seconds, duration is 1 second or less)
• Reaction (happens outside of your turn)

We can discern that within a round an action and a movement are each equal to a duration of 3 seconds. This is because movement permits you to move up to a distance equal to your speed in 3 seconds, and the action "dash" permits you an extra move up to a distance equal to your speed in 3 seconds.

However, movement is different than an action such that while you can take an action for additional movement, a combatant cannot substitute an additional action from not moving.

There is a quality of reconnaissance to movement.

During the movement phase of your round regardless whether you are actually moving, you are also making an effort to locate enemies (and allies) and to ascertain strategic features of the combat. Even if you do not move at all, it takes 3 seconds from within a round to a round to evaluate your strategic situation within a combat round.

Dividing 6 seconds generally into a 3-second movement and a 3-second action, we must consider what happens to that time when bonus actions and extra attacks occur.

I suggest that a bonus action takes 1 second at any time during the 6-second round while the gaining of an extra attack takes 1 second from the 3-second action phase.

Inserting a bonus action into a 6-second round requires some additional time, but seems would overlay movement and action rather than interfere with them. I considered many different bonus actions to arrive at this conclusion.

Some classes permit extra attacks at higher levels which historically would fit within that same amount of time for an attack action, with the inference that you attack faster.

Each individual combatant rolls for initiative on a d20 (an exception for a group of identical monsters who roll one d20 as a group), then adds their Dexterity Modifier.

The number difference between the highest initiative score and the lower scores determines the second in the initial round when each combatant begins their particular turn. Each 5 points a combatant’s initiative score is less than the highest initiative score results in beginning their turn 1 second later that the highest initiative score. (For example, at 5-9 points below, that combatant begins their first turn 1 second after the combatant with the highest initiative score; at 10-14 points below, begins their turn 2 second later; at 15-19 points below, 3 seconds later; etc.)

Where multiple combatants can act in the same second, compare actual initiative scores and the highest acts first. If actual initiative scores tie, the combatant’s dexterity ability score is the tie-breaker.

Rounds would be managed in 3-second half-rounds, rather than full 6-second rounds.

By breaking down the round by seconds, and then assigning a staggered starting second based on initiative, combatants actions can be arguably more simultaneous. The order of turns in a round is actually bound by time as overlapping sequential rounds instead of time having been bounded artificially by all the sequential turns in the round.

In their given 3-second half round a combatant may:

• Take an action (with or without a bonus action or extra attack); or
• Make a full movement (with or without a bonus action); or
• Make a partial movement and begin or conclude an action (with or without a bonus action or extra attack). 

However, because of staggered starting seconds within the initial round, a combatant may not have a full 3 seconds in their initial half round (or even, if a combatant rolls particularly poor versus the highest initiative score, lose the entire first half round and perhaps seconds from the second half round). 

This would be similar to "surprise" (ha, especially if a combatant rolled very poorly on initiative), but more accurately could be assessed as the amount of time for a combatant to react in an attack.