How can TL3 basic combat be sped up?

Question

GURPS, 4th Edition melee engagements between evenly matched TL3 combatants seem to go on forever. Because of the game's focus on realism, even without top-quality armor (but with some luck) sword-and-shield-armed warriors can protect themselves admirably. Halberds, heavy crossbows, mounted clashes, explosives, and field artillery are rare things for the typical adventurer to encounter. The grappling rules provide options, but there are many ways to escape.

Players seem hesitant to risk using something like All-Out Attack and, instead, mostly perform a basic attacks and defenses, sometimes with extra effort. Yes, exhausting an opponent is a realistic tactic, too, but it shouldn't be the only tactic.

And armor seems to prevent way too much damage.

What can be done to make basic melee combat go faster?

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Note: This question asks about GURPS, 4th Edition advanced combat; I am interested in speeding up basic combat.

Answer 1

If combat is too slow, the Basic Set* recommends making defense rolls a Contest of Skills - so instead of just needing to beat your Dodge/Parry/Block roll, you need to beat it by as much or more than the attacker beat their attack roll. This has two results:

1. Combat is significantly faster, since the odds of defending successfully are lower.
2. The balance is shifted in favor of the PCs, assuming the PCs are more skilled than their enemies - high skill now matters more, relative to luck or number of opponents.

*_{This is from 3E, p.108. I don't see it in 4E, but there's no reason it shouldn't work just as well.}

Answer 2

Roll 7 to 9 dice at once, color-coded.

I typically roll all the likely-needed dice at once for an attack, split up by color.

• 3 green dice for the attack roll.
• 3 yellow dice for the defense roll.
• X dice for the damage roll, according to the weapon damage.

That lets me quickly roll and read the result, rather than taking time for each step. If the attack misses or the defense succeeds, ignore the other dice. As a bonus, if the red dice read high, I can add some color description like "Karl takes a swing that would surely kill you, but you barely deflect it."

I roll the dice into a space on the table with barriers, so I don't have to chase after dice, etc.

Of course, some players prefer to roll their own dice, so I ask what they prefer. For NPC vs. NPC rolls, the full pool can still be rolled by the GM. If a player is involved in a roll, and they want to roll, the GM can also roll the NPC dice at nearly the same time - just the habit of thinking of combat action/defense/damage as being calculated quickly together can be useful to develop GM habits that allow quick resolution and narration even when the PCs are rolling, as opposed to thinking of each step at involving time to consider, choose, look up numbers, and roll.

Also, I tend to require players to be ready to declare their action when it is their turn. I tell them to think about what they will do in advance, so they have an answer ready. Too much delay and their character takes a default action appropriate to the character. After all, turns are one second long. It's entirely realistic for many/most characters to spend many/most turns not doing anything useful, let alone brilliant and well-considered. Certainly no looking up of rules.

And of course, I have all the usual needed stats for everyone pre-calculated and listed so they are very easy to read, so I almost never need to take time to look up what someone's skill is, or if I do, it's right there. See the GM Control Sheet. I make those for NPC groups too.

Also, I've been playing GURPS forever and I'm very good at math and reading die rolls, so it goes really quickly for me. It took a year or so before I got really fast at it. But once I've memorized most of the rules, combat doesn't take much longer than the rolls, and by combining 3 rolls into one, it really speeds things up.

(I'm also really interested in combat, so I actually enjoy the time I'm resolving combat.)

Don't fight to the bitter end.

Consider the situation for everyone in combat, and consider they probably really want to survive. When a fight starts to not go their way, roleplay what they do about that, including negotiating an end to the fight, running away, surrendering, playing dead, not getting up after taking a wound, calling for a retreat for their whole side, etc.

That can be good in other ways, too, as surviving opponents make for a more interesting ongoing situation, and the possibilities of surrender and negotiation, or capture and ransom, can all be quite interesting. They make the game more humane and real, and it also can be much more nice and interesting for the players if they ever lose a battle, to have not fighting to the death and being slaughtered a reasonable option.

If you and your players really don't care much about combat details, then consider optional rules to abstract things.

One such is any of various optional rules where the skill and defense levels of both sides can be reduced by skill, or the degree of success on an attack reduces the defense, or an attack is handled as a quick contest of skill.

Heavy armor has various counters.

As for armor, the values are meant to be semi-realistic, and if anything they're actually pretty low compared to the protective value of real armor.

I don't know at what level you want to address the issue of armor, but there are several ways to get more injury at TL3:

• Set games where there aren't many people in plate armor. Only late-medieval TL3 really historically had much if any plate armor. Hot climates tend to discourage heavy armor. Sailors tend not to want to risk wearing heavy armor. Etc.

• Use deadlier weapons. Heavier weapons, finer weapons, weapons wielded with more strength, magic weapons.

• Use a culture where many fights are to first blood.

• Check out the rules for aimed shots. Several target areas can take someone out of combat with not that much penetrating damage. Same for targeting weak points in armor.

• Note the rules for knocking people down.

• See the rules on disarming people and breaking weapons and shields.

• Use the optional rules for standing up in armor. Not only does it discourage wearing very heavy armor, but those who do can be subdued by knocking them down and then dealing with them while they are down.

Answer 3

If you have people fighting one-on-one, both in heavy armour, then they are fairly resistant to each other's attacks. The ways round this that PCs usually use are based on having higher skill, or using tactics.

The Basic Set methods for using higher skill to get through an opponent's defences are Feint, from p365 of the Basic Set, and Deceptive Attack, from p369.

If you're willing to have a little more complexity, without going to hex-grid Tactical Combat, you can use Hit Locations (p389-99) which can end fights more rapidly, without the need to kill opponents. To stop them being able to fight you, target their arms, which are often less heavily armoured than the torso, and can be attacked at -2. To stop them being able to run away, target their legs, also at -2.

But the simplest way to win fights is to gang up on opponents: fighting several people at once is really hard in GURPS.