otto@whuxle.UUCP (George V.E. Otto) (05/31/84)
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The following was taken from an item posted recently by Steven Maurer, along
with my comments.
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Well now, I have managed to borrow that old dumb book,
"AD&D Players Handbook", and am finally able to respond to
the person who made the various personal attacks on me a
little while ago.
STRICTLY SPEAKING, these are the casting times for
various popular spells. Instead of dealing in "segments"
and "rounds", I will instead compare the casting times to
the number of attacks a fighter would get before the spell
would go off. REMEMBER that if a MU or Cleric is injured
during the spell casting time, then the spell stops.
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You must play a different version of AD&D from that described in the Players
Handbook, etc. In general, low-level fighters can get *one* attack per
round with a hand-held weapon, or sometimes 2 or 3 attacks with missle
weapons.
Also, you forgot to mention that in general the side with the initiative
will get its attacks in before the side that loses initiative, although this
is of course adjusted according to the amount of initiative a side has and
the speed factors of the weapons used. Another factor you forgot to mention
is that when calculating the segment that an MU's spell goes down against the
segment that a fighters attack succeeds against the MU, the spell CASTING
TIME is compared against the weapon SPEED FACTOR, with adjustments because
of initiative. (See DMG, p.66, "Other Weapon Factor Determinants".)
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Now, as you can see, it does appear that any moderate level
fighter or monster will be able to chop up a MU/Cleric with no
problem, IF TIME IS COUNTED. But, of course, it is not. For
all you AD&D players out there, ask yourself when was the last
time you had to wait 5 segments (attacks) before the Cure Light
Wounds on your character took effect??
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Of course we have to wait for 5 segments for the spell to take effect, but
since that is in general one-half the time available for a *single* attack
from a fighter (where did this idea of 5 attacks come from?) I see no problem
with it.
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I stand by my eariler statement, that in AD&D, spell casting
time is almost completely ignored by most DM's. And, in addition,
that this is the fault of the system.
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No, spell-casting time is *extremely* important if you are going to play the
game properly. I have never seen a DM ignore it. Of course, most of the
people I play with have been playing for 10 years or so. Maybe there are a
few newcomers who have changed the rules without knowing it or meaning to.
The fundamental confusion here seems to be that a fighter can make single
attacts during segments rather than rounds. That is true *only during
surprise segments*, i.e., when one party is surprised by another party.
(See DMG, p.62, "Surprise".) Let me quote: "Because the party surprised is
(relatively) inactive, the surprising party will be able to attempt telling
blows during each segment of surprise *as if the segment were an entire
round*! That is, a fighter able to attack twice during a normal round of
combat will be able to do so twice during each surprise segment." [Emphasis
mine.] Note that surprise does not change a player's movement base, so that
if a fighter needs to close during the surprise segments, he or she may use
up all the surprise segments before being able to deliver a single blow.
George Otto
AT&T Bell Labs, Whippany
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