[deepomega]

I'm (slowly) gearing up to GM my second campaign with the same group that I did my first. We've got 11 runs under our collective belts, everyone basically knows what's up, but I always had a bit of trouble managing large combat. I have six players, and in order to keep combat moving, I'd usually try to handwave the movement rules a bit. We recently tried out a bit of D&D 5E, and the grid-based movement seemed to actually SIMPLIFY combat in some ways, because the DM had to actually be rigorous about who was where, which enemy was which, etc.

So my question is: Has anyone else had any luck pushing for a more real-distance version of SR5e combat? Does this make it more or less easy to juggle large groups of characters? Any other suggestions I'm missing here to speed combat up a bit?

[MijRai]

Mapping it out and drawing it up definitely helps out a lot.  My table uses a grid map, and we mark each grid as such-and-such length (20 feet or 6 meters, usually).  Throw on some appropriate props, draw in the buildings, use those old pizza box props to represent vertical distance...  It works out well, that way. 

[Spooky]

I normally only draw out a map when the runners are indoors, because drawing outdoor spaces is too large for the table we play on. When I draw a map, I use grid at 2 meters per square.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Large-scale combat - whether in distances/ranges or in quantities - can get tricky.  IMNSHO, the main thing that you should focus on is a) where the characters are now, b) where most/all of them can get to in the next turn, c) who's likely to be shooting at them in the next go-round, and d) who else is available for the opposition to shoot at.  Know the movement distances your PCs can take; be able to say whether or not there's cover within easy, tough, or 'you better roll' reach of their current cover.  Decide - based on their cover, their movement, and who else is available as a target (people are more likely to engage a nearby target under serious cover than a very distant target under negligible or no cover) - who is shooting at them, and toss dice only for those NPCs.  And if NPC Bad Guy A is going to be shooting at NPC Good Guy B, chuck some dice for show but don't worry about it - whatever happens is what fits into the story.

Also keep in mind what the player goals are for the fight.  Sometimes it's easy, really; if the players need to get from Point A to Point Z without getting killed, and aren't going to need to kill every single other MFer on the battlefield, then you only need to roll 'X guys are shooting at you this phase'.  Sometimes, though, killing every other MFer is the point, and then you should focus on 'engagement zones' - the areas within which any particular NPC is going to automatically shoot at targets.  And even then, it can still be relatively easy ...

[ScytheKnight]

This is something I've really struggled with in my game, mainly because the whole movement system to me seems extremely wonky, even penalizing fast melee characters... why? Because as per RAW a character has to be running for a combat round before they can make an attack while still running to perform a charge attack... when you think about it, the faster you are, the harder it becomes to excecute a charge attack because there's more distance you need to cover to successfully perform an attack!

[MadBear]

I like the old 3rd ed DnD movement rules. That is, you trade a Simple Action for your base movement, in SR it would be your AGL in meters, or a Complex for double that. Running adds the usual modifiers, and doubles movement rates. I also allow a 1 meter step for a Free Action, and you would not believe how often those are used. I use it in two games, one I play in and one I GM, and it works beautifully. We use a grid, a big table sized vinyl mat, which is a MUST to make any movement system work. You need to know about cover, LOS, Area of Effect, etc.

[ScytheKnight]

Yeah, I use a grid mat as well and I just let my players know the scale... I also tend to just simply allow using free action to run at a target within range and then complex action melee attack for a Charge, melee combat is punishing enough as it is without having to spend 2 rounds to perform a single attack.

Has anyone ever tried to rewrite the movement rules in a more understandable way? Not changing them, just rewording them so they're more understandable.