Quote from: Ghost Whistler;640055Can you show me this system? Is it your own idea?

I used to own Exalted, but I don't think I made it as far as the combat rules before I gave up (3e might excite me, but that's nother topic).

I posted about it a fair bit when I first joined, I can't find those posts now though as history only goes back 250 posts and the keywords are too generic. It borrows concepts from a lot of different systems and ideas, mixed in and refined with my own experience and gaming.

It's a roll high skill+stat+d10 game, using the battle wheel and rolls to hit and dodge, not damage (that is set for each weapon and modified depending how high you roll over the target). The time actions take are modified by your skill level which can have a huge effect on combat - victory can easily hinge on the difference between taking 3 ticks and taking 2 ticks to attack, it can be a real white knuckle ride even for experienced players.

I'm pretty happy with it and plan to release it one of these days, I'll send you on a copy when I get round to organising it.

Quote from: The Traveller;640056It's a roll high skill+stat+d10 game, using the battle wheel and rolls to hit and dodge, not damage (that is set for each weapon and modified depending how high you roll over the target). The time actions take are modified by your skill level which can have a huge effect on combat - victory can easily hinge on the difference between taking 3 ticks and taking 2 ticks to attack, it can be a real white knuckle ride even for experienced players.

I'm pretty happy with it and plan to release it one of these days, I'll send you on a copy when I get round to organising it.

It sounds like an elegant solution, I'd really like to see it too.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;640038The Battle Wheel idea is a good idea. But for me, it's an exceptionally daunting design prospect: havign to cost actions and balance is not going to be easy.

You may be overthinking this. Does your system include rules that could be applied to resolving actions fast-but-poor, slow-but-accurate, and average-but-average?

Well, set a baseline time cost (Say, 4 ticks), and slot everything else in around that, say, 2 - 6 ticks. Add some sort of skill-based way to go faster or slower (Like, if you succeed by x points, your next action goes 1 tick faster, or let characters punch their opposition back to later ticks. If you've played the old JRPG Grandia, you might be familiar with the concept - can't remember if FFX had it, or anything more recent than that).

Slot your kewl kombat powahz in where they'd belong in relation to regular attacks; because timing system is pretty coarse anyway, the exact details aren't insanely important, as long as it feels right.

Quote from: Ladybird;640069It sounds like an elegant solution, I'd really like to see it too.

Not a bother, one for everyone in the audience!

My discussion on Story Games threw up an interesting point regarding these systems; that they give more 'screen time' to quicker characters. Though a slower lumbering Zangief type might do more damage when he gets to hit with his big attack or heavy weapon, he gets to act much less. It's a fair point...?

How about a system that gives the player, eg, a couple of actions per turn (4k does this, two simple actions or a full action). So a quick attack can be followed by something equally quick, while a big swing from your might warhammer takes a full action. More or less the same time for the characters involved.

Yeah I was reading that thread, fairly nasty bunch over there.

Thing is though, regardless of what system you use a combat god is going to dominate combat. 'Screen time' is a proxy for 'importance' here, so you'll have a sliding scale with two ends in most situations. Unless the system specifically forbids any kind of specialisations or makes them unimportant, this is unavoidable.

Which brings us to the next point, namely if combat is such a central feature of your campaign that combat gods dominate the whole game, odds are every character is going to be so optimised, either that or you should look at emphasising other possible solutions to conflicts.

Not to be a broken record but in my system it is possible to be that guy who can kill four men before anyone else has a chance to pull a sword, an Olympic gold medallist swordsman with ten years battle experience, and you can be that right out the starting gate, from chargen.

Even at that level of competence however combat is still a risky proposition. Multiple simultaneous attacks on you apply a severe cumulative defence penalty; four guys down and the remaining eight dogpile the combat god, chances are someone's going to do some damage. Worse if they have longarms and worse yet if they have bows. Guns, forget about it, it ends up looking like (and more importantly feeling like) that shootout scene from Enemy of the State, 7:30 to 7:50. Shit gets wild when violence erupts.

And that's just the human enemies, what about a frost giant? Dude is taller than an average suburban home and stocky with it, hardened steel shatters on their icy hides, he's effectively swinging an i-beam at your torso, with a bad attitude to boot - were there ever warriors that could go one on one with things like that? It is doable of course, wouldn't be much of an adventure otherwise, but combat is much more dangerous without it being a group effort.

And of course then we have non combat situations, which should normally outnumber the combat situations by a large factor. If you've optimised to that extent for combat, you haven't optimised for anything else.

The point I guess is that the value of 'screen time' given to each character by tick systems varies wildly depending on the backing system and campaign you're running, but even then is not a factor unique to tick systems.

The idea is appealing.

I could call it the Combat Oracle and design it to look like a Pakua compass with 8 spaces. I'm not sure how many spaces you would need to make it work.

I'd say eight is fine. I use ten because the main dice in the game is a d10 so it works in that way. If you need more you could always put in an outside track or maybe some kind of yin-yang spiral design, there's no rule to say it has to be a circle.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;640283My discussion on Story Games threw up an interesting point regarding these systems; that they give more 'screen time' to quicker characters. Though a slower lumbering Zangief type might do more damage when he gets to hit with his big attack or heavy weapon, he gets to act much less. It's a fair point...?

Not really, it's artificial and gamey.

Sure, it works in a tournament fighter, but there everything about your character is bundled together, because everyone is a pregen and there are so few other factors to balance with. There's no twiddling with their stats, you just have to learn the character as-is, and the speed difference between a fast and slow character is nowhere near that of, say, an RPG where Ryu is acting 1.5 times as often as Zangief.

In an RPG, though, Zangief's player has already made tradeoffs for his huge strength (And, in RPG terms, both Ryu and Zangief would come under "combat gods"). We don't need to penalise him again every combat round for that choice; it's probably best to make that a choice for Zangief's player, which means making it a standard part of the combat system... essentially, as we have discussed, implementing these tradeoffs on a per-attack basis. So if Zangief wants to keep heavy-hitting, sure, but that's an option, not the sole possibility for him.

Steal from BRP?

So actions are performed in DEX order counting down. That's for PCs and GM characters.

BUT BEFORE then, intentions are stated in INT order, counting UP.

So the dumb ones state their intentions first, the smartest ones last.
Then the fastest do them first and the slowest last.

There has to be a penalty for changing your action, or simply refuse it.

Of course if you don't like fixed initiative then roll 1d20 plus DEX modifer for the DEX element.

Believe you me, it makes life so much easier but adds a nice tactical twist.

At the risk of being awkward, I don't like the idea of using a single specific stat for Initiative. I'm dealing with very competent characters who are able to react with all manner of skill: a kung fu chef is jsut as quick as the Chief Strategist of the Battle of Red Cliff, who isn't per se a swordsman. Of course if you allow the PC's to pick any of their stats/skills to use as Initiative they will end up with the same initiative which is rather self defeating.

Quote from: Ladybird;640574In an RPG, though, Zangief's player has already made tradeoffs for his huge strength (And, in RPG terms, both Ryu and Zangief would come under "combat gods"). We don't need to penalise him again every combat round for that choice;

Do i have to point out that one of those tradeoffs is that he is Slower than, for instance, Ryu?
And that it do mean that he is slower Each Combat Round?
It isn't "penalizing again", it is bringing the rules to bear ....
He is still at least as fast as a regular human, just that Ruy is even faster.

Ok, what is the best way to resolve the initial placement on the 'combat oracle' (i love that phrase even if noone else will). There seem two ways:

1) everyone produces an initiative value (which will be 1-8) and that is their starting step.
2) everyone prodcues a value and the highest starts at the first step in order with everyone deriving their starting step by subtracting their value from the highest and placing a number of steps from the first equal to that difference.

If you want a system where a warrior can kill four guys before anyone else can finish drawing their swords, 2) is best for you. Keep in mind though that if there are big enough differences between the highest possible score and the lowest possible score it can end up overrunning (as in say someone has 9 less than the highest and so moves into tick 1 rather than being on tick and you'll have to remember which ones overran.

One way round this is to just stack overunning counters at tick 8, with the quickest on the bottom and slowest on the top, then play them from the bottom. I do that anyway when there is more than one counter on a tick. It's like a three dimensional battle wheel. Or, have more tick spaces.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;640598At the risk of being awkward, I don't like the idea of using a single specific stat for Initiative. I'm dealing with very competent characters who are able to react with all manner of skill: a kung fu chef is jsut as quick as the Chief Strategist of the Battle of Red Cliff, who isn't per se a swordsman. Of course if you allow the PC's to pick any of their stats/skills to use as Initiative they will end up with the same initiative which is rather self defeating.

Let them use whatever skill, for initiative purposes, they want to use for action purposes. If they're multiple-actioning, use the worst skill they're using.

Or give them some kind of join-battle skill, for initial initiative, and add a system for spectacular successes knocking a tick or so off your action's cost.

There's a cowboy rpg called Aces & Eights that has a similar but perhaps easier to manage system where you just accumulate a total, rather than go around a wheel. Maybe this would be better?