Game Mechanics

To be fair, some of the stuff you can do with the Fighter's Superiority dice are pretty crazy to consider using every round. I think it should've been on a gradual recharge system.

As in, "You get 6 dice to work with at the start of an encounter. You get 2 back at the start of your turn each round, up to your maximum of 6." This would encourage use of the martial prowess shit but also keep you from spamming too hard.

It may seem small, but I really really enjoy random rolled stat generations, especially if they have a point system to help you influence or reattempt rolls. Having to deal with bum rolls makes it more interesting and gives more value to the times you DON'T roll shit and roll amazing. Point-buy systems for stats are neat and all, but they feel stale and predictable.

>"You get 6 dice to work with at the start of an encounter. You get 2 back at the start of your turn each round, up to your maximum of 6."
I use a variant mana system like this (well, this and FFTA2 I think) when I run Savage Worlds, except it starts at half-full pool, so you need to power up for your most powerful moves.

For class based systems, I really like modular classes like in Rule of Cool's Legend and Strike!.

>Rule of Cool's Legend

Ffffff. I hate being reminded of that. Such an awesome foundation with so many cool mechanical ideas but it will never get proper support or extra content. Such a fucking shame.

I consider that where a martial should be at *minimum*, with what I actually expect being somewhere around ToB levels, so it didn't bother me at all. The Fighter we ended up getting? Now that bothered me, and anyone who okayed it can go fuck themselves.

Well, for martials, the idea would be that Superiority dice would represent the Fighter's stamina and ability to execute strenuous moves in rapid succession.

Can you explain for a relative noob GM?

I have been thinking of trying to make a 5e conversion, taking ideas from that and some other fav games.

Rolemaster/MERP did a similar thing. It's a d100+skill system and in melee combat, you can divide your skill between offense and defense, having to calculate how much incoming you're likely to get during the next round.

I had a pretty similar mechanic to this at one point, but it was a light fatigue system. You had pools called Vigors that represent exertion. They were finite pools of dice you could draw from to add to checks. There was Stamina and Focus. Most rolls were pretty dodgy if you didn't add ANY vigor, so things would get gnarlier and gnarlier as you got more and more tired. Diet, exercise, and sleep would replenish and advance your Vigors.

Turned out a really simple way of having pretty meaningful survival mechanics.

Let's try it system agnostic.

Let's say you have a currency called "Fatepoints"
Whenver the players do something with their characters that the GM particularly likes, he awards them Fatepoints.

Players can then spend these Fatepoints whenever they want to gain certain benifits, for example
>Spend 1 Point before a roll to gain +1 on the roll
>Spend 5 Points after a roll to gain a reroll
>Spend 10 Points to "spawn" an object at the scene that has already been there, but nobody noticed (at the GM's discretion)

It's a flexible mechanic. Players can gain a certain amount at the start of a session, they could get a random amount whenver they are awarded and what you can actually DO with them is up to the writers.

Funny, that's the basis of the dungeon crawling system I'm currently writing. You have a pool of dice representing your fatigue and every time you want to roll on anything even slightly psychically exhausting you choose how many dice from your pool you want to spend on that roll, representing the effort and amount of energy put into doing something. Management of all forms of resources is generally supposed to be a main focus of this system.

That graph doesn't make any goddamn sense.

I was briefly working on a similar system. A characters physical stats were added up to form their stamina pool while their mental stats determined their willpower pool. These STA and WIL points were spent to perform actions and reactions.

There was no limit on the number of actions a character could take during their turn, but the pools only refreshed at a rate equal to two specific stats (Endurance and Instinct). Burning through an entire pool on their turn was inviting an asskicking, as they'd have no points to spare for reactions.

Unknown Armies (while not being at my cup of tea for most other respects) has an awesome "insanity" system you can pretty much tag anywhere since it has little to nothing to do with the rest of the rules.

Right. Like making D&D "Inspiration" actually interesting. Maybe I will try this. Thanks!

The UA system always seemed interesting, yet way too involved to me. Something that looks great on paper, but is too much hassle in practice.

I always liked the simple, but effective way of CoC, you get a number that tells you more or less how far gone you are and lasting mental disabilities to give it more details when necessary.

Has anyone read Fireborn? Their way of rolling stats is amazing in theory.

You have 4 base stats, each paired off. Fire is Physical Active, Water is Physical Reactive, Air is Mental Active, Earth is Mental Reactive. So if you want to punch someone, you roll your Fire pool (d6 based game, 4+ is a success) against their Water; to avoid being tricked, you roll Earth against their Air.

However, you can 'move' dice from one attribute to another with your skills. So if you have Melee 4, you can move 4 dice from any attribute into Fire, so you punch with Fire+4 dice in total. But if you moved those out of Earth, you're now vulnerable if someone makes a mental attack against you.

It's very dynamic in play, similar to old SR like described. too bad Fireborn falls at every final hurdle at every stage of the system

I've recently been obsessed with how to determine initiative. I'd love to see some innovative ways of handling it.

opposed skill check - high roll goes first

I was thinking of having it based on a characters speed stat, but characters can spend points from their stamina pool to increase their effective speed for initiative (buying their way into acting first).

>Legends of the Wulin
>Round Begins
>all players roll their dice pool
>find dice pairs
>i.e. 3, 3, 5, 7, 7, 7 would give you a 23, 37 and a 15
>because 23 & 37 are dice sets, which allow special things
>spend any pair or die on your Initiative
>Can use extra dice sets for shaping the environment, performing any sort of non-combat action
>Actions then happen according to their initiative score

>Riddle of Steel, Song of Swords, Band of Bastards
>Combat Begins
>Determine if you're being Aggressive, Cautious or Defensive
>the more Aggressive gets Initiative
>All actions occur at the same time
>Initiative makes your action resolve before everyone else
>Initiative is passed around on successful defenses and landed hits

Simultaneous resolution. Standard formula goes:

Everyone secretly submits their actions
Actions resolved as though they occurred at the same time

Usually requires a ruleset built around it though, and it's easy to get wrong by introducing mechanics that get messy

I love burning wheel's social combat.

>I was thinking of having it based on a characters speed stat, but characters can spend points from their stamina pool to increase their effective speed for initiative (buying their way into acting first).

Hmmmmm, now that's a good idea. A fixed, stat-based initiative that can be changed up by using points from your awesomeness pool... That ain't bad. Nice idea!

I like 5e's Advantage mechanic, and I have yet to see anyone disagree. Would anyone who disagrees please post and explain why.

Advantage and disadvantage don't stack, which means players have no incentive to strategize beyond the weakest mechanical justification for advantage.

That sounds like determining initiative would take longer than the actual battle.

Well, that's not entirely true. That's all the strategizing they have to do in regard to advantage, there's still the entire rest of the battle to consider.

Also, the GM decides if you get an Advantage or not, and I would argue that only a bad GM gives it up like a ten dollar whore working for twenty.

It is entirely true. There is no depth to 5e combat, and the nonstacking of advantage is part of it. 90% of the time the optimal course of action for martials is standing still and attacking.

>Everyone secretly submits their actions
>Actions resolved as though they occurred at the same time

I do kinda like that method... although that's a recipe for rrreallly slowing down a game, though.

>Legends of the Wulin

Yeah, read up on that in another thread. Sorta blurry, though it has potential.

>Riddle of Steel, Song of Swords, Band of Bastards

Hmmmm. That's interesting. I'll have to read up on that one. Thank you!

>I love burning wheel's social combat.

Explain please?

Until they use the narrative mechanics to reinforce cliches of YA, urban-fantasy rather than spin them off into something interesting.

However, that's not a complaint specific to MH

Duel of Wits

The basic goal in DoW is to reduce the opponent’s Body of Argument (BoA) to zero, before he/she reduces yours to zero, through a series of verbal jabs and parries. By doing so, you prove your argument was the correct one, and your opponent has no idea what he’s talking about. A DoW is not about who is telling the truth; it’s about convincing everyone within earshot that you are.

Before a DoW, both players should state clearly their case and what is at stake. This is mostly a meta-game issue, to avoid confusion later. The stakes here are a social contract between the players that basically says, “My character will do this if I win and this if I lose.” It does not necessarily mean that both characters suddenly stop discussing and clearly state their case.

However, DoW is not mind control. If you cannot agree to the stakes being offered, you are free to walk away. A glib peasant couldn’t talk a king out of his kingdom, because no king would enter into such a deal! On the other hand, remember that BW conflicts are built on how much you’re willing to risk against what you hope to get out of them. Don’t be scared of big risks and desperate acts, because that’s the road to fortune and glory!

Social combat takes place in turns off three rounds, that all parties decide upon before they are resolved. It's sort of like paper rock scissors in a best of three, where you decide what you throw before you throw anything, and the relationships between rock, paper, and scissors change each time.

>Anime pedophile thinks something bad is good
WOW people of color me surprised

I have a question.

I am building an array of stats for a game I'm working on.

I have 8 attributes and at the start they need to be between 10 and 18...BUT they must all have the same total value(all 8 attributes total up to some value in all cases)

attributes are(Vitality, Endurance, Strength, Dexterity, Perception, Arcane, Social, and Intelligence) I'd like to have a bunch of fair starter-builds that work and don't suck but I'm crap and spontaneously generating semi-random numbers

is that a 5e thing?

I might need to look more into that system...
but I also really really HATE the priority gen system it comes standard with...

it does actually, granted it uses qualitative variables as opposed to quantitative ones.

even the janks in the graph make sense cause at the earliest stages many players are willing to put up with more frustration early in overall time playing, but unwilling to deal with frustrations later

what game is this in?

is from burning wheel.

thanks

For Wulin the dice mechanic is universal in the combat as well.
Not to mention it's just as much as a combat resolution mechanic as it is a narrative tool to do more than just fight while fighting and brings your descriptions into the crunch.

For Song of Swords it excels at 1v1s and tracking initiative is rather simple.
Even in multiple bouts it doesn't become more than a 2 second process.
Though tracking actions and when they resolve can be a chore when there's more than 2 or 4 in a fight

I don't understand exactly what you mean by this. Could you elaborate please?

I love the concept of dice pools but they often just end up shit that players don't actually have an idea of they will succeed a task or not, especially if they are allowed to remove dice from their pool/increase the number of successes needed. Also due to the bell curve produced just a few dice of difference will make the average contested roll between two characters a lopsided affair to the point of not needing a roll in some systems (mostly half die + successes). I really want a dice pool to be neat and exciting and have some reason for being rolled but fear that in the end it'd just be faster and more easily resolved with a d100 system.

Liking lots of dice said, I hate bellcurved XdY systems. Why would you want a quarter of the probability space occupy half the results? It's not even the interesting quarter of the probability space.

Not him but

5E Shadowrun works like this, players roll Xd6 and add a modifier. Goes from the top of the results to the bottom of the results. When it reaches the bottom of the initiative order all initiatives are decremented by 10 and goes over all remaining positive initiatives until there is no positive initiatives left. Taking damage reduces your initiative and certain actions also decrease it by say -5 a use. Most of the -5 a use actions are defensive ones that allow you to roll more dice on your defensive action. It's pretty nice, it has a weird balance of "faster" people getting more actions after everyone acts but that's mostly trying to ease off on the initive being even more of a god stat in the system like the old days where street sam were truly horrifying by able to get multiple actions before any normal person got 1 in combat every fucking round.

I am thinking of making a 2d6-roll-under system similar to GURPS, with character points being spent and all of that. I figured I'd go with Strength Dexterity Intellect Fortitude Perception and Willpower for stats, though I also considered Brawn Agility Spirit Intellect and Charm (BASIC). Average stat would be 6, and skills would work similarly to GURPS, except stuff would have triangular costs. So a hero would have like 20 character points, an average joe would have 10. Stats would be:

> 4 costs -2
> 5 costs -1
> 6 costs 0
> 7 costs 1
> 8 costs 3
> 9 costs 6
> 10 costs 10
> 11 costs 15

And so on, triangularly.

Default skill roll would be against stat - 2, so skill costs would be as follows:

> stat + 0 costs 1
> stat + 1 costs 3
> stat + 2 costs 6
> stat + 3 costs 10
> stat + 4 costs 15

And so on and so on.

So for example you could buy DX 8 and Shooting 10 (DX + 2) for 3 + 6 = 9 points.

Hit points (or "vitality") would probably be equal to Fortitude score. Maybe vitality will be a stat that is directly reduced by damage. And 0 will be a straight put down with possible death, although I might do something GURPS-y for staying up while at negative. But the point of this is to be uncomplicated.

Thoughts on this? I know it's not much but I figured I'd put the idea out there. I want to build a 2d6-based generic system, and while I have a skill-only one that works similarly to this, I like attributes because they add another dimension to the character.

>I am thinking of making a 2d6-roll-under system
>Average stat would be 6

Just keep in mind that the average roll on 2D6 is actually 7.

>I love the concept of dice pools but they often just end up shit

R. Talsorian's Fuzion and Interlock systems (Cyberpunk, Mekton, Teenagers from Outer Space, Bubblegum Crisis, VOTOMs, DBZ, etc) have a dedicated "Luck" Stat. Like all stats, it's from 1~10, and it's a pool of points you can use whenever for anything. So, like, you have a shot you NEED to make, you declare you're gonna dump half your luck into it, boosting the roll. Handy.

That doesn't help the main mechanic. It's a band-aid that could be replaced with a "Use a fate point to succeed" or even roll a luck die to turn a failure into a success. I want the dicepool to stand up on it's own not have a secondary system make you ignore it's rough edges cause you circumvent it somewhat, some of the time.

Yes. Well it'd actually be roll

Can you guys tell me about cool social interaction mechanics? Is there such a thing as good "social combat" system? Most ones I've read seem pretty unwieldy and would seriously get in the way of roleplaying. Maybe you just have to get used to them. Anyway in most of the games I've played social mechanics ended with GM saying "eh, roll your social stat/skill/poll and we'll see" and that's pretty lame if you want to play a "face" character.

I remember there was some Chinese system where you didn't have HP but you instead had Conditions you could put onto other characters either through combat or through social interaction and the dice mechanic for both was the same.

i.e. Your opponent could be a real stoic hard ass that teleports behind you and does the whole "nothin personell kid" bullshit

But if you're a doctor you could use your doctor skills to determine that he has a problem with his bladder, or if you're a Courtesan you can convince him that he just has some seriously repressed gay feelings.

And these then become conditions that are on the character that can be inflamed or soothed.

I think it also worked with the damage system, like you could beat up a dude with your fists and then use your social skills to make him afraid of coming around this part of town ever again.

That's Legends of the Wulin, it's been mentioned a few times before in this thread. It has so many cool mechanical ideas, if only it wasn't such a fucking nightmare to actually learn to play it.

>if only it wasn't such a fucking nightmare to actually learn to play it.

Can confirm, I've played several campaigns and run a bunch of solo sessions and the only thing anyone understands after a day of having the PDF is that weapons are on page 198, Externals & Internals are right after.

Some games give different players different numbers of action per turn, based on their stats and/or skills, or how well they roll, or whatever. While it makes sense, it is such a drastic advantage that it just sucks balls immensely for characters who don't get as many actions. I prefer it kept flat -- like 1 or 2 actions per turn.

>I prefer it kept flat -- like 1 or 2 actions per turn.

That's kinda the wors since the guy with two actions will be literally twice as effective as the guy with one. If you set it so everyone had like 5-6 actions the difference would be comparatively minimal (but would lead to more complex turns so not sure if worth).

Make it d6-d6 and then the average roll would be 0, which could be your average stat as well. Also, same curve.

I don't mind games where you can make a variable number of actions in one turn, but the more actions you take the less likely you are to succeed at each.

Oh, whoops! I meant "games where everyone gets one action or games where everyone gets two actions."

Cool idea.

I do too, actually. Like, you can do one action at no penalty, you can do two actions at -2 to each, three actions at -3 to each, etc.

>I do too, actually. Like, you can do one action at no penalty, you can do two actions at -2 to each, three actions at -3 to each, etc.

Make ten million actions and fish for Nat 20s.

Nat 20 shouldn't be a thing in systems like that.

Also, assuming it works like SW, you can't do the same action twice; i.e. you can't attack with the same weapon twice (unless it has rapid fire or you have some sort of special action that allows it), or move your speed twice, etc. because it'd get rather silly.

I have a modern fantasy system where initiative is entirerly determined on who has the lightest and smallest gun.

Snub nosed revolver? Shit accuracy and damage, but always goes first.
Heavy weapons drum barrel machine gun thing with a thick barrel and custom rounds? You'll destroy everyone, but you go last. That's the idea of it.

So I'm trying to create a fantasy game with mostly guns being the primary weapons, with minor emphasis on armor and protecting yourself.

Essentially I wasn't sure what would be the best solution to including armor in a system where everyone had guns, but I thought about it.

How does something like this sound;
>Melee attack- Roll damage die vs armor. Subtract armor from damage
>Ranged attack- Roll to hit, armor adds to defense. If hit, roll full firearms damage.

The idea of this system would be that melee attacks are reliable, but not nearly as deadly as gunfire. Additionally, you can attempt to knock people's armor off or open with melee attacks, can suppress enemies with guns, and do a few other combat tactics so its not quite as simple as this; but that's the gist.

Will this work? I want players to choose between being agile and quick vs being armored and a bit slower. I'd also like to do something with armor being able to take a number of hits or gunshot wounds maybe instead of the above, but I'm not sure.

needing luck isn't due to bad systems. it's an integral part of the hero's journey.

What do I do if I fire the Big Gustav?

Do I just come by the day after the session to inform them that they've lost?

So your melee would always hit, it just might not hit hard enough?

Everyone rolls initiative based on their stat.
Then, using weapon and gear modifiers determine who is slowest and who is the quickest and declare actions in reverse order, so the quickest guy gets to see what everyone else is doing first but also gets to act first with that knowledge.

Yes, it's not unreasonable for untrained fighters in street fights and bar brawls using improvised and very short ranged weapons like tools and knives instead of polearms, shields, and plate armor to assume that basically every attack 'will hit', but the attacks that don't penetrate armor are not necessarily automatic hits, it could easily be fluffed as a miss as well.

Not bad at all, reminds me of the Doctor Who rpg where the type of action you do determines your initiative - talkers get to act before runners who get to act before fighters.

I prefer totally non-innovative "the fastest goes first".

The Batman miniature game has some pretty fun game rules.

Why do people bother with that graph when there is a much better one

> Like, you can do one action at no penalty, you can do two actions at -2 to each, three actions at -3 to each, etc.
I, too, enjoy arbitrary math puzzles that can be solved using an excel sheet and basic knowledge of probability math, as opposed to games in which people who don't have those things. I feel that not having that extra complication robs people of the opportunity to shoot themselves in the foot by accidentally making mathematically inferior choices without knowing any better - and that's a fundamental feature of the kind of game I'm just strictly better at than others.

It's the kind of great design that brought us D&D 3.X Power Attack and Two-Weapon Fighting rules, or OWoD action splitting rules.

My preferred version of the graph.

OP seems to be implying that your desire for complexity increases with playtime.

That's not represented in that chart.

The sides of this graph disappear when I open it

The system I am currently developing has a unique initiative system which has done great in play-testing (although I am concerned that the novelty will wear off after a while and all that will remain shall be its tedium, we shall see).

All players have an Action Point pool determined by their stats.

When combat starts, every participant chooses a certain amount to move into their Active AP pool, based on what they want to accomplish with their first turn (every kind of action has a cost).

The GM finds the participent with the highest current AP (not active AP) and they take their turn, spending their active AP. When they are done, and before the turn is passed, they set aside a new amount of active AP for their next turn. There is also a robust reaction system through which you can spend AP from either your current pool or your active pool to take instant reactions out of turn, at the cost of lowering your place on the initiative order or having less AP to spend on your turn respectively.

Once all participants hit 0 AP, the round ends, everyone regains their full AP and re-wagers a new amount of available AP, and certain effects tick (such as blood loss or magic DoTs)

It has a lot of moving parts, which worries me (and frustrates me when there are more than a handful of npcs to control). But so far friends have found it very engaging. There is a contest every round to seize the upper hand on the initiative sequence and keep it until the people at the bottom hit zero, so you can spend your last few hoarded points to make actions they have no way to react to or defend against.

Technoir has interesting condition-based mechanics. You have verbs and adjectives. Verbs let you apply adjectives on the target, whether they're positive or negative. So you can Coax someone to make him Embarassed, or Shoot to make someone Covered.

Do we think that 2d10 are shit? is 2d10 in this context not 1d100? what do we all think of 1d100? since im making a game built around that im curious to hear what thoughts about it are out there

With a d100, unless you have some sort of secondary function for the second digit, it's literally 9 times out of 10 doing nothing. Which makes it kinda wasted, in my opinion.

It's not unlike the new exalted combat

Everyone secretly picks an Initiative number. Highest number goes first, but the higher the number, the higher the fumble threshold.

I'm infatuated with the idea of a balance mechanic wherein the road to advancement is also the road to eventual character death/removal.

As an example, I have a rules-light game system I use with a few friends where the best way to gain EXP also increases "Gloom" (a setting-specific stat which in a nutshell is how much of your soul is bound to minor demons). When a character reaches the Gloom cap, they get spirited away and you need a new PC. I enjoy the sense of inevitability it gives to character death, but speaking in more mechanical terms I have combined this with a leveling system where you need steadily increasing amount of EXP to buy up to the next level and when you mix those two elements you get new PCs quickly leveling up to catch up with the rest of the party, a forced elimination of any PC that's been around too long/is getting too strong, and a soft plateau of power level for PCs.

Along a similar vein, PCs can get extra boosts to their power that are independent of their character level in the form of Talents, but every Talent you take leaves you more vulnerable to Gloom accumulation (and the only way to lose Gloom is basically DM fiat). Even with lots of Talents, losing your PC in just a few sessions isn't a real possibility, but taking that easy shortcut to power WILL shorten your character's life span (or at least their time as a PC, since capping on Gloom doesn't necessarily mean death, it just means your PC gets taken out of the picture) by some amount in the long run.

there's something similar to this for orcs in Burning Wheel

They have a stat called Hatred, as bad things happen to them their hatred increases, hatred is the base stat for a bunch of their unique skills, meaning that as it increases you get better at doing orc stuff. If it gets too high though you either go berserk and die violently or you retreat from the world and go live in the wilderness, either way retire character.

There's an interesting game which uses this concept, Dawn Command. The players are Phoenixborn, reincarnated heroes who gain strength with each death. However, you can only die seven times and remain mortal, after that you return to the flame and act as a mentor and advisor to future Phoenixborn.

It's an interesting dynamic, since it's a game all about heroic sacrifice- You get abilities entirely about dying in awesome ways. But you also need to be careful, as your character is on a set timeline.

D100 is just a more granular d20. I don't think getting +1% or +3% a good thing when you can work with 5% steps.

Changing subject, using advantage and disadvantage from D&D 5e in a 3d6 roll mechanic good, bad or overpower? I mean rolling 4d6 and dropping the higher/lower one.

Since there's no Game Design General, I'm going to repost this Bloodborne/DaS inspired stuff I've been working on.

The game is d20 roll under, and is basically a d% system (think Dark Heresy et al) shaved to 5%. Higher numbers are better, though, provided they don't go over your target number.
>If your TN is 12 you succeed on 3, 7, 10, but fail on 13
In combat, you roll 1d20 plus the dice of your weapon's damage and if the d20 roll is less than your target number, you're treated as if you succeeded with a roll of d20+damage dice.
>1d20+1d6 that comes up 10 and 4 will still pass a TN 12, but still be treated as if you rolled 14.
I am thinking of figuring out some way to make that less swingy, though, like having only half the d20 contribute to damage. Otherwise successful hits can still end up dealing only 2 damage. Though hit locations can possibly fix that.

Weapons also have stances, which are basically the trick weapon stuff.
>Just to test things out:
Daggers are AP 3 and add 1d4 damage. When they change stance, they're AP 4, but add 1d4 per flurry.
Swords are AP 4 and +1d6, and become AP 6 and +2d6 in their second stance.
Axes are AP5 with +1d8; second stance is AP8 with 2d8 and treats armour as two less when Cleaving.

These two posts aren't by the same poster, but touch on the same thing with d20/d100. Neat.

T-that's a good point, user....basically any %ile system can be reduced to a single d10 roll with very little difference - thank you for opening my eyes to such an elegantly simple observation that i've missed for years and years!! Fuck i'm dumb.
Any other interesting observations?

Interesting... But that's gonna get complicated in a battle where there are multiple different types of weapons. Or where everyone's the same kinda weapons. What happens in a martial arts battle? A swordfight? Do fists go before derringers? Do derringers go before switchblades? Do pistols go before swords? What about a vehicular battle?

>Make ten million actions and fish for Nat 20s.

Nah, there'd be a cap on the number of extra actions you can take. Based on your reflexes stat or something.

>Nat 20 shouldn't be a thing in systems like that.

Why not?

>Also, assuming it works like SW, you can't do the same action twice; i.e. you can't attack with the same weapon twice (unless it has rapid fire or you have some sort of special action that allows it), or move your speed twice, etc. because it'd get rather silly.

Depends on the weapon. A semiautomatic pistol can be fired several times per second... all the shots are gonna have shit accuracy though. (Which is how the "penaties for multiple actions" idea works.)

Yeah, I've never been comfortable with this kind of system. It gives everyone ESP -- they all know what everyone else is gonna do. It robs the fight of a hell of a lot of drama.

>Not bad at all, reminds me of the Doctor Who rpg where the type of action you do determines your initiative - talkers get to act before runners who get to act before fighters.

Ohhhh, that's good! It favors the talkers, which is a VERY Doctor Who idea.