Alternatives to turns or "initiative" based combat resolution

>it would be a sacrifice to your world
Absolutely haram. While I don't disagree about the importance of gameplay, I believe that a well designed world with a consistent and logical set of rules aids immersion (and therefore proper roleplay) which is just as important. Hence why I'm working so hard to figure out how not to sacrifice either.

I made this a few years ago. Just never finished. Maybe it can give you an idea.

What the fuck, somehow you've offered a solution that is worse than the dnd standard i'm trying to move away from. Those still have the issue of turns being completely discrete time pockets in which only one person can act and nobody else can do shit but now the order in which people act isn't even in any way related to their individual skills/abilities? What made you think this was a better way?

>the issue of turns being completely discrete time pockets in which only one person can act and nobody else can do shit
Unless you include response/interrupt actions this is the only way anything is going to work.

Yes exactly. I'm angling for a more realistic reactive system so something like abilities to interrupt or respond to things would be exactly what I want. But I can't figure out how to systematise such a thing.

>I can't figure out how to systematise such a thing.
You have actions that allow you to act in somebody else's round. Example: Shadowrun represents initiative as a number that decreases by 10 each time you cycle through all combatants. You can make interrupt actions for an initiative cost (usually 5).

But first, an important question: What do you think happens in a round, in-character? Do you think people just stand around waiting for their initiative to make an action? Because that's wrong.

>Lumping all aggressive resolution options under one label seems absurd (though I totally get it for Dr Who).
So just assign speeds to all different types of actions and then go in order of speed.

Alternately, allow people to interrupt actions when they're doing something significantly quicker.

I obsessed on this for a while, actually. I had a few ideas, all bad.

The first was an action point system that just used MTG system to the letter. Initiative would give you priority, but most actions would be instants.

The second was having all actions on cards and just placing them in a center pile when you feel like it, in real time. You then flip it over and resolve the actions top to bottom. This turned out to be a thinly veiled reality check for speed and intelligence.

The third was Tempo. It was stupid simple, just an action point system where action points were also initiative order, essentially. The action points worked more like seconds. Everybody would place a card face down in front of them that had their intended action and it's Tempo cost, and then flip then over together. The smallest costing one would happen first, and so on.

Anyways, these all sucked.

Check out Marvel Universe RPG. Although it's diceless, it's quite cool, but I believe my group plays a slightly houseruled version:

You can place energy in up to two actions. Everyone does this at the top of the round, including enemies.

Actions then happen in this order: Mental actions then Physical actions in Speed stat order, from 10 to 0. Ties are broken by Agility, which should do it, but after that it's broken by whoever used the most energy that turn.

You can cancel an action in response to another action, but you only get half the energy (rounded down) back from it; which then gives you the opportunity to use another action if you so wish. You can also retarget an action, but lose 1 energy from the action for doing so.

Once I tried to hack together a tick based turn style based on the grandia series turn system. It came off a touch WhiteWolfy

I tried to figure out a way to standardize calculation of action speed modifiers, but I fumbled.

For those of you who don't know in Grandia your turn icons are constantly moving around a clock-face, basically. Once you hit 12 o'clock time 'freezes' for your turn and you get to pick your action. Then you switch from your speed to your action's speed (powerful spells cast slower, I don't remember if it's standard, but in my version, it would be a modifier).

Action Speed is usually slower than your normal speed, and you're in that from 12-3. Once you hit 3 o'clock your action goes off. However, while you're casting and everything your action can be interrupted/canceled and knock you backwards on the clock.

Physical actions would include running up to the person you want to smack in the action time.

A few years back, when my group was still using a somewhat homebrewed AD&D, rounds went like this:

1) DM goes from player to player and asks them to announce their action for this turn
2) Everyone rolls initiative (d10) and applies action modifiers
3) Things play out in the initative order, e.g. a wizard that casts a spell at ini 8 gets interrupted by an attack against him at a lower ini, but finishes his spell if he's faster than the attacker
4) If actions conflict, there will be a compromise if possible (Attacking a target that teleported away? Attack an enemy that is nearby instead), otherwise they're lost
5) End round, go back to 1)

We didn't use miniatures, of course - that would impose an exactness on every situation that would make this totally impracticable.

I remember finding miniatures incredibly appealing, because this system made tactics really difficult. You never knew if the DM agreed with your imagination, for example when you wanted to protect your wizard in the tunnel behind you, but the DM had enemies run around you because the tunnel is much wider in his mind.

The only game I can think of that does nonstandard initiative well is Reign, but that's only because the way the roll system works makes it so that you can determine how quickly an action happens as part of the roll. Basically
>round start
>lowest initiative person declares their action
>repeat until you reach the highest initiative
>roll, which makes sets of dice
>largest dice set happens first, with the number on the dice breaking ties

Mate did you even read my posts? That is exactly what I have in mind currently. I just thought there had to be a better way than that. I can conceive of a large variety of combat actions in my system and I feel like a realistic representation would end up with too much granularity for action speeds.

That sounds like an interesting idea, though a flat cost for interrupts of any kinds sounds unrealistic I could adjust that on a per action basis. But regardless of what you think is happening in character while waiting for your turn, the gameplay doesn't really bear that out. Yeah sure you can fluff it as them doing something (what exactly though would someone be doing if they are standing still while a guy charges them with a fucking cleaver or something? twiddling his thumbs?) but ultimately that's just you saying shit and without it being backed by crunch it just feels hollow.

That's easy to say but without systematising action speed this will invariably lead to arguments at the table about what qualifies as "significantly quicker"

If I may, what sucked so much about the Tempo style system? Because that sounds appealing to me

Incidentally, I forgot to reply to you last night but you have arguably been the most helpful so far. They certainly have an intriguing system.

Yours sounds similar to the hackmaster way like the above guy suggested. Might be the way to go.

I never use miniatures so that doesnt bother me at all but it sounds like your tactics issue is just poor DMPlayer communication. If tactics are relevant to your system then then the DM should be making clear things like distances, chokepoints, cover etc. And if your strategy involves these tactics you should be requesting thhs information insofar as your character can know it. I always hated the precision of miniatures on a grid so what I like to do when I've DM'd is to get a little hand whiteboard and marker and just draw out a little map of the combat zone and known enemy and player postitions. It's pretty trivial to just rub out and redraw little dots to represent players and enemies as they move.

I recommend you read Burning Wheel's combat subsystem, "Fight!"
Players script they actions in a special "exchange" sheet. Each exchange has three volleys and actions are distributed evenly across the exchange (the amount of actions depends on the PC's reflexes). In each volley actions are compared and resolved, each actions interacts differently with eachother and occur simultaneously, like a very (very) complex rock paper scissors game.
The systems is not always good, it can get convoluted. But you might get some ideas from it.

I kind of like action tick systems. Every action a character can take has a set AP cost that determines when it will resolve, so everybody declares their actions and then you just count ticks from there until the first action resolves.

Really opens the door to things like interruptions, and personally I like the element of dynamic action it brings.

I'm working on a homebrew god-awful abomination hybrid of 4e utilising this system, but I find I've had to basically rewrite it from the ground up. My intent was to make a system that didn't give a shit about 4e's boring mook encounters and was specifically designed to have the party only fighting big boss type enemies, while retaining 4e's power system. But then a guy I bounce ideas off gave me a cool idea: Power cards. You have a deck of powers which you draw from, rather than a set number of encounter powers and at-wills and shit.

It's actually coming along alright.

Story engine has sides that pool resources and all roll at once. A small encounter can be done as one roll while a "boss battle" could be multiple rolls with changing parameters.

I love the concept, but everybody involved really has to be involved or it just ends up being a clusterfuck.

Or you need a GM who is some kind of autistic bookkeeping machine who will play all the turns for you based on your spoken input.

I've experienced both, but I've also experienced the shitshow that occurs when people stop paying attention for short spans and keep saying 'Has my action resolved yet? How about now? I thought I was faster than the goblin'.

I had an idea once with having the initiative system changed to a point-bank system. Initiative points can be spent for actions. Initiative order each turn is dictated by who has the most points, the highest goes first and so on. When making an attack or action against a target, the target can spend an initiative point to ready an action, try to block, shout a warning, etc. The attacker then gets the opportunity to spend a point to try and counter the counter (I.e. an opponent spends a point and reflex saves, raising a shield to block your sword, you spend a point of initiative and reflex save to adjust your swing and try to hook around the shield) it can end there or keep going if you choose. Each point spent in a turn increases the difficulty of the action being performed. This can be great for countering blows in a duel, dodging someone aiming a bow at you, etc.

Any player may spend a point to do something in response to another action or attack. GM's discretion on the difficulty of the saves (normally reflex), as normal.

Initiative points drain out throughout a fight, naturally, as warriors tire and their concentration wanes. Lowering initiative means they slow down and attack slower, and have longer reflexes since they are spending all of their points. A player at 0 initiative can still attack, but is unable to respond in a turn.

Honestly, out of all the responses I've received this "action tick" idea seems to be the best option of all. As long as I keep the range of action point costs relatively low then there should never be issues with pacing. Dispensing with discrete turns altogether is a powerfully compelling idea.

To be fair, the system i'm building is aimed at a specific niche of more focused and dedicated players. I don't feel the need to make my system have mass appeal because I don't intend to monetise it and there are plenty of available options for those who want such a watered down, simplified system. Though as I stated above I am considering developing companion applications/software to assist in dealing with crunch at the table. Everyone has a smartphone or laptop these days so I reckon it's worthwhile.

This idea about spending action/initiative points in order to react/counter is pretty good too. Though it's probably wise to make costs exponentially increase with increased reactions otherwise things would get out of hand with people reacting to reactions against reactions etc.

Play D&D.

The system you described is literally how initiative works in AD&D.

Reactions against reactions works well for any high fantasy martial setting. Very thematic.

>You get these ridiculous situations arising where it's like people are just sitting there waiting for this bad shit to happen to them
That's not the intended interpretation. Everything is happening roughly at once in the fiction. When an owlbear swipes at you, misses and then your allies take their turns before you attack the owlbear, you aren't standing there. Fictionally you might nimbly dodge the brute's claws then immediately counterattack while it is off balance.

It's the same as how HP isn't merely meat points or "misses" do not literally mean your character was simply inaccurate. These are abstractions meant to speed up gameplay, they are not literal reflections of the fiction.

Well, I'm glad I could help

It's a system I've always been intrigued by, but I've only had the chance to play one game with it, and I had the same issues as the other guy where somebody stopped paying attention while their action resolved and got confused

Of course I'm aware that is the intended idea but I fail to see how the gameplay reflects that in any way. Imagine i have a loaded pistol ready in my hand and some creature starts charging towards me from a distance. In gameplay terms because it is that creature's turn they will approach uninterrupted and gore me or whatever despite the fact that in reality the time taken for something to approach you would be more than adequate for you to take some kind of preventative action or even just run away as soon as you noticed it charging. The fact is the no matter how you try to fluff it the mechanics do not portray turns as occurring simultaneously.

Many have tried to do better, to my knowledge none have succeeded.

Perhaps the easiest is to go with something like Burning Wheel - characters write multiple actions and resolve them against each other simultaneously. In that case, "pistol shot" would definitely beat "close the gap" or similar.

It's a shame you haven't had more opportunities to playtest that as I'd love to hear how it generally panned out and what could be done to iron out kinks and improve balance. Why do you think that player got distracted? Is it that they were just of a short attention span or did you have too many ticks? How long did it typically take you to resolve a single tick in real time at the table? And how long was that in game terms?

Reactions to reactions could be resolved by limiting players to only having a single ration within each "chain".

For example; Allan is firing an arrow at Bob. Due to burning through all his stamina/initiative/action points Bob is incapable of reacting (he's exhausted). Charlie decides to make an Intercept reaction against Adams attack. If successful he would position himself between the two and become the new target. Because he is using his reaction to take the hit he will be unable to block (a reaction).

Dave sees this happening and wants to intervene. He hates Bob and wants the arrow to land, so he reacts to Charlies Intercept with his own Intercept. If successful he'll halt Charlies movement, thus preventing him from intercepting the arrow.

At a table, this whole exchange would be:
>I shoot at Bob
>I can't react
>I got you bro, intercepting the arrow
>Fuck you, intercepting Charlie

The reactions would be resolved in opposite order:
>Dave rolls to intercept, success blocks Charlies movement
>If Dave fails, Charlie rolls to intercept. Success means getting shot with an arrow.
>If Charlie fails, Allen rolls his attack unopposed.

While that is discouraging I am very resolved to figure this out. Yes that sort of system of declaring intent and then resolving via a global action priority is what I was thinking already as I stated earlier. But while those two actions are very easy to compare in timescale others are less easy to differentiate. And the more granularity i provide the slower things will be. It's sounding like it's just gonna be a matter of finding that line between too much simplicity and too much granularity. But that's gonna take a buttload of playtesting.

Alternatively, all the rolls could be made at once.

Dave's is compared to Charlies, if it's higher he has halted Charlies movement (thus negating his roll) and Allens roll is applied to Bob, unopposed.

If Dave's is lower, then Charlie compares his roll to Allens attack. If he wins he has successfully intercepted the arrow and Allens roll is applied to Charlie, if not then Allens roll is applied to Bob.

Hmm, that might work quite well actually, thanks for the idea. It sounds like that would stay nice and snappy once players get accustomed to the system. Even better is that my game is gonna be centred more around co-operation between players so there is unlikely to even be such a lengthy chain. I'm designing it to be for around a group of 4 players and combat would likely be focused on small scale skirmish type battles and tactics.

I was working on my own system a while back that uses that mechanic. But since I doubt my players would be interested in play testing it I've set it aside. Feel free to use it, so sense in not sharing or using good ideas.

Short attention span. He's the closest thing our group has to That Guy, and he's well known for working out his turns in advance and then looking at his phone until his turn comes around. In a normal initiative system that would be fine, but in the tick based system, it was a little iffier, especially since he was resistant to learning it in the first place.

Outside of that, it was fairly quick. No quicker or slower than a regular system, once we got into the flow of things.

Ah I see. While I'm sorry you had to deal with such a player that's great news for me. It seems like this will be the way to go. Now i just need to go about allocating appropriate action point costs to every conceivable combat action. Yay.

I won't be using it quite exactly as you described it though, I don't think I'll give players a reservoir of action points that deplete. Rather I'll set hard system wide limits on the number of reactions (perhaps slightly varying it based on some stat or race/size etc.) and during what kind of actions you can react or not. Possibly allowing characters to purchase feats/abilities whatever that extend the limit of reactions/intercepts they can make within a given period.

Rolling all at once might save time but i think could get confusing.

For instance, if there are multiple enemies involved in this chain of reactions and interceptions then the DM is gonna have to roll multiple dice. If they even have enough dice it could easily get confusing as to which dice represents which enemy. I think reverse sequential order as you initially proposed is the best idea.

I think of it kind of like an effect stack in MtG.

Player A takes an action that the reactions are stacked onto. Then the stack is resolved from the top down, with successful reaction modifying or removing whatever below.

If it's a game with opposed rolls then having all the rolls go at once doesn't really complicate things.

Ohh, I see where your coming from.

Rolling for each reaction versus everyone rolling at once might be dependent on the games actual rolling mechanics.

>Hey Veeky Forums, so I'm working on a system of my own entirely from scratch. The problem is that I'm trying to keep this as realistic and plausible as possible in many ways. I just can't get over the inherent implausibility brought about by an initiative based/turn order combat system. You get these ridiculous situations arising where it's like people are just sitting there waiting for this bad shit to happen to them like some dude running up to you and clubbing you over the head when you would have ample time to like lift a gun and shoot him or cast a spell or some shit.
I assume you're taking about D&D/Pathfinder. Dodging is taken into account with AC. The reason AC is tied to dexterity is because your character passively tries to dodge every incoming attack. Same with shields - you don't have to tell the GM that you use your shield, the shield is passively added to AC and it's assumed that your character attempts to block.

If you want to make avoiding attacks feel more active, you can add a shitload of reaction - type moves that only work on an opponent's turn. Like maybe upon being attacked, you can choose to block OR dodge, each of which has different effects.

Or maybe you have a number of action points that refresh at the start of your turn, and can be used for various things on other people's turns or your own. So you might spend all your AP on some crazy high-cost action like hacking a computer on your turn, or save some AP so that you're ready to fire potshots at the guards that are about to charge in. In other words, treat it like Mana in MTG.

i know the issue and i think i have solved it. since i am about to publish my rpg in a short amount of time, i don't want to spill it here though.

>The best I've got so far is the idea of everyone calling their intended actions at the beginning of a turn and then resolving things in some sort of order of action priority? So like the quickest stuff happens first
yes, that is the solution but there is a few things you need to observe to make it work.

>The prospect of listing and ordering all potential actions and assigning them different, accurate priorities is daunting enough as the creator. I an only imagine the headache for potential players
it can be done. if you think about it long enough, you can find a workable balance. the keyword here is 'interruptability'.

Please read the thread man, I wasn't talking about blocking or anything like that, this is about other types of reaction/interruption. And no I'm not talking about DnD, like I said I'm making my own system from scratch, ground up. By the way there is no AC-like stat in my game, armour is more of a damage threshold such that anything below the number does fuck all. I have a dodge stat which is rolled upon being attacked and that covers those sorts of actions.

Please keep in mind that the GM also has to work with this system. And he doesn't have to pilot a single character, he has to do all the enemies and maybe one or two helpful NPCs too. And let me tell you, if you have to manage eight goblins, a troll and an orc or two, you don't want to fuck around with keeping track of action points or reaction-reactions.

I get that of course but like I said the focus of the game is to be small scale skirmish type battles with a tendency towards realism. Any fighter who gets surrounded by like 10 other combatants is totally fucked regardless of how good they are. Those kinds of numbers should be unlikely to show up in game or be handled as more of a "How best do we run the fuck away from this?" kind of challenge.

Additionally as i stated above i'm considering making a set of player and GM tools for use on smartphones or laptops could take the strain off of the players and particularly the gm

Rather than just trying to find a "better" system, think about what dissatisfies you with existing systems. Think about the sort of situations and actions those systems won't support, and then build a system around supporting those. You can't just design a system to be "better" or "more realistic", you still need to establish a set of interactions that system allows for and describes.

I thought I made my particular grievances pretty clear. The unrealistic nature of turns resulting in gameplay/events unfolding in a nonsense way as in the examples I have posted throughout the thread. And no shit I'm trying to build a system that supports that but that's easier said than done. Many of the helpful suggestions throughout the thread regarding action tick systems will likely form the basis of that. Did you even read the thread?

AD&D has turns though?