Getting rid of combat turns

So I'm creating a homebrew in cooperation with my group as I am gming the final days of our shadowrun campaign. The goal is to create a deadly, classless system for a weird fiction campaign.

I've been going over various Initiative systems to get some playtests going. After some fiddling around, I am now thinking about getting rid of "combat turns" alltogether and instead make every weapon, spell and action have a "tick count". The basic idea is as follows

>Attack with a longsword takes 18 - Finesse ticks
>Can only be parried during this time
>Parry gets a negative modifier equal to the amount of already passed attack ticks
>Parry takes weapon speed - Finesse ticks
>Failed attack or parry takes roll difference ticks to rebalance before any other action

What do you think?

Sounds like a pain in the ass to keep track of, both for the GM and the players. Just keep combat turns, they're fine.

Feng Shui has this kind of tick count.

It is indeed a pain in the ass to keep track of unless you're doing a sword-fighting simulator.

Here's a test OP. Describe one "round" of combat with four PCs vs four NPCs. PCs have fast guy with two daggers, strong guy with large club, balanced guy with a halberd, and a dexterous guy with a bow. They're fighting two troll type monsters with greatclubs and two goblin type monsters with makeshift weapons. Add as much parrying, blocking, and dodging as you feel like it.

Any alternatives? What's the best iniative system you know?

The issue i have with combat turns is that they become iffy very quickly when dealing with ongoing effects such as burning, casting a spell and such. Also I have yet to find one that makes movement fluid.

Pic related is what little I have so far.

Sounds like a nightmare to track.

I'm kinda asking to get bearings on whether or not I should put energy inti developing it to the point of testing in that way right now. Seems like a bad idea according to

This is our first attempt at a Homebrew tbqh, we didn't even use house rules so far in any game.

Explain how combat rounds are "iffy" when it comes to that sort of thing, because I don't know what you mean.

We haven't played that many systems, so excuse any shortcomings that I may not know about.

Ongoing effects such as burning or acid burns take place at the beginning or end of a combat turn, which leads to weird situations where in Shadowrun a character can act with whatever (minor) wounding he currently has for two to three passes while covered in acid goo and then suddenly drop prone as the acid decides to kick him in the groin when the turn is over.

Casting a spell in Shadowrun takes a complex action, always. This is fine for Shadowrun where spells are just quick mental things, but the group wants to go the "Concentrated mage summoning flames around him before throwing the ball" round from what I understood, and in classic combat turn systems that would kinda mean "increase damage per single turn of channeling". This does not allow for in-combat prepared maneuvers such as "I want to channel until the second this guy pops his head out of cover".

Movement is just a fuckfest in Shadowrun, which may be different in other systems. Depending on how many initiative passes you have, your speed per pass decreases since you get to move at a rate of movement speed per combat round. This lead to weird situations in our game where it feels like the feet of our characters are going in slow-motion while they aim and shoot at four guys in supersonic speed with their upper body.

I just simulated it in a spreadsheet

>Goblin #1 goes first
>Attacks Dagger guy at Tick 4 (Would deal damage at tick 12, weapon has speed 8)
>Dagger Guy parries at tick 5 (-1 to defense roll) and succeeds at +4
>Bow Guy loads arrow at tick 5, taking 5 ticks until tick 10
>Goblin #1 needs to rebalance after being parried, starting at tick 6 until tick 10
>Goblin #2 Attacks Club guy at tick 6, lasting until tick 13 (Speed 8)
>Dagger guy attacks the rebalancing goblin at tick 6, taking 3 ticks (Weapon speed 7 - Succesfull parry 4)
>Halberd guy goes against the troll at tick 7 with an attack taking 10 ticks until tick 17
>Troll #1 decides to bash the halberd guy instead of parrying, taking 16 ticks from tick 8 on (damage at tick 23)
>Dagger guy hits the still rebalancing Goblin #1 at tick 8 too, incapacitating him
>Dagger guy goes for Troll #1 at tick 9, moving three squares (arriving at tick 11)
>Club guy acts at tick 10, parries Goblin#2 and fails at -2
>Troll #2 tries to charge dagger guy, moving 4 ticks from tick 10 (arrives at tick 13, attacks at tick 14, dealing damage at tick 25 with -4 accuracy, +4 damage due to charging for 4 squares)
>Club guy rebalances at tick 11 for two ticks due to failing his parry
>Bow guy aims for 5 ticks at tick 11 until tick 15
>Club guy tries to parry again at tick 13, taking 8 points reduction due to the attack of Goblin #2 being almost finished and fails miserably -6
>Goblin #2 hits Club guy at tick 13, dealing a wound
>From Tick 14 on, Club guy needs to rebalance for 7 ticks until tick 20

So how do you expect anyone to actually play this?

It goes on like this. Combat is finished by tick 32, club guy and all four enemies are dead. Dagger guy is heavily wounded by Troll #2, Bow guy is fine, halberd guy is wounded by Troll#1 and club guy is dead due to failing every roll.

Seems cool. I personally like Action Points, and the person with the most action points goes next. It's more interesting and fun for the flow of combat but makes timers, like you said, more complex. It could be anytime you become subject to an effect, the effect ends after you've spent a certain amount of AP. So the assumption is that time moves for you when you use AP.

Another system is having cards for your actions that everybody can place in a stack in the middle whenever they want. So there's a little bit of a speed element, and decisions happen in real time. Then, when everybody is happy with the stack, flip it over and resolve it one card at a time. This could be really fun, again just for choosing what to do, but would make the passage of time weird.

All theoretical systems aside, the Hero System does a pretty good job. A turn is divided into 12 segments. A character gets an amount of phases, segments during which they can actually take action, equal to their speed. On a given segment where multiple phases exist, action order is determined by DEX. It's pretty cool, a lot more fun than rolling for initiative.

Took me like 10 minutes to do the rolling. A lot longer to write down. If everyone has their own tick line in front of them it seems to be actually slightly faster than Shadowrun, but I haven't tried it with actual people yet.

>Action points
That reminds me of Fallout. I like it, thanks.

>Cards
Sounds fun, but probably more for a beer & pretzel oneshot than an actual campaign

>HERO Segments
I should look into that. Seems like a good compromise.

Easy. Players take their turns all at once, then enemies take their turns all at once.

How do you deal with action speed? Like comparing a dagger strike to a claymore one?

You don't because it's not important?

Wouldn't that just make it a damage race? Unless you make heavy weaponry unwieldy as fuck. Also mixing ranged and close combat like what my group is looking for would be even more weird due to close combatants rushing into combat at the speed of sound. Sounds more fitting to a card game.

I think you're getting too wrapped up in "muh realism". Combat in RPGs is already a damage race.

Which is why my group is trying to make a homebrew for a weird fiction campaign that isn't. The players already want a switch from Hitpoints to wounds and the goal is to make it deadly and strategic as far as combat is concerned.

>This is our first attempt at a Homebrew tbqh, we didn't even use house rules so far in any game.
>We haven't played that many systems, so excuse any shortcomings that I may not know about.

Really I think the best advice might be to read up on other RPGs first before you go making your own. You're already starting to dive into that newbie trap of making things too convoluted for the sake of realism.

Seems complicated, but can be cool,specially with something graphic to make it clearer. The idea is neat.

What you describe is almost exactly how Exalted 2e combat functioned. It was nigh-unplayable and completely revamped in 3e. I'd recommend reading both systems to see how they approached the issue.

Any recommendations?

Depending on my research from the suggestions in this thread, I may come back in a week or two and post whatever I have at that stage.

Thanks, I'll check it out. Never heard of it before.

At least GURPS, Savage Worlds and FATE
Call of Cthulhu, D&D 4e, Burning Wheel/Mouse Guard are all worth a read
If you are set on doing something with muh realism and autism, Riddle of Steel or its newer iteration, Song of Swords is something you should look at.
Also, pretty sure Hackmaster has a tick based initiative system, as does RuneQuest. FengShui has the only workable tick based initiative I've ever seen.

>he doesn't use spreadsheet macros for basic in-game calculations

git gud, scrub.

seriously though, 32 ticks of it is excessive - again, generally go with action points if you want that sort of granuality, with "faster" weapons using fewer Action Points.

(trying to think of systems that use Action Points and drawing a blank, desides the SPECIAL system from Fallout and Nechronica obviously...)

>again, generally go with action points if you want that sort of granuality
The issue is that the group wishes for a system that leaves behind some of the issues I stated here
Action points and combat turns might be an interesting route to look at, but in the end, the combat I described had every character only do between 4 and 7 different actions total.

Thanks for that, but does GURPS really offer enough for me to look at? I tried once and failed.

>combat turns are bad
>therefore, let's split each turn into a gazillion turns, during most of which nothing happens

Genius.

>does GURPS really offer enough for me to look at?
Depends on what you want. It's worth it to look at GURPS from a purely game-design standpoint. I don't like the system, but it's one of the more consistently constructed games out there and thus it's good to understand how it works and why they do stuff they do in there. It helps to do things differently when you understand the reasoning for a certain set of rules.

Other than that, here's my opinion on this:
Tick Systems are a lot of bookkeeping and introduce a ton of problems, first and foremost: They are a nightmare for the GM to handle. Whenever you think up rules for anything, absolutely anything, ask yourself: "Is this manageable when you have to do this for five to ten characters at once?" Because if it's not, then you probably have crapshoot on your hands. A lot of systems commit the cardinal sin of designing only for the players, and those fucks only have to handle a single character in combat.

That's solid advice, thank you

Thus I was asking for opinions and suggestions. You went the bitchy route. Good on you.

You know Advance Dungeon And Dragons had the same thing. No body used it but it was on the books.

The initiative system Im trying to use in my homebrew is
>"You and your opponent act during the same turn"
I havent tried it out yet, but resolution also going to have negotiation. As GM I set up the situation and ask the player. In combat it will be something "the ogre is lumbering at you with his tree trunk held high, ready to smash you. What do you do?"
A reply of "I attack it" is gonna result in the player character with a 'serious headache'. To facilitate this, I thinking I will stay with player for 1-3 rolls to get some action and interaction - and then move on to the next player and his immediate opponents.

This is untested but I like the idea. Any advice on this type of system? Song of Swords, TRoS and like, along with Dungeon World inspired me for this system of initative.

OP here, and I actually played AD&D 2nd. I'm unaware of there ever being a system like this. Was it contnued in second or only in first?

I'd love to get you, but I don't get your english. Would french or german be easier for you?

No need to be salty just because someone paraphrased your garbage idea. Be less bad.

Not him, but I know to what he's referring. It's in "Combat and Tactics" which included lots of rule expansions for martials that my group used heavily when we played 2nd. Lots of excellent material in there I still use today, such as the weapon knockdown dice. It also included tables giving each weapon a speed value that works more or less exactly like you're suggesting.

The end result was that this would be great in a vidya and a calculation nightmare on a tabletop. One of the most important and overlooked aspects of game design is the elegance and simplicity of the system. (Many) Players will get bored if they have to wait on you- or spend their own time- painstakingly calculating out each second of combat. For comparison, see why "Riddle of Steel" never became mainstream.

Interesting. that's one of the books we never bought back in the day, but I just saw it lying around at my FLGS so i might pick it up.

From what little I could read since I started this thread, I'm kinda thinking of having each player have a pre-printed initiative track in front of them to keep track of their own actions. I'll call my next NPC's number and playrs can interrupt if they have a lower number, but I'll check out "Combats and Tactics" and everything else mentioned in this thread before playtesting anways.

Note that one thing that was commonly used for was casting time for spells. A wizard casting was exposed for several initiative ticks especially it was a high-level spell. He could be interrupted before he got it off and needed the fighter is around him to act as a bodyguard so he could cast.

Castor supremacy was still a thing back in the old days, but a guaranteed spell wasn't.

This is an interesting concept, but I feel like it would be better if the number of ticks that things took was reduced over all. So the slowest action might be no more than, say, 10 ticks. Could streamline things.

I personally like a Initiative system that allows for you to consider other players' actions

Basically you roll initiative and the person with the lowest initiative decides what his character does
Then the one with the second-lowest initiative describes his turn
and so on till the one with the highest initiative
then all the actions are resolved at once
It means that the higher your initiative, the better you can react since you know what all others are doing