Topic: An initiative system thats splits Movement and Combat.

[Druss_the_Legend]

Do you use individual initiative or party initiative?

How do you handle movement before and during combat?

I am considering splitting the combat round into MOVEMENT PHASE and COMBAT PHASE. This has come about because of the unsatisfactory way we have been using tactical movement during combat.

I am wanting to trial Party Initiative for Movement and Combat and do away with individual initiative altogether. Characters will 'go' on their Qu temp. the winning initiative side MOVES LAST and ATTACKS FIRST and the losing party initiative side MOVES FIRST AND ATTACKS LAST next in order of Qu.

Movement happens first and then combat.

ROUND SEQUENCE
1) each side nominates someone to roll for the party initiative
2) MOVEMENT PHASE. losing initiative side moves first, in Qu order. Fastest moves last [winning initiative can react if they want to - see below]
3) winning initiative side moves second, in Qu order. Fastest moves last
4) COMBAT PHASE. winning initiative side attacks first, in Qu order. Highest attacks first
5) losing initiative side attacks second, in Qu order, Highest Qu attacks first.

React Actions. During the MOVEMENT phase each combatant has an opportunity to react and move in response to anyone on the losing initiative side if their individual Qu is HIGHER. This might be for situations like intercepting a fleeing enemy or rushing to the aid of an ally who is under threat.

Spells, Missiles and Melee attacks are simultaneous.

Specific fringe cases might allow a character who's side WON INITIATIVE react to a quicker character (someone who has higher Qu) during the movement phase but that would require a moving manuever roll and most likely give them a reduced attacking opportunity even if they succeeded. eg. Adrenal Move speed would allow a react action without the need for a manuever roll. An ambush set up with assassins waiting on nearby alleyway rooftop would also provide react opportunities to the attacking side, probably requiring a jumping manuever to pull off.

Feedback and suggestions welcome?

[jdale]

I use individual initiative, rerolled every round. I did try separating movement from other actions, but it resulted in players forgetting to take their movement into account when acting, so I went back to doing all actions at once.

[netbat]

I use individual initiative once at the beginning of combat and use CEATSII for timing and movement.

[EltonJ]

I'll use individual initiative, and then run the combat like D&D initiative.

[Druss_the_Legend]

I use individual initiative, rerolled every round. I did try separating movement from other actions, but it resulted in players forgetting to take their movement into account when acting, so I went back to doing all actions at once.

interesting. id expect round1 to be the one with the most movement actions then each following round would be lots of no moving and mostly combat. i can see the opportunity to move before your attack as being less imp after round 1 so gm likely announces at start of movement phase "Does anyone want to move or attack a different opponent?" then just skipping ahead to combat phase and resolve attacks in order of Qu for side who has the initiative followed by the other side.
players can just pass on moving if they are happy to stay in same location in battle. they might take up the opportunity to flee or retreat or seek higher ground though. if they dont want to then just skip ahead.

[jdale]

Play styles may vary but we tend to have a lot of movement throughout combat. Melee characters will move as foes are defeated, non-melee characters are moving to avoid threats. I rarely have enemies who just form a line.

I also find that a lot of battle maps are just way too small, so that also might be an indication we are outliers in that regard.

[Cory Magel]

You may have seen me post this before, pretty much what you're going, but to put it really simply (not getting into exceptions):

Assuming I'm using a simple combined round: Everyone rolls their own initiative each round.
Worst roll moves first, best roll moves last, in order. You can react to someones movement (take your movement) who has a worse roll than you.
Best roll acts first, worst roll acts last, in order. You can choose to delay your action if you want.

This results in those with a better initiative forcing others to give away where/how they will move (possibly cut them off for example) and then potentially try to thwart those other characters actions by then being able to act first (if they so chose).

I kinda like second by second better if I'm playing with a very experienced group however.

[Hurin]

I also find that a lot of battle maps are just way too small, so that also might be an indication we are outliers in that regard.

You might not be; we have the same issue. The ability to employ larger maps on a VTT does help a bit, but still, we did find movement too fast in previous editions. An average character could move more than 200' in a single round (40+ hexes), meaning they could move pretty much anywhere on the map, and thus making the map almost meaningless.

We always use individual initiative, especially in Rolemaster, since getting the drop on an opponent can mean so much. I can't imagine what might happen if an entire squad of Orcs got to attack before anyone in the party did.

[Druss_the_Legend]

I also find that a lot of battle maps are just way too small, so that also might be an indication we are outliers in that regard.

You might not be; we have the same issue. The ability to employ larger maps on a VTT does help a bit, but still, we did find movement too fast in previous editions. An average character could move more than 200' in a single round (40+ hexes), meaning they could move pretty much anywhere on the map, and thus making the map almost meaningless.

We always use individual initiative, especially in Rolemaster, since getting the drop on an opponent can mean so much. I can't imagine what might happen if an entire squad of Orcs got to attack before anyone in the party did.

Tactics would happen. Full parry and beat a tactical retreat and form up ranks with the non combat types in the rear. Im betting your players would come up with some handy delay or bait and switch tactics to buy some time and lure attacks onto the strongest fighter.

[intothatdarkness]

I also find that a lot of battle maps are just way too small, so that also might be an indication we are outliers in that regard.

You might not be; we have the same issue. The ability to employ larger maps on a VTT does help a bit, but still, we did find movement too fast in previous editions. An average character could move more than 200' in a single round (40+ hexes), meaning they could move pretty much anywhere on the map, and thus making the map almost meaningless.

We always use individual initiative, especially in Rolemaster, since getting the drop on an opponent can mean so much. I can't imagine what might happen if an entire squad of Orcs got to attack before anyone in the party did.

I've been using individual initiative for some time...pretty much in the way Cory described above (best acts first, moves last, worse moves first, acts last).

I think the issue with maps has more to do with the time scale of RM's combat round, honestly. I've gone down to a two second round in my own rules, and find maps are easier to work with simply because the distance covered in a round is lower. You'll always have scale challenges, but with shorter rounds combat often doesn't last as long in a relative game time sense (characters tend to get as many actions in the shorter round as they do in the longer one...a shorter round removes some of the 'flurry of blows' idea) and that means characters don't always have the option to move as far. My experience with other systems leaves me with the same feeling: longer rounds means you need larger maps because there's more extended movement going on. Others' experiences may vary, of course: play style also impacts quite a bit of this.

If you really want to do tactics at scale, games like Warhammer (or pretty much any Napoleonic miniatures system) are illustrative of the play area you need.

[MisterK]

I've been using individual initiative so far. I might change, because one of my recent readings (Ironclaw 2) has made me re-think my aversion to group initiative. Basically, IC2 states that one group acts, then the other does, rinse and repeat. Whoever starts the fight acts first, and when in doubt, PCs act first.
But
- in the first round of combat (only), everyone rolls a manoeuver. The outcome determines if the character is reeling (unbalanced), normal, can get ready (such as draw a weapon) at the cost of reeling, can get ready without penalty, or get focus [which is the most important thing].
- when a character gets to act, they can perform two actions, and both actions must be different. Or they can choose to focus if they don't have focus yet.
- if you have focus, you can interrupt someone, essentially acting out of turn just before they do - but you can only perform *one* action. You can interrupt someone who interrupted someone else.
- if you act in your turn and you *do* have focus, you immediately lose focus, but can perform *three* actions (once again, all different).

And I realised that this system used a very simple round-robin group initiative, but used a special status (focus) to spice things up in a major way, providing opportunities to interrupt and perform bursts of actions and putting the sequencing back into the hands of the protagonists.

And I wonder - is it not what I want from a combat sequence system ?

[Cory Magel]

When using more traditional rounds you are correct in that, after the first round, it realistically is just a back and forth prospect.
But I think from a lot of player's perception it just doesn't feel that way, so I've always avoided that by default.

If using second by second, imo, the entire point is individualized speeds at which various characters are able to perform various actions.
When I had more time on my hands I was working on my own second by second system for RM, maybe one of these days I'll finish it.

[Hurin]

I think the issue with maps has more to do with the time scale of RM's combat round, honestly. I've gone down to a two second round in my own rules, and find maps are easier to work with simply because the distance covered in a round is lower. You'll always have scale challenges, but with shorter rounds combat often doesn't last as long in a relative game time sense (characters tend to get as many actions in the shorter round as they do in the longer one...a shorter round removes some of the 'flurry of blows' idea) and that means characters don't always have the option to move as far. My experience with other systems leaves me with the same feeling: longer rounds means you need larger maps because there's more extended movement going on.

I think you're right, which is why I prefer shorter rounds. Remember the DnD 1e round, which was IIRC one minute long, lol? RM improved on that with a 10-second round, then DnD realized its round was too long and went down to 6 seconds, now RMU goes down to 5 (I even lobbied for 4), and I think HARP does 2?

In any case, I think you are right that a shorter round addresses the issue of characters moving too quickly. Chalk me up for short rounds!

[Cory Magel]

The whole one minute round thing was somewhat realistic if you looked at it from the 'your attack action is a series of... blah, blah...' perspective.  But I think for most gamers the way a round plays out has really never felt that way.  The way so many things are described just logically falls into more of a specific action resolution.

Granted, there's often a mixture of types of actions happening that you'd normally expect to happen at different paces but, for game functionality, really all need to be crammed into the same round.  Second by second can potentially solve that, but the realistic version of it will sometimes cause one player to effectively sit out multiple rounds while quicker actions happen around them.  This gets into the realm of one of my mantras... Balance trumps Realism and Fun trumps Balance.  If any of it becomes un-fun, the rest is simply irrelevant.

[intothatdarkness]

I think the issue with maps has more to do with the time scale of RM's combat round, honestly. I've gone down to a two second round in my own rules, and find maps are easier to work with simply because the distance covered in a round is lower. You'll always have scale challenges, but with shorter rounds combat often doesn't last as long in a relative game time sense (characters tend to get as many actions in the shorter round as they do in the longer one...a shorter round removes some of the 'flurry of blows' idea) and that means characters don't always have the option to move as far. My experience with other systems leaves me with the same feeling: longer rounds means you need larger maps because there's more extended movement going on.

I think you're right, which is why I prefer shorter rounds. Remember the DnD 1e round, which was IIRC one minute long, lol? RM improved on that with a 10-second round, then DnD realized its round was too long and went down to 6 seconds, now RMU goes down to 5 (I even lobbied for 4), and I think HARP does 2?

In any case, I think you are right that a shorter round addresses the issue of characters moving too quickly. Chalk me up for short rounds!

I do a fair amount of non-magic setting gaming, and in those systems you often see two time scales: one very short one for combat and another slightly longer one for situations that MIGHT result in combat. My system is using a 2 second combat round and a ten second tactical turn (the original Top Secret had a 5 second combat turn broken into 1 second phases, for example, and used arbitrary GM-determined scales for the rest - Cyberpunk Red uses a 3 second combat round and Roleplaying Time which 'works just like it does in real life,' which I don't consider especially helpful). I think some of the issues with original D&D (and RM) stem from how they developed magical casting...both games used longer casting times (especially OD&D if you played by the letter of the rules), and to keep casters relevant (and alive) you had to have a longer round.

[Druss_the_Legend]

Made a few refinements to React Actions.

React Actions.
During the MOVEMENT phase each combatant has an opportunity to react and move in response to anyone on the losing initiative side if their individual Qu is HIGHER. This might be for situations like cutting off the escape of a fleeing enemy or rushing to the aid of an ally who is under threat from multiple enemies. To react, you must have line of sight on the enemy and be unhindered by wounds (-25, -50, -75 from wounds reduces your Qu by the same amount).

Specific fringe cases might let a character who's side WON INITIATIVE to react to an enemy who has higher Qu during the MOVEMENT phase but that would require a moving manuever roll and most likely give them a reduced attacking opportunity even if they succeeded or might
force them to lose the opportunity to attack altogether if their MOVEMENT took a large % of the round or their manuever roll failed.

The Adrenal Move Speed skill would automatically allow a combatant to both move and attack (within reason) or move and attack a single opponent twice provided they were close enough to the intended target. In either case, a successful AM Speed check would be needed. AM Speed allows someone to react to enemy movement regardless of Qu.

An ambush set up with assassins waiting on nearby alleyway rooftop would negate the defending sides MOVEMENT phase altogether.