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Thieves
2010-05-09, 11:31 AM
Are there some initiative systems for RPGs you know other than D&Desque rounds? They don't have to be generic, they can be system-specific. Name any.

The thing is, I'm mainly looking for a system that would utilize a Final Fantasy Tactics-like mechanic: "A guy with 5 Speed and casting a slow casting spell can get interrupted by two guys who are just behind him in initiative."

[I always were kind of fuzzy on how that worked in D&D (low-level low-magic games yay), and I imagine it's still kinda limited with even powerful spells taking only a standard action.]

Any and all suggestions welcome, not only those that work exactly as I specified :smallsmile:

gallagher
2010-05-09, 11:35 AM
hmm, i havent ever seen or heard of one, so you might have to homebrew it

however, if you do get a system like that, that would serve to power down casters a bit, because that would give martial characters multiple chances (potentially) to disrupt them and force a concentration check... also gives other casters time to spellcraft and counterspell...

IonDragon
2010-05-09, 11:56 AM
I heard somewhere about a... kinda point boy initiative?

I'm not really clear on how it works, but I'd imagine it's something like... You're initiative is 24 you 'spend 5' to cast a spell or something, then if your initiative is now lower the next person goes. I'm not really clear on how that would work. I think in 1st or 2nd ed they had something similar with a 'speed rating' on your weapons.

Brother Oni
2010-05-09, 12:16 PM
There's the Shadowrun 2nd ED rules that I know:

Normal people roll 1d6 and add their Reaction value (an average of their Intelligence and Dexterity).
Starting with the lowest score first and working up, players and NPCs declare their actions. The person with the highest value then acts first.

The initiative order then counts down and people act on their turn. If your (initiative score-10) is a positive number, you can act again on that number, thus someone with an 11 can act on 11 and again on 1.

People can delay actions and act on which number they like. If people are tied, their actions are resolved simultaneously.

In the Shadowrun game, there are various spells and implants that increases both your Reaction value and the number of dice you roll.


You can homebrew it if you like so that complicated actions take multiple turns (in the game, you could do 2 simple actions or 1 complicated actions every time you act - firing an semi automatic weapon was a simple action, while casting a spell or firing on full auto was a complicated action), thus you could say that you can equate level 1-2 spells to a simple action, 3-4 as a complicated, 5-6 as a complicated+simple, etc, spreading them out over multiple turns.

This will require tweaking otherwise you'll shift the balance in favour of martial classes and everybody will start packing crossbows to disrupt enemy spellcaster's spells.

tonberrian
2010-05-09, 12:26 PM
Exalted's system is sort of what you're looking for.

Upon joining battle, each character rolls for initiative. Combat speed is measured in "ticks" (basically seconds), and the person with the best roll acts on Tick 0 (the beginning, of course), and anybody else gets placed later based on their roll in relation to the highest roll (one less and you act on Tick 1, 2 less acts on Tick 2, etc.), with a limit that no one can act later than Tick 6 for their first action.

Now, each action has a corresponding "Speed" listed with it. When you perform an action, you add the Speed to your current tick to find out when you can act again (for example, attacking with a Greatsword is Speed 5, so if a person acting on tick 5 would swing his Greatsword, he couldn't act again until Tick 5). You can take multiple actions on a tick, and doing so puts your composite action at a Speed equal to the greatest among its component parts.

There are also delaying actions to act on a later tick.

okpokalypse
2010-05-09, 12:33 PM
FreeGamers' Initiative (For use with 3.x D&D):

Base Initiative (BI) = Dexterity + Int Mod + Size Mod + Wpn Mod + Armor Mod
Combat Initiative = Base Initiative + d10

Size:
Fine: +8
Diminutive: +6
Tiny: +4
Small: +2
Medium: -
Large: -2
Huge: -4
Gargantuan: -6
Colossal: -8

Weapon:
Unarmed / Natural: +3
Light Weapon, Dart, Shuriken: +2
1 Handed, Bows, Light X-Bow: -
2H Melee, Over-Sized 1H, Hvy X-Bow, Javelin, Net: -2
Over-Sized 2H, Siege Equipment: -5

Armor Modifier: 1/2 the Armor Check Penlaty of Armor & Shield (Round up)

Examples:
A Human Paladin wearing Full Plate & Heavy Shield w/ Longsword. He's got a 12 Int and 14 Dex. His BI would be 14 (Dex) +1 (Int) +0 (Size), +0 (Weapon) -4 (Half Total Armor Check Penalty) = 11 BI.

His Combat Inititative would be 11 +d10, or a range of 12 - 21.

Now take an Elven Monk fighting bare-handed w/o armor. He's got a 16 Dex and 10 Int. His BI is 16 + 0 + 0 + 3 + 0 = 19.

His Combat Initiative would be 19 +d10, or a range of 20 - 29.

There is literally a 1% chance the Paladin would go before the Monk, and a 2% chance they would act simultaneously - barring initiative enhancements, alternative armors, ability enhancements, etc... In a normal d20 Init system like D&D has the Paladin would actually act first 40% of the time - which is basically just flat-out random and doesn't properly reflect one's weapons and armor being used as a means of being slower to act.

Swordgleam
2010-05-09, 01:03 PM
Midgard has a system like that. You get as many segments per round as you have speed. Some actions - mostly casting - take more than one segment. And some spells can give you more segments. You say what you're going to do each segment at the start of the round (you declare in reverse order of speed), so you can get interrupted if you decide to cast and someone else decides to attack you.

Everyone else found the system confusing, but I loved it. It's a free RPG: http://www.scribd.com/doc/13586084/Midgard-RPG

nefele
2010-05-09, 01:08 PM
FreeGamers' Initiative (For use with 3.x D&D)
That's great.

But what about people who want to do something other than attack with a weapon? Cast a spell, use an SLA, activate an item etc? Any idea how it works?

Lapak
2010-05-09, 01:12 PM
The thing is, I'm mainly looking for a system that would utilize a Final Fantasy Tactics-like mechanic: "A guy with 5 Speed and casting a slow casting spell can get interrupted by two guys who are just behind him in initiative."This is exactly how 2nd Edition worked:

- Everyone declares their actions at the beginning of the round.
- Everyone rolls d10 initiative, which is modified by:
- Your Dex mod
- The action you're taking:
- Generic actions like getting something out of a bag were +3, IIRC
- weapons had various speed factors, +2 to +7 or more
- spellcasting added +spell level (exceptions were things like Power Words)

If a caster was hit before his spell went off, it was ruined. So casting a level 9 spell added 9 to your initiative: pretty much everyone was going to go before you.

Totally Guy
2010-05-09, 02:15 PM
Burning Wheel has a fun way of doing combat rounds. Everyone acts simultaneously. The actions interact with each other according to a fight matrix. A standard "exchange" is 3 "volleys".

An exchange might look like this:
Lord Bob
Volley 1: Avoid
Volley 2: Counterstrike, Strike
Volley 3: Counterstrike
(A character with Reflexes at 4 gets to add an extra action to a volley of choice)

So if an opponent (with Reflexes 5) scripted their exchange like this.
Nimble Jack
Volley 1: Strike, Push
Volley 2: Feint, Disarm
Volley 3: Strike

The first Volley would start off with Lord Bob ducking and weaving avoiding Jack's basic attack. But then Jack would push. Then volley 2 starts, Jack (very likely) stabs Bob (Feint beats counterstrike) then Jack would attempt to disarm Bob but Bob (very likely) stabs Jack. Then in the third volley Bob would have a chance to deflect Jack's attack and score a hit himself.

You can sacrifice an action to go first (instead of seeing how it plays out on the action matrix) but your opponent can choose to cancel this out by sacrificing an action of his own.


I've heard the Doctor Who RPG has combat rounds that resolve interestingly...
Characters that are talking first
Character running away go second
Characters using a skill go next
Characters carrying out violence go last.

So the Doctor wants to give a speech. The Daleks want to exterminate. Well looks like they have to listen to a monologue first. It fits the fiction.

erikun
2010-05-09, 03:23 PM
I seem to recall some AD&D 2nd edition variant options like that, as well as... is it Scion? Basically, weapons and spells have a speed modifier. When you declare your action, the speed modifier decides when your spell is finished casting later in the initiative.

I also recall some kind of "initiative wheel" someone had designed, which was basically the same thing but didn't reset the initiative each round. Rather, if you cast a spell with a speed of +3, you moved down 3 spaces on the wheel, cast the spell there, and that was your initiative next round.

okpokalypse
2010-05-09, 08:57 PM
That's great.

But what about people who want to do something other than attack with a weapon? Cast a spell, use an SLA, activate an item etc? Any idea how it works?

I don't have my docs in front of me, but I believe that any spell / item activation is treated the same for the most part. It actually make Wizards / Clerics who choose to forego wielding a Staff / Mace a little faster since they're unarmed - and, in the case of Wizards, their high Int also gives them a good modifier bonus as well.

There are a few things I really like about this system.

One, using a d10 makes Initiative much more consistent. d20 is an incredibly wide range. Two, adding in Int as a factor means that smarter people also act quicker by method of faster reasoning. Three, Factoring for weapons and armor is brilliant IMO. There is almost no way, realistically, that a man wielding a great sword while in full plate would EVER act before an unarmed man with a dagger all things being equal. This system exemplifies that very well.

Lapak
2010-05-09, 09:16 PM
One, using a d10 makes Initiative much more consistent. d20 is an incredibly wide range. Two, adding in Int as a factor means that smarter people also act quicker by method of faster reasoning. Three, Factoring for weapons and armor is brilliant IMO. There is almost no way, realistically, that a man wielding a great sword while in full plate would EVER act before an unarmed man with a dagger all things being equal. This system exemplifies that very well.Unless by 'act before' you mean 'strike before', because if the dagger-wielder starts out of reach and both know what they're doing there's basically no chance he'll get to knife range without the sword-wielder getting a swing at him.

(Which was my major issue with weapon speed factors in AD&D.)

Voidhawk
2010-05-10, 07:57 AM
One DM I have has heavily converted DnD, and uses a version of the "tick" system, modified to make more sense in DnD.

The basics are that there are 15 ticks in a round. A standard action costs 10 ticks, a move action 5, and a 5ft step is 1 tick. When you roll initiative, that's the number you start on (having suprise gives +15 to the roll). You start at the highest initiative and work down, taking whatever action you want, and then moving your marker down.

Here's where it gets interesting. When you cast a spell, you move your marker down, but it goes off the next time it gets to your action. The intervening time is spent chanting and whatnot, giving anyone with a pointy stick and a lower tick action time to muck it all up for you. However, different spell levels cost different numbers of tick's to cast. Namely, each level below the maximum you can cast reduces the tick cost by 1. So if Rincewind can cast 5th level spells, casting 1st level ones cost him (10-4=) 6 ticks. This makes lower level spells alot more useful, as while casting that Time Stop you're liable to be interupted by 50 Magic Missiles. :smallamused: The one exception to these being the Power Word line of spells. Being single devastating words, these are only 1 tick, and hence quite brutal.

Close combat actions get their cost reduced as well, especially for Monks, who with flurry of blows can make 2 tick full BAB attacks relitively easily. Alas, I'm not to familiar with the CC rules, as I played a Sorceror in the only long running game in this system I've been in, but overall I found it to work really well. :smallsmile:

Coplantor
2010-05-10, 08:00 AM
In second edition D&D,, the lower the initiative, the better, you added the casting tie to your initiative, you added the speed of your weapon and the speed of your action to your roll, plus, initiative was rolled every round.

hamlet
2010-05-10, 08:26 AM
Compleat Arduin (yes, that's spelled correctly) had the CF system which did away with rounds for the most part, though it had the problem of being invariable and unrandom. It might be worth a look.

Thieves
2010-05-10, 09:48 AM
I also recall some kind of "initiative wheel" someone had designed, which was basically the same thing but didn't reset the initiative each round. Rather, if you cast a spell with a speed of +3, you moved down 3 spaces on the wheel, cast the spell there, and that was your initiative next round.

Grah! I knew this will come up, I knew someone just HAD TO design it before me! That was what I thought up when aiming to design my own system. So much for originality in 2010! If anyone has any quick references to its likely whereabouts (I'll look for it later in some surge of time), I'd be very much obliged.

All proposals interesting, though most seem quite calculation-heavy, and I imagined something to go well with people not very system-savvy... But I guess that's the way it goes for more flexible systems. Any "god it's so cool that 80's metal must have invented it!" systems you can recall on top of these?

Raging_Pacifist
2010-05-10, 11:30 AM
Grah! I knew this will come up, I knew someone just HAD TO design it before me! That was what I thought up when aiming to design my own system. So much for originality in 2010! If anyone has any quick references to its likely whereabouts (I'll look for it later in some surge of time), I'd be very much obliged.


Its used as far as I know, In the Whitewolf d10 system for Scion.
www.white-wolf.com/scion/index.ph

Marillion
2010-05-10, 11:41 AM
I like the 7th Sea initiative system, which is d10 based. Everyone has 5 traits (ability scores) one of which is Panache, which determines how many actions you get per round. Generally, the maximum you can have in any trait is 5 (though of course there are ways to raise traits up to 7 but these are expensive) with the average being 2 or 3. Each round (generally 10 seconds but up to the GM's discretion) is divided into 10 phases (which are always 1/10th of a round). At the start of the round, the combatants roll their Panache. If you have 3 Panache you roll 3 dice, if you have 1 you roll 1, and if you have 7 (stupid Montaignes) you roll 7. The numbers shown on the die are the phases that you get to act on, so if Rolf the Eisen rolled a 2, a 5, and a 7, he gets to act on 2, 5, and 7, while if Luc the Montaigne Valroux user rolled 1, 2, 4, 4, 6, 9, and 10, he gets to act on 1, 2, twice on 4, 6, 9, and 10. When two people act on the same phase, you count everyone's initiative total by adding up their remaining action dice, so on phase 2 Rolf has a total of 14 while Luc has 35 (not 36). Luc goes first. In the event that the initiative total is a tie, the person with the highest Panache goes first (Luc DEFINITELY goes first) and if that's also a tie, just flip a coin. After phase 10, a new round starts and everyone rerolls their action dice

The way this works with spellcasting...Say that Luc is also a Porte (teleportation magic) sorcerer, and despite the fact that he has 7 actions a round, things are going poorly for him. He decides to Walk to an item that he has previously bloodied and left in a safe place, say, his mansion. In order to open a portal, he needs to spend two actions to literally rip a bleeding hole in the fabric of reality, we'll say actions 4 and 6. Rolf, having heard of Porte, knows that he'll die if he follows Luc into the portal, but he can't let Luc escape, so on phase 5, he successfully tackles Luc, disrupting his concentration and ending the sorcery. However, if Luc decides to open the portal using both of his phase 4 actions, before Rolf is scheduled to act, Rolf isn't completely out of luck. He can spend his two remaining actions in order to act immediately and attempt to beat the snot out of the Montaigne. However, if he misses, or Luc manages to get back to his feet, and Rolf doesn't have any friends, there's nothing Rolf can do, since he spent all his actions.

It might seem like a lot, but after a few practice rounds, it's really quite intuitive.

AvatarZero
2010-05-10, 04:30 PM
The thing is, I'm mainly looking for a system that would utilize a Final Fantasy Tactics-like mechanic: "A guy with 5 Speed and casting a slow casting spell can get interrupted by two guys who are just behind him in initiative."

I'm sure I've seen a houserule that does that to DnD. All spells, or possibly just all of a caster's high level spells, require a full round action to cast and only activate at the start of their next turn. As a result, everyone in the combat gets a chance to interrupt the casting.

I wish I could remember where I saw that one.

Coplantor
2010-05-11, 07:06 AM
There was also the Alternity system. Each character had an action score and an X ammount of actions per round.
Each round was divided in 4 phases, the marginal, the ordinary, the good and the amazing.
If your Action Score was, say, 16, you had to roll 16 or lower to be able to act in the ordinary phase, 8 or lower for the good one and 4 or lower for the amazing phase.
If you rlled 17 or higher, well, you acted only in the marginal phase.
You had to distribute your actions among these phases, some actions required you to spend 2 actions in one phase and that was the only way you could spend more than 1 action in one phase.

Arbane
2010-05-11, 12:59 PM
HERO system: Has rounds, but each round is divided into 1/2-second 'segments' and the number of times you get to act (and when) are determined by chart referencing on your Speed stat.

Feng Shui: Rounds, again. At the start of each round, everyone rolls their Speed stat--highest goes first, each attack action takes 3 'shots', actively defending takes 1. You can take as many shots as your Speed roll. (So, fast characters go early and often, and a sufficiently mobbed target might not get to go at all if they keep defending.)

erikun
2010-05-11, 04:09 PM
Grah! I knew this will come up, I knew someone just HAD TO design it before me! That was what I thought up when aiming to design my own system. So much for originality in 2010! If anyone has any quick references to its likely whereabouts (I'll look for it later in some surge of time), I'd be very much obliged.
It was on a RPG blog, from what I recall, but has sense been lost to my imperfect memory. If anyone knows what I'm talking about, a link would be nice.

And as I mentioned, D&D 2nd ed and Scion use similar ideas.

LibraryOgre
2010-05-11, 04:20 PM
Hackmaster Basic's is: Roll a die determined by the situation... the more awareness and advantage you have, the better your die (i.e. jumping around a corner to where you KNOW there are specific enemies gives you a very low die... turning a corner and bumping into enemies you weren't aware of gives you higher dice to roll). Add modifiers based on stats and class. Your starting total is the second on which you get to start to react. You can take your first action at that point (moving, attacking, whatever). Each second, you can move more or, if you haven't taken any other action, you can make your first attack. You can attack again in a number of seconds equal to your weapon's speed. There are no rounds... the GM just counts up seconds.

Morty
2010-05-11, 04:23 PM
The Riddle of Steel initiative system is curious in that you don't roll for initiative at all - each combatant has to declare whether he's an agressor or a defender - and it needs to be done quickly, without hesitation, like in a real fight. Once it's decided, they act in order determined by their stats.

Arbane
2010-05-12, 03:36 AM
Another odd one is Godlike's system. For any action you roll a pool of d10s, then count up matching dice. The 'height' of the roll (the number rolled) tells you how well you attacked/defended/whatever, the 'width' (number of matching dice) tells you how fast you did it--allowing you to pre-empt enemies.