Adapting Conditional Turn-Based Battle to D&D

[Temennigru]

How can I adapt final fantasy X's battle system to d&d and make it ballanced?


Conditional Turn-Based Battle
The Conditional Turn-Based Battle system, or the Count Time Battle system in Japan, designed by Toshiro Tsuchida is used in Final Fantasy X. CTB is a turn-based system which does not operate in rounds, instead it uses an Act List that is affected through various means and thus does not guarantee that each participant in a battle will have an equal number of turns. Units with higher speed take more turns than slower ones, making speed more important than in other turn-based battle systems. Players can substitute party members mid-battle adding a new level of strategy.

Spells and abilities (such as Haste or Overdrives) modify the Act List, as some abilities require a longer cool down time. Weaker abilities tend to require less cool down time, thus introducing a trade-off between speed and power. When a character's turn begins all action stops while the player decides upon an action. This shifts the focus from reflexes and quick decision-making to strategy and careful planning.

The Conditional Turn-Based Battle system is the battle system of Final Fantasy Legends: Toki no Suishō.

[KillianHawkeye]

Well, I'm not sure how FFX's CTB worked mathematically, but it's probably a more advanced version of the one originally used in Final Fantasy Tactics.

In FFT, each character would get to act whenever their CT reached 100. CT increased according to a character's speed, and it would be reduced by an amount based on what the character did on their turn. (I don't remember the numbers exactly, but it was something simple along the lines of doing a Move + Act reducing you to zero, but only Moving or only Acting would reduce you to 20 or 40 or something.) So basically the faster characters would generally get more turns because their CT would increase more for each "tick" of the combat round, but that could be affected by using Haste or Slow or just by having a character not burn all of their CT.

Based on the description (and my fuzzy memory of playing the game), the FFX version is mainly different by having more variation in the "CT cost" AKA cool down of certain actions rather than the standardized costs used by FFT's system. Also the fact that there was no movement, and you could swap characters in from the reserves as a free action.

[Temennigru]

FFX generated a list of turns based on each character's speed.
http://i1147.photobucket.com/albums/o555/Temen-ni-gru/FFXBattle_zpsz8o8ndys.jpg

I want to balance it in such a way that I won't have the party's rogue taking 6/10 turns, but players will still be rewarded for having a high initiative.

I was thinking about having the players initiative be added to their initiative count at every "tick", then have each character with initiative count > 100 act and reset their count, but that way, a player that rolled a 20 would act 20 times more that a player that rolled a 1, and that would be a problem.

Maybe I could have a system similar to the stat system, in which I would calculate an "initiative stat" (10 for +0, 12 for +1, and so on), add that to their dice roll to determine their speed, or something like that. I still think it wouldn't be very balanced, since some power players in the party have something like +20 initiative.

[Florian]

How can I adapt final fantasy X's battle system to d&d and make it ballanced?

First, go and have a look at the Savage Worlds RPG system. It uses Poker Cards to create the initiative order for all combatants each round. That´s not including the option to modify the result by last rounds action, but it should give you an insight how using a dynamic system can alter the flow and feeling of a battle.

Note, for example, that tactical maneuvers on a battlemap get a bit harder to pull off, since even simple stuff like flanking get harder and Attacks of Opportunity get more tricky, too.

A german RPG system, Splittermond, uses a bit more advanced system that is based on "Ticks" but lacks the random element beyond the first initiative roll.
For all practical purposes, each possible action comes with tick-costs attached and each weapon, spell and maneuver has either a speed value or a speed modifier.

Draw a bowstring and nock an arrow: 4 ticks. Aim and Fire the Bow: 10 ticks. Defender raises shield for active defense against shot: 4 ticks.... and so on.

For this system to work, there´re two battlemaps on the table: one for the positional combat, the other is rather like a "game of life"-board with a numbered "tick track" running on it and after any action has been taken, ticks are calculated and a marker is moved to the next initiative position.

Now if you combine both, the bit more randomized variant as seen in FFG and the tick system, I think it will be an accurate replication but a bit too much administration to be of use in actual play.

[Knaight]

The way I've seen this done in other systems (Shadowrun, mostly) is that you have everyone roll initiative, and then whoever has highest initiative acts, which then kicks their initiative down. Once everyone drops below zero, they reroll. If someone joins mid combat, they roll and get slotted in at wherever they end up. With that said, I don't think putting this in with the 3e mechanics is particularly advisable.

[Arael666]

Sounds like more trouble (and bookeeping) than even rolling for initiative every round.

[Elder_Basilisk]

Sounds like more trouble (and bookeeping) than even rolling for initiative every round.

Adding initiative modifier to initiative count every round would be relatively easy to do if you customized a combat tracker app. Doing things like adjusting initiative count and modifier for things like prayer and deafness, however, would add a lot of complexity to it and my experience with my current home game DM (who uses a Lone Wolf Games program to track combat) suggests that using an app for things other than keeping track of who goes when may actually slow the game down rather than speed it up.

[Temennigru]

Adding initiative modifier to initiative count every round would be relatively easy to do if you customized a combat tracker app. Doing things like adjusting initiative count and modifier for things like prayer and deafness, however, would add a lot of complexity to it and my experience with my current home game DM (who uses a Lone Wolf Games program to track combat) suggests that using an app for things other than keeping track of who goes when may actually slow the game down rather than speed it up.

Problem is, some people have +0 initiative, while others have +20-ish.
That is literally infinity times greater.


Sounds like more trouble (and bookeeping) than even rolling for initiative every round.

Since we are using roll20, I plan on scripting the initiative count to reflect my system.

What I thought that could solve my problem is:
Have everyone roll for initiative. Take the die roll, add it to init mod/2, then add that to 50.
At each tick, add that number to their initiative count. if they pass 100, subtract 100, then add them to the initiative list by order of remaining initiative count.
I could then have each kind of action have a certain impact on their remaining initiative count.

Just so you understand the background of the problem, I'm running a "parallel stories" side-campaign and I want to create a more interactive system that supports 3.x material so my players can have more fun.
If I can make it work, I will make it the system for the main campaign.

[KillianHawkeye]

Problem is, some people have +0 initiative, while others have +20-ish.
That is literally infinity times greater.

Not to mention those few characters who actually have a negative modifier to initiative!

[Temennigru]

Not to mention those few characters who actually have a negative modifier to initiative!

That's why I need a lower bound

[KillianHawkeye]

That's why I need a lower bound

Well, if you want to really be true to how Final Fantasy did it, you really need an independent Speed stat of some kind. It wouldn't be the first time a ruleset added a new ability score.

Either that, or have some static value added on that's large enough to overcome any initiative deficit, say... 10. So if your initiative is +0 your Speed Counter is +10, a -2 initiative is still a Speed Counter of +8, while someone with a +8 or +10 to initiative has a whopping +18 or +20 Speed Counter and gets roughly twice as many turns as the guy with average initiative. And if you want to have the character's initiative modifier play less of a role in determining the number of turns, increase the static value. With a 20 instead of a 10, your +0 guy has +20 and your +10 guy has +30, now he's only getting 50% more turns.