| Bill Miller 52 |
I find the system to be a pretty elegant way of introducing a pseudo-beat based combat system, as other respondents have mentioned.
I've noticed that many of the respondents to this post have implied or outright stated that this system doesn't maintain compatibility with the core 3.5 rules, but if you actually study it, I think it does. In fact, it seems that the only thing that is affected is that full attacks are broken down such that a characters with a lot of attacks can do some or all of his attacks and still move some.
Since the physical damage based characters in DnD 3.5E are widely regarded as the most jilted from a power standpoint, I don't think that is particularly unbalanced.
Any standard actions look to be the same in this proposed system. Look at the structure that Michael proposed: A round consists of primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary actions. The standard action uses the best 3: primary, secondary, and tertiary. If the character still wants to move he can do so with his quaternary action, albeit at a different point in the round from his standard action. This is practically the same thing as in the core material and doesn't seem to be incompatible at all.
While not expressly stated in this proposal, I would assume that any full round actions would just use all 4 slots up, so the character couldn't do anything else except swift, immediate, and free actions, as normal.
I'm sure there will be periodic oddities that come up that will need to be addressed on a case by case basis, like you did with charge and run actions, but individual anomalies do not mean that this adjustment is not compatible. I think it'll add a lot of realism to combat dynamics without requiring a wholesale rewrite of all the other 3.5 material.
As a response to posters that have argued against this point on the grounds that it is too complicated or requires too much actual attention being paid to the game, I have this to say: Sit, down and take your Ritalin. All you have to do it write down who goes when when initiative is rolled. If your players can't be bothered to pay attention, then do you really want them in your game?
The way I see it, and rules change that allows you to use the wealth of already released material without having to rewrite each individual entry in the monster manual is at least worth an objective look. Good post, Michael.