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Yeah, this is a known problem with "Turns one at a time, even though everything is at once".
The simplest (not necessarily best) solution I've seen is to add a "declare" phase to each round, which runs on a "flipped" initiative. Lowest person declares what their actions will be, then next lowest, and so on up to the top. The highest person then gets to plan his actions knowing what everyone else is doing, and get the drop on them. The actual actions are resolved highest-to-lowest, with actions that are no longer possible simply failing.
Ready and Delay are both complicated, though.
Yeah, this is a known problem with "Turns one at a time, even though everything is at once".
The simplest (not necessarily best) solution I've seen is to add a "declare" phase to each round, which runs on a "flipped" initiative. Lowest person declares what their actions will be, then next lowest, and so on up to the top. The highest person then gets to plan his actions knowing what everyone else is doing, and get the drop on them. The actual actions are resolved highest-to-lowest, with actions that are no longer possible simply failing.
Ready and Delay are both complicated, though.
I've played in such a system once. It looks okay on paper, the problem is that for a lot of fights it makes winning initiative tantamount to winning the fight.
Yeah... In my games I use a very simple formula to solve this, Bonus on initiative. Sometimes ill give my players hits that something is about to happen, depending on success of skill checks, Then they re adjust their positioning.
Another thing I often do when Im gming is I wont have the dumb barbarian run right around the fighter, Scenario matters as well, Is the barb targeting the squishy wizard/princess, if no then he would charge the fighter, if yes then well the players probably didn't cover the person they are trying to protect. IMO if its all based on the caster character getting taken down, well whatever it happens, thats why they have the lowest hit die.
So here is a scenario: a fighter in about to go one on one with a barbarian using fleet. 10' behind the fighter is a squishy that the fighter wants to protect. Initiative is rolled and the barbarian beats everyone. For his turn, he travels in an arch around the fighter, avoiding his threatened squares, and attacks the squishy, killing it.
This scenario is a tactical failure on the part of the Fighter. He's too far away from the person he should be protecting and there's too much room for the enemy to go around him. The Barbarian basically faked him out and ran around him.
There is a problem vis-a-vis movement and initiative; any footrace scenario will show that. Solutions are going to be extremely fiddly (everyone moves 5ft in order, repeat) or imbalancing (easy to react to higher initiative opponents and neutralize their plans).
One possible option that stays fairly clean is to allow 5ft steps to be used as immediate actions in response to enemy movement. One single 5ft step isn't going to be a game breaker. Whether or not this should be a feat is up for question; the Step Up feat is an example of this kind of maneuvering, so either it should be a feat or have some serious restrictions (like not being able to enter a threatened square, or provoking AoO's despite being only a 5' step).
It seems to me like the solution to this might center around a readied action.
The fighter in your scenario could declare his readied action as "I'm going to stay between the princess and the barbarian."
Obviously, this doesn't help him during the first round of initiative if the barbarian gets to go first, but I think that's okay. It represents the barbarian acting before the fighter realizes what his motive is.
With a readied action to stay between the two, however, the barbarian moves one square, then the fighter reactively moves one square, then the barbarian moves another, then the fighter, etc. until both have used up all their movement for that round. In your example, the fighter would run out of movement and the barbarian would get to move several more squares, but the blocking action of the fighter would make it much less likely that the barbarian could still make it to the princess.
Since readying is a standard action, the fighter would give up his attacks while running interference like this, so maybe readying this sort of action should be reduced to a move action?
I've wanted to start using this rule for a while but haven't really thought if through. Does this seem like it would work?
It seems to me like the solution to this might center around a readied action.
The fighter in your scenario could declare his readied action as "I'm going to stay between the princess and the barbarian."
Obviously, this doesn't help him during the first round of initiative if the barbarian gets to go first, but I think that's okay. It represents the barbarian acting before the fighter realizes what his motive is.
With a readied action to stay between the two, however, the barbarian moves one square, then the fighter reactively moves one square, then the barbarian moves another, then the fighter, etc. until both have used up all their movement for that round. In your example, the fighter would run out of movement and the barbarian would get to move several more squares, but the blocking action of the fighter would make it much less likely that the barbarian could still make it to the princess.
Since readying is a standard action, the fighter would give up his attacks while running interference like this, so maybe readying this sort of action should be reduced to a move action?
I've wanted to start using this rule for a while but haven't really thought if through. Does this seem like it would work?
I've also been interested in doing this, but I basically found that Pathfinder had already done it for me.
The APG has two new feats; Bodyguard and In Harm's Way that make the fighter an excellent protector, especially if the fighter is using a reach weapon.
With both of these feats and a reach weapon he can very effectively protect an adjacent ally. Reach makes it much harder for a melee opponent to approach his charge without provoking because the ally can be inside the fighter's threat ring.
When the AoO is provoked he uses Bodyguard to Aid another to improve his charges AC. If the charge is still hit by the assailant he uses In Harm's Way to take the successful attacks himself.
Pretty effective IMO.
I had been considering a way to incorporate 4E marking into Pathfinder, but decided that these feats made that unnecessary.
I like your solution but I don't think it goes far enough.
Going any further will tend to break down the entire movement and initiative system. D&D isn't built around the concept of interrupts, the Ready action is a poor attempt (as it requires you to have a higher Initiative and delay to interrupt).
Simultaneous movement is a nice concept, but works very badly in execution (your single round turns into a multi-mini-round affair). Breaking it into larger than 5' chunks might be more viable (say 1/2 your total movement?), but when/how you act will end up being strange (if you do get in range of the Barbarian, he still acts first and the best you might get is an AoO), and it changes little if someone's 1/2 movement ends up being fairly large.
Probably the best solution is to create a feat that deals with the specific problem - intercepting someone's movement. You'll need restrictions (only vs. someone moving towards you or an ally beside/behind you, not vs. moving away/fleeing, you must move towards contact with target, etc.). Expect it to get taken a lot, as even with restrictions it's quite useful, especially for a melee type.
Of course, the best advice is that if you want to guard someone, stick close to them - as in adjacent close, and even then you have to be careful about the terrain. A single bodyguard is not an effective strategy (3-5 is much better).