Alternate Combat Round

[kyrt-ryder]

So I've been pondering this kind of combat round for a while, and figured it would be best to post my thoughts thus far, get feedback, and see if we can't hammer it out.

Initiative: A character's Base Attack Bonus is added to his initiative.

Actions: Characters with high BAB can take multiple actions per round. In addition, when taking an Action, a character can apply a -2 penalty to said action (-2 to his attack rolls, -2 penalty to his save DC, something along those lines) to move up to 1/2 his movement speed as part of the action (either immediately before or after performing said action.)

Additional actions are gained with every 4 points of BAB, and taken at -4 penalties to initiative. (So for example, a level 5 Fighter would act on his initiative and on his initiative -4)

Free Movement: Each character can move up to his movement speed each round without invoking a penalty. This movement can be split up as desired between actions.

Notes:

* Actions do NOT have reduced attack bonus like iterative attacks in normal play.

*Two Weapon Fighting is making an attack with each hand during an action (and attack of opportunity if these are retained.)

*Spontaneous Metamagic does not increase casting time.

Obviously there are going to be some problems with this system (such as how AoO's interact, spells, etc.) And I'd like to hear peoples thoughts on these and how it can be improved.

To throw out one possibility (which would need to be accounted for in spell design), higher level spells might require more than one action. (For example, spells of up to 4th level might only require one action, while spells of 5th through 8th level might require two actions, and spells of 9th level might require three)

[Bruunwald]

The thing to remember when designing new games or tweaking old ones, when dice are concerned, is to watch out that what you are changing has an actual effect, rather than bleeding all the otherwise dynamic elements together into a blur.

In the case of this initiative thing, it at first would seem like you are giving fighter types and certain monsters a serious advantage. But when you break it down, what you are really doing is making initiative modifiers useless.

For instance, a fighter with a BAB of +5, with a Dex mod of +1 is going to have a total +6 initiative mod. His rogue buddy with a BAB of +3 and a Dex mod of +3 is going to have a total +6 initiative mod. This gimps the rogue's usual advantage of better initiative through higher Dex, and makes the rule itself useless for the fighter. They both may as well roll a d20 straight with no mods at all.

The actions thing does seem to give an unfair advantage to fighters and constructs, dragons, etc.

You further seem to be gimping non-fighter types with forcing additional actions on higher spells.

And the whole thing seems rather complicated on top of it all.

Perhaps a better way to make something dynamic like this, but keep it fair and simple, would be to give each combatant an Action Point per round, or per combat, or per day, or whatever, which they can spend on a non-full-round action type of their choice.

[kyrt-ryder]

All of that is deliberate my friend. I WANT BAB to be valuable. And while yes, the rogue and fighter in that specific instance may as well go with a straight d20, there are dozens of other instances where things would vary.

And yes, I like the idea of making higher level spells be difficult to cast (I did note that the power of said spells would need adjustment, particularly the damage spells that were already underpowered for the level.)

I will admit there is some additional complexity added to the combat round, but it seems like it could be a good thing and I intend to take this chassis and refine it, rather than abandon it completely for 'Action Points.'

[kyrt-ryder]

Any more takers? I'd like to see a few more posts to take into consideration before I start working on a round two.

[ShadowcatX]

Personally, looking at your changes it looks more like palladium fantasy than pathfinder. (Multiple actions determined by "fighting styles", high level spells taking longer to cast. . .) Quite frankly, if you're going to change the whole basis of the game, why are you playing this game at all?

If I sat down at a table and was handed this as a list of house rules, I'd get up and walk away and not look back.

[kyrt-ryder]

Some of us prefer d20 and like Pathfinder as a foundation to our homebrew games. I never claimed this was for a 'true pathfinder' campaign.

Thank you for your opinion Shadowcat. I'm more looking for actual feedback rather than to be shunted towards a different system, but its good to know that there are people who would flat reject the chance to play under such a system even after it is polished and refined.

[Bruunwald]

kyrt-ryder wrote:

All of that is deliberate my friend. I WANT BAB to be valuable. And while yes, the rogue and fighter in that specific instance may as well go with a straight d20, there are dozens of other instances where things would vary.

And yes, I like the idea of making higher level spells be difficult to cast (I did note that the power of said spells would need adjustment, particularly the damage spells that were already underpowered for the level.)

I will admit there is some additional complexity added to the combat round, but it seems like it could be a good thing and I intend to take this chassis and refine it, rather than abandon it completely for 'Action Points.'

Yeah, I guess I would like to see what compensation the spellcasters received for "paying" more than the martials to accomplish their actions. I guess another thing I would point out would be that if you gimp them too hard on the time needed to get a spell off, the combat may very well be over, and - I am assuming you might not change this? - the spell lost. Thus, whatever compensation granted in terms of power would, at least in that scenario, also be lost.

Mind you, I am not trying to stop you from being creative. I just think it's important to think well ahead. I've started many game designs myself, over many, many years, but few of them get beyond a certain point. As with chess, you have to be considering things many, many steps ahead to make sure you do not waste your efforts.

In terms of making BAB "valuable," what compensation do other classes receive? Since this valuable resource comes without cost to the martial types, what penalties do they suffer in exchange? If none, then you have to really compensate the others.

[kyrt-ryder]

Now we're getting somewhere.

Well, for starters I would plan to fix damage dealing spells. There is no way that a polar ray is a legitimate 8th level spell even with the dexterity damage. The vast majority of damage dealing spells would fall into level 4 or lower and be simple 'point and shoot' sort of deals.

5th level-8th level would be larger more grand-scale magic, the sorts of awesome spells you read about in fantasy.

9th level would, of course, be basically divine spells (like they are now, but a little wider in scope.) Meteor Swarm, for example, might be set up to level a city block with a normal casting, with a ritual incantation option that could, given enough time (possibly something like one hour) and an obvious sign to onlookers that they could try to stop it be augmented to pull a Sodom and Gomorrah and nuke a whole city within a certain range.

As far as the Rogue and the Monk, I'm not yet sure what to do with the Rogue, though I'm looking to make skills very powerful (and slightly more condensed), so being the class with the most skills will be a very good thing. Might do some work on the rogue talents as well, there is a lot of room for expansion in them.

[Drejk]

Some questions about consequences of your changes:

- how you intend to rewrite haste effects? will they give extra action in a round or will work some other way?
- do you intend to boost two handed weapons somewhat to compensate for TWF increased efficiency at higher levels?
- do you intend to keep option of attacking with two weapons without TWF feat as a standard action with penalties or will it become impossible?

More technical questions later.

[Blueluck]

I think you're going to have trouble with high-initiative characters taking multiple actions before low-initiative characters act, thereby winning fights on initiative alone.

Here's how:

Ranger Rick, Ranger Level 10, BAB +10, DEX +6, Improved Initiative +4, Initiative +20
Sorcerer Sam, Sorcerer Level 10, BAB +5, DEX +0, Initiative +5
On average, Ranger Rick will get four whole actions before Sam gets one. Initiative order can look like this: Rick, Rick, Rick, Rick, Sam, Rick

Also, because a d20 is quite a few increments of 4, a good roll vs. a bad roll isn't just who goes first, it could give the better rolling character 4 extra actions before the low-roller.

Lots of game systems I've played use an initiative system somewhat like you propose. The first "fix" they usually add to solve this problem is that everyone gets 1 turn before anyone gets 2. (Shadowrun is a good example here, since they made that change between editions.) Also, even after this fix is applied, you still might want to lower the number of additional actions. Otherwise you can end up with an initiative order that looks like this: Rick, Sam, Rick, Rick, Rick, Rick

In this scenario, initiative still ends up being the most important stat on a character sheet. Non-fighter monsters, lower level monsters, and big slow monsters will all get p0wned by parties full of characters with DEX builds and the Improved Initiative feat. (Which, by the way, grants an extra action, so everyone will take it.)

Kudos for trying to kludge the system. I'm curious, what are your design goals with this change? What net effect do you want to see in game?

[kyrt-ryder]

Drejk wrote:

Some questions about consequences of your changes:

1- how you intend to rewrite haste effects? will they give extra action in a round or will work some other way?
2- do you intend to boost two handed weapons somewhat to compensate for TWF increased efficiency at higher levels?
3- do you intend to keep option of attacking with two weapons without TWF feat as a standard action with penalties or will it become impossible?

More technical questions later.

1- an additional action at -4 (or possibly +4) initiative could be pretty cool, but I'm open to alternative options.

2- I intend to boost two weapon fighting with this house rule, as it's still rather resource intensive (I'm looking at you, magic weapons.) If it proves problematic, I will decide how to adapt. (I also am considering giving 2wf a -2 initiative in concordance with the -2 attack.)

3- those penalties for attacking with Two Weapons without the feat are pretty steep, I see no reason not to keep the option.

[kyrt-ryder]

Blueluck wrote:

I think you're going to have trouble with high-initiative characters taking multiple actions before low-initiative characters act, thereby winning fights on initiative alone.

** spoiler omitted **

Kudos for trying to kludge the system. I'm curious, what are your design goals with this change? What net effect do you want to see in game?

Oh wow, I did not notice my wording caused that.

What I meant, was that for every +4 BAB one gains an additional action at their initiative -4 from the last action. (So Ranger Rick would have at most three actions at initiative +20, +16, and +12, while Sorcerer Sam would have two at +5 and +1.)

Improved Initiative does indeed seem problematic for this system, as does the d20's ability to massively skew initiative.

Hmmm... what if I went with the 'no two actions before anyone else gets theirs' rule, and improved initiative (instead of a bonus to initiative) allows one to take their actions in order of initiative chain even if there would be multiple actions in a row?

[Blueluck]

kyrt-ryder wrote:

What I meant, was that for every +4 BAB one gains an additional action at their initiative -4 from the last action. (So Ranger Rick would have at most three actions at initiative +20, +16, and +12, while Sorcerer Sam would have two at +5 and +1.)

Ah, I see! So it's limited by the number of extra actions awarded by BAB alone. That solves the problem of high initiative granting extra actions.

kyrt-ryder wrote:

Improved Initiative does indeed seem problematic for this system, as does the d20's ability to massively skew initiative.

Hmmm... what if I went with the 'no two actions before anyone else gets theirs' rule, and improved initiative (instead of a bonus to initiative) allows one to take their actions in order of initiative chain even if there would be multiple actions in a row?

I think 'no two actions before anyone else gets theirs' (and, of course, no 3rd until everyone has had 2, no 4th until everyone has had 3, which basically amounts to "Extras come at the end, not the beginning") solves the problem of the Improved Initiative feat.