House ruled combat, please comment

[JuliusCreed]

So, I recently changed the way we do combat in our Rifts game. My players like the new way and one has gone so far as to say it is a vast improvement.

The change is simple, but makes the combat flow better and more realistically. It also solves the problem with less combat oriented characters sitting around not doing anything at the end of every combat round.

Here we go. A combat round starts the same way, with an initiative check. Then the round is split into four turns. I quartered it because most characters seem to start with four or five attacks and four is a nice round number.

If your character has four attacks per round than things remain roughly the same. Each of the four turns you get one attack action and one non-attack action like running, piloting, or yelling.

If your character has more than four attacks per round you begin to be able to take multiple attack actions and possibly non-attack actions starting with your first turn. So if you have five attacks your turns would go 2 attacks, 1 attack, 1 attack, 1attack. If you had seven attacks your turns would go 2, 2, 2, 1.

If your character is one ove those rare characters with less than four attacks, IE one with no HTH skill, you would be able to take a non-attack action on each of your turns and be able to choose on which turns to take your attack actions.

With my method, characters with less attacks get to act all the way through a combat, the speed a character can move is not slowed down per action due to having more actions than his slower opponent; like it is in the basic system, and faster characters (with more attacks) are able to strike opponents several times before taking return fire which is realistic.

My players like combat better with these adjustments, what do you think? Would you consider trying this in your games? Do you have an alternate way of house ruleing combat?

Ok let me see if i got this straight... gonna run through a quick combat scene for you to make sure I Got this right...

2 fighters (A and B)
A has 4 attacks, B has 5
Initiative roll: A=15 B=12... A acts first and chooses to attack
A attack roll: 10, B defend (parry) roll:12
B attack roll: 13, A defend (parry) roll:15
B attack roll: 12, A defend (parry) roll: Nat 20
++END TURN 1 of 1st MELEE RND++

Turns 2, 3 and 4 proceed similarly, but without any extra attacks from B because he only has 3 attacks left for the round and thus only one left for the 3 remaining turns... Is this how a typical combat round proceeds in your games?

If so, well done... it's like a reversed idea of the original system... spreading a larger number of attacks over the span of a melee round instead of concentrating them all to a flurry of attacks from a single character or two at the end of the round... I especially like this for a Ninjas and Superspies setting in particular... it has a rather cinematic flow to it... you all have seen Jackie Chan movies... the Hero fires off a couple quick jabs before defending against a flurry of attackers, some swinging two, three even 4 times at him before he gets a shot at taking another swing or two at someone... I like it...

[Grug]

This is actually how I do it too. It does help keep the game moving faster, also doing called shots and dodges work better because of it. Since you might not even lose your next action.
I also use a D4 to help me remember what action we are on sometimes lol.

[Noon]

I've tooled around with roughly the same idea, particularly for movement reasons.

[Juce734]

This way makes sense in a more realistic sort of way.

[Hendrik]

Hiya,

how do you handle loss of 1 attack for active defense (there are those who do not have autoparry/autododge)?

Cheers
Hendrik

[Giant2005]

Your way is a better way of doing things.
The canon way doesn't properly reward the faster combatant nor does it make any sense.
If two combatants are of different skill levels (one has 4 attacks, the other 10) the game gets broken.
Both combatants attack at an equal pace until the weaker of the two has unleashed all of his attacks within that 15 second period. At that time the more skilled combatant freezes time so he can attack 6 more times within that 15 second window that has already passed.

I have a question though for you respecting your system: If an attacker uses a body throw or any move that removes attacks from the target, how do you handle it?

[Grug]

As I use the same adjustment, I will say how we do it.
It always takes your next attack, for example, Grug has six attacks so on the four rounds his six attacks would be broken up as 2,2,1 and 1.

The combatants are Grug and a Giant, the Giant has initiative.
The Giants first attack is to throw Grug, he succeeds throwing Grug 10 feet. Since this makes Grug lose an attack his attacks for the rounds would go to this 1,2,1 and 1. But means Grug can still make an attack on the first round.

[jaymz]

I do something similar. I use a 3 phase setup myself though. Each phase being 5 seconds.

Mind you I also fiddle with many other things too.

[Voodoolaw]

We have been doing this for a while too. I use 5 phases of 3 seconds. I went with this because it makes speed conversion easier. Each phase a character can move their speed in yards.

[wolfsgrin]

Very similar to what we do. We love it. Rewards speedsters and characters with experience. I do it a little different in only that I place the other attacks (after 4) every other turn. So if you have 6 attacks then it goes 2,1,2,1, and if you have 7 attacks 2,2,2,1
Combat for 6 players goes a heck of lot faster than it use to. Been wanting to post something on it for some time now. Thanks for the post! It should improve many games to those who like this system for combat.

[jaymz]

Jaymz, I had considered 3 turns each but thought it would be too few. I never tested it though, how do you find it? I do like the fact thet each of the three turns represents 5 seconds.

Voodooclaw, I hadn't thought of that. Making the speed of characters so easy to calculate is appealing.

I found it sped things up dramatically. Also allowed for power punches and other "multiple attack" actions in one "phase" withouth worrying about keeping track of attacks spent and how many were left for the "round"

[Tyberius]

great thread for someone getting back into things. Thanks. This helps me conceptualize combat and run through some ideas on how I would like to do it, and avoid some pitfalls, hopefully.

[Justthis Guy]

We have been doing this for a while too. I use 5 phases of 3 seconds. I went with this because it makes speed conversion easier. Each phase a character can move their speed in yards.

I use a battle map of 1" squares for combat. Wet erase pens draw the terrain and features, and use minis or other tokens (wire nuts, coins, etc.) for combatants. Each square is 10' by 10'. there can be multiple tokens in a square, say up to 4 smaller creatures. This method also helps for AOE spells, determining line of sight, and so on. I use the back of a plastic calendar that is 30" by 24", and drew the permanent grid in black sharpie. The wet erase pens come in 8 colors.
My general rule is a character can move speed in number of squares, so speed of 16 160 feet in 15 seconds, reasonable considering the combat situation, but if you are moving the full amount that eats up your actions except for one attack.


I really like the method of breaking up the combat in phases like this. It will make future combat easier to manage! Thanks!

[jaymz]

We have been doing this for a while too. I use 5 phases of 3 seconds. I went with this because it makes speed conversion easier. Each phase a character can move their speed in yards.

I use a battle map of 1" squares for combat. Wet erase pens draw the terrain and features, and use minis or other tokens (wire nuts, coins, etc.) for combatants. Each square is 10' by 10'. there can be multiple tokens in a square, say up to 4 smaller creatures. This method also helps for AOE spells, determining line of sight, and so on. I use the back of a plastic calendar that is 30" by 24", and drew the permanent grid in black sharpie. The wet erase pens come in 8 colors.
My general rule is a character can move speed in number of squares, so speed of 16 160 feet in 15 seconds, reasonable considering the combat situation, but if you are moving the full amount that eats up your actions except for one attack.


I really like the method of breaking up the combat in phases like this. It will make future combat easier to manage! Thanks!

Well in my setup of 3 phases my movement works like this:

walk is SPD x 1 = feet per phase
jog is SPD x 3 = feet per phase
full run is SPD x 5 = feet per phase

The only thing I add is that full run costs an action. I also have jogging and running apply bonuses to dodge but penalties to strike. Walking has no bonuses or penalties.

The movement above works really well in a 3 phase system and works out perfectly with the numbers generated by the SPD attribute since SPD is 1 foot per second per point. It is also fairly accurate to reality oddly enough.......

[MaxxSterling]

I play by the rules in the book. I do not like altering them.

[jaymz]

I play by the rules in the book. I do not like altering them.

Ok, question for you then. When can a character move during combat, how far can they move and how long does it take?

I ask because if you have an answer it can only BE a house rule as there are NO rules as to how to let a character move during combat.

[MaxxSterling]

Characters do not move during combat. They either shoot at each other, or engage in hand to hand until someone is dead.

That being said however, I do not disagree that this game system has serious issues. Have you ever tried to jump in this game?

[jaymz]

Characters do not move during combat. They either shoot at each other, or engage in hand to hand until someone is dead.

That being said however, I do not disagree that this game system has serious issues. Have you ever tried to jump in this game?

Yeah the rules for that I believe are with the movement rules

[MaxxSterling]

A lot of folks go to the open house right? I assume K.S. runs a game... I would like to know how K.S. handles a lot of these situations, how does he handle movement in combat or jumping. Maybe someone who has seen a "Canon" version of this game can also tell me how a teleport ring works in PFRPG as well. Just curious, or does he just institute his own house rules for things that suck in the system, if that's the case, I'd like to slap him.

[Akashic Soldier]

Characters do not move during combat. They either shoot at each other, or engage in hand to hand until someone is dead.

That being said however, I do not disagree that this game system has serious issues. Have you ever tried to jump in this game?

I think the R:GMG should be required reading for all Game Masters. I really do.

Back on topic:

I wrote THIS about 8 months ago. I have extensively play tested it and it works great but I am always looking for anyone else who might want to try it out and give me some feedback. By which I mean, actually use it and see how it plays out, and not just read it, roll your eyes and say its crap.

It is only part 1 (please be awake its still a draft and in manuscript format) and I cannot hand out part 2 (can't say why but its a good thing trust me).

That said, it is entirely compatible with all existing characters and it makes running combat much more streamlined and it pretty much covered all the rules you are going to need short of environmental and circumstantial bonuses/penalties.

The content is copyright and time stamped and Palladium is aware of my work on it. So anyone who thinks they might like to steal it and claim it is yours (its happened once already), you should think again. It is free to use but cannot be sold or reposted on another website. Any violation of these terms will result in legal action being taken.

[Shimasaki]

I used the new combat system (breaking the turn down into 4's) in my game this week and it worked really well. The players who were familiar with the system said they had never seem combat so streamlined. I will be using this from now on. I used color index cards to represent how many attacks each player had so someone with 5 got 2 white cards, 1 blue card, 1 green card, and one red card. The would put the card out in front of them when they used their attack.

I was also thinking about limiting the times a player can roll or parry to avoid overuse. Any thoughts on this?

[ZorValachan]

PFRPG and early other PB titles did a all attacks resolved then the next guy. Now with 'round robin' the guy with the most attack flurries at the end. I did not like either so in the last 2 games I ran, I had broken it up into 15 sections, with a chart and people's actions on which second. But I like this proposed idea much better. I just really like 5 second 'combat rounds', so will probably use 3 of these turns per round instead of the proposed 4. Then most people would at least get a 2 action/attack first turn.

It is good to see a simple, yet effective way to streamline the combat without altering all kinds of rules.

*Edit: I could be wrong about how combat was in early works. I got robotech when it came out and went to PFRPG and TMNT quickly after. On a very recent re-reading combat in TMNT, both all at one time and round robin seem to be described in the sample combat example. So maybe in my teens I misunderstood something. Still-this alternative seems a great system.

[St. Evil]

I will talk to my players after the holidays and see if they would try this it looks good.

[Semi-Retired Gamer]

A simple change but one that should be much better in play. Consider it borrowed. Great job!

[Akashic Soldier]

I used the new combat system (breaking the turn down into 4's) in my game this week and it worked really well. The players who were familiar with the system said they had never seem combat so streamlined. I will be using this from now on. I used color index cards to represent how many attacks each player had so someone with 5 got 2 white cards, 1 blue card, 1 green card, and one red card. The would put the card out in front of them when they used their attack.

I was also thinking about limiting the times a player can roll or parry to avoid overuse. Any thoughts on this?

No, parry should not be limited. It already has its own disadvantages (see knockdown/knockback). Likewise, you can only parry so many opponents at a time anyway.

A simple change but one that should be much better in play. Consider it borrowed. Great job!

You're welcome.

I will talk to my players after the holidays and see if they would try this it looks good.

Let me know how it goes.