Forums of the Megaverse®

Kagashi wrote:Personally, I stay clear of this as well.

It certainly makes sense to house rule *something* because the rules as written are pretty much incomplete. Palladium rules say each character takes turns until one runs out of attacks and the other can just unload. The system works *okay* until you run into a player who has a significant amount of attacks over the opponent. So if a character with 4 attacks is fighting a character with 8 attacks, the character with 4 attacks suddenly stops reacting 7.5 seconds into every 15 second period. Heck, the entire megaverse stops reacting to what they were doing every 7.5 seconds as long as their is a character that exists with 8 attacks. That does not sound very realistic.

Example: Bob = 4 attacks, Mark = 8 attacks. Bob will win initiative in all my examples.

Turn order would be:
Bob
Mark
Bob
Mark
Bob
Mark
Bob
Mark
Mark
Mark
Mark
Mark

One approach to fixing this is what you propose, allowing a character to borrow attacks from the next round. but then if you think about it, it really takes away from the entire purpose of having more attacks than the next guy. Plus, you have to regulate it somehow. You cannot just let him use up his whole next round of attacks. Perhaps only one can be "borrowed" each round. Perhaps the following round, he has to pay 2 to make up for the one borrowed attack, or the following round is fought at -1 to strike, parry, dodge for every attack borrowed the round prior. Something. The Character with the lesser number of attacks is SUPPOSED to be at a disadvantage. So using the above example, Bob could use one of his four attacks of his NEXT melee round to counter the FIVE unopposed attacks Mark gets to level at him, but I would throw in a penalty for the second melee round for Bob of -1 s/p/d...AND he only has 3 attacks vs Marks EIGHT in round 2.

Another approach is a bit more complicated. When I ran this system, I used a chart to help me visualize. But I broke down each player in combat by the number of attacks in a 15 second period. Each attack would take up longer or shorter periods of time within each melee round. So going back to the 4 vs 8 attacks, the guy with 8 attacks would get to react to the outcome of the combat twice for every time the guy with 4 attacks would get to react.

Bob
Mark
Mark
Bob
Mark
Mark
Bob
Mark
Mark
Bob
Mark
Mark

This approach is more realistic, but can become quite cumbersome with more characters in the combat or numbers of attacks that do not divide evenly like the example above. But there would be no need for borrowing attacks as Bob now spreads his attacks evenly in the 15 second period.

Personally, lately, I have been leading to abandoning the number of attacks all together for a third approach. I propose every character, regardless of H2H training, OCC, RCC, or whatever, gets 5 APM. Period. Then take the number of attacks Palladium says the character should have and apply a +1 to s/p/d (or all combat rolls...doesnt matter as long as everybody in the megaverse is doing it) for every attack that character should have.

(EDIT: Perhaps a bonus to Init would be more warranted. Bonuses to strike would mean under the current Palladium rules, nobody would ever miss a shot/strike).

This way, each attack is a nice even 3 seconds of combat game time and there is no need to borrow attacks for less experienced people. There are no charts to have to maintain, simplifying the issue for the GM. And more experienced characters will still have an advantage over less experienced characters.

Bob
Mark
Bob
Mark
Bob
Mark
Bob
Mark
Bob
Mark

I think this would ALSO resolve the misconceptions I see people having about the concept of simultaneous attack.

flatline wrote:I ditch attacks per melee entirely. Everyone gets one action per round, each round is 1 second long, and some actions take multiple rounds to complete.

Also, instead of rolling to dodge, if you choose to dodge, the difficulty of all attacks made against you that round is increased.

--flatline

glitterboy2098 wrote:IMO, the ability to 'bank' attacks doesn't make much sense.. not only in terms of in setting time but also in terms of book keeping.

i generally ignore it. though now that i think of it, it might be worth trying out something like "you can continue to dodge for free, but at a -4 penalty" or something like that. give them the option, but make it less attractive an option (thus letting autododge remain a valued option)

Murdock_SE wrote:Just curious if most of you GMs allow for the ruling that if the opponent wants to continue dodging when they run out of "attacks", they can "bank" them by using attacks from the following round. That is not something that was allowed in 1st edition if memory serves. The one question I have as a result, do you LIMIT that to only the attacks of that following round and ONLY that following round's worth, or do you continue to allow them basically unlimited dodges (as long as it keeps eating up "attacks" for the future). Yes, naive question. Please excuse it. : )

flatline wrote:I ditch attacks per melee entirely. Everyone gets one action per round, each round is 1 second long, and some actions take multiple rounds to complete.

Also, instead of rolling to dodge, if you choose to dodge, the difficulty of all attacks made against you that round is increased.

--flatline

Tiree wrote:I also do something similar to Kagashi. Based on situation though:

Play by Post, I break it up to 3 5 Second Phases. Everyone's attacks are spread evenly across all 3 phases.
Table top Play: I break it up to 5, 3 Second Phases. Everyone's attacks are spread evenly across all 5 phases (making sure that everyone has an attack in phase 1.

Both work well, I do a shorter amount of Phases in Play by Post, mainly to make the writing a bit easier as a GM.

Tiree wrote:My group likes the 5 phases better, as it is a bit more granular than the 3 phase. It also let's them figure out their attacks when they do two action things (ie aimed shot, power punch).

jaymz wrote:Mind you I also modify the whole "cannot dodge 4 or more missile rule" as well

jaymz wrote:Um, has everyone forgotten the 2nd ed of Robotech have quite a few mecha that have auto-dodge and that you add your PP bonus to auto-dodge rolls?

      Mecha   Autododge
UEEF:      11   4 (VR-038, VR-042, VR-052, VF-057)
ASC:      14   3 (Logan [F-mode], Ajax [F-mode], Manticore [space only], 
UEDF:      6   1 (VF-1 [F-mode])
IMU's:      4   2 (VRM-32 Typhoon, VFH-RAU "fury")
Invid:      8   0
Masters:   9   1 (Bioroid Invid Fighter)
Zentreadi:   7   6 (Regult, Light arty pod, Heavy arty pod, Gluag, MPA, FPA)
haydonites:   2   0
Gura Invid:   5   0
Regent:      1   1 (Cougar)

note: Alpha models, Beta models, VF-1 models, and Cyclone submodels not counted seperately, Bioroid upgrades treated as seperate models due to massive changes to their designs and stats.