Initiative/action declaration

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Mord
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Initiative/action declaration

Post by Mord »

Hey all. I'm trying to build an initiative system for a game where the players and antagonists are all robots. One of the things I want to be supported by the system is spending actions on defense - dodging or blocking. I also want speed to be a real advantage for characters.

To support both of these goals at the same time, I'm trying to decide on two axes how to handle turn order:
  • 1) initiative order declaration versus reverse initiative order declaration for turns and
    2) delayed resolution of the effects of actions until the end of a round versus immediate resolution following declaration.
I'm here using the term "declaration" to also include the rolling of appropriate dice, while "resolution" refers to the making of changes to statlines in response to declared/rolled actions. In the case of resolutions delayed to round's end, this means that the actual roll results would be recorded and the appropriate changes made to stats at the end of the round, with different action types sorted according to a defined order of operations.

The four options then are as follows:
Init-order declaration, immediate resolution: The only choice that allows you to fell an enemy "before they have time to react." Strengths: simulates Clint Eastwood pistol duels where the faster man doesn't take a scratch if he has better aim. Weaknesses: slower characters can be dogpiled and killed in one round without having a chance to do anything. Not fun if it's a PC.

Init-order declaration, delayed resolution: Strengths: Everyone gets an action even if they take enough damage to be KO'd in one round. Weaknesses: Slow characters have a better understanding of the evolving tactical situation than fast ones, who have to basically act blindly. Allowing delayed initiative basically turns this into reverse-init order. Requires an order of operations among distinct action types or is either 1) functionally indistinguishable from immediate resolution or 2) an impossible mess (e.g. how do you adjudicate a round in which the same character is subject to both Poison and Cure Poison?).

Reverse init order declaration, immediate resolution: Strengths: None, this is fucking retarded. Weaknesses: Slow characters can kill fast characters before they have a chance to react. This pretty much is the exact opposite of the idea of "giving an advantage to speed."

Reverse init order declaration, delayed resolution: Strengths: Everyone gets an action no matter what, faster characters have a better tactical view of the battle than slower characters, who act blindly. Weaknesses: requires an order of operations.

I'm definitely leaning towards reverse init order declaration with delayed resolution, with occasional modification for things like surprise/sneak attacks where opponents are caught flatfooted.

I'm worried that I haven't fully considered the implications of the different approaches. Does anyone have any thoughts/comments/criticism to offer?
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Wulfbanes
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Post by Wulfbanes »

Delayed resolution sounds like it'd be a nightmare to bookkeep any conflict with multiple parties. Can you write out how you imagine a round to go for 3 actors, how about 8? Does it scale at all?
Mord
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Post by Mord »

Wulfbanes wrote:Delayed resolution sounds like it'd be a nightmare to bookkeep any conflict with multiple parties. Can you write out how you imagine a round to go for 3 actors, how about 8? Does it scale at all?
I feel like keeping the dice rolling with the declaring helps to keep things straight for the players, which works against the increased bookkeeping on MC's side. The exercise you propose is a good idea.

Simplifying assumption: characters only get 1 action per turn.

TEST SCENARIO #1: ALICE, BOB, CATHY
Alice: HP 5, Init 10, Attack 5. [Team 1]
Bob: HP 10, Init 5, Attack 3. [Team 1]
Cathy: HP 8, Init 7, Attack 4. [Team 2]

Declaration order is Bob, Cathy, Alice.

Bob's turn. Bob attacks Cathy. Bob rolls his attack dice against the appropriate difficulty to hit and makes his THAC0 threshold (or whatever). The MC records the 3 HP damage that will be coming Cathy's way at the end of the round.

Cathy's turn. Cathy suspects Alice will attack her next, so she elects to defend. Cathy rolls dice to gain a pool of damage absorption for this round. The MC records Cathy's result of 5 HP added to her soak pool.

Alice's turn. Alice attacks Cathy, knowing that Cathy already has 3 HP of damage coming her way that will leave her with only 2 defense on top of her natural 8 HP. Alice rolls to hit and succeeds, meaning 5 more damage is headed Alice's way. MC records Alice's attack damage.

MC consults the Order of Operations and first gives Cathy her 5 HP soak pool. Then he combines the power of all attacks made on Cathy, adding them for 8 HP. MC tells Cathy that her HP value is reduced from 8 to 5 HP. The round ends.
I don't think that was too bad.

Something to note: Because the effects of attacks can't be considered individually, it is not possible for a defense action to decrease hit rate. A binary hit/miss value has to be determined on the actor's turn, because it's a mess to go back and cancel a packet of damage that's already been earmarked for a defending character and at the very least you would have to also record each attacker's die roll instead of just the damage value of their attack. Practically, defense actions can only absorb some of the numerical pain coming your way, not cause retroactive misses.

Individual attacks can still have status effects associated with them. Different defenses could counteract different status effects as well. I'm thinking about including "wound thresholds" as well, to make it possible to cripple enemy robots with powerful enough blows, but because damage is cumulative among all attacks, it would be difficult to differentiate a non-wounding death of a thousand cuts from an equally damaging sledgehammer blow. I definitely don't want people trying to allocate their soak pools preferentially to specific attacks to avoid wounding.

TEST SCENARIO #2: ALICE, BOB, CATHY, DENNIS, ELLY, FRANK, GILLY, HOWARD
Alice: HP 5, Init 10, Attack 5. [Team 1]
Bob: HP 10, Init 5, Attack 3. [Team 1]
Cathy: HP 8, Init 7, Attack 4. [Team 2]
Dennis: HP 4, Init 12, Attack 5 [Team 2]
Elly: HP 20, Init 1, Attack 3 [Team 1]
Frank: HP 12, Init 6, Attack 2 [Team 2]
Gilly: HP 6, Init 6, Attack 4 [Team 1]
Howard: HP 9, Init 9, Attack 1 [Team 2]

Declaration order: Elly, Bob, Frank/Gilly [tiebreaker], Cathy, Howard, Alice, Dennis

Elly's turn. She is the slowest and therefore has no ability to react to what anyone else participating in the combat does. She defends and rolls +8 to her soak pool. MC records the result.

Bob's turn. Bob also defends, getting +5 to his soak pool. MC records.

Frank's turn. Frank attacks Bob and hits, inflicting 2 HP damage. MC records.

Gilly's turn. Gilly attacks Frank and misses. MC doesn't bother.

Cathy's turn. Cathy attacks Gilly and deals 4 damage. MC records.

Howard's turn. Howard rolls to put a buff on Cathy and succeeds. MC records.

Alice's turn. Alice attacks Cathy and deals 5 damage. MC records.

Dennis' turn. Dennis attacks Gilly and deals 5 damage. MC records.

MC totals the damage. Bob gets 2HP knocked off his soak pool, but ends the round with no HP loss. Gilly takes 9 total damage and is killed. Cathy takes 5 damage and is left with 3 HP. Cathy is buffed by Howard's spell.
I'm here giving soak pools as a value of HP added to your total that vanish at the end of the round, but there's no reason a soak pool couldn't be expressed as a percentage and reduce incoming damage on that basis.

I dunno, I don't think it's that bad in terms of bookkeeping, though it is somewhat clunky if you take your notes in text form and then have to hunt through them... 8 entities on the field at once is pretty average size for a level appropriate encounter, though getting any bigger you'd need to prepare a table in your notebook in advance or otherwise take special measures to record the damages and status effects flying around in a round.
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Wulfbanes
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Post by Wulfbanes »

Some problems I believe are inherent to your mechanics:
1. If damage is summed before soaking, a rhinoceros will still be at the mercy of a horde of bunnies.
2. Due to a lack of retro-active hitting or missing there is absolutely no space for buffs to increase improve an ally's THAC0, DR, provide mischances, etc.
3. Aside from straight buffs not working anymore, there's a glaring flaw too. What if Dennis, the fastest guy, is a bodyguard. He is the fastest guy around and can see the intent of all the people around him, and act faster than them. He sees the attacks aimed at Cathy. What if he;
a. Shoots Howard in a disabling way, negating that character's attack?
b. Positions himself between the attackers and Cathy in the traditional 'dive and take the bullet for the president'-style?
c. Pushes Cathy out of the way and into cover before any attack could've hit her like in every drive-by scene?

With no retro-active missing, you will miss out on all these options, and more importantly, be very counter-intuitive to what a high initiative should be most useful for.

Aside from that, how many rounds do you imagine a traditional combat taking? I guess on the table-drawing side, it's fine if it's 3 rounds or so. Much longer, and you're burning papers and notes.
Last edited by Wulfbanes on Tue Jun 24, 2014 7:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
Mord
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Post by Mord »

Wulfbanes wrote:Some problems I believe are inherent to your mechanics: [...]
1. This is a problem no matter how initiative is handled, so I don't see the objection.

2. These kinds of buffs to AC are possible, they just can't take effect until the next round. Hence why buff spells would probably be near the bottom of the order of operations for resolution.

3. This is getting into the part where it gets interesting. I was hoping I'd see the silver bullet solution without fleshing out more of my concept, I see that was unrealistic. So. Interrupts.

A faster character can spend actions during a slower player's turn, naturally at the cost of the actions they would have used during their natural place in the round. Being the fastest means you can choose the most opportune moment to act among all others; so if you run into a pileup where one reaction provokes another reaction and so forth, you still sort them in initiative order.

So, various feats, features, abilities, whatever, give characters the ability to react to different types of threats in different ways. Dennis the Lightning Bodyguard may have some ability akin to Final Fantasy's "Cover" that lets him take interpose himself in front of an attack in place of an ally.

I don't know if interrupts should be a default ability or if they should exclusively be unlocked by special features of some kind, but they'd be the other half of the equation as for why it makes sense for fastest guys to go last.

I know that the White Wolf games do initiative in a similar way, but they have a whole weird "reverse initiative declare then regular order roll and if you want to change your declared action then you get penalty X but if celerity then..." It's just not elegantly implemented, but I think the underlying insight is valid: it's easier to just have faster people state their intentions last than to constantly have to announce that you're delaying your turn.
Aside from that, how many rounds do you imagine a traditional combat taking? I guess on the table-drawing side, it's fine if it's 3 rounds or so. Much longer, and you're burning papers and notes.
That's a question for the mathcrafting part of the dev cycle, but IRL time I think a combat encounter should seldom last longer than an hour. How to reach that goal, I dunno. Ten rounds sounds too long, five rounds too few. Let's call it seven?
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Wulfbanes
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Post by Wulfbanes »

#1. That's not true. High DR or Damage Soak rolls completely fix this. I agree it's not a problem with the initiative system, but I wanted to point it out, as I think it's a bad mechanic.

I think interrupts would solve both #2 and #3. If a higher initiative character gets to hear a lower initiative character's declaration of action, he gets to act before it is resolved. So he gets to buff, intercept, debuff, and the effect of that affects how the intial declaration will be resolved, but the initial declaration doesn't get changed.

Initiative will then be reprentative of awareness and reflexes. A high initiative character will have the realistic advantage of seeing what some of the rest are doing, and making a decision to affect some of the effects going on.

The problem that'd arise is cumulative interrupts. Not having them will be incredibly unrealistic. Having them may bloat the combat round, in not being able to finish a single declaration, and having to remember multiple ones before resolution.

I think it is indeed far more elegant than keeping to delay your turn, even if mechanically similar.
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Post by Mord »

Wulfbanes wrote:#1. That's not true. High DR or Damage Soak rolls completely fix this. I agree it's not a problem with the initiative system, but I wanted to point it out, as I think it's a bad mechanic.
O I C. Yes, allowing certain level of base DR independent of defense actions is definitely supportable. I don't want to have soak rolls for every attack, though.
I think interrupts would solve both #2 and #3. If a higher initiative character gets to hear a lower initiative character's declaration of action, he gets to act before it is resolved. So he gets to buff, intercept, debuff, and the effect of that affects how the intial declaration will be resolved, but the initial declaration doesn't get changed.

Initiative will then be reprentative of awareness and reflexes. A high initiative character will have the realistic advantage of seeing what some of the rest are doing, and making a decision to affect some of the effects going on.
My thoughts exactly. I'm glad you understand what I'm going for here!
The problem that'd arise is cumulative interrupts. Not having them will be incredibly unrealistic. Having them may bloat the combat round, in not being able to finish a single declaration, and having to remember multiple ones before resolution.

I think it is indeed far more elegant than keeping to delay your turn, even if mechanically similar.
Cumulative interrupts could get messy, but at least they would only go in a particular fixed order - the same order as the normal initiative pass, which would help a lot IMO.

On reflection, the major reason I was thinking about delaying resolution in the first place was just to prevent anyone from dying before getting at least one action - especially in the cases of BBEG-types, who would naturally use their action to Reraise or heal themselves in event of total and unexpected party dominance ("laaaaaaaaaaaaaame!"). But that's easy to fix - just say that death doesn't kick in until the end of the round no matter what. Status effects can be treated in the same way.

Going to the standard instantaneous resolution, though, makes it harder to do defense actions the way I was initially considering, e.g. as one roll for a whole round's defense.

An alternative could be to treat a defense action as an interrupt against one specific enemy attack (this would be sort of an exception to the normal init-based order of multiple interrupts). This would also make it possible to actively shield against only the most damaging incoming fire, saving your action budget selectively and weighing the pros and cons of having more actions on your turn versus having more health. That's tactical and a bit more flexible, I think, and also addresses the elephant-versus-vermin swarm problem.

But it brings with it the problem that now instead of high-speed characters delaying their turns, you have low-speed characters saving actions for defense against potential future attacks. That's not going to fly. Hmm. :confused:
Last edited by Mord on Fri Jun 27, 2014 3:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
Surgo
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Post by Surgo »

Wulfbanes wrote:I think interrupts would solve both #2 and #3. If a higher initiative character gets to hear a lower initiative character's declaration of action, he gets to act before it is resolved. So he gets to buff, intercept, debuff, and the effect of that affects how the intial declaration will be resolved, but the initial declaration doesn't get changed.
Resolving non-simultaneously leads to degenerate cases. For example, in a 1-on-1 melee combat, the slower character would literally never be able to attack the faster character, because the faster character could always move out of range.
Last edited by Surgo on Fri Jun 27, 2014 4:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Blade »

Simulating real life is complicated.
The more you want to get in details and the more realistic you want it to be, the more complex your system will be.

Your system needs to:
- Be fun/interesting
- Have the expected amount of complexity
- Support the stories/games you want to have

So I think you have to first ask yourself:

- How important you want combat to be? If your game is mostly about combats, and you have no problems with having game sessions that only solve a few combats, you can go for a much more complex system that if you want combats to be solved in 5 seconds.

- What would your ideal combat scene look and play like?

Then we can start discussing which aspects the design should focus on, and which solutions to choose for the different mechanisms.
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