Changing combat time to more than 1 second/turn

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by gilbertocarlos

Or 2y wide hexes.

Although that will complicate reach if your using hexes

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Movement is gonna become weird

To be honest, movement in GURPS RAW is too fast. It's physically impossible to go from a standing start and cover 5 yards in one second. Just change sprint from +20% to x2 and leave everything else the same and you should be okay.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Gollum

The only problem with that house rule is movements. Someone with move 5 is supposed to be able to run 10 yards in a 2 second turn. But this problem can be solved very easily: just multiply movement rates by 2.

Or say that 5y/turn is a fast walking pace, but if you jog, run or sprint then you can go further. It's probably already the case that GURPS is very miserly with how much extra mobility you can achieve if you're willing to pay monentarily for it (accept penalties, pay FP, et cetera) because it is wary of enabling characters to ever move more than about 11-12 yards per second, as that would starkly violate observed limits of Human performance.

I opted for 2 meter hexes in Sagatafl exactly so that I'd be able to do ranged combat on even a reasonably sized battlemat. 2m/hx is a bit more than twice as large as GURPS' 1y/hx.

And with 6 second Rounds, I don't really have to worry about the Guiness Book of World Records. A character moving 30 hexes in a single Round, e.g. via three Run Move Actions, is impressive but unproblematic. Even 33 or 36 hexes can probably be ignored, since it's a mere percentage-magnitude increase over the observable world records. And you'd need to optimize obsessively to achieve even 10 hexes per Run move Action, and nearly pay genuine blood to do 3 Move Actions per Round (even though it's only character blood, not player blood).

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

It's probably already the case that GURPS is very miserly with how much extra mobility you can achieve if you're willing to pay monentarily for it (accept penalties, pay FP, et cetera) because it is wary of enabling characters to ever move more than about 11-12 yards per second, as that would starkly violate observed limits of Human performance.

GURPS is quite realistic as soon as you choose realistic attributes and advantages for your character...

But, even so, I still have to admit that I do agree with Anthony: characters can still do quite unrealistic things like being able to run 5 to 7 yards in one second, then stop for one second, and then run again 5 to 7 yards the other second, etc. Such acceleration, stop, and new acceleration are not really possible for ordinary humans.

Someone (sorry, I don't remember who) once proposed a realistic house rule to solve that problem: the very first second of running you only move at half your ground speed.

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

And with 6 second Rounds, I don't really have to worry about the Guiness Book of World Records.

Can you explain us how you handle attacks during your 6 seconds turn, please? I think that it may be part of what the original poster is looking for...

Allowing only one or attack every 6 seconds sounds to be very slow and, if Sagatafl allows more than one attack per round, how do you determine who strikes first? Do you allow opportunity attacks, do you break the 6 second turn in several segments?

[Walrus]

Yeah, there're simplified Chase/Combat in Action 2.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Gollum

Someone (sorry, I don't remember who) once proposed a realistic house rule to solve that problem: the very first second of running you only move at half your ground speed.

That was me; or at least, I was one of several (perhaps) who also noted the same thing. I mentioned it in my blog post Increasing mobility while using The Last Gasp, plus probably on the forums too.

I also recently split the difference between free movement, which requires no map and often doesn't use one, and turn-by-turn one-second accounting. I use five second time blocks for cautious tactical movement. I describe this in my post Cautious Advance, and amplify a bit in my comments on guns combat in the Alien Menace campaign.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Gollum

GURPS is quite realistic as soon as you choose realistic attributes and advantages for your character...

You and I don't use the word "realistic" in the same way. As far as I'm concerned, GURPS says that the span for Human variety for HT goes up to 20, and for DX it also goes up to 20, and for IQ too, so therefore a Human character with HT 20, DX 20 and IQ 20 is realistic.

Unrealistic, in my book, starts at IQ 21, or DX 21, or being able to fly, or being able to shoot freakin' lazorbeams out of your eyes, and so forth.

Originally Posted by Gollum

Can you explain us how you handle attacks during your 6 seconds turn, please? I think that it may be part of what the original poster is looking for...

Allowing only one or attack every 6 seconds sounds to be very slow and, if Sagatafl allows more than one attack per round, how do you determine who strikes first? Do you allow opportunity attacks, do you break the 6 second turn in several segments?

Well, for starters, it's not really so much one attack as it is one effective attack, plus you also do a lot of other things during those 6 seconds that we ignore, because they sort of fall "under the radar". You may be doing micro-feinting, or change your facing slightly (Sagatafl uses implied facing, meaning that the character faces in whatever direction it would make logical in-character sense for him to face, at any given time - and with 6s Rounds it's perfectly possible to change facing at will, unless you're surrounded[1]).

Secondly, the original approach I used was that some characters could have multiple attacks, called Blows. In fact I envisioned it as quite common that skilled warriors would be able to perform more than 1.0 combat action per arm per Round.

Initially, I had a system of Blows, that is an integer amount of things you could do per weapon or shield, or in terms of unarmed attacks (e.g. 3 unarmeds means you could deflect once and kick twice, or kick three times, or punch two times and kick once, or any other such combination).

I wanted martial arts style training to be able to increase the number of Blows, however (e.g. if your chosen martial arts style emphasies attacking a lot, instead of emphasizing something else), and I also wanted weapon Enchantments to give extra Blows (e.g. the fairly powerful sword Quick-Silver, in my Ärth setting), and I wanted buff states such as Berzerkergang or Warp Frency or Energi Spells to give extra Blows.

And it just seemed like too much to always have them give +1 Blow each or +2 Blows for a very powerful Enchantment or spell buff state (or a downright Odinic Berzerkergang). It's an extremely abrupt transition to go from being able to attack once per Round, with your sword, and to being able to attack twice per Round. It's jarring. "Yay! I am now twice as powerful compared to how I was 1 nanosecond ago!!"

I wanted to achieve a smoother, more gradual transition.

So I came up with Half-Blows, that adds up, so that you get one more Blow every other Round, or if you have two of those they sum to one extra Blow per Round.

Eventually I also came up with Gimped Blows, that you can do at a +2 Roll Difficulty penalty (+2 RD isn't nice, but it's better than not being able to perform the action - usually), and even Gimped Half-Blows (if you stack one Gimped Half-Blow and one non-Gimped Half-Blow, it becomes one Blow at a +1 RD penalty, of course).

But it didn't seem particularly elegant, and was combined with a complicated Initiative Roll system where you'd roll on the first Round of combat to see what you were allowed to do. Essentially to see how surprised you were. If you were extremely surprised you wouldn't be allowed to do anything. Lesser surprise might allow defensive actions but not attack, depending on degree of surprise. Absence of surprise would allow any action.

Meanwhile I was tinkering with another system, a sligtly subject-specific one, Moder Action RPG, in part because I wanted to expore the concept of Action Points, as used in the Feng Shui RPG (or the first two Fallout computer games). I built some good mechanics there, to make characters different from each other based on background, style and profession (for instance a character from a police background would most likely train to be better at using the Double-Tap shooting action, and someone from a SWAT or other CQB background would most likely train to become better at using the SMG Burst Charge action, while someone from an infantry background would train to do Supression Fire and to become more resistant to the fear of enemy supressin fire, and someone from a US Secret Service would train to not Dodge ever but to remain standing upright and calmly shoot back).

I also came up with a few other nifty things in MA RPG, such as mandatory Flaws for characters.

Eventually I decided I'd import most of those concepts. Action Points and Flaws (and a few others, such as Veteran Points, and a more detailed Luck system) into Sagatafl, and so I largely lost interest in MA RPG.

Sagatafl needed a more fine-grained AP costing system for actions, though, because there could potentially be a much larger number of factors to improve the speed of actions, such as permanent magical effects (often weapon Enchantments) or temporary magical effects (often spell buffs or berzerkergang states), or even just mundane weapon Quality (a sword made by an exceptional craftsman might be able to attack slightly faster than an average sword).

In MA RPG, there were only two sources of AP cost reduction. You could train one binary skill per weapon per action, e.g. Faster SMG Burst or Faster SMM Salvo, or Faster SMG (Single) Shot, to reduce AP cost by 1, or you could buy a Signature Weapon trait to reduce the AP cost (of all actions with that weapon) by 1.

Anyway, in Sagatafl each Round (not just the first), each character must make an Initaitive Roll, for the Reflexes stat, to determine how many AP are generated for that Round.

A character subject to Surprise must roll for Surprise Initiative instead, which is likely to generate much fewer AP, but mitigated by Danger Sense, to the point where a character who has a very powerful Danger Sense is effectively impossible to surprise (you might as well not bother trying).

Characters who succeed on the Initiative Roll gain 11 or more AP, but rarely many more. Failure gives you 8, a Fumble gives you 6, 4, 2 or none, or even means that you get zero new ones plus you lose all the unused ones you Banked the previous Round (obviously your Bank is empty on the first Round of any new combat).

Actions then are done in order of AP count, that is the player responsible for "the count" starts by saying "21", then if nobody bids, he goes down to "20", then "19", usually fairly rapidly at first since it'll be rare for any character to have more than 16 or 17 AP (unless under some kind of buff), even including previously Banked AP.

Actions each have a base cost, in AP, such as 10 AP for a regular melee weapon attack, but higher for special attack types such as an attack that targets known anatomical vulnerabilities (Critical Strike) or armour vulnerabilities (Precise Strike) or that uses a lot of strength (Power Strike).

Defensive Re-Actions can be taken "out of turn" as responses to other actions. Examples include Parry and Dodge, and Blocking with a Shield, or making an unarmed Deflect. Re-Actions tend to be cheaper (faster) than Actions, with a Shield Block or a Dodge having a base cost of 6 AP, and a weapon Parry 8 AP.

continued in next post...

[Peter Knutsen]

... continued from previous post.

Each of these Actions and Re-Actions can be sped up with Speed Factors, that apply cumulatively. The first 3 Speed Factors always lowers the AP cost by 1 each, for the sake of simplicity. That covers the majority of cases. But if a character has more than 3 SFs stacked towards a single action, e.g. if he's from a cultur whose martial art emphasises the swift use of the spear, then there's a lookup table to show what additional Speed Factors do. Most often each additional SF lowers the AP cost by 1, but sometimes by 2, and sometimes by zero. All players need to know is that if they keep piling on Speed Factors, the AP cost will go down, usually to a minimum of 2, but in some cases to a minimum of 1 (or 3 for the inherently slow ones such as Power Strike), although you'll be having an uphill battle against diminishing returns to make most combat Actions be that amazingly fast (a normal sword attack is 10 AP. If you reduce that to 2 AP, then you can attack five times faster than a normal person. Even if we posit that a trained warrior can attack for 9 AP, which I think is reasonable, you're still 4.5 times faster than he is).

Movement is handled in two ways.

You can always Step (on your turn - it's not a Re-Action), with almost all characters having a step of 1 hx. There's no limit on how many Steps you can do, as long as you can pay for them, and they represent sure-footed movement, so you can do those over rubble, or greased stone tiles, and so forth. They're not very efficient, though. You'll pay a lot of AP for each 2m hex you move. Step also isn't regarded as a Move Action.

Characters are softly limited in terms of how many Move Actions they can perform per Round, to two. Even the 2nd Move Action costs a small amount of Combat Fatigue Points (many combat Actions also cost CFP, such as Power Strike or Kick, and some Re-Actions such as Dodge). You can perform a 3rd Move Action, but that costs a lot of CFP, and if you want a fourth you'll have to pay both CFP and a small amount of Willpower Points.

The three most common Move Actions are Walk, Run and Charge.

Walk is more sure-footed than Run, so after a walk you won't be suffering any RD penalties to defensive rolls, nor will you face serious problems if trying to walk across slippery or otherwise problematic hexes. Run is more efficient in terms of hexes moved per AP paid, though, so it's an tempting option to take.

Run may also have an inherent CFP cost each time you do it, cumulative with any extra CFP cost for being the 2nd, 3rd or 4th Move Action in a given Round. I'm still undecided on that particular thing.

Charge is a combined Walk-and-attack action, costing fewer AP than the combined base cost of a Walk and an attack, because I want characters to close to melee, instead of just standing there and glaring at each other and exchanging insults, waiting for the other guy to move so you can disembowel him. That's boring. Get it over with already!

Charge can also be enhanced in multiple ways on a per-weapon basis (e.g. Axe Charge, SMG Salvo Charge), making it faster (costs fewer AP), or making it longer (move 1 or even 2 aditional hexes), or in other way (Intimidating Charge combines a Charge with a roll for the Intimidation Skill, e.g. to simulate a Kiai-Charge).

Each character has an AP Bank, that he can "deposit" unspent APs in at the end of combat. These can always be withdrawn again during the same Round if he changes his mind, but it'd be bad form to "Bank" your AP too early, before you're pretty sure that everybody is done acting for that Round.

Any Human, or any being with a Human-like neurology, is born with a Bank size of 2 (making allowances for small children possibly not being fully developped yet, but any teenager or adult has a 2 AP Bank, anyway, and probably older preteens too). Some primitive beings, probably including most lizards (but not velociraptors and the like, and probably not intelligent lizardmen either) and all amphibians, should have a base Bank size of 1, while some advanced beings such as high-TeL robots might well be born with a Bank size of 3 or 4.

Characters can (and do) train to increase this Bank size. It's very common to learn a binary skill that adds +1 to Bank Size. That's the equivalent, in a way, of GURPS' Combat Reflexes, but costs less and has a much less major effect. Nevertheless, it indicates that the character has a clue about what to do during combat.

Bank size can be increased further, by up to 2 (for a total of 5 for a Human - beyond that you need magic, usually in the form of a temporary spell buff state, e.g. something in the vein of the Body Magic College from GURPS Magic, or a high-Level Energize Spell from Sagatafl's Body Magic Realm), but at increasing expense. Not all characters, nor all cultures, find that attractive. There are other things that one can also train for, and those other things suit some tempers a lot better. But you can't really be regarded as a serious combatant if you haven't "upped" your Bank once.

Banked AP are simply added to you Initiative total next round.

As an example. Alfred Banked 4 AP at the end of last Round, and Beatrice Banked 1.

Alfred then rolls 3 Successes for his Intiative, generating 13 AP, to which he adds the 4 from the Bank, meaning that his first action is on the count of 17 (although of courtes, in the unlikely event that somebody gets to act on 18 or even 19, Alfred can Re-Act to it just fine).

Beatrice rolls 2 Successes, so she generates 12 AP, for a total of 13 including what's in her Bank.

If these two are fighting each other, Alfred will go first, using some form of attack, to which Beatrice will then most likely Re-Act, although she may choose to ignore the attack (letting it hit her) so that she has more AP to spend herself on attacking Alfred. E.g. with a Critical Strike or Precise Strike, or if she's trained to speed up Power Strike she can do that too (base cost is 14 AP, which he doesn't have).

Alfred can calmly attack, because unless he does a very expensive attack indeed, he'll know that he'll have enough spare AP to also Re-Act to whatever Beatrice tries to do to him (especially if he has a shield. Base AP cost of 6 to Block is nifty, and if you really know how to use a shield you will have at least one Speed Factor on your Block, making it 5).

Note that there's no Blows-per-hand principle here. In fact that's one item I have a small amount of trouble with, figuring out how to reward characters for having an item in each hand, e.g. a sword in each hand, or a sword in the sword hand and a shield in the shield hand. In some cases little reward is needed, since shields are already pretty good (base cost 6 AP for a Block, and if you train you can bring that down to 3 AP, or you can get Speed Factors from elsewhere, such as shield craftsmanship Quality, to the point where the real need may be to reward the no-shield style, e.g. as preferred by the fearless Keltic warriors of my Ärth setting), but two-weapon fighting definitely needs something to "elevate" it, to make it actually desirable. I have some ideas for that, but nothing solid yet.

Also note that the target gets to know whether the attack potentially hits, before choosing to defend, but not how good the attack is.

That is, when Albert attacks Beatrice, Beatrice will know whether Albert gets any Successes or gets none, but now how many. If he gets none, then the attack is a miss (it might have connected, but if so in a way that did no appreciable damage) and so Beatrice will know it's safe to ignore it. But if Albert does get one or more Successes, then Beatrice won't know the exact amount. He might have gotten 1, or 3 or even 9 or 10 (depending on how skilled he is). Beatrice thus has limited information available, when she must choose whether or not to Re-Act to the attack, rolling in the hope that she'll generate Successes enough to reduce or even negate the damage of the attack (if Albert has a broadsword, then he'll do 1d10 Wound damage per un-Countered Success, compared to Beatrice's likely Hardiness of 3.0. 3-5 damage gives her a Minor Wound, 6-8 damage a Major Wound, 9-11 an Incapacitating Wound and so forth. So let's hope she can counter some of his Successes and is wearing some armour to deal with the remaining ones).

Of course, she can try to Riposte it. Riposte is usually not a good idea, but if you train for it (various binary skills to improve Riposte so that it ceases to be a "not good idea", including binary skill to apply Speed Factors to that action), it can be, in that if you generate more Successes on your defence roll than the attacker has, you get to do a free counter-attack.

continued in next post again...

[Peter Knutsen]

... continued from previous post.

Oh, wait, I thought I was done, but you also asked about opportunity attacks...

I've got those covered, naturally.

If somebody tries to run past you, e.g. if you're the big beefy warrior of the party, at the front lines, and behind you there's a skinny feeble wizard, and then a Goblin or similar miscreant tries to run past you so he can attack the wizard, then you can try to make a Tactical Strike at him.

A Tactical Strike is a Re-Action, and thus differs from other Re-Actions in that it is offensive in nature, rather than defensicve.

Tactical Strikes are fast actions, with a low base AP cost, and can of course be made faster with Speed Factors, from martial arts training (in a sufficiently silly Dungeon Fantasy-type world, the Adventurer's Guild will have Wizard Protection Classes whose sole purpose is to teach that particular binary skill to warriors), and from weapon Enchantments or craftsmanship Quality, and so forth.

The target of a Tactical Strike might try to Dodge, or perhaps even Shield Block (not 100% sure about this later one), but it'd be at a penalty, since he's busy moving.

Tactical Strikes aren't meant to be lethally dangerous, but merely there to discourage Goblins from trying to run past the warrior, in a darwinistic kind of way ("back in the dawn of time, the First Age, Goblins did that all the time, but as the Goblins with the genes to give them an inclination to do that died young, and so rarely got to pass on their genes, eventually the tactical tendencies of this lowly species changed somewhat, and these days you rarely see a Goblin who genuinely thinks it can make its way past the warrior and shiv the wizard").

The only problem with Tactical Strikes is to nail down a complete list of situations in which they are legal to use. Run-past seems like an obviously legal sitaution, but I'm not sure if there are others, and I've heard so many bad things about the Attack-of-Opportunity gamemechanic from D&D 3rd Edition, that I'm wary of creating something over-complicated.



[1] I almost forgot my one footnote... I have some rather vague ideas about "enhancements" to combat actions (e.g. Dodge) to enable the character to use them unpenalized against attacks from the flank or when in a situation of being flanked (e.g. one foe on either side of the character), but nothing really solid yet. I might well solidify once I start looking into it, the way my transition from Blows to Action Points solidified the questions of Initaitive and surprise and temporary surprise-hesitation by giving me obvious answers ("you can do whatever actions you want, as long as you can afford their AP costs, even in the very first Round"), replacing the hugely complicated Initiative lookup table, defining for each possible roll outcome what the character could do freely, could do at a penalty, and could not do at all, in the first Round.

[namada]

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