Dungeons & Design & Development: Incrementing Initiative

While listening to this week's Biggus Geekus episode on combat, one or more people suggested an Action Point system, where you get points and spend them to perform actions. This is something we've worked on before, in the vein of Fallout and Fallout 2, but while listening it made me think of something different (among many other things).

My idea is that you'd roll initiative as normal, but it would only be something like 1d6 per side. This serves as everyone's base initiative value. Everyone declares actions, with your action adding to this value. Initiative then starts at 1 and increments: when it reaches a combatant's value, the action is resolved and then it declares a new action or waits. When a new action is declared it is added to the current initiative value, and then the creature resolves the action when the count reaches this new value.

For this example, let's assign some more or less arbitrary costs for various commonplace combat actions:

• Move (up to Speed) 3
• Dash (double Speed but -2 Defense) 5
• Charge 5 (but you are -2 Defense)
• Attack 5
• Spell 7

You can wait, but initiative continues to increment until you make a decision. There could also be a way to combine actions, such as by drawing a weapon and attacking, which would add +1 to the action's cost. It could be a separate action entirely with a cost of 1 or 2, but for now let's just focus on some of the more commonplace options.

For our combatants, let's say a party consisting of a fighter, rogue, and wizard runs into three skeletons. Initiative is rolled for each side, with the party getting a 3 and the skeletons getting a 4.

The skeletons are mindless so will just be Charging the nearest character, giving each of them a total initiative count of 9 (4 + the action's cost of 5 = 9). The fighter also wants to Charge, giving him a count of 8. The rogue is just going to fire his crossbow, also giving him a count of 8. The wizard is going to use Earth Grasp on one of the skeletons, giving her a count of 11.

The count starts at 1, and when it gets to 8 both the fighter and rogue resolve their attacks. Now, before the count continues both declare new actions: the fighter is going to make another attack, giving him a new count of 13. The rogue draws his arming sword, which we'll say gives him a count of 9: he draws his weapon just as each skeleton makes an attack against the fighter. The skeletons will simply attack again at 14, though the rogue will be within melee range at 12.

The wizard acts on 11, crushing a skeleton between a few slabs of conjured stone. The skeletons don't seem to be much of a threat, so she decides to draw her own arming sword and move in (this is Dungeons & Delvers so wizards can wear armor and use weapons, albeit not nearly as well as a fighter): both of these actions will be resolved on 14.

At 12 the rogue is next to a skeleton (and declares an attack that will resolve at 17), at 13 the fighter makes another attack, destroying a skeleton in the process. He prepares his next attack, which will resolve at 18. At initiative count of 14 the wizard is up close and personal, but her attack won't resolve until 19. The skeleton also gets to act at 14, attacking the fighter because it is mindless so why not. It's next attack won't trigger until 19, but by then the fighter and rogue have finished it off.

In this system initiative is never re-rolled (though it is rolled at the start of combat), and just counts upward until combat is over. The main draw is that it provides a clear opportunity to disrupt spellcasters who are in the middle of casting spells, and also allows for more granular action types. For example, an aimed shot with a bow would grant a bonus to hit, but have a higher count. A rapid shot would have a lower count, but an attack penalty.

Weapons could also have different types of attacks with their own counts and effects. An example I used in my blog post response to the combat video pertained to the longsword, which could have a profile like this:

• Swing: Reach 4, 2d6 slashing, cost 5
• Thrust: Reach 5, 1d6 piercing (AP 1), cost 5
• Stab: Reach 2, 1d6 piercing (AP 1), cost 4
• Club: Reach 3, 1d6 bludgeoning (AP 1), cost 5

Reach is used to determine who strikes first in melee, so it might be beneficial to use a thrust attack even though the damage is lower in order to get a hit in first (or avoiding getting hit first by a Reach 5+ weapon). Stabs would be faster but if you also use rules where opponents with longer weapons are at a disadvantage against those with smaller weapons when in close quarters it's a way to also avoid an attack penalty. Club is mainly just something you use against enemies that are resistant to slashing attacks.

A potential downside is that if you're making attacks as expected that it could result in fairly cyclical combat, anyway (ie, you go, they go, you go, they go, etc), so part of me wonders if assigning some actions a variable amount would make for a more unpredictable fight. Say, moving is 1d4, attacks are 1d6, and spells are 1d10. Or giving weapons a speed modifier (though nothing major, as the difference in weight between a dagger and longsword is typically only a few pounds).

I'd imagine that classes would have ways to reduce the action cost of certain actions, such as fighters and weapons, rogues and mobility, wizards and spells (wizards I think can just burn extra Willpower to reduce the cost). Initially, I was concerned that this could result in fighters making multiple attacks in a row, but then that's what Multiattack already does so it's not a big deal.

A definite downside is complexity, as everyone needs to track their initiative count, as opposed to more abstract combat where you get a turn and can do x, y and/or z. Something that might be tricky is reworking Swift Actions, as there are a number of monsters and races that can, for example, make an extra attack as a Swift Action after making a normal attack (such as the nekobito in Oriental Dungeons & Delvers).

While these could have lower action costs, if it just adds to your count a player might not want to do this because it's just going to delay his normal attacks. Maybe something like, after resolving an attack action this other attack can be resolved at an action cost of 1. That might be a way to handle multiple attacks as well: once the fighter makes a melee attack, his next one has its cost reduced by 2 or 3 or 4, to a minimum of 1, but after that it costs the normal amount.

This way it's more like he gets a quick flurry of strikes in, and then has to pull back a bit. Even better, if a monster can make multiple attacks in this manner, it would be possible for a character to try and interrupt one of them.

Other things to consider refocusing an action and what are currently Reactions.

For example, say you want to attack a goblin, but someone else manages to pick it off before you go. There should be a way to change targets without having to wait an entirely new count, especially if another target is nearby (or even right next to you).

As for Reactions, these I could see delaying your current action by a bit, or essentially letting you take an action earlier than expected, also with a delay. So you might declare an attack, but if someone provokes an Opportunity Attack you can do that right away, but then your initiative count gets pushed back a bit, more so if you decide to also refocus your target (assuming whoever provoked the attack wasn't your initiate target, anyway).