I’ve been playing around with the first of the alternate combat sub-systems in the Dangerous Adventures project. What began as a purely Weapon Speed & Casting Time exercise has morphed into quite a bit. It still has weapon speed and casting time involved, though they appear differently, now.
The primary problem that reared up with the system as originally envisioned involves movement. Breaking movement down by segments proved to be a bit tedious and boring in play. Even grouping segments of movement together on an ad hoc basis whenever all that would happen for those segments would be movement just wasn’t working well.
Also, the weapon speeds in the book obviously weren’t intended to be used in a strict segment count system, so those would all have to be re-figured; I couldn’t find a suitable mathematical formula to use to assign them segment counts. It’s easier to simply work up new speed ratings from scratch.
Now, beginning from scratch means that the ratings don’t have to reference segments, nor range from 1 to 10 to fit. I can break the round into any number of segments that I wish, based solely on what seems to work best for me. That means I can structure rounds around (!) any of the concepts involved in combat. With that in mind, I’ve landed on five segments/phases in a round, based on the different types of movement I want to include. I think the five-step phasing will assist GMs to work in any unusual activity, too, with the provided descriptions of movement types giving suitable examples to generalize from for rulings on the ground.
The list of movement-types: Shift/Intercept; Split-Move (& Fire); Half-Move (& Attack) [Or (Attack &) Half- Move]; Charge (& Attack); Counter-Charge (& Attack); Full Move (Advance); Full Move (Run). These movement-types should provide enough examples to provide guidance for GMs ruling on weird actions.
This is all part of the chassis for the combat system, part of the Basic rules for it. There will be Expanded rules that include abilities added for some PCs (fighters) as they increase in level and also fit both Mana Channeling & Counterspell and Magical Combat procedures. I think it’s flexible enough, at this point, to support any other combat types I may want to add (read: that I’m contemplating now).
Now, LJ has a three-phase round structure too accommodate all of the above, to one degree or another. It’s interesting (at least, for me) to see how the same basic ideas brought on two different structures. I’ll likely post about that at some point so everybody can compare the two.