I’m currently working on combat/action sub-systems, at least for the Dangerous Adventures project. That involves taking a hard look at many of the usual business approaches to aspects of combat systems and deciding if those are fitting with my intentions for a system. It may prove inspirational for others to read how I approach the design process with some examples, so I’ll begin here.

The oldest version of D&D and then AD&D both use one-minute combat/action rounds. Among the early editions, B/X stands out for using a much shorter round, nominally, though the rules really don’t offer any substantial difference in play to support the varied time scales. In each instance, a round of fighting activity is assumed to involve basic fighting movement, feints, dodges, parries, attacks aimed at different targets, sucking down air, and any other individual bits of man-to-man fighting one would care to mention. Throw in movement on the battleground and one has a reasonably complete picture of what’s going on in the abstraction. It’s all in support of the pointy end of the stick, which is finding out if the PC fought effectively enough to do any significant damage to the foe.

That approach stands up under scrutiny, as being reflective of reality in fighting while being useful in playing games. I don’t see any utility in trying to reduce the time to very short instances of action and trying to posit individual strikes in a fight. Far too many attempted strikes would be ineffective to make such a process at all interesting, so the assumption of a round involving at least several such attempts works better for me.

The only part of this that I’ve taken issue with is how long a round is. I’ve found over the years that both one-minute rounds and ten-second rounds grate on my sensibilities, with the one too long and the other too short. The technical length of the round doesn’t have much direct effect on what happens within it, other than a general guage of how much can get done, so it’s never been a major issue. I’m designing with the idea of rounds being 15 to 30 seconds long, likely the best measure to use; anything longer could make differences in movement rates moot and anything shorter would stretch some activities over more rounds. This tightens things up a bit when compared to AD&D rounds.

Among the elements I want to incorporate in my projects, is that of weapon speed. I don’t see this as a literal measure of how quick the weapon is when in use, mostly as a measure of how easy it is to use the weapon and have it in place for striking and parrying and such when wielded. The weapon speeds listed in the early versions of D&D will help guide the assignment of Action Facility ratings (weapon speeds) for use in DA.

I suspect the Facility can be improved based on class and level, too, though I’m not to a point where I can gauge that (the basics of it have to be well-tested, first). At first glance, I can see experienced fighters being able to improve Action Facility with a favorite weapon type.

Movement has to be nailed down, in terms of how far a character can generally move in a single phase of the round. The rates of movement resulting from different approaches –cautious, careful, aggressive, sprinting, etc.– have to be tested for verisimilitude and all that.

I want to include pass-through fire on moving foes, with missile able to attack them at an appropriate place along the line of movement taken during a phase. I want split-move attacks possible, with partial move followed by a quick attack and then ending with further movement. An unengaged character should be able to intercept a moving foe, whether by a simple short shift move or a longer interception move.

I suspect that pulling a lot of the choices that orginated in miniatures play can help make sub-tactical RPG engagements perhaps more fluid and certainly requiring more factors to consider each round.