Fixing speed in melee?, Just might work. Options

[Arethusa]

Ran my ideas by a couple friends of mine and came up with this; I think it really just might work:

The faster combatant recieves a Speed Reach bonus equal to the difference in ititiative between the two combatants / 10, rounded down. This bonus is not available during the first melee combat of the combat turn, and is available at 1 point progressive for each melee combat thereafter. This bonus functions as reach normally, but is not negatable by the Close Combat maneuver.

Basically, one speed crazy attacker with 5 actions this turn gets no bonus when attacking his opponent who has 1 action this round, but if he proceeds to attack for every action after his first, he'll have 1 point of reach for his second melee attack, 2 for his third, 3 for his fourth, and 4 for his fifth. Melee combats do not need to be consecutive for the bonus to carry over (though it resets at the beginning of each new turn, naturally). Personally, I think a person moving at 5 times the speed of a normal human being should ultimately have one hell of an edge, but he should definitely have to work for it.

A couple final notes: this is only applicable on offensive melee actions, which means a fast character doesn't get to build up a defensive bonus when being hit a second or third time. As a possible addendum suggested by a friend of mine, the bonus resets if the attacker desides to switch the reach bonus from applying to his skill roll to his opponents (or vice versa).

Initially, I was a little worried that initiative difference / 10 would be too powerful. 20, on the other hand, basically makes Speed Reach of 2 something that'll practically never happen, and even 15 makes it extremely rare. How often do you have a divide of 30 between two melee combatants? Given the people'll that'll be meeting in melee, seems likely that 10 is actually fairly balanced in practice.