SR4 Miniature Movement Rules, Grid-based tactical combat FUN! Options

[Veggiesama]

For those of you who despise the idea of hosting fights on a grid or find the idea of quantifying some aspects of SR4's vague movement system to be unthinkable, I beg you to turn back now. Hostile replies of "Back in my day..." or "Miniatures destroy imagination!" will not help, thank you.

For everyone else who may be interested in dynamic visible battles, please read on.

The aim of these rules is to simplify determining distances, line of sight, and combat organization for players and GMs alike. It's also meant to add more fun, increasing the tactical and strategic aspects of SR4's combat system for those who don't mind learning a few extra rules.

Here is where you may find the one-page chart of two tables (character movements and weapon ranges), along with the temporary rules:
http://myfilestash.com/userfiles/veggiesam...ma/movement.pdf

Here's an example map (the Stuffer Shack from "Food Fight"!) to spur your imagination. Sorry, I know it's cruddy, but I only had a few minutes to make it:
http://myfilestash.com/userfiles/veggiesam...tuffershack.png

Here are the main facts you need to know:
- 1 Grid Square = 2 Meters
- Both tables use squares instead of meters.
- The idea is that every character will move when it comes to their initiative count, whether or not they get an action during that initiative pass. For example, this can allow you to accurately run away from a grenade, plan out a melee charging attack, or reach a good place to gain cover.
- Walking Trolls and Running Humans/Trolls take a very small hit to their movement rate (they lose 1 meter, or half a square, for the sake of every number being even).
- Weapon Ranges have been boosted slightly to fit with the "even number philosophy".

What is the Character Movement Table for?
- The book recommends, when it becomes necessary to know how far you can move in one initiative pass, to divide your total movement by the number of initiative passes in the round.
- This table does that for you, by metatype and number of passes in round. Most of the time this will come out with a remainder, but the table addresses this for you (ex. Human walks 10m per round. If there's only one init pass in the round, he moves 5 squares. If there's two, you'll come up with 2.5. Since you can't move 2.5 squares per round, I decided the first pass you'd be allowed to move 3, second pass 2. Each pass is seperated by commas.).

What is the Weapon Range Table for?
- It's an easy reference for calculating distance by squares. The original table was mostly divided into 5-meter ranges (or multiples of 5; ex. taser short range 1-5m, med range 6-10m, etc.), so this one converts each of those five meters into three squares. Yes, they practically became six meters now, but since every square is two meters, it was either six or four (if that makes any sense). Plus it felt better to be at maximum short range for pistols at 3 squares away, not 2.

Why are there XXX's on the Weapon Range Table?
- I didn't calculate super-huge ranges. The amount of squares you'd be counting would be so goddamn high, it'd be impractical and a waste of time. Fifty squares seemed like a reasonable maximum on my laziness, so if you want to use more than 50, you're probably using your whole basement as the battle map, so good luck with that.

Why does this remind me of d20 Miniature Movement rules?
- Because I think d20 did a very good job of simplifying combat with miniatures. I'm definitely taking some of my inspiration from there, so if you despised d20 for its rules of cover or attacks of opportunity (not that I'm using them... yet...), you might not like what I've been doing.

Lemme see another example!
- High IP is 3. In the first pass, a dwarf may walk 2 or run 4 squares. In the second pass, the dwarf may walk 1 or run 3. Same for third pass. If on the third pass he wants to sprint, he will roll a Running Test. If he gets 4 hits, he may then run 3+4=8 squares.

What is left to be done?
- I probably should have waited before I got more solid rules, but I want to see if there's any interest in this little project of mine.
- Interceptions: debating whether to handle them almost exactly like D&D Attacks of Opportunity, or slight changes to it (i'll post my ideas later)
- Melee Combat: whether they should have to just move beside a character or actually into their opponent's square, still deciding
- Grenades & Blasts: pretty easy: if a blast radius is -1/m, it's just going to be -2/square.
- Vehicles, Matrix, Astral Plane: these rules are not designed to handle these gameplay areas for obvious reasons
- Sample Maps & Mini's: designing your own miniatures (imho) is a lot more fun than purchasing a pre-painted one, and it won't cost you a penny (actually, i lied... my mini's cost one cent each, because i printed off small paper disks and taped them onto the heads of pennies)

I know this was an incredibly long and boring post, but if you have any ideas/suggestions/criticisms/comments/interest/flames, please leave a reply. I'm gonna go through with this (whether you like it or not) for my own games, but I just want to see if the community has any interest in SR4 Mini rules.

[hahnsoo]

Meh. We use "minis" in our games, but that's because all of us are playing online from different locations, using OpenRPG. Our maps tend to be 1 grid square = 1 meter, which takes all of the calculation out of it (at the cost of possibly an uber-large map), but the scale changes depending on the picture file that is used. Really, as long as your scales are consistent, it works well. I personally wish that SR4 used multiples of 12 for their movement (seeing as 12 is easily divisible by 2, 3, and 4, the amount of initiative passes that you'll have in all combats), but the math isn't so hard.

[Veggiesama]

[blakkie]

The Battlemats we use are big enough for 1m:1" for all but large warehouses and outdoors which get switched to 2m:1" or sometimes higher than that. At 2m:1" we generally don't lose the movement resolution there though as we are used to D20 outdoors running at 10'/1", and with just subdivide the squares into quadrants. The bases of the minitures we use are usually small enough that you can mostly fit them 4 to 1".

Where it gets kinda wierd is really spread out stuff where you are shooting medium to long range with AR and rifles. You pretty much have to switch to abstract where where the pieces are are at 1m:1" or 2m:1", but you small gaps on the Battlemat that represent 10's of meters, or perhaps even hundreds of meters. So that spirit you send out to get down and dirty with the sniper can do so in detail. We just put in drafting type notation to denote the huge tracts of nothing.

EDIT: If they would have just made all the movement rates even numbers that would have helped. Better yet all divisible by 4. Humans, elves, orks 12/24, Dwarfs 8/20, Trolls 16/36 would have changed the balance very little. With that if you get into a dividing by 3 just treat the 8 as a 9, the 16 as a 15, and the 20 as 21, the rest being divisible by 3. That's pretty close, and actually gets you even closer to the canon ratios.

[Slacker]

I tend to use maps with grids for my games, especially online games, but I've never really found it necessary to create strict rules for such. I just use the map as a visual guide.
Also, I simply use a photoshop file as my base image for online game maps. That way I can have layers for each character/NPC and just move them around during the course of the game. Each time something changes I just save it to a common image type such as .gif or .jpg and put it where my players can see it.
Case in point is my own Stuffer Shack Map that I am using in my SR4: First Run game here in the dumpshock forums. Its a bit messy now with all of the drek that has been spilled in the gun fight.
For this particular map, I'm using a odd number of 1.5m per square, but I have used 1m and 2m scales in other cases. It just depends on what I feel is needed for it, that or a mere whim.

[snowRaven]

I use miniatures, most often using 2m/square. However, for tight quarters and/or where positioning is very important it's 1m/square. For larger outdoor areas t's 5m/square.

I strongly dislike SR4's movement rules, though. SR3's scale for movement may have resulted in some weirdness, but copping out and saying every one has the exact same base movement is kinda crappy imo.

[warrior_allanon]

honestly i think anyone who doesnt lie to themselves about their gameplay uses a grid system, it just helps everyone keep track of things like range to target, distance to cover, and such at a glance instead of having to pull out calculators and rulers. it also gives you perspective as to what you can and cant see and honestly munchkins are gonna complain cause they want to be able to rules lawyer and argue their way into everything, frag them, its a tactical game, you need a tactical setting

[Nikoli]

I've always built my maps using the basic figurines scale, 1in=5ft, but then overlaid a grid of meters which was visible on the final printout. It works well because all the drawing are to scale with the figures, but you can calculate ranges almost insantly. If I had the time I'd make a hex based grid to reduce the mathe further

[Veggiesama]

I like the suggestions, and I'm starting to realize that just having one base grid at 2m=1square would lead to some scaling problems for many people. I'm now going to try to make my charts at one of each grid size: 1m, 2m, and 5m.

1m works great, I used blakkie's suggestion and everything is beautiful and evenly divisible.

There's a dilemma with 2m that'll pop up even worse for 5m. Basically it comes down to how much different characters can move per pass. Should they remain the same, easy, and consistent (like how the evenly-divisible method blakkie suggested), or should they remain how I did before, where at least nobody gets gimped out of movement? I have three choices:
1) Go with what I had originally. While everyone got a fair amount of move speed, having to remember that "first pass my dwarf can walk 4, second 3, third 3" seems kind of like a bother.
2) Try to make every pass have the same movements so you just have to remember two numbers (one walking, one running). Though some characters start getting gimped out of movement (that dwarf would have to be "simplified" to 3, 3, 3 instead of 4, 3, 3) or overbuffed (or the dwarf gets 4, 4, 4), which ends up to just a judgement call.
3) Combine them? Make a pattern or something...

For 5m, it sounds like it could get really bad. Though it could just be really easy and get rid of the move-by-pass thing and you only get one movement per combat turn. That way:

Walking:
Dwarves: 2 square (round 8m)
Humans: 2 square (10m)
Trolls: 3 squares (15m)

Running:
Dwarves: 4 squares (20m)
Humans: 5 squares (25m)
Trolls: 7 squares (35m)

I dunno, suggestions?

[Veggiesama]

More Movement Rules and Interceptions
I'm gonna be borrowing heavily from d20 AoO terminology here, but since Interceptions work a lot like them, it's no big deal. (1m/2m) refers to 1m/2m scales, while (5m) refers to 5m scales, where the rules will be different.

Moving Through Characters
- (1m/2m): You may move through friendly characters' squares, but not through enemy squares. You may not stop on a friendly square.
- (5m): You may move through any characters' squares. You may stop on a square occupied by a character, as well.

Threatened Areas
- "Threatened" means they're within range for a melee attack. The "Reach" statistic means nothing, as it only gives you extra dice.
- (1m/2m): The 9 squares of space adjacent to every character is considered threatened by them.
- (5m): Only the square the character occupies is considered threatened. To engage a character in melee, you have to be standing in their square.
- Prone or otherwise immobilized characters (subduing, etc.) do not threaten any squares.

Interceptions (overrides rules on p151, but similar)
- If you move INTO a threatened area, you will not be intercepted.
- If you attempt to move WITHIN or OUT of a threatened area, you WILL be intercepted if your opponent takes a free action to intercept.
- You may move within or out of a threatened area if you only take a free action One-Square Move (below, akin to d20's "5-Foot Move").
- If you take no damage from the attack, you may continue movement. Otherwise you must stop.
- To intercept you must use a free action. If you have a weapon ready, you may use that melee weapon skill to start a melee attack. Otherwise, you use Unarmed Attack (even if you have two hands filled, you can still throw a kick). For improvised weapons (including pistol whips, rifle butting, etc.), see p149 (House Rule: imp. weapons take a penalty of -1 die pool).

New Free Action: One-Square-Move
- You may take a free action to move within or out of threatened areas without incurring an interception.
- This works identically to the below simple action ("Withdrawal"), but you are limited to simply one square.
- (5m): [dunno if this action should be allowed on large grids]

New Simple Action: Withdrawal
- You may take a simple action to withdrawal from melee combat.
- The first square you're standing on is not considered threatened for purposes of movement. Future squares will still be subject to interceptions. This allows you to move your full speed away from a fight (remember, you can only take this action BEFORE you move, so you cannot withdrawal, move, then shoot a gun at your opponent... you can, however, shoot, withdrawal, THEN move).
- You may still take a 1-square-move and avoid interceptions without spending a Simple Action to Withdrawal.

New Complex Action: Tumble
- You may take a complex action to tumble through melee combat, avoiding all possible interceptions.
- Determine your course and count how many enemies you'll be tumbling near. Then roll an Agility + Gymnastics Test, with the threshold being the number of enemies you'll be avoiding. If you succeed, you avoid all interceptions and may move to where you plotted. If you fail, the GM determines which enemy you get intercepted by (suggestion: If the threshold was 4 and you roll 3 hits, you get intercepted by the third enemy). If that attack misses, you continue your movement, and the next enemy in the line may take an attack. It is possible to fail the roll but still dodge all of the attacks normally.
- If you fail your Agility + Gymnastics tests, you are treated as if you are using Full Defense (Gymnastics Defense) vs melee attacks, but only until your movement is complete. After your action phase is over, you lose this bonus. [this part might be a little overpowered, dunno yet]
- Running still incurs a normal -2 dice pool mod to your Gymnastics test.
- (1m/2m): If you wish to tumble through an opponent's square, add +1 to the threshold for every opponent this is done to. You still may not stop on their square. If you are intercepted, the opponent chooses which square you are "pushed" to.

Subduing Combat
- If a grapple is successfully established, the attacker moves into the defender's square.
- (1m/2m): This violates the "You may not stop on a square occupied by a character". As soon as the grapple ends, the defender may move into whichever adjacent square they wish.
- Both grapplers do not threaten any squares.

Charging
- To receive bonus dice on a charging melee attack, you must have a straight line of empty unimpeded squares between you and your enemy:
- (1m): 4 squares
- (2m): 2 squares
- (5m): 1 square

Wow, that was a lot of stuff. Post any suggestions, thanks.

[snowRaven]

At 1m square size I wouldn't allow you to move through a friendly square unless both characters take at least a free action to do so. One square meter is not alot of space for two adult characters to maneuver by each other on, especially in a combat situation.

Otherwise, your rules look alright, I think, Veggiesama

[Veggiesama]

Sorry for the shameless bump, but the PDF seen before is now "final"-ish. It's got rules for three different scales: 1m, 2m, and 5m. So check again and refresh:

http://myfilestash.com/userfiles/veggiesam...ma/movement.pdf

Running along the right side and bottom of the first page is the basic information you'll need to know. The three tables correspond to running/walking on the three different grid scales. I stole blak's advice for the 1m scale, but I just couldn't get 2m to work right for me, so I used what I had before. For 5m, I said "screw it". Everyone moves once on any of their passes, since they'll be moving so few squares anyway. Also I swiped snowRaven's idea for not allowing friendlies to move through each other at 1m scale.

Second page lists some more advanced information: charging, interceptions, and the new actions to help avoid being intercepted. I'm still so damn ambivalent on that Tumble action: should it give (temporary) Full Defense and be a Complex Action, or no (temporary) Full Defense and become a Simple Action?

Third and fourth pages show weapon range charts for the two new scales: 2m and 5m.