Time, Pool, and the Flow of Combat, the SR3R way Options

[Kagetenshi]

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SR3R Master Thread

Jon’s Glorious Karma Character Generation System (S3CKS)

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Decided:
(All of these are subject to reopening for discussion should there be any strong argument for a different path)
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In progress:

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Timing is a touchy issue, but it's key to the game. To launch right in:

1) People move in weird orders

Mr. Slow-As-Molasses-In-January-And-Not-In-Boston-Either acts before anyone but the Move-By-Wire-equipped can act twice. This doesn't make a lot of sense.

In SR2, Mr. SAMIJANIBE would move once, after Mr. WR3 moved two or three times. Possibly four, with an optimized build. That doesn't make a lot of balance.

Other proposals have been suggested, including interleaved systems and backwards-counting interrupt-based systems. That doesn't make for a lot of simplicity.

What do we do about this?

2) Timing might be weird between different systems

I personally believe that astral time, matrix time, Rigger time, and physical time all match up quite well, but this opinion is not universal. Thoughts?

3) Pool use is weird outside of combat

Whenever initiative is not in use, pool becomes free dice. Is this a bug? A feature? Do we fix this, and if so, how?

4) Bonuses from reaction/initiative enhancement are not consistent

Most things give +2R +1d6I, but it takes two spells to grant bonuses to both. I think that's fine, others may disagree. Present your arguments.



Anything else?

~J

[Kagetenshi]

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[hyzmarca]

Pool outside of combat as free dice is a feature. It should be easier to do things well if you aren't being shot at.

[Eyeless Blond]

[Crusher Bob]

To split up actions over the round you can try stealing 7th Sea's system. Determine number of init passes, everyone rolls xd6 where x is the number of init passes they get. The round is split into 6 segments, you go in the segment(s) that you have dice showing on. If you happen to roll multiples of the same segment, you go multiple times in that segment. This makes it more difficult to game the init system, since you can never be sure exactly when the other guy will act.

Example:
Sam, Bob, and Fred are in a fight. Sam gets 3 passes, Bob gets 2, and Fred gets 1.

Sam rolls 1,3, and 6
Bob rolls 4 and 4
Fred rolls 2

So the order of action would be:
Segment 1: Sam
Segment 2: Fred
Segment 3: Sam
Segment 4: Bob (x2)
Segment 5: no one
Segment 6: Sam

To split ties between guys in multiple segements, you can compare reaction, or something.

[Garrowolf]

The initiative system I use reduces the extra IPs.

I view the extra actions thing for Street Sammies as a way of covering the multiple attacks that martial artist can do. I think that the problem is partially the defined action system. I defined complex actions as an action that takes a whole turn or more. Then I allowed characters to take multiple simple actions in a turn if they normally had extra actions. This makes them more like a martial artist and less like a speedster.

Characters can make burst fire attacks with SA weapons. They can do an additional bullet worth of damage in burst fire attacks. I made melee and unarmed attacks into simple actions. Each additional action instead gives you an extra simple action and a +1 reaction.

This means that street sammies can kill alot of people in their area but they are less likely to run around moving, killing, moving and then killing. They act first but only go once a turn like everyone else. They can hold their action if they want to. If they want to move more then a few steps then they can do so as their turn.

This also means that magic users can't use extra IPs to cast several spells.

Instead of getting extra actions, many of the decker's and rigger's actions become free actions. They can do a number of free mental computer control actions equal to their Intelligence. Any attack actions occur as simple actions now. Movement actions for riggers are free if easy or simple if more difficult. This becomes the advantage of implanted connections.

I think that the game works better and plays faster without the IP mechanic. Everyone gets to play more quickly. Street Sammies are still killing machines. People can come up with a list of free actions quickly (mostly non rolled actions). It bring everyone on to the same page and it gets rid of the long wait on the decker.

[Link]

1) Interleaved system: as has probably been said before, it blends SR2 & 3's systems.

[Herald of Verjig...]

1) In Mechwarrior 2nd edition, there was only one action per character, and the two phases were movement and attack. During the movement phase, slowest declared first, but faster could interrupt to prevent something from succeeding (such as blocking the door that one of the opponents was going to exit). I suggest a way to allow speedies to sacrifice later actions to speed up the next action.

2) Never had a problem (or a decker).

3) Probably feature.

4) Synaptic Accelerator, Boosted Reflexes, and the spells are all not +2+1D6. I like the variety.

[nezumi]

1) Someone has posted a suggestion similar to the mechwarrior idea. Basically, rather than counting from the highest initiative and going down like you did in SR2, you start from 0 and go up. When your character goes, his initiative goes down by 10. Any character with a higher initiatve than the current count can interrupt. So in other words, the slowest people go first... When the fast people want to let them. An initiative 41 person surrounded by initiative 8 mooks can, at his option, go 4 times before any of them move (41, 31, 21, 11), but then everyone else can go before he gets his final action.

IMO, it is an elegant solution, making higher initiatives more beneficial without bunching all the extra actions at the beginning or the end, but it doesn't work well for online gaming like I run.

2) I agree with your statement, they should be on the same time scale.

3) Maybe a feature. It certainly makes most decking actions very easy compared to combat, but the numbers associated seem to reflect that.

4) I don't mind the variety, but I like some of the suggestions made about separating mental and physical initiative.

[Platinum]

I like the interlevened system like Link mentioned above, and come up with something that works very much like he mentioned. The problem is it does require a bit of simplistic math. It just means that you start to resolve actions into negatives.

Basically instead of subtracting 10 from your init ... you subtract 20, but you get a number of IP's = init /10 round up.

to used nezumi's sammie with 41 init surrounded by 4 goons.


sammie rolls 41. goons get 9,9,11,13,22

Sammie goes on 41, shoot a goon-9 and drops him.
goon-22 goes next
sammie goes again on 21
goon-13,goon-11,goon-9 go.

on 2 goon-22 goes again.
then sammie on 1.

Then on -7 goon-13 goes again

on -9 goon-11 goes again
then sammie 41 goes on -19
then sammie 41 goes on -39

All of the actions are evenly distributed on the manner mentioned by link.

So ... I have some related questions I wanted to ask.
1 - if you move should all your following actions be impacted?
2 - I am not sure if I agree with sr2's combat pool refresh or sr3's.
2 has it refresh on each ip
3 has it refresh once a combat turn

I think if can be overpowering if it is each ip, but I also think that it over penalizes fast characters if you only refresh once a combat turn.

I believe that speed should have a serious impact on the game. you work really hard to stay on the cutting edge, if you lose that edge you die. That edge should come with sacrifice, but this is survival we are talking about.

[nezumi]

You sure SR2 has pools refresh on each PASS? That doesn't sound familiar to me.

[Tanka]

[Eyeless Blond]

My responses:

1) As much as I'd like to bring up my own ideas for making Initiative into a Success Test, I really think we should just shelve all of the extremely complicated or radical changes to initiative we're seeing here. I don't think any of us is going to get enough of the crowd behind a single one of the more radical changes to ever get it adopted. If we do want to make any fundamental changes, let's keep them short, sweet, and above all, simple and streamlined.

By the way, save all these radical changes for a later date. If and when SR3R ever gets compiled I'd love to compile a database of houserules and variant systems that can be modularly swapped into the system, but now's simply not the time for them.


At this point, we have a simple problem: really fast people should go more than once both before and after the slow people, not all after like in SR3 and not all before like in SR2. A simple solution for this would be to reorder initiative passes. Instead of the 1-2-3-4-5 that you see in SR3, why not try 5-3-1-2-4? In effect, you run down through the odd numbered initiative passes, then upward through the even passes.

The rules would go like this: at the very beginning of the Combat Turn, you figure out how many passes you get, and your initiative at each pass. A Sam with init 31 would have an init of 31, 21, 11, 1, while a mundane with an init of 16 would have an init of 16, 6. We start by counting down the odd initiative passes, meaning the sam would go once with an init of 11. Then the first pass, with the sam going at init 31 and the mundane going at init 16. Then the second pass, with the sam going at init 21 and the mundane going at init 6. Finally the fourth pass, with the sam going at init 1.

Net result order: Sam, Sam-mundane, Sam-mundane, Sam.

It's exactly one sentence more complicated than the current rules, and that sentence is a simple mnemonic: "Count down the odd passes, then up the even passes." 5, 3, 1, then 2, 4, 6 (if applicable). Is that still too complicated?


2) The timing issue is really not because of initiative, but because of the differences between systems. In particular the decker is the real problem here. Walking through scripted metaphors creates an all-important symbolic barrier between him and the rest of the team. It's too confusing and distracting for the rest of the team to be constantly interjecting about what fantasy realm the decker is dealing with today, and the result is usually his part of the run is resolved either before or after everyone else, in the rare cases where deckers are even used.

There's also the issue that the way security tally and IC triggering and suppression encourages a smash-and-run mentality when it comes to decking, as opposed to the Overwatch mentality that would be much more beneficial to a concurrently-working team. Look at the Infiltration Challenge thread for a beautiful example of how the Overwatch mentality, rather than endless obsessing over seperate-but-equal metaphors can make for a great decking run, that works concurrently with the meatspace run. Note also that the deck and decking rules had to be seriously twinked just to keep the decker in the system long enough to actually be *able* to do any Overwatch without getting instantly smashed.

Again, though, these are not really issues related to initiative and timing so much as they are a result of the current Decking rules, and they actually should be discussed in there.


3) I vote that pool use outside of combat is a feature. In fact, I would like to see a few more pools out there, or maybe ways to generalize pools so that every skill use can have some kind of pool attached to it. Pools in SR3 are the Attribute-to-Dice-Pool in SR4, but in SR3 the attributes are far less broken with Skill 1 characters, and you have to choose what you're going to put effort into when you're distracted by combat situations. I really like that difference.


4) I'd really like to see everything that gives you levels of init boost give you a +2R +id6INI per level. I do recognize, though, this is an unpopular view, both because it has potential game balance issues if handled incorrectly and people enjoy being able to make the choice over whether it's better to get +2R +2INI for 2.8Ess and 90,000Y, or +4R +2INI for 3.0Ess and 165,000Y.

[Crusher Bob]

My main issue with init system with fixed action order is that they can be 'gamed' by the people with a large number of actions. If you are the fast guy vs 3 mooks in SR2, you gun them all down before any oth them act. If you are in SR3, you get complete cover behind a wall or something on the first pass, wait for the mooks to all go, and them pop out and kill them all. What I liked about 7th Sea's random action order was that you could never be exactly sure when the mooks were going to go, meaning that your actions tended to be much more natural.

[Crossfire]

I think we should try to aim for a couple variants depending on the style you want to run. For a more "grittier" set of rules, something like 3rd edition would be ok. If you want something more cinematic, go for 2nd edition rules where you can act 4 times before anyone else. I really think that the initiative system (and the combat system in general) as to fit the genre.

As an example, my old group once ran a cinematic Shadowrun campaign. We used 2nd edition initiative rules as well as lots of other rules and house rules to fit the genre (like wound modifiers only after combat, extra dice for stunts - a la Exalted, combat pool refreshing every PASS, etc.). It worked quite well. Then we ran a more standard, serious, grittier game with 3rd edition initiative rules (where you have to be very careful, take cover more often, no flashy moves, combat pool every combat turn, standard wound modifiers, etc.). So I would say break it down into 2 systems depending on what style you want to play...

Peace!

Crossfire

[Kagetenshi]

I have no intention of including variant or optional rules in SR3R.

~J, believer in the One True Path

[Eyeless Blond]

[tisoz]

[Eyeless Blond]

[hyzmarca]

Okay, here is my idea for a more balanced initiative.

Roll xd6 and add them to reaction as usual and note the score as in the format

[nezumi]

So far I think Platinum's idea above is the simplest method of interleaving actions. Someone with an initiative 20 above his nearest competitor will go twice before anyone else moves once, will interleave towards the center, and get a few extra actions towards the end. It still mixes it up enough that the speedy guy has a clear advantage, but the slow people don't find they have nothing interesting to do for most of the scene (since they're in the middle, they have the advantages of both the SR2 and SR3 system). No crazy mod functions and whatnot, no division even.

[Kagetenshi]

Ugh, that's no good. We need at least one pass through the imaginary axis to be a decent rule.

~J

[nezumi]

"imaginary axis"? Where's the imaginary axis? Is that like the axis of evil?

[Herald of Verjig...]

[nezumi]

Oh, I get it, you're complaining that the rules aren't complex enough. Cute :P