It's nothing new for me to say that I'm not a fan of initiative rules in RPG combat. There are several reasons for this:
- Winning or losing initiative can make a huge difference in who wins a fight. This is particular vexing to me, because...
- Initiative mechanics often lead to unrealistic situations that break verisimilitude. In real combat, just as real life, people don't take turns. And besides...
- To the extent that initiative is realistic, it's rarely calculated in a satisfying way. Things like combat experience, cool-headedness, reach, etc. are often forgotten. The most egregious offender here is D&D, which puts it entirely down to DEX, and that's only in the cases of versions of D&D that use individual initiative instead of side-based initiative.
For a while now, I've looked for ways to resolve combat without initiative. Based on the results of recent playtesting with my group, I may have finally cracked it. The rest of this post will describe my house rules for OSE combat sans initiative.
Starting Combat
I largely dispense with rolling for surprise; instead, surprise happens if one side ambushes the other. More relevant is which party detects the other first. I won't address that here and now.
When combat begins, I give my players a minute or so to discuss tactics. If they are surprised, though, they don't get this. Once any tactical discussions are complete, we're on the clock.
Combat Rounds and Actions
Each round, I start by giving players ten seconds to state their actions for the coming (six-second) round. Since we're online, it's easy to just ask them to enter this into the Discord channel, but in person I could insist on slips of paper or just a verbal declaration.
Each character is allowed to take three actions per round, each of a different type. They are as follows:
- Operation: This is something like attacking, casting a spell, trying to pick a lock, etc.
- Position: This is usually movement, but it could also be something like drawing a weapon. More on drawing weapons later.
- Instant: This is something that requires little to no care, like shouting a quick phrase, dropping something held, stepping two yards, etc.
An operation can be traded-in for an extra position, and a position can be traded in for an instant. So a character could move at double normal movement rate for the round at the cost of giving up his attack, or delivering a series of statements in return for standing still and doing nothing else.
Also, some activities consume more than one kind of action in a round. Casting a spell requires using one's operation and position, for instance.
Finally, position actions can either be short or long. A short position would consist of something like a half-move or drawing a weapon, while a long position would be full movement or casting a spell.
Timing
During the combat round, things happen in the following order:
- Immediate: This is when things happen that primed to occur immediately, such as melee combat between adjacent opponents, firing a drawn arrow or loaded crossbow, dropping something being held, etc.
- Short Position: This is when short position actions are resolved. A full movement is half-resolved at this point.
- Intermediate: This is when operations are resolved that were proceeded by short position actions, like drawing a weapon or moving a short distance.
- Long Position: This is when long position actions are complete, or the second half of a full movement.
- Late: This is when operations are resolved that were proceeded by long position actions such as melee after a full movement or casting a spell.
Players and NPCs are allowed to change what they were planning to do in later phases based on whatever happened during the current or previous phases, as long as this doesn't entail performing extra actions. Of course, they have to make these declarations promptly.
During each of these phases, everything is resolved simultaneously. So two adjacent opponents attacking each other will each resolve their attacks without considering the success of each other. However, there are a two main exceptions to this simultaneous resolution, discussed below.
Melee Reach
If two combatants are attacking each other and one has a reach that exceeds the other by two feet or more, then the combatant with the longer reach initially resolves their attack before that of their opponent. However, once the opponent with the shorter reach scores a hit, this situation reverses i.e. the one with the shorter reach resolves their attack first. This situation will again reverse when the combatant with the longer reach scores a hit!
Pre-emptive Actions
On occasion, a character may endeavor to pre-empt the action of their opponent during a phase, even if they were supposed to happen simultaneously. The referee should resolve this by making an appropriate ability check for the pre-empting character, possibly an opposed check if the opponent has ability scores; the ability is usually DEX, but could be whatever.
If the pre-empting character succeeds in the ability check, then they can go on to attempt their action normally, and if it succeeds, then it pre-empty the other character's action. However, if the ability check fails, then the entire action fails; this is a penalty to discourage overuse of this mechanic.
Equipment
I've made a couple of tweaks to how weapons and other equipment are used to go along with this system, as well as to better reflect my own notions of realism and what is interesting in combat.
Drawing Weapons
- Short weapons: e.g. dagger, short club, etc. count as instant actions
- One-handed weapons: e.g. sword, mace etc. count as short position actions
- Two-handed weapons: e.g. two-handed sword, polearm, etc. counts as a full operation action
Readying Ranged Weapons
- Readying a short bow, sling or undrawn thrown weapon (i.e. drawing an arrow, loading and spinning a sling, etc.) requires a short position action.
- Loading and drawing a longbow requires a long position action. However, an archer could choose to partially draw a longbow, which would treat it in all respects as a short bow for timing, range, damage, etc.
- Loading a light crossbow requires a full operation.
- Loading a heavy crossbow requires two operations plus two long positions. In other words, two full rounds without moving. Of course, crossbows can be carried around, ready to fire, once loaded.
Weapon Damage Changes
To rebalance things in light of some of these other changes, and to make things more realistic (to me), the following changes have been made to weapon damage:
- Javelins: 1d6
- Slings: 1d6
- Longbows: 1d8
- Heavy crossbows: 1d10
The light crossbow is a new weapon. It does 1d6 damage, and has range bands of (5-60) / (61-120) / (121-180).
Gear
Drawing an item from one's belt is an instant action, or a short position action if some preparation is required (like uncorking a potion). Retrieving an item from one's pack or drinking a potion requires an operation action. Drawing a potion from one's belt, uncorking it and drinking it takes a long preparation and operation to complete.
Other Equipment Changes
- Longbows, two-handed swords and polearms are only usable by fighters and elves.
- Shields provide +3 AC for unarmored characters, +2 AC for characters in leather armor, +1 AC for characters in chainmail and plate mail.
- Two-handed weapons are no longer "slow," except with regards to drawing times as described above.
Spell-Casting
Casting a spell, unless otherwise noted in its description, requires an operation and a long position. They generally go off at the end of the round. Any damage taken by a spellcaster between declaring the spell and it being launched causes it to be ruined, and the spell slot is still consumed. A spell-caster can still use his instant action to take a couple of steps, but otherwise cannot move much during the combat round.
That's It!
What do you think? I know that it sounds cumbersome. But it actually goes pretty quickly because there's no rolling. You just declare actions, and resolve things pretty intuitively. Most of the time, you don't actually have to count off the different phases, have players redeclare their actions or pre-empt other combatants, but those rules exist to handle slightly more complicated cases when they arise.
