Speed of movement
Question for you about movement.
The way combat works in my system is I dont have a set "initiative" where players and enemies take their turns one at a time and do everything for the round on their turn. Instead I have a time step initiative where players and monsters declare their actions and then move along a timer track labeled 1-30 (each label is supposed to be number of seconds in a round).
Combat example: at the start of combat if player A has a heavy slam with speed 18 and a firebolt with speed 5, player B has a basic attack with a speed of 8, and a monster has a claw attack with a speed 7 the first round of combat (with no movement) might look like:
All characters decide their first action and move their token along the tracker: Player B casts firebolt at time 5, the monster makes a claw attack at time 7, and player A makes an attack at time 8.
Player B goes first because they have the fastest action (in the case of a tie the GM decides how the actions resolve). After casting Firebolt they decide to use heavy slam and so moves their token to time 23. Then the monster and Player A (because they dont have any other tactics and I dont want to complicate the example further) swing at each other twice deciding each time whether or not to continue the assault. Each time they do so they move their tracker to the next spot on the time tracker. At time 23 Player B gets to make their heavy slam and then they decide to switch back to their firebolt and move their token to time 28.
What im not so sure about is movement (which Im going to use as a basis for non attack actions). I have three options I can use:
- Each movement is 1 meter at a time. So if you want to dart in and out at a speed of 3 you can absolutely do that. Its extremely granular and the combat is incredibly dynamic and reactive to combat. So you can absolutely get hit by the lightning dragons breath attack mid stride as you race across the battlefield and not just because you ran out of movement. The problem is its every meter. So every square/hex takes you 3 seconds and is tracked individually. That might be too much bookkeeping. It also runs into the issue of a character with a speed 18 heavy slam attack not being able to hit literally anything because any target can move out of the way.
- All creatures have movement speed and thats the time cost for them to move some larger distance, say 5 meters. So you declare that you are going to move and move your time tracking token up 15 seconds and then you resolve as normal. The problem is its less dynamic as you stand around for 15 seconds waiting to move rather than actually moving. And then what about if you only needed to move 2 meters? You just wasted so much time that doesnt make sense.
- Its dynamic. So you declare "I want to move X meters" and then you move your time tracking token 3X seconds. Its more dynamic and it limits characters from being able to dart in and out but I dont like it. It has all of the second options issues and I do want skirmishers to exist.
Ultimately my preference is for the first option but Its a ton of bookkeeping to use.
My second question is if I instead have this set up wrong and maybe it shouldnt be 1-30 seconds but 1-30 with some other conversion that will make everything make more sense. I thought about making it so every 10 time is 1 second and them move speed is 1 meter/10 seconds but then that bogs down the battlefield.