The other day I found this by reading my daily OSR stuff, and this paragraph offered me a new wonderful paradigm. I'll just cite:
OD&D has no such thing as Initiative and to my way of thinking it should never use it - EVER!
OD&D uses Parallel Actions; everyone does what they do in a round and then results are applied.
You engage the orc and you are both circling and looking for an opening… roll your attack, oh you hit it for 7!
The orc falls to its knees mortally wounded, in a last effort it swings at you missing and falls face down on the ground in front of you.
The orc got its attack in even though you killed it.
Oh Oh, sometimes things should not happen in a parallel order.
What you can do is apply reasonable results to any situation. Lets say our heroic fighter decides to attack a troop of orcs armed with pole arms. The pole arms should do about the same damage if they get a hit as our hero's sword. Yet our hero has decided to be The Man in this situation and is charging at pole weapons, this is not a good idea. He needs to clear those pole weapons before he gets his attack roll. Thus I would judge that the orcs get to roll their attacks before he gets past their pole weapons and can strike with his sword.
With simultaneous initiative, the problem in my head was at first: "then who declares actions first?" But for some reason, I was enlightened this time: It doesn't matter. You can make it so combatants can re-declare actions based on what their opponent is doing, and then the opponent, add infinitum. Or just say that you can hold action indefinitelly, with some rounds ending with motionless combatants in both sides because they don't want to give an opening. But the truth is that you can probably run games during months before you have to resort to one of those.
Just a good point to remember: If PCs and NPCs power grows parallel to each other the game might keep balance, but with simultaneous initiative, the possibility of mutual kill increases depending on how easy is for both to hit.
In reality, in a sword fight it's easy to kill each other. That's not only confirmed by our modern experience with HEMA, but also by numerous historical accounts.
ReplyDeleteFact is, it's not only easy to hit each other at the same time (both attack without cover, quite common especially with inexperienced fencers), but also killing blows are very rarely "insta-kills", there can be plenty of time for the other guy to retaliate with a last blow or two before going down from blood loss, and if your sword is embedded in their abdomen, it's not easy to parry or get out of the way in time.
I like the idea. Surprise would then be an unopposed attack, making that much more important.
ReplyDeleteIf any can have two attacks they might need to declare them afterwards.
Would get rid of one awkward dice roll that never felt right.