The "+60" Initiative System

The +60 Initiative System:

So, here I will describe our new initiative system.

First it is necessary to explain why one might want a new system:

Well, the old system is pretty good and works quite well, as long as nobody of the fighting characters has additional attacks (or other actions).

But if there are fighters or even specialists or only someone using a bow (with two attacks) one comes into trouble.
Why?

It is such that the official rule is saying something like "all do their action at their rolled initiative segment (with all modifiers) and any applying extra actions take place at the end of the round". This might sound ok, but it makes not really sense.

Imagine the following:

Natascha a elven archer lvl11 high master is able to shoot her bow about 7 times a round. Her team mate Marrakesch a human fighter lvl12 also high master may do 2 attacks with his primary hand in a round. Using the official rules a battle where these two participate would look rather weird. Marrakesch does his first attack (quite early because he is fast). Nataschas first shot will come only a little time later (because she is fast too). Then both will stand around for nearly one minute doing nothing but waiting till the end of the round. (OK, ok, I agree, with melee combat one can imagine a lot of fencing with attacks and parries. But what about the archer? (No, it takes no one a minute to reload a bow! And even less if one is a high master.) ).
Then all of a sudden Marrakesch may make his last attack and Natascha lets fly a total of 6 (!!) arrows.

This is simply nonsense.

Some thoughts:

First question is how to interpret the meaning of extra attacks. What does it mean if Natascha can fire 7 arrows in a round?

How should the attacks are being distributed over the round?

Well, the only real possible and sensible solution which is not too complicated is to say that there is an equal amount of time from one attack to the other. Of course this is a compromise, but one (we) can live with that.

To say it clearly: Seven attacks per round means seven attacks in one minute and nothing else, especially not one attack in one minute and 6 in the following microsecond.

Then there arises the question of how long, measured in ini-segments, a round should be.

By the way:

An ini-segment is a number where an action may take place. If for example one rolls a 5 on the d10 for initiative and there are no further modifiers the action takes place in the 5th ini-segment of the round. If another's action is at 8 this will be 3 ini-segments later than the 5.

We say:

It is not necessary to have an exact length in ini-segments that each round lasts. It is enough to know that the round is 1 minute long. The exact time in seconds of an ini-segment is not important and is even possible that the value shifts slightly from round to round.
(Meaning that one round may last 20 ini-segments and the next 25 or so. This is nothing new, because this was the same in the original system.)

Putting those questions and partial answers together leads to the following solution:

There must be a (just principal) base value of how long a round is measured in ini-segments. Lets say that is "B" (base) ini-segments for now, where B is some natural number.

Then one is able to say that a characters first action is just as ever in the ini-segment which is determined by his die roll plus any applying modifiers, lets call it the "I" (initial) ini-segment.

Now say the character has more than only one action namely "A" actions in this particular round.

Then his next action would take place in ini-segment number the next after that at next at ... and the last at which is at I+B.

Once more in some other words:

The first action takes place at the "normal" initiative. Then there is a certain amount of time left of the round. In this time ALL of the characters remaining actions (A-1) must take place.

To make sure that this is possible one defines this mystic base value B. We chose for reasons I explain later B=60.

As I said earlier the time from one action to the next should be equal. This one can achieve by simply dividing this base value B by the number of actions which must take place in that time. These actions are of course all that are still left to the character which means A-1.

So we have determined the time between two actions as ini-segments.

This means he acts every ini-segments beginning at his somehow rolled initial initiative ( I ) where the first action takes place.

The last action will then take place B ini-segments after the first at I+B.

Now to the 60 which gave the name to this "+60 initiative system".

The reason for which we chose 60 as the base time is simple.

60 can be divided by the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. So one will not get any non-natural ini-segments for up to and including 7 actions a round. (Which is a lot, so to say)

If it occurs that there is a character doing more actions than that one may be forced to somehow round up or down, which is not too terrible.

Some tables:

It is now an easy task to make a table which shows how simple this seemingly complicated system works in game:

# actions	Initiative
1	1. "normal" initiative (here called "I")
2	1. I
	2. I + 60
3	1. I
	2. I + 30
	3. I + 60
4	1. I
	2. I + 20
	3. I + 40
	4. I + 60
5	1. I
	2. I + 15
	3. I + 30
	4. I + 45
	5. I + 60
6	...

One may also make a table of the time between the actions , but in this case it is important to remember that the first action still takes place at the normal initiative:

• "# actions" = TOTAL number of actions of the character in that round (see additional notes)
• "the +" = time between actions

# actions	formula	the +	actions take place at
1	n/a	n/a	+0
2	60 / (2 - 1)	+60	+0 +60
3	60 / (3 - 1)	+30	+0 +30 +30
4	*	+20	*
5	*	+15	*
6	*	+12	*
7	*	+10	*
8	*	+8.57	+0 +9 +8 +9 +8 +9 +8 +9
9	*	+7.5	+0 +8 +7 +8 +7 +8 +7 +8 +7
10	*	+6.67	+0 +7 +7 +6 +7 +7 +6 +7 +7 +6
11	*	+6	*
12	*	+5.45	+0 +6 +5 +6 +5 +5 +6 +5 +5 +6 +5 +6
13	*	+5	*
14	*	+4.62	+0 +5 +5 +4 +5 +5 +4 +5 +5 +4 +5 +5 +4 +4
15	*	+4.29	+0 +4 +4 +5 +4 +4 +5 +4 +4 +5 +4 +4 +5 +4 +4
16	*	+4	*
17	*	+3.75	+0 +4 +4 +4 +3 +4 +4 +4 +3 +4 +4 +4 +3 +4 +4 +4 +3
18	60 / (18 - 1)	+3.53	+0 +4 +3 +4 +3 +4 +3 +4 +3 +4 +3 +4 +3 +4 +3 +4 +3 +4

Example:

Natascha decides to fire 5 arrows in the current combat round. She rolls a 6 for initiative and plus all modifiers she ends up at ini 7 for her first shot ( I = 7 ).
Her next shots will then take place at ini 22 (I+15), 37 (I+30), 52 (I+45) and 67 (I+60)

Conclusion:

What we have achieved now is a fairly consistent system which is quite good playable if there is no one with 10^23 attacks per round. The only problem is that one might get some non-natural numbers but this is not too bad and it happens not too often anyway.

Some additional notes:

One very important thing:

When speaking of actions per round or even total number of actions per round it is always meant the number of actions which can NOT be done at the SAME time.

Example:

Marrakesch uses two katanas in combat doing 2 attacks with his primary hand and one with his secondary hand. He rolls a 4 for initiative and has an additional modifier of +1 which makes a total of 5. He will then do his first attack with his primary hand at 5 and the next at 65. The offhand attack may be made together with the first primary hand attack or anytime later that round.

The actual length of a round measured in ini-segments varies a little bit because the length of the actual round is the initiative of the slowest character plus sixty. (But this does not matter at all.)

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