Okay. Previously I stumbled and fell during my last Versus Battle. Hitting the Palladium/Megaverse system's major flaw in combat. Combat. With 19 characters in play, ten of them animals, it became impossible for me to keep track of who was doing what to whom, at the beginning of the fourth action of round 1.
The actual problem I was having is that with actions and initiative. Normally after initiative is rolled for the round everyone goes through their first actions in initiative order. Then everyone goes through their second action and so on and so forth. Until everyone has had all of their actions for the round. Then you move onto the next round.
In Heroes Unlimited player characters start with 2 actions per round, but can quickly gain more through skills or powers. Most appear to have 4, at first level. The highest I've seen around first level is The Gargoyle, with 9 actions; a character I was planning on having turn up in later rounds of the versus battle in question.
Keep in mind that the combat round is 15 seconds long.
I remember from my teens having a great deal of fun playing this game. But then we were a small group of players and having more than a handful of foes was rare. When half the characters are being controlled by other people a lot of the weight of running combat is shared; Versus battles drop all that weight on my shoulders.
Someone must have had a similar problem to me. So I did some research, and yes. Lots of people. Looking at their solutions was not helpful. Most people just rewrite the system into another system and change things that I wanted to keep.
My self brief was thus:
- Keep everything that makes the system the system. So no adding or removing bits.
- Make it work.
I spoke to friends and people online, I wracked my brain for a solution for two weeks. Nothing.
I tried looking at Actions as if they were Action Points, but that changed nothing. I tried looking at when an action would take place in a 15 second round. But that also didn't change anything and, if anything, added more complexity.
They, April 3rd I dozed off in front of the TV and dreamed of going through a box of books and folders that my poor parents are still storing for me. It was a battered blue folder which I once painted a streaking aura around a humanoid figure that caught my attention. The paint had almost immediately peeled off but in my dream it was whole. Inside was a system I had designed in my late teens; a super powered wrestling system. If you've ever seen a wrestling match, and I haven't been a fan since I was a kid (I loved Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks; I lost interest when they retired, which dates me) it has a pattern in which whoever "has initiative" inflicts their opponent with a chain of blows, bounces, throws and pins until something goes wrong. Then the tide turns and the initiative reverses. In this system I had created I had attempted to model this. It was simple. Whoever wins initiative does their stuff until they screw up and fail a roll. Then the other guy gets to do their thing until they screw up and then the round ends and initiative rerolls. I'd never figured out how to get it to work with more than two fighters but that's because I was asking the wrong question.
When I woke up I realised I had my solution. To both problems.
The solution to the Palladium problem is to change how Actions work in the round. Instead of everyone taking their first action in initiative order, and then everyone taking their second action, and so on and so forth. Now whoever wins initiative gets to use as many actions as they wish until...
- They fail a roll.
- Or they run out of Actions
- Or they decide to stop for whatever reason.
At which point the next person in initiative gets to use their actions. And so on down the line.
When everyone has gone once, rinse and repeat until everyone is out of actions or nobody wants to act any more. Then the next round begins.
If someone has to dodge they lose a future action but the result of their dodge roll keeps until they either get to act or they are attacked again and choose to reroll. Which will cost another action.
And that's it. Simply reframing the combat sequence eases the burden. Or does it. Let's go to round 2 of that combat that confounded me and see what happens:
