Thinking about going old-school with hesitation

[leonpoi]

Background - I own v1 and 2.2 of tw2k and also 2013. We play 2.2 because it's the version we all know best and also because it's the easiest to get into (we play infrequently and the players don't know much of the rules anyway). I know all of the versions so I know how they compare, but we never played much v1 at all.

The initiative rules in v2.2 are quick; almost everyone gets 1 action per round, except for high initiative chars, who get 2. i.e. I guess it is assumed that the characters with initiative <6 spend 1/2 their time hesitating.
In v1:
time in combat -> CUF -> hesitations per 6x5 second turn (or whatever it was called).
As a rough comparison I was going to say hesitations = 6 - v2.2 Initiative and roll back the initiative system to something like v1. The only reason I'm thinking of doing this is because I like the system where repeated actions do not suffer from hesitations, and because I find the doubling of actions for Initiative > 5 to be a bit coarse and advantageous.

Those of you who are familiar with how the v1 system worked in practice, could you give me advice and your thoughts?

[Legbreaker]

Personally I prefer the 2.0 initiative system in which the lower initiatives are only able to act occasionally unless they're repeating a previous action.
And then there's what happens when a character is injured - potentially even a slight wound can removed the character from the action for up to nearly a minute!

Does it punish low initiatives? Yes, if they're not using their heads and planning actions out ahead of time. Does it allow high initiative characters to run rings around low ones? Again yes, but isn't that what they shoud be able to do - react faster than others?

[Adm.Lee]

My only beef with v2's intiative was that in a long-running game, the PCs get to jack up their initiatives with experience. Keep them alive long enough, and they can, as said, run rings around mere mortals. I saw lots of bad-guy platoons chopped up in seconds.

I can't remember any impressions of v1, which could mean that I was OK with it.

[Legbreaker]

That's possibly GM fault. Too many XPs handed out and a too leniant Initiative improvement scale. Also, NPCs can (and definately should) use repetative actions.

I've seen a party of about 10 PCs of which about half were Initiative 5+ almost taken out by a similar number of Experienced (Initiative 3) NPCs. A handful of grenades serve really well to even the odds, wounding PCs and causing them to miss actions as well as reducing their effective initiative. It wasn't until the PCs used the same tactics (grenades) that it looked like they might actually survive.

He who gets the first effective shot in usually wins.

Another very useful tactic for slower characters is to have them provide cover fire. Provided they don't need to reload often (belts are great), they can shoot every phase pinning the faster characters and allowing others in their group to close in for the kill.

[headquarters]

We made the V2.0 rules go like this :
every character ,NPCs etc get a move every phase ,who goes first is then determined by initiative,agility or skill or in the rare case of a total equality luckof the dice

(agility minus bulk rules apply if in a who shoots first situation )

I guess we never loved the idea that a Navy Seal with init 6 could clean his finger nails for 20 seconds when facing an NPC with init 2 and then beat him to the punch with an agility minus bulk calculation come the npcs turn to act .

Instead we use the initiative rules to suss out who keeps cool and can act coherently by applying initiative checks in dangerous situations .If you fail by say 3 -thats the amount of phases you are going to panic/freeze/hesitate up or whatever you can say is more likely to happen to the untrained and in experienced troops on a battlefield .

Also we changed the damage rules alot ,
firstly using D12 instead of D6 to make weapons more deadly ,
using critical hit rules (damage 3 means 30% chance of critical hit )
new critical hit tables with a lot of nasty effects .

We changed the rate of fire to match the real world rate of fire by doubling the allowed number of bursts to be fired (not the ROF stats of the guns pr se ).

Amongst other things .

I guess any system can be as dangerous or lenient as the GM makes it out to be .
But the game designers obviously had put in elements of hesitation and time managment as defaults in the rules.We did away with most of these and let the initiative rules handle these things and let the recoil rules speak for themselves in the event of anyone letting of a long ,protracted burst with an auto weapon ( recoil will build up and reduce hit probability quickly).

I guess we have altered the original rules alot overthe years and certain house rules are now so embedded in the play that our group hardly remembers the original rule they were based on .

Our latest project were the melee rules that we found to simplistic .We made up a system where you get a number of moves /attacks pr phase that correspond to your skill set .That way we hope to mimick real life where a highly trained fighter will make mincemeat of an untrained one in short order in most cases - high strength and agility can come into play but is less effective than actual skill.

All of these are to be found on our site under house rules btw.

[leonpoi]

We changed the rate of fire to match the real world rate of fire by doubling the allowed number of bursts to be fired (not the ROF stats of the guns pr se ).

An interesting observation is that if you are using v2.2 (not sure about 2.0), and your init > 5, then the real world ROF is equal to game ROF because they get 2 actions.

Q. So if 2.0 similar to v1 for initiative and hesitation?

I'm also not happy with the melee rules, and have removed many of the types of unarmed attacks because I thought that they were flawed. We also use all kinds of (mostly subtle) house rules.

Back to the initiative pros and cons:
So far no one has complained about the one Init 7 character and his actions, but I'm still not happy. First thing I did was to remove Move as an action that could be done twice in a round because I didn't want him running twice as fast as everyone else. I've changed the rate of gaining Initiative to the recommended rate in (I think) spec ops. (you need Init squared and not Init to advance a Init Level), so that keeps the Init 5 char's advance slow to needing about 36 firefights (or maybe a bit less), while the Init 2 char only needs 9.

What I like about the 2.2 system (which has no 6x5 second rigid time units) is that it flows very quickly. We had a massive firefight with a bunch of new players who were unfamiliar with the rules, and there was shooting, automatic fire, grenade launchers, grenades, melee and unarmed combat, and combat against vehicles, all in the same battle. At the end of it everyone breathed a massive sigh of relief as the tension lifted, and everyone agreed that the system worked quickly and fluidly and that the pacing of the action was not thrown off.

Initiative checks are used if someone is shot (knocked down) and I use a threat level mechanic taken from tw2013, so lower init characters can still have a lot of time wasted by hesitations in the v2.2 rules.
Threat levels https://sites.google.com/site/leonpoitw2k/Home/files/Threat.pdf?attredirects=0, I have printed and laminated them and we use it to track current initiative and threat level.

I tried to playtest quickly with a friend v1ish rules - this is what happended:
Characters, Int 7, 3 and 2 get caught under automatic fire:
turn 1
- init 7 - returns fire
- init 2 - discusses with init 3 about current orders (to flank)
turn 2
- init 7 - returns fire
- init 2 - returns fire
turn 3
- init 7 - fires under barrel grenade launcher (indirect)
- init 2 - hesitates (in cover I'm assuming)
- init 3 - runs from cover towards building
turn 4
- init 7 - fires loads grenade launcher
- init 2 - hesitates
- init 3 - hesitates (in open)
turn 5
- init 7 - fires under barrel grenade launcher (indirect)
- init 2 - hesitates
- init 3 - hesitates (in open)
turn 6
- init 7 - fires loads grenade launcher
- init 2 - hesitates
- init 3 - hesitates (in open)

Comments - character with init 2 would be bored, at least in this exchange of fire. Init 3 should have put his hesitations first so that he could run on the last turn of the phase, so that the following phase he could then repeat the run action 6 times. But this feels clunky to me and artificial. One observation is that it forces characters to pre-plan combat because one or more discussion/talk actions stuff up the whole phase for use with repeated actions, and I like that aspect.

Hesitations would also stuff around with tank crews. An init 3 gunner who is alternatively aiming and firing (with the loader loading) could do only fire/aim/fire in a phase rather than fire/aim/fire/aim/fire/aim - basically the rate of fire is halved.

[edit] - what I also want to avoid is a situation such as:
npc init 3, char init 3
npc - move (into cover)/shoot/shoot/hes/hes/hes
char - hes/hes/hes/run (around and stand next to the npc)/shoot/shoot
the npc just looks dumbly at the pc standing next to them shooting...

[Marc]

So far no one has complained about the one Init 7 character and his actions, but I'm still not happy. First thing I did was to remove Move as an action that could be done twice in a round because I didn't want him running twice as fast as everyone else. I've changed the rate of gaining Initiative to the recommended rate in (I think) spec ops. (you need Init squared and not Init to advance a Init Level), so that keeps the Init 5 char's advance slow to needing about 36 firefights (or maybe a bit less), while the Init 2 char only needs 9.

We make exactly the same regarding initiative points and movement allowance. About the speed, if a soldier is allowed to spend two actions at full run, he/she would be moving at 12 m/seg! Good for Matrix, too much for Twilight! :D

[Legbreaker]

According to 2.0/2.2, a character carrying less than their Load Capacity can run 100 metres in a little over 16 seconds.

The world record for the 100 metres is less than 10 seconds.

Also 2.0 does not allow for initiatives of better than 6.

I think the speed as listed isn't too bad when you consider it's unlikely for anyone who wants to live longer than a few heartbeats to expose themselves for very long. Therefore short bursts are far more likely. Adrenaline also tends to be pumping lending a hand to the running character....

Note that 2.2 allows for extra actions for initiative 5 and above. As double movement puts a character in the sub world record category, even when loaded with say 30kgs of weapons and gear, restricting to only one phase of movement is obviously the best choice. This issue is actually covered in 2.2 on page 195.
Combat movement rates are expressed in metres moved per five second combat turn.

Initiative squared is how I've always done it - as has been said, the basic advancement method is just too rapid for high levels!

[leonpoi]

I've been doing a lot of soul searching, trying out variations in house-rules, and even played a few encounters using gunmaster just to see how it flows - here is what I'm thinking now:


All characters/NPCs have a chance to act twice in a turn, at their full Initiative & at 1/2 Init, rounded down.
Characters who are not knocked down/cowering etc get to act on their full Init value.
On their 1/2 Init, rounded down, value characters must pass a modified Initiative test on 1d6 to act again (basically get a free action). Roll 1d6 and add the character's current Threat level (defined below but basically lifted from tw2013); if the result is <= current initiative then the character can act again.
On their free action characters can do pretty much anything they like, including moving again - but movement is limited to 40m/5 seconds (i.e. 2 trots, walk + run max).
A character that fails the Init check hesitates and does not get the free action.
A character that is shot/hit and is Knocked Down does not get to check for a free action because they lose all actions for that turn.
A character that is shot/hit and Panics does not get to check for a free action because they lose all actions for a number of turns.
On a tied Init count, the lowest Blk weapon wins - otherwise the shots are worked out simultaneously.


Some remarks:

A character with Init > 5 with no threat levels is guaranteed to act twice.
Threat levels are cleared at the start of the turn.
An Init 1 character does not get to check for an extra action at init count 0.
I use my threat level play aid to keep track by using counters on the initiatives. I also keep track of threat levels on the same play aid. By simple observation if the counter for the threat level is higher up than the characters Init, the test would fail - so don't roll.
For NPCs, the PCs don't know the Inits, so don't worry too much about Threat levels (TL) for the individuals - just roll a bunch of dice with some generalised modifiers based on how the combat is going and decide how many NPCs get to act again.


e.g. an Init 3 character would get to act at count 3 and maybe count 1. For an even fight, and not being shot at he would get to act again on a 1d6 roll of 1, 2 or 3. If getting shot at (+1 TL) on a 1,2. Shot at by automatic fire with 2x10 rnd bursts the TL would be 1+2 = 3, i.e. the character is too suppressed to act a second time.

e.g. a Init 7 character (one guy in my campaign), would always get to act twice in most situations even when getting fired at (TL 1). If behind cover and getting shot at by automatic fire with bullets striking the cover (i.e. would have hit him if the locations were not behind cover) the TL would be 1+1+1 = 3, so he'll get a 2nd action on a 1d6 roll of 1,2,3,4.

By putting fire on individual soldiers you are guaranteed to give them at least TL 1 - this reduces their chance of getting a 2nd action and allows you to manoeuvre etc with a bit more of a tactical feel.

Because characters may now act twice per turn, the ROF of the weapons (in 2.2) are effectively doubled, bringing them up to what the real world ROFs would be (if the characters are burning ammo with 5 auto bursts per action!!)

Tactical Considerations:

+1 each 25% causalities
+1 attacking prepared position
+1 fighting in darkness w/o NV
+1 outnumbered 2:1
+1 can’t see enemy
+1 no escape possible
-1 shooting automatic weapons at full ROF
-1 outnumber enemy 2:1
-1 leader fails (not catastrophic) LDR test, or
-2 leader passes Difficult LDR test, or
Ignore all Threat, outstanding LDR test
LDR test results last for 30 seconds (6 turns)


Basic Considerations:

+1 getting shot at
+1 in kill zone of automatic fire, or
+2 if in kill zone for each 20 bullets
+1 under chemical attack with protection, or +2 under chemical attack without necessary protection
+1 if hit or if cover stops bullet, or
+2 if hit or if cover stops > 3 bullets
+1 in burst radius of explosives