Superhuman vs. Regular Human Combat Mechanics

[Nawara]

I've been designing a superhero universe for my own purposes using a heavily modified version of the Aberrant system.

Each character gets an initiative score equal to Dexterity+Wits (physical speed and mental speed). In normal humans, this ranges from 2-10, average 4, while superheroes can have much higher scores (if they have Mega-Dexterity, Mega-Wits, the Enhanced Initiative power, or a combination thereof). The highest initiative of any character in my universe is 17.

In combat, characters resolve their actions in order from highest to lowest (though you can hold an action until any later point in the turn).

Multiple actions (from the Quickness power) are really fun... the first action takes place at normal initiative, and each successive action takes place at two initiative less. So the aforementioned 17 Initiative girl, with 3 actions, acts on phases 17, 15, and 13. The Flash-like character acts on 14, 12, 10, 8, 6, and 4. Against normal people, this looks like the typical "Flash hits Grodd six times, then Grodd hits him back once" superhero battle. When multiple superquick combatants are involved, then it becomes a game of strategy.

Normal people and superheroes without Quickness can still take multiple actions, though at a -1d penalty for the first action, a -3d penalty for the second, etc.

I love this system... it's really true to the genre, and probably works for a lot of others as well. And multiple actions, while very powerful, aren't always going to win... you can average 10 damage six times a turn, but if your opponent has 15 automatic soak (which a lot of them do), it doesn't matter.

-Nawara
(In the real, unmodified Aberrant system, everyone adds a d10 roll to their base initiative score every round. I threw this out to save time and make the badasses of the setting more badass... they ALWAYS go first, no matter how bad of a day they're having.)

[failrate]

The best system I've seen so far was in an on-line ballistics game.  At the beginning of each fight, initiative is randomly determined (with various modifiers, not sure all of them), but then each action you take, and the types of actions you take, in the round in which you are active adds to the total initiative number.

EX.  4 combatants, Bob, Steve, Fred, and MutilatorX are in combat with each other.  They are randomly assigned the following initiative results.
Bob - 1
Steve - 2
Fred - 3
MX - 4
Play goes from lowest to highest, so Bob goes first.  Bob bids, say, 3 initiative points to run up to Fred and 2 initiative points to punch him.  Next, Steve bids 1 initiative point to defend.  Fred bids 2 initiative points to punch Bob.  MutilatorX bids 5 initiative points to compose a haiku describing the horrors of war.
So, now the initiative table looks like this:
Bob - 6
Steve - 3
Fred - 5
MX - 9

So far, this is a good basis, but it is incomplete, as it doesn't call into question Speed.  This could be resolved in a number of ways, depending on player preference, ease of use, and appropriateness for system.

Speed could either determine the total number of initiative points to be spent in each player's turn (not very realistic, but simple).

Speed could be an overall score that directly modified the initiative cost of every action.  Further, the decision needs to be made whether this would be divisive or subtractive (or even multiplicative or additive if someone had a below-average speed), and whether a Speed score would apply to all actions, or whether specialties would exist.  The degrees ascend in difficulty and realism/fairness approximately equally.

Assuming the math for determining Initiative costs was kept modest, most people could just keep track of their initiative on a piece of scratch paper, and this shouldn't impede play.

[happyelf]

A points based system as failrate described above is a good idea.

Consider this- at the start of each round, roll inititive, higher the better. Whoever has a higher inititive normally acts first but if somebody wants to, they can burn inititive points to act quicker- so say somebody with an inititive of 10 can burn 2 points to act at inititive 12. If he does an action with a cost of 3, he's then down to inititive 5 for his next action. This represents slower character who might be able to fling themself in, sieze the inititive and act first, but due to their inferior recovery time, they aren't going to keep that pace up.

The problem here is that we're back to fast characters doing a bunch of stuff before the slowpokes get to do stuff. One way to mediate this would be to add extra 'combo' actions to combat, wich would cost more inititve, but offer better outcomes- like a boxer that can snap off a one-two punch before their enemy reacts, or a martial artist who can drop to the ground as part of a throw, but then spring up again before the enemy can take advantage of it.

This is why in Hero System on the low end, things tend to break down in terms of cost. If you can't have a much higher level of effectiveness per round, then you can't make up for an increase in speed. An "agverage" human has a speed of 2. For just 20 more points, he gets twice as many attacks doubing the effective value of all my other abilities. That just doesn't balance. Worse, it doesn't represent the marginal differences in real human reacion time.

One thing to remember is that in Hero, the consequences of actions hang around between phases. If a character gets attacked on phase 3, aborts his phase 6 action to do a dodge, and then gets attacked there, on phase 6, and then on phase 9 before he acts then, he's effected 3 enemy phases with 1 phase of his own- he gets his DVC bonus to dodge against all three. In other words, there are some in-built features wich balances high speed characters against low speed ones. Also, 20 points is a great deal for a 'normal' character to spend.