Re: Good initiative mechanics?

On Apr 2, 1:15=A0am, psychohist <psychoh...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> I'm not sure exactly what we're looking for, though.

I guess the objective is to avoid concentration of fire because
the game system implies that it's a bad strategy, not by
banning it arbitrarily.

> Focused fire is
> a reasonable tactic for situations where ac***ulation of damage
> matters. =A0That's not generally the case in infantry battles. =A0At
some
> points in history, it was for naval battles, and there you did see
> focused fire used. =A0If you don't want focused fire to be effective, I
> think you should stay away from ***ulative damage systems.

Concentration of fire can be arranged to be weaker as a strategy
without giving up systems based on ***ulative damage.

Consider two forces of ten opponents each facing ten player
characters in separate encounters.  The first force of ten
has evenly distributed hit points; seven attacks from the
player characters are needed to defeat each of the ten enemies.
The second force of ten has five strong opponents requiring
11 attacks each to defeat, but also five weaker opponents
requiring 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 attacks respectively to defeat.
In each round, every character on each side attacks simultaneously;
so the player characters cannot concentrate fire on one target
and then switch in the same round if it is defeated.  Also, the
player characters cannot judge how strong a given opponent is;
the opponents act the same until defeated.

To simplify, assume that the player characters have sufficient
resources (hit points, healing, etc) to avoid any deaths (so they
always get ten attacks each round), but still want to minimize
the number of attacks taken from either force; and assume
that the player characters use one of two strategies:
spreading their fire as evenly as possible, or
concentrating all of their fire on a single target.

Against the first force, concentrating fire is superior; one
opponent is defeated every round, and the enemies get 10+9+
8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1 =3D 55 attacks against the player characters.
Spreading fire takes 7 rounds to defeat all of the opponents at
once, and the player characters suffer 70 attacks.

Against the second force, concentrating fire is inferior; the
weaker opponents are defeated in one round, and the stronger
ones in 2 rounds.  The best case is if the stronger opponents
are chosen last; then the player characters suffer the same
55 attacks as before, but an extra 5+4+3+2+1 during rounds
when a stronger opponents is attacked but not defeated, for a
total of 70 attacks.  Spreading fire defeats one (or more, if
the extra attacks after the first round by luck attack weaker
targets) opponent in each of the first five rounds, and the
stronger opponents will each take no more than 6 more attacks
after those five rounds, so three more rounds with pairs of
attacks on each: a total of 10+9+8+7+6+5+5+5=3D55 attacks taken.

The example is somewhat (that is, very) contrived, but if
characters (PC or NPC) routinely meet opposing forces more
like the second than the first, it seems reasonable that
they would prefer the strategy of spreading fire.  And that's
without favoring the strategy of spreading fire with specific
rules: e.g., superior defense for targets of multiple attacks, or
some mechanism for pooling hit points among homogeneous targets.

I think it interesting that your two examples seem to match
the two types of forces in the example: infantry (it seems
to me) are far more likely to have a substantial variation
in how many attacks are needed to defeat them, while
****ps would probably be more consistent.

--
Magister