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RELATIVITY: Four Combat Timing Systems for Fudge

Introduction

In traditional RPG's, and in fact even in the canonical FUDGE sourcebook, no distinction is made between the various parts of a combat system. However, in reality, any "combat" system is really made up of three distinct parts: timing, striking, and damage - when any given attack lands, whether it actually hits, and what happens if it does.

As described in the previous article, "Full Contact", there is no real reason to force these to be entwined with one another. That article presents a detailed and modular striking system which could be used with virtually any rules for timing and damage; this article describes four different combat timing systems, each of which would be compatible with the "Full Contact" striking system, or in fact with virtually any other strike and damage rules.

The four systems are Simultaneous, Simple Rounds, Graduated Rounds, and Continuous, representing increasing degrees of detail and realism - but also increasing degrees of bookkeeping and effort for the gamemaster. Simultaneous combat basically involves everyone's blows landing at the same instant; Simple Rounds has everyone taking turns based primarily on their rolled Initiative, in the vein of Dungeons & Dragons; Graduated Rounds uses timekeeping within a round to order the characters' attacks; and finally Continuous combat does away with the idea of rounds altogether, using timekeeping over the course of the entire battle to determine when each action occurs.

Simultaneous Combat

While technically Simultaneous Combat is a perfectly workable method for deciding event timing in battle, calling it a "system" is probably an exaggeration. Simultaneous combat is basically no timekeeping - all of the combatants in battle land their first blows at the same moment, their second at the same moment, and so forth. No ordering is used; there is no need for initiative or speeds - but there is also no use for weapon speeds or rates of fire.

Example:

A party of adventurers is attacked by a pack of goblinoids. The monsters consist of two orcs with daggers, two goblins with pikes, and an orcish shaman; the adventurers include Roland, a thieving bard, Madoc the wizard, and the giant-sword-wielding paladin Cardiff. Madoc decides to cast "Spark", a very quick electrical atack spell; the shaman wants to cast "Unholy Grasp" to freeze Cardiff in his tracks; Roland will use his elven bow; and all of the others charge straight into melee.

Under Simultaneous combat rules, everything happens at once: Cardiff swings at an orc, the shaman's spell freezes him, Roland shoots a single arrow at the shaman, Madoc electrocutes the goblins, both orcs attack Cardiff, and one goblin attacks each of Madoc and Roland.

Then anyone left alive after that all do whatever comes next at the same instant.

Simple Rounds (D&D Style)

Description:

Using the Simple Rounds method, battle becomes turn-based. A given battle is divided into rounds, and each combatant gets (usually) one turn in each round. The exact order of characters in battle is determined by Initiative rolls, adjusted for action and character speed.

Conceptually, the length in game time of a "round" is roughly 20 seconds. This is only a rule of thumb; the actual time that would be taken for a "round" depends on what actually happens.

Initiative:

An Initiative roll is 4dF+5, producing a value between 1 and 9 (non-positive numbers are inconvenient for timekeeping). Lower is better, in this case; characters with lesser total Initiative values battle first.

The simplest form of Initiative score is the raw 4dF+5 value, which does work. However, the score becomes more meaningful when it is adjusted for the situation at hand; in this version, each weapon or activity (spellcasting, running, reloading, etc.) will have a "Time Taken" (TT) factor supplied by the GM. The TT score is added to the basic Initiative to find the total Initiative. Furthermore, the GM will probably decide that certain attributes and skills are relevant to battle speed, and these would have half their value (rounded toward 0) subtracted as a bonus from the Initiative score each time the player rolls it.

Initiative scores may never be nothing; a calculated Initiative of 0 or less counts as 1 instead - 1 is the very beginning of the next round, and taking less time than that involves going back in time. Certain settings may conceivably allow this, if the GM wants, but we don't cover doing battle backwards in this article.

Example:

For the first round of battle, Roland rolls an Initiative of 4 (i.e. -1 on the 4dF, plus 5), Madoc gets a 6, and Cardiff an impressive 1. If unadjusted Initiatives are being used, then these are the Initiative scores those characters use for this round: 4, 6, and 1.

However, suppose their GM is using the augmented Initiative methods. In this case, the GM has decided that each character's Agility scores and skill with the weapon or spell in question will be relevant. Furthermore, the GM has declared that Cardiff's monstrous 2-handed sword has a slow TT value of 7, while Roland's much quicker elven bow has a TT of 2, and Madoc's "Spark" spell was especially designed to be cast at will, for a TT of 0.

Roland is fairly well trained with bows (Good skill, +1; bonus of half that rounded towards zero is 0), and has extremely good reflexes (Great "Agility", +2, bonus +1). So his total bonus is 0+(+1) = 1, and his Initiative is:

[Roll of 4] + [T.T. of 2] - [Bonus of +1] = 5

(Note that the Bonus score is subtracted from this value, not added, because lower Initiatives are better.)

Madoc is only of average speed (Fair "Agility" 0, bonus 0), but he is an astoundingly good spellcaster (Legendary "Spellcraft" skill, +4, bonus +2). When spellcasting, he has a total speed bonus of +2, so: [Roll of 6] + [T.T. of 0] - [Bonus of +2] = 4

Finally, Cardiff, while well trained with his sword (Great "Two-Handed Sword" skill, +2, bonus of +1), is very slow and cumbersome (Terrible "Agility", -3, bonus -1), and so has a total bonus of +1-1 = 0. He's also using the slowest weapon, so his Initiative becomes:

[Roll of 1] + [T.T. of 7] - [Bonus of 0] = 8.

Turn Order:

The order of battle is simple: the character or monster with the lowest Initiative score goes first, then the next lowest, and so on. If two of the combatants have the same Initiative, then those two events happen at the same instant.

One advantage of using Simple Rounds over Simultaneous is that rates-of-fire or multiple attacks per round become meaningful this way. Characters with more than one action per round perform their first at the moment determined by their Initiative roll; once all characters have gone once, those with another action go again in the same order, then those with three do so yet again, and so forth.

In the following example, bear in mind that the magic system being used is similar to that of D&D, so spells can be disrupted halfway through the casting. Other magic systems may not include that possibility.

Example:

The GM has rolled up and adjusted Initiative scores for the goblinoids: 6 for the shaman, 3 and 4 for the orcs, and 9 for both of the pike goblins. So the turn order is:

Init	Action
3	Orc #1
4	Madoc and Orc #2
5	Roland
6	Shaman
8	Cardiff
9	Goblin #1 and Goblin #2

Nobody moved faster than the first dagger-wielding orc. Since daggers are a very fast weapon and Roland's bow has a 2-shots-per-round rate of fire, after the goblins attack the round will continue with the second action from those characters:

Init	Action
3	Orc #1, second attack
4	Orc #2, second attack
5	Roland, second shot

If any of these were entitled to a third attack in the round (if, for example, Roland had "Bracers of Archery" for another bow shot), then those with three attacks would rotate through in the same order after the second attacks, and so on.

So the first round of battle will probably go something like this: The first orc rushes up to Cardiff, but has his dagger turned aside by the paladin's armor. Then the second orc reaches Madoc, and hits him; this would have disrupted his spell but it was completed at the same moment and a little spark of magical energy scorches the shaman even as Madoc falls to his knees. Roland takes his first shot, skewering the second goblin; the shaman would go next, but his "Unholy Grasp" was destroyed when Madoc's spell hit him. After that, Cardiff gets his behemoth blade up to speed, and decapitates the orc that struck at him, and then the goblin that's still alive pokes the paladin with his pike. The first orc would go next, but it was the one Cardiff just split in two; the second orc tries to stab Madoc again, but is stopped by his magical protection, and then finally Roland puts his second arrow through the orc's head.

Graduated Rounds

Description:

Graduated Rounds are very similar to Simple Rounds, but allow for more specific detail in the battle timekeeping. With Graduated Rounds, the time taken for each action (modified by the same Initiative roll) is used repeatedly during the round to line up the timing of individual events.

Graduated Initiative and Ticks:

Graduated Initiative is rolled and calculated for each action identically to Simple Initiative above. However, the way it's used is slightly different.

In Graduated Rounds timing, each round is divided into 20 "ticks" - where each round is usually about 20 seconds, each tick is 1/20th of whatever the round is, so it's roughly one second. The Initiative score a character gets for a particular action now actually represents which tick in the round that the action finishes in; it also gives the approximate amount of time, in seconds, that the action took.

Multiple Actions and Ready Time:

The main differences between Graduated and Simple rounds come into play only when a character has more than one action in the round. They do not simply take turns with their actions after everyone else is gone; rather, they roll 2dF and add this to the TT and bonus of what they're doing (with a minimum value of 1), and this is how many ticks after the first action finished that the second occurs - i.e. adding this value to the number of the first action's tick gives the number of the second action's tick. What's going on here is that a new initiative-style value - the "Ready Time" - is created from the character's speed and skill (and modified by a random factor of 2dF). This is the time taken for that action, and its value is added to the tick in which the previous attack (this round) was completed to give us the tick in which this new attack lands.

Example: Continuing the previous example (from Simple Rounds), we have these same times rolled for the fighters' first actions:

Tick	Action
3	Orc #1
4	Madoc and Orc #2
5	Roland
6	Shaman
8	Cardiff
9	Goblin #1 and Goblin #2

However, the timing for the second actions of Roland and the orcs is probably different. Suppose (reasonably) the GM has decreed both that daggers have a TT of 3, and the orcs have no special bonuses. If the 2dF Ready Time modifier rolls for Orc 1, Orc 2, and Roland were respectively 2, 0, and -1, then we can calculate their "next ticks" thusly:

Orc 1
[Roll of 2] + [T.T. of 3] - [Bonus of 0] = Ready Time 5
[Ready Time of 5] + [Previous Tick 3] = Next Tick 8
Orc 2
[Roll of 0] + [T.T. of 3] - [Bonus of 0] = Ready Time 3
[Ready Time of 3] + [Previous Tick 4] = Next Tick 7
Roland
[Roll of -1] + [T.T. of 2] - [Bonus of +1] = Ready Time 0
Ready Time cannot have a value less than 1, so it changes.
[Ready Time of 1] + [Previous Tick 5] = Next Tick 6

So as it turns out, the characters with second actions actually get them in reverse order in this round, compared to the Simple Rounds example above; in fact, Roland and the second Orc were so quick in this case that they both have their second attacks before the Goblins actually get around to their first. The revised turn order is:

Tick	Action
3	Orc #1 (1st)
4	Madoc (1st) and Orc #2 (1st)
5	Roland (1st)
6	Shaman and Roland (2nd)
7	Orc #2 (2nd)
8	Cardiff and Orc #1 (2nd)
9	Goblin #1 and Goblin #2

Clearly, this changes the battle - for example, Orc #2 never gets its second stab at Madoc in tick 7 because Roland's second shot that slays it now occurs in tick 6, rather than at the "end of round" once everyone has had their first turn.

Note that the tick number for every action in a single round (beyond the first) is determined with a Ready Time and the tick of the immediately preceding action. Suppose that Roland has those "Bracers of Archery" providing him a third arrow shot. If he rolls 1 on the 2dF for his third initiative this round, then we would calculate his third shot tick as follows:

[Roll of 1] + [T.T. of 2] - [Bonus of +1] = Ready Time 2

[Ready Time of 2] + [Previous Tick 6] = Next Tick 8

... using the time of his second shot - 6 - as the Previous Tick for determining the time of his third.

At first glance, the Graduated Rounds style of battle timekeeping may appear prohibitively "long-winded", but that's mostly how the examples are presented here. In practice, all of the values used to find an Initiative or Ready Time score would be precalculated (on character sheets for PCs or major NPCs) or at the beginning of battle, except for the random-factor die rolls of 4dF+4 and 2dF; even then, all of the "calculations" are just adding and subtracting values less than 20. This system should speed up a lot after just one or two game sessions of using it.

Ticks After 20:

Sooner or later, a character with multiple attacks will roll so poorly on their Initiative values that their last attack takes place a few ticks past 20. In this case, the GM has a number of options, including:

• Extend the round: Just keep adding ticks to the end of the round until all of the events that were supposed to take place in that round do so. Since rounds are only approximately 20 seconds, and ticks are only roughly one second, this works fine: longer round, smaller ticks.

• Spill that attack over into the next round: Subtract 20 from the offending tick number, and the attack happens at that tick in the next round. This works, and keeps the timekeeping consistent, but runs the risk of having characters with particularly slow weapons and fast skill get "out of phase" with the rest of combat.

• Cause any such attacks to happen at the "end of the round", as would happen with Simple Rounds.

• Lose the attack, on the basis that anything too slow for the round was just too slow to happen under the circumstances.

Whatever the GM chooses, they should decide and tell the players before it comes up in battle - ideally at the beginning of the campaign or the current session, but definitely at the very least before the battle itself.

We recommend either the first or second option above. If Graduated Rounds are intended as the sole and final method of battle timekeeping for the campaign, then extending the round would probably be best; if the Graduated Rounds system is actually being used to "wean" the players gradually off of a simple round system or a simultaneous system and onto a Continuous Combat system like the one below, then spilling ticks over into the next round is the obvious choice.

Continuous Combat

Description:

With Continuous Combat, we come full circle and once again do away with the "rounds" and "turns" of turn-based combat. We keep, however, the idea of the "ticks" that were introduced above in Graduated Rounds. Essentially, each battle consists of an indefinite series of ticks, with each action occurring some number of ticks after the previous thing the same character did.

Of all the timing systems presented in this paper, this one is the hardest on the GM in terms of "bookkeeping", but is also by far the most realistic: the time taken for an action depends solely on the character doing it, and the two sides of a battle never stop to take turns.

Since ticks are very close to one second each, and the length of "rounds" is no longer a concern, one other minor advantage to Continuous Combat timing is in the wording of battle events that have duration - descriptions of traps, gas grenades, magical fields, etc.: they can be described using familiar real-world terms such as seconds and minutes, and this can be translates directly into battle time terms at the rate of 1 second = 1 tick.

Continuous Initiative:

At the moment battle is joined (i.e. for the very first action of each character in combat), Initiative is rolled exactly as for the beginning of a Graduated Round. Battle then proceeds as though made from a single Graduated Round, containing an arbitrarily large number of ticks. Every action in a given combat after the first, however, is timed with a Ready Time roll and occurs that many ticks after the preceding action.

In many ways, this resembles the rules for a Graduated Rounds series in which the "spill over" method of dealing with tick numbers greater than 20 is being used. In fact, one of the best methods for keeping track of the current tick numbers when there's an arbitrarily large number of them is to number the ticks 1 to 20 and then start at 20 again; whenever a time goes past 20, just subtract 20 from it, like a stopwatch with 20 numbers. In the worst case (unusually slow events), the GM would at worst have to remember "how many twenties" before a given event takes place.

Intentions:

In one round of the Graduated Rounds method, all of the actions a character can engage in are either identical (shooting an arrow repeatedly), or all but one are trivial (swing an axe and yell something). Clearly, this limitation can't exist in Continuous Combat, since there are no true round boundaries.

Conventional rounds require each character to decide at the beginning of each round what they are doing during that round. In Continuous Combat, this decision is instead made at the moment the previous action has taken place; then Ready Time is rolled and counted forward from the current tick to find the tick in which the new action occurs. If players change their minds in the middle of an action, then the Ready Time for their new idea is rolled and added to the tick in which they change their mind, plus any extra time taken (according to the GM) to prepare the new action (dropping or drawing weapons, reloading, etc.). This is important; players must not "get away with" changing their characters' minds retroactively.

Example:

Using the same example conflict, the battle would start the same way, because the first (and only the first) timing roll is a full Initiative roll:

Tick	Action
3	Orc #1
4	Madoc and Orc #2
5	Roland
6	Shaman
8	Cardiff
9	Goblin #1 and Goblin #2

This marks the first action of each character.

Battle begins and is played on a "tick-by-tick" basis. Nothing happens during the first two ticks, then Orc #1 reaches Cardiff and fails to pierce his armor; at this instant, the GM decides that the orc's next action will be another stab at Cardiff, and they quickly roll a Ready Time for this (as described under Graduated Rounds), and find that the Orc's next blow should land in tick #10. This immediately updates the list of pending actions, removing the completed tick 3 and adding the Orc's action in tick 10:

Tick	Action
4	Madoc and Orc #2
5	Roland
6	Shaman
8	Cardiff
9	Goblin #1 and Goblin #2
10	Orc #1

In the next tick, 4, Madoc casts his spell and Orc #2 strikes him at the same instant. Madoc is knocked down, and decides to hit the orc with his hidden dagger (Ready Time rolls 2, sums with Madoc's adjustments to 6, blow lands in tick 4(current) + 6 = 10); at the same time, Orc #2 decides to keep stabbing Madoc (Roll 0 -> R.T. 3 -> Next tick 7). The Orcish Shaman had been casting a spell, which is now gone; he decides to cast another, this time "Word of Darkness: Blind" on the archer. This has a TT of 2, but the GM has decided to impose a penalty of 2 extra ticks to recover from the lost spell, so it becomes a TT of 4 in this instance. The shaman's roll is -1, for a R.T. of 3, so the spell will trigger in tick 4+3=7. Pending actions become:

Tick	Action
5	Roland
7	Orc #2, and Shaman
8	Cardiff
9	Goblin #1 and Goblin #2
10	Orc #1 and Madoc

In tick 5, Roland slays Goblin #2 with an arrow. He intends to fire his bow again immediately, this time at Orc #2 (Roll -1 -> R.T. 1 -> Next tick 6):

Tick	Action
6	Roland
7	Orc #2, and Shaman
8	Cardiff
9	Goblin #1
10	Orc #1 and Madoc

At 6, Roland slays Orc #2, and directs his next shot towards the Shaman (Roll 1 -> R.T. 2 -> Next tick 8). Note that in Continuous Combat, the idea of "Rate of Fire" is inherent in the Time Taken for each shot, so that the particular effect described here for the "Bracers of Archery" would not apply. The pending actions become:

Tick	Action
7	Shaman
8	Cardiff and Roland
9	Goblin #1
10	Orc #1 and Madoc

In 7, the Shaman successfully casts his blinding spell on Roland. Blinded, Roland can't fire his bow with any degree of accuracy, so he drops it and draws his short sword - an action that the GM rules has a Time Taken of 4 ticks (Roll 0 -> R.T. 4 -> Next tick 11). In the case of the stricken archer, this means that he will have his sword out and ready in tick 11 and will then get to decide what to do with it. In addition, the Shaman chooses his next spell ("Disrupt Dweomer", TT 4), and prepares to cast it at the armor effect created by Madoc's magical "Steel Pendant" (Roll -1 -> R.T. 3 -> Next tick 10):

Tick	Action
8	Cardiff
9	Goblin #1
10	Orc #1, Madoc, and Shaman
11	Roland

The battle will proceed this way until it ends, with at least one side either surrendering, retreating, or being wiped out. Note that Roland (had he not been blinded) would have had three bow shots in this example before the goblins' first attacks - this is perfectly valid, because Roland was an unusually quick and agile man wielding a fast bow, while the goblins were small, slow, and wielding extremely slow pikes. In addition, the goblinoids were largely outmatched; they made the mistake of ambushing a party which was better armed and better trained than themselves; this battle was much more one-sided than it would be with more powerful enemies.

Addendum

Suggested Weapon Speeds

As a convenience to GMs who want to try out the timing systems presented in this article, here is a list of suggested Time Taken and Rate of Fire values for some common weapons. Rate of Fire is presented in shots-per-round.

These are just preliminary values to get players started; we would welcome the creation of a list that is more comprehensive and properly playtested.

Fantasy
Weapon	TT	RoF
Axe, Battle	5	1/1
Bow, Long	3	2/1
Bow, Short	2	2/1
Club	3	3/2
Crossbow, Heavy	8	1/2*
Crossbow, Light	5	1/1
Dagger	3	2/1
Hammer, War	3	4/3
Mace/Morningstar	3	4/3
Pike/Pole-arm	8	1/1
Quarterstaff	5	1/1
Spear	5	1/1
Sword, Bastard (1-hand)	5	1/1
Sword, Bastard (2-hand)	6	1/1
Sword, Long	5	1/1
Sword, Short	4	4/3
Sword, Two-Handed	7	1/1
Whip, Bull	5	4/3
* Heavy crossbows generally require a round to reset their very heavy draw, hence the 1/2 RoF. In Continuous Combat, the TT for Heavy Crossbows should probably be increased to at least 12.
Oriental
Weapon	TT	RoF
Bo Stick	4	4/3
Fan, War	3	5/3
Katana	4	1/1
Kusari-Gama	6	4/3
Naginata	5	1/1
Ninjato	4	1/1
Nodachi	7	1/1
Nunchaku	3	2/1
Sai	3	2/1
Shuriken	2	3/1
Staff, Three-Part	4	3/2
Tonfa	3	5/3
Tachi	4	4/3
Wakizashi	3	2/1
Wrist Razor	3	2/1
Industrial & Modern
Weapon	TT	RoF
Bayonet	5	1/1
Chain, Length of	5	1/1
Grenade*, Hand	4	1/1
Grenade*, Launched	4	1/1
Hand Gun, Luger Semi-Automatic	3	2/1
Hand Gun, Revolver	2	3/1
Hand Gun, Desert Eagle	3	2/1
Knife, Switchblade	2	3/1
Knife, Bowie	3	2/1
Machine Gun+, Gatling	6	1/1
Machine Gun+, M-16 or AK-47	5	1/1
Machine Gun+, Thompson	4	3/2
Rifle, Flintlock	14	1/2
Rifle, Sniper	9	2/3
Rifle, Twelve-Guage	7	1/1
* Any sort of grenade would use these same values for speed, regardless of whether they're percussion, fragmentary, gas, etc. The distinguishing characteristic of a grenade is what it does on impact, not how long it takes to get there.
+ These values refer to bursts of fire, roughly 15 rounds per burst. Rapid-fire weapons such as these would probably require more detailed rules to cover different burst sizes, fanning sprays, etc; since this article is primarily about melee combat, detailed machinegun rules are outside of its scope.
Science Fiction
Weapon	TT	RoF
Lightsaber	4	3/2
Pistol, Laser	3	3/2
Pistol, Particle	5	1/1
Pistol, Heatseeker	7	1/1
Rifle, Laser	5	1/1
Rifle, Plasma	12	1/2
Rifle, Railgun	6	1/1
Tazer	9	2/3
Whip, Monofilament	4	3/2

Casting Time

Everything that happens in battle is timed; thus, if any of the latter three timing systems presented above is used in a setting that has magic, the magic system will need some way to define the amount of battle time it takes to use an arcane technique. It will be up to the GM to produce this information, either by finding it or creating it. Examples of ways to determine casting time include: TT listed in the spell description (for spell-based magic), as a function of the caster's skill with that magic (for strictly skill-based magic), or as a function of the magic's "level" (again, if applicable).

Essentially any source of TT values would be fine (up to and including a decree that all magic is an instantaneous act of will - TT 0 across the board), as long as it's based on the idea that one tick is roughly one second.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Cavan O'Leary and Darren Sheppard for their technical assistance in the adjusting of the relative strengths of the entries in the weapons charts.