My online players and I have discovered that the standard 10 phase combat turn is rather unwieldy for use in a play by play setting. This is mainly due to the time lag between phases. One of my players with a panache of 2 rolled a 2 and a 9 and it was a week and a half before he got to do anything!
So, I devised the following method and I look to you for comments and ideas that may not have occured to me (and I'm sure they haven't).
First, I reduced the number of phases in a turn to equal the highest panache score among participants. So, if the highest panache is 3, there are three phases.
Second, each player receives a number of actions in the turn equal to his panache. The way I set it up, those with the lower panache scores act in the first phases of the round. I suppose you could distribute the order more (say have panache 1 act on phase 2, have panache 2 act in phase 1 and 2) but I thought it would be more balanced to have those with the higher panache to have more options.
third, each player rolls their initiative dice to determine who acts first in what phase. The higher the total roll, the earlier you act in the phase.
So it looks like this (where P# = panache score):
Phase | Active participant
1 | P1, P2, P3
2 | P2, P3
3 | P3
etc...
I put the lower Panache scored players in the earlier phases to allow them to hold their actions for later if they desire. The higher Panache scored players still get to use their actions for interrupts and such.
One player asked how abilities like "Combat reflexes" would work. Since combat reflexes essentially re-orders your active phases and potentially allow you to act earlier or later in the round, I decided a player using combat reflexes would re-roll his initiative dice and use the re-rolled total to determine when he acts in the phase.
For instance, if a Panache 3 player with combat reflexes rolled 12 for his initiative and a Panache 2 player rolled 19, the Panache 2 player would act before the Panache 3 player in shared active phases. The Pnache 3 player could activate his combat reflexes and re-roll his initiative hoping to get a higher total than the Panache 2 players roll, but he has to accept the new outcome.
Anyone have any ideas or refinements? Concerns? What do you think?
