D100 The Melee Round

Despite a very busy summer, progress continues on D100. Recent play testing reveled some problems, not serious problems, but problems none the less. These issues revolved around movement in melee. The conundrum was how to allow for movement in melee with out have various action types and making it overly complicated. It was a tough nut to crack, keeping it simple and also flexible. We tried several methodologies and ended up with a hybrid of the brighter ideas.

In order to properly explain this I have to give you a bit of background, specifically describing the round. We arbitrarily selected a 10 second round long ago. Later we consider a GURPs style one second round, but found it killed the beauty of the skill level system, so a 10 second round it is. I have not explained skills yet but we already have a well developed melee model based on skill level and number of attacks/defends per round. It is a beautiful system and will be the subject of another entry. The result of the skill system is that a player gets Melee Points. These points translate 1:1 to attack or defense action in the 10 second round. Each action (attack or defend) burns a Melee Point and takes 1 second.

So to solve the conundrum of Moving in Melee, we divided the round in 10 seconds, any seconds remaining after or before actions (Attack/Defend) can be used for movement. This as it turns out solved several other problems with respect to spell casters, charging, withdrawing, free attacks, missiles and many more. Whats best, is its solved with one rule and not one rule for each situation. Very simple, very fluid, easy to remember and it works!

In Conclusion, I need to follow up with a post on Skills and Melee Points. Perhaps tomorrow!