Core - Combat

From Open Source Tabletop

I am currently trying to create a combat system that is both easy to use but enjoyable and a little bit more entertaining then some systems where players wait for their turn, hit the create with their weapons, and repeat. Combat should be more then just "it's my turn, i wack the creature with my weapon."

Rolling for Turn Order

Unlike other systems where either the most dexterous players go first or where different things can make you go first more often in OSTS you just do a straight roll to see who goes first. There is no way to raise or lower your chances of going first. All players just roll a D12 and the then the players go from highest to lowest. In the event of a tie the two players that are tied re-roll and the one with the highest number from that roll goes first while the other one goes second.

NPC Turns

I am not exaclty sure what I am going to do with this yet. I have been considering doing something that would make the game more interesting but might break the game too. This would be to sort of seperate the party and the enemy NPC's into two groups and have each group go 1 after another. This means that if Bob, Mary, Joe, Lisa, and John come up and attack a dragon the combat turns could be as follows. The GM would decide which group goes first. I bolded the NPC's in the the examples to make it easy to read.

Bob, Dragon, Mary, Dragon, Joe, Dragon, Lisa, Dragon, John, Dragon

If the party instead came across two goblins it would look like this

Bob, Goblin 1, Mary, Goblin 2, Joe, Goblin 1, Lisa, Goblin 2, John, Goblin 1

so on and so forth...

The other way I am considering is the simple having each NPC roll an initiave and then doing turn order something like this. I am going to use the Dragon and the Goblins for the next example

Dragon, Bob, Mary, Goblin 1, Joe, Goblin 2, Lisa, John

Not sure which way I am going to go, I like the first way but I think it might make the game too hard.