Two Actions per turn

So I've run into this issue on a number of occasions, where players want to drink a potion and attack in the same turn, or just a variety of combinations. That said, I'm placing this suggestion up; I was going to hold off and implement this in ZURPG 2.0, but screw it, if people think it's a good idea, let's see what happens when we implement it now. Will the balance of the game break? Probably, but quite frankly, it's probably already a little on the broken side.


Here's the poll options explained:

1. One Action per turn:
   • Regardless of what it is, you can only do one action per turn.
     
   • You can cast an extra Support Spell for 150% of its cost in addition to the action.
2. Two Actions per turn:
   • You can do up to two actions per turn.
     
   • However, you can only do 1 Offensive Action per turn.
     • If the action has you rolling against an enemy, it's an Offensive Action.
   • You cannot cast an extra Support Spell for 150% of its cost in addition to this, because now you can do that anyways without the higher cost.
     
   • If you start charging up, it will take one action, leaving you with another action to do stuff. You can't use that other action towards trying to make the charge-up go faster.

Feel free to comment on this, and if the majority vote is on two actions (2/3rds or higher), I will make a change in the system and then watch things break. And no, I'm not going to follow up with an immediate balance patch on it, because I want to see how the game works, as it is, with this change... if it passes.

Two actions per turn. I definitely support this because I felt the one action per turn rule to be overly restrictive.

As it stands now, healing in battle (outside healing magic) is not very viable because of how fast-paced the battles are. You drink a potion, you sacrifice a large amount of offensive momentum because you just dropped a turn in which you could attack. Given that each battle lasts between 2 and 3 rounds with an upwards of 4 rounds, there is not a lot of time to stop and just drink a potion because your health dropped low. This would solve this issue, and makes defense- and setup- oriented strategies more viable in general.
However, I do see a drawback associated with this suggestion. With this rule in place, someone could load themselves up with potions and consume one whenever they are low on health with no repercussions, enabling them to tank through tough battles with ease. My suggestion to balance out this rule is to implement a form of potion sickness that discourages the constant use of potions to tank through tough battles.

One of the interesting things about battles is exactly the way Orithan put it: at most, any one combat scenario only ever lasts a maximum of four rounds. At present, I don't see a way to lengthen that process without making combat exceptionally boring either. Unlike a traditional videogame, most combat rounds take something like 15-20 minutes, as opposed to maybe three or four. That being said, there's no reason not to have potion drinking be a free action on account of that, since it will mitigate the fear of getting two-shotted in a battle. No one likes to be bounced out of a battle right in the heat of things, especially since that means they'll be sitting idle for at least half an hour, sometimes a full hour until it's finally resolved. We could try, at some later point, to make it more like a traditional combat with snappier turns, but I doubt that's going to happen soonish, unless all of our players acquire internet that can support voice chat reliably (I'm looking at myself for that one.)

I hate to state the obvious here either, but it's not like we're trying to make players lose. The art of the thing is in creating combat that makes the party feel invested and fearful of losing, but without making it seem like they've stumbled into a situation where the party has no choice but to fail utterly (since we're still distantly holding on to the idea that, if all characters die, then that's it for them.) In addition, the more characters that die during a combat scenario, the more the curtain gets pulled back on the DM's attempts to keep things balanced. It's a cruel DM indeed that sets out to kill the party (barring, say, trial situations where life is not what's ultimately at stake,) and even Wind isn't that evil (Except that damn Essence of Emo from the Shiekah Trials...) But seeing the wizard pulling levers to make sure he doesn't accidently kill everyone involved sort of ruins the fun and magic of the thing.

I guess my point is that for now, as things are, we're looking at combat where the characters have a couple of choices, and acting tactically tends not to be one of them. While everyone has been working hard on remedying that (The Shiekah Trials, Fireblast's Trololo boss, various mid-combat nerfs, etc.) combat still looks something like this: straight attack, conditional attack, charge for most of combat and unleash one big attack, or turtle if things look utterly grim, to the detriment of the party as a whole. We've tended to end up with a struggle between the party's momentum and the mobs' ability to slow it down or bring it to a screeching halt, for better or worse. I figure free potion heals might at least break the game in a way that encourages the DMs to reconsider how to approach this problem and innovate. Or we go back to how it was if it doesn't work out, no harm done.

I know the first thing that's going to be a problem is potion spam, and while the obvious move is to nerf potions, I've got a better idea - make more moves that counter recovery and potion spam. That said, if there's a type of move that there's not enough of, or more needs to exist, post it here. I know we're missing revival spells, but outside of that, what are we missing?

So we ran another battle, and uhh... as cool as something things were, it ultimately undid the first battle system change, aka... made the battle go waaaaaay too long. I'm back towards one action a turn, and just keep the first battle system change.

EDIT: Had to nuke the poll for revotes to work, so... vote again folks.

EDIT2: I should note, for the DM's side of things, trying to keep track of all those double actions....... ow my mind.

Two actions a turn.

Oh dear, is this going to turn into another "Currency debate" fiasco?

So most of people have already revoted, and it looks like it's in favor of just one action per turn. I will say one thing that's going to be changed however...

During the action phase of the rules, it says you can do the following:

• Extra Support Spell
  • During your turn, you may cast ONE extra support spell in addition to your main action.
    
  • Its cost is increased by 50%, rounded up.

Tis being changed to...

• Extra Support Spell
  • During your turn, you may cast ONE extra support spell in addition to your main action.

---

So that extra cost is being dropped, and as DoubleEx has noted to me, that extra cost was like punishment for trying to buff yourself while attacking in the same turn. There are several active support abilities on items as well, and what I'll do for them is say that they count as Support Spells.


This change will be included on Wednesday's update.

WOOPS, I BROUGHT THIS BACK UP!

This was originally shot down cause it added to how long battles were taking. Well, if I recall, this was suggested before we came up with the suggestion to do Planning/Action Phases. In theory, this idea should no longer add to the times of battles, because all those non-combat actions are automatic. Usually, there's no rolls required, just state it with your action line in the planning phase and it's good. I know we actually did try this during the testing of the planning/action phases, but... there's a lot of optimizations we're making to ZURPG right now that should speed battles back up, since we ran straight back into the problem. Stuff like...

• We don't have to keep track of durations anymore. They all last for the remainder of the battle.
  
• All Status Effects are being simplified down to one effect each.
  • Duplicates are getting removed. In the end, there should be a good number still, but they'll be a lot easier to remember.
• Counterattacks will require a specific passive skill, so instead of getting 5 to 10 minutes to go choose your attack out, it's already preset.
  
• A lot of gimmicky stuff on enemies is being simplified or reworked entirely.
  
• Bonuses will be listed on all profiles, so instead of having to look up 5 different items to see what your attack bonus is, you'll have one handy-dandy spot to look at it.
  
• We may have more functionality with Navi in the future. I'm trying to think of different things I can suggest to Sephiroth to add that theoretically won't be a pain to add, and stuff that's simple but helpful. For example, a $difference ($d for short) function that calculates the absolute value of the difference in successes of the last two dice rolls. That'll be very helpful for higher level calculations, or just anyone that doesn't feel like doing math in their heads.
  
• This one has technically been in, but people have been lazy about it. Damage calc is supposed to go on the defender, using info from the attack line, difference in successes, and his own bonuses. That said, DM is perfectly allowed to hit $endturn once the actual attack and resulting things have resolved, save for damage calc.
  

There's a lot of active abilities on items that feel like support spells that I'm having to add "This counts as a Support Spell" so that you can cast it as an Extra Support Spell and then attack, otherwise it takes two rounds to attack after applying it and it feels kind of meh as a result.


I have cleared the poll and am now awaiting revotes!

Kay, this is being officialized. I'll get the rules updated soon.