Aetylus

I mean, wasn't this the case with PnP or even classic IE? A dagger did 1d4 and you didn't get to go any more often than someone wielding a 2d4 bastard sword. I'm not saying that this was a good thing (I only understood it as a role-playing choice in BG/BG2 to be deliberately suboptimal), but how do newer TB or editions of D&D handle this? Yup, in the original D+D etc this was the case... bigger weapons were simply better than small/fast weapons... the compensation was class weapon limits. So Fighter could use swords (1d8), Cleric could use maces(1d6), mages could use daggers (1d4) etc. As explained above, the newer round based pen and paper system were more nuanced, using weapon proficiencies etc to balance rather than classes... but still basically limiting access to the 'good' weapons. In the RTwP game the basic balancing act was speed vs damage (which better than any round based system imo), which didn't require a hard limit on weapons... but that is pretty much broken under a round based approach.

The pen-and-paper systems used round based because that is the only practical way to do it with pen-and-paper. Computer RPGs have then used more nuanced systems because the computer can handle the math. Deadfire's RTwP system basically does this. So if a character has a dagger and light armour, then their attack speed is faster, so they hit more often. The equivalent to the RTwP system (which is more nuanced) is to use a continuous turn based system (like the ticks noted above). All of the rules and balancing would move over pretty directly then. By going to rounds, all of the balancing is broken because speed is now largely irrelevant. There is no advantage to using dagger, because it doesn't go any faster than a two-handed axe, but it does much less damage. So basically: Deadfire is balanced around RTwP. 'Tick' based mimics RTwP so is 'pre-balanced'. Round based breaks all the existing game balance.

Yup... I agree that "continuous turn based" would be a much better system than "round turn based". A continuous system is basically a mirror of the RTwP approach... so things like initiative translate meaningfully. It would work something like this: Take three characters: Fast Fred(FF), with -30% initiative bonus Medium Molly(MM), no initiative modifier Slow Sam(SS), +30% initiative penalty Round based system: Round 1 - FF Round 1 - MM Round 1 - SS Round 2 - FF Round 2 - MM Round 2 - SS Round 3 - FF Round 3 - MM Round 3 - SS Round 4 - FF Round 4 - MM Round 4 - SS So everyone gets the same turns and initiative is pretty much meaningless Whereas a continuous system: Tick 0.7 FF Tick 1.0 MM Tick 1.3 SS Tick 1.4 FF Tick 2.0 MM Tick 2.1 FF Tick 2.6 SS Tick 2.8 FF Tick 3.0 MM Tick 3.5 FF Tick 3.9 SS Tick 4.0 MM So characters get the equivalent number of turns that they would get in RTwP.