Simple/clean mechanical proposal to fix most of the balance issues with TB mode

[amblingalong]

Balance issues with the current system

In the current move, you have one move action and one standard action per turn, plus unlimited free actions. That causes the following set of game balance issues:

• Firearms are overall now much better relative to bows/crossbows, because reload time is no longer a significant penalty

• Many skills become nearly pointless, because they offer only single attacks and the default is now full attacks

• Knock down effects are much less useful, because enemies recover immediately from prone

• Skills that stun the enemy party each round (like Returning Storm) make the game trivially easy, because stun lasts the entire round

• Instant speed skills, like evasive fire or many wizard buffs, can be used infinitely in each round; at mid-to-endgame, this makes combat trivially simple, because you can (for example) trigger evasive fire 8+ times at the start of combat and wipe out entire enemy groups.

A simple solution

My proposal would address nearly all of these issues to some degree, and completely address most of them. Simply put, I suggest adding a third type of action per turn, a 'free' action, which would interact with each of the above systems. Some of these fixes are simple:

• Reloading consumes your 'free' action

• Getting up from prone consumes your 'free' action

• Each 'instant' speed skill consumes your free action, limiting you to one buff/Evasive Fire/etc. per round

• Getting stunned consumes actions based on the duration of stun in RTWP. A 2 second stun would consume only your free action, a 4 second stun would consume your free and move action, and only a 6 second stun would consume all three actions.

The fix to full/partial attacks is more complex:

• Making an attack consumes a standard action, as normal; however, this only is a partial, not a full attack

• However, if you have your free action remaining, you can instead make a full attack instead of a partial attack, at the cost of consuming your free action.

What this proposal doesn't fix

• Dexterity and attack speed bonuses being relatively less useful than in RTWP

I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[Flashman]

Great ideas I think. Seems like the turn based mode will be having some mechanical upgrades, and something like this would be definately an improvement. 

[Phenomenum]

Dexterity and attack speed bonuses being relatively less useful than in RTWP

 

There's a simple fix for this - go away for fixed 1 turn per round restriction (OR 1 attack per turn). If character have low enough Initiative the he/she should have more turns per round OR should be able perform more attacks/actions per turn. I other words, Initiative should work like an Action/Recovery Speed in RTwP and allow to attack more often.

 

Until Obsidian don't rework Initiative mechanic in this way, Dexterity and Attack Speed will not be useful. Period.

Edited February 26, 2019 by Phenomenum