Tick based initiative

[Senoj]

Are there any rulesets or extensions out that use a tick based initiative? What do I mean by tick based? When initiative is rolled it determines how many ticks you get to spend. As you declare an action your tick points decrease based on the action you took. You take tick points at the beginning and reduce it by the action cost and are reinserted back into initiative based on the new tick count. Initiative is given to the person with the highest tick. When everyone is at zero, a new initiative is determined. This initiative tends to favor the quick and brings into play rushed actions that are faster, but less accurate.

This can also be done low initiative and add up.

I have encountered this type of initiative over the years in several games. The ones that immediately come to mind is Victorianna, Twilight 2013, and even the CEATS system with Rolemaster. I think Hackmaster used something similar; however, I only played a demo game of that when the new version came out.

[dr_venture]

That's a pretty cool idea, I'd love to see it implemented as an extension. I also saw another INIT systems that was similar, except that it eliminated rounds altogether - you just more or less rolled a d10 or 20 minus your DEX mod, and added a base set number for the type of action you were committing to. Then once everyone had an INIT value, the action counter just started ticking up until it hit the lowest INIT value... that person performed their action, announced their next action, rolled a new INIT that is added to their previous INIT (so Initiatives are essentially rolling numbers that get bigger as time goes on), and the action counter continues to click upwards. Everything gets an INIT - get stunned? The stun effect gets it's own INIT and is in effect until the action counter counts up to where the effect expires.

It's a really simple system that keeps people on their toes, as the order of combat is always changing, just like in the system you described. FG is the perfect place to use such a system, but alas, no one has implemented such a thing yet. I sure wish there was a CoreRPG extension that would bring such a functionality to all of the Core-based rules systems... *sniff*