The Business: A Palladium That Survives Through The 21st Century (Part 2)

(Following from yesterday's post.)

A Testable Combat Procedure

Here's something you can work with. Adapting from AD&D1e because Palladium is Kevin's house rules as it is, so why not?

1. Determine if one or more parties are Surprised. (For Surprise, see (XX).)
2. Determine distance between the parties, if unknown.
3. If either no parties are Surprised, or all parties are equally Surprised, then Roll Initative.
4. Determine the results of all movement and actions taken by the winning party in this order, as applicable.
   1. Avoid engagement if possible.
   2. Attempt to parley.
   3. Await action by other party or parties.
   4. Use ranged attacks or supernatural powers.
   5. Either close into or Charge into melee contact. (For Charge, see (XX).)
   6. Set weapons against potential enemy Charge. (For Set, see (XX).)
   7. Melee combat (armed or unarmed, lethal or not)
   8. Grapple or Hold
5. Determine the results of each remaining party's movements and actions in the Initative order. (Repeat the subroutine above.)
6. Continue this procedure until one party cannot or will not continue for whatever reason.

Initiative: Roll 1d20. Add the highest Initiative modifier in that party to the roll. Highest roll wins and goes first. If there are three or more parties, track each result.

Surprise: Relative to each party's capacity for detection; an encounter in the air between Valkyries and hostile mecha will be measured in Miles or Kilometers (as the users prefer), while an encounter between Elves and Orcs will be measured in Yards or Meters. Someone able to detect and act against someone unable to detect them automatically gains Surprise.

If both parties can detect the other, but neither has yet, then Skill Checks may be made to shift the Surprise odds in their favor. Otherwise, by default, this is down to a simple roll of 1d6. On a roll of 1 or 2, that party is Surprised.

If multiple parties are Surprised, compare the results. If the results are the same, both parties are Surprised for the same amount of time (permitting others to converge on their location, which is why this matters); if not, the less Surprised party gets the benefits of Surprise for the difference between the results. (e.g. One gets a 1, one gets a 2; the party rolling a 2 gets one Surprise routine against the other before Initiative is rolled.)

The benefit of Surprise is that the winner gets to use the subroutine above unopposed. Shooters get their full Rate of Fire. Movers get their full movement allotment. Shooters and strikers get to roll to strike unopposed, grapplers automatically succeed, and power wielders get one free power usage (one spell, one psi power, etc.) Auto-Kill attacks (see (XX)) are permitted under Surprise. They can also flee contact unopposed.

(Don't get Surprised. Ambush your enemies every chance you get. Surprise is that powerful; this is intended.)

Commentary

This is a Combat Procedure that scales well. You can see that this easily goes up from Man-to-Man to Warbands to Armies to The Battle of Amritsar.

Yes, I am telling you that this procedure will handle a massive Space Opera fleet action that large. It can go bigger. It can handle what you read about in the Grand Daddy of ALL Space Opera: The Boskone War of Lensmen.

This is what you need in a tabletop fantastic adventure wargame product. Not Muh Comicbook Slugfest.

And yeah, your mans are going to get hurt. We'll talk about that tomorrow.