#222 – House Rules: Holding and Readying Actions

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Continuing our discussion of combat options in Palladium role-playing games mechanics. We're delving now into the realm of house rules. This one is one that is something that every group I've played in handles it differently. And that is, how do you delay a ready, an action in the Palladium initiative system? Buckley, do you have a suggestion?

Do you have a method that you prefer in The '80s in general, most role-playing games didn't have this as a concept, which in hindsight is weird because I use it all the time now in most games.

Why do you think they didn't?

I don't know. I think it might be because of how they were looking at combat, that you would never want to pause and not take your action. You always want to go, right? You always want to get into the action. You always want to attack or do what you're going to do. Why would you ever pause and wait for things to happen?

So, okay, again, and folks, folks at home, we're actually free-forming this. This isn't a prepared spiel we're going through here. Okay. Initiative systems, combat systems, RPGs, we all accept they're ultimately founded in war games, right? Did early war games just not have the concept of coordinated fire?

I don't know. It's not an area that I have enough experience in. They had to have though, right? I would think. It's, it's just interesting. So to like kind of bring it forward though, the concept here is that I rolled a 20 for my initiative. I get to go first, but I have no idea either as a person what I want to do as a player or what my character wants to do. So I'm going to hold my action, which is slightly different concept than readying your action. And readying really came in like 3rd edition D&D when it was really quantified, at least my experience, where you are readying a reaction to something that happens in the scene. I am a spellcaster. This was the most common one that I would use. I'm going to counter magic, another spellcaster. So as soon as they start to cast, I'm going to cast dispel magic on them and stop them from doing whatever they're going to do. And that was a very specific criteria. It was an if-then statement. And if you never, if you never finished it, you just lost your turn. Okay.

That sounds about right.

Yeah. There was also what ended up being a house rule in a lot of the games was I'm going to hold my action. I don't know what's happening. I don't know what's going to happen. I'm going to hold my action and be ready to kind of interrupt what is happening in this scene. 2 very different discrete things.

Very different. And I've seen many games that do one or the other, but rarely both.

Rarely both.

Uh, if you're doing a hold action, that might— that trumps in my way the ready action. Because it gives you more versatility. You have more option of things to happen. I have been using the hold action more in pretty much any game that I play, unless for some reason it explicitly says you can't or shouldn't. And I like the freedom there. I've seen this in real life as well. Look at 2 mixed martial arts combatants. One person could be kind of doing just enough to not get hit and looking for that opening. They're not really actively in that fight, but then all of a sudden they see the opening they look for and bam, they strike, they kick. And it's a different situation, especially in— if you've ever watched a boxing match or an MMA match where one of the, one of the 2 combatants obviously has the advantage, they obviously has—

The initiative.

The initiative. But they're choosing not to act on it right away because they're holding their action, looking for that opportunity that they want. Now, in the core rules, rules as written, this is not a concept anywhere in Palladium.

Yeah, there is no wait, delay, hold, ready, none of that.

There's not even a hint of it where You could move to a position and wait. You know, there's— it's, it's just not there. Although in most games I've played, organically it became a house rule, and I don't think anyone even really consciously made the decision. You'd have the first player in one session go, hey, can I just hold my action? I don't know what I want to do yet. Okay, sure, tell me when you want to jump in. And that's usually as quick as it is, you know, as much discussion about it.

I would say then, just thinking on it now, I've, I've done both in the past. I've done hold actions and delay or ready actions or overwatch, as some video games of the turn-based nature like XCOM and stuff call it. For me to run something like Palladium, which doesn't have it, and if I were to add it in, and I will because it's inevitable, I would do both. And I'm Thinking that the idea would be that if you are delaying and simply like, I don't know what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna watch and see what happens, you can try and interject, you know, or join into the initiative order at some point later. And I guess if you are waiting to react to something, you can either choose to go right after it, or you can maybe do some kind of a test to see if you can interrupt it. Like roll off an initiative test or something, see who gets it first.

If I was to codify it more than just off the cuff, if you are limiting yourself to an if-then statement—

Well, that would be delay action.

A delayed action.

Or sorry, ready action.

Ready action.

Delay is the, I don't know what I'm going to do, I'm going to wait.

So if you were going to do the if-then, the ready action, I would, because you're sacrificing anything else you can do, I would just let you do that.

I would say that, yeah, you, if on your turn you want to ready an action, I say you just spend the action point or the attack for it. It's spent. It just hasn't happened yet.

Right. Like I'm going to shoot that person when they cross this line or when they turn, or I'm going to cast this spell when this happens. And that if-then statement, you've sacrificed your ability to do anything else. But it will happen.

Yeah, so yeah, there's no need to roll to interrupt.

Right. Now on the ready action, the hold action.

Sorry, again, sorry, that was ready action.

Yes.

The ready action. Okay, let's review here. So we got hold, which is I don't know what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna wait and see what happens. And then there's got the delay or ready. Let's just go with, let's forget delay because delay is confusing. Am I delaying my action or delaying my turn?

Right.

Let's go with hold versus ready. We did ready.

Right. So on a hold action, because you have the versatility, that's where I would probably crib from several of the games that I've played where you have to, there's a challenge involved. You have to beat the person that you want to interrupt because now you're stealing their agency in some ways. You know, the bad guy is going to come down with his sword and lop off the head of your buddy. Well, I've been on hold, so I'm going to interrupt them and do something to stop them from accomplishing that. Now I need to beat them in some sort of challenge, maybe a physical prowess check, or maybe I have an ambush skill I'm going to use, or something in that way where it's— you may not— you may succeed in the attack that you want, but it might not be at the time that you want it to happen.

Yeah, yeah. It could be as simple as both of you just roll a quick initiative check and see who gets the better.

Yeah, and maybe, you know, bubble that off.

Nice callback. Yeah, yeah. A lot of this is assuming we're using, who knows, we don't know what initiative system.

And it could also be interesting If you don't allow those, let's say in your game, I just want to stick with what the rules say. And if a player doesn't know what they're doing, they just lose their turn. And that might sound kind of like a dick move, but if you're upfront about it, it also could keep players engaged a little bit more. So when their turn comes around, they know what they're going to do. And that could be just time management and table management.

My advice, if you are going to do that, is you need to set in a minimum action cost per phase. Like, somebody should not be able to just delay, delay, delay, delay, and then after everyone is done, take all of their actions. It— if regardless of whatever system you're using, if you're using the 3-phase combat rounds that we've talked about before, If you're simply just going round and round until everybody's taken an action over and over and run out of points, or if you're using the bubble, if somebody chooses to pass or somebody chooses to delay and that doesn't happen, it should count as if they have passed and that should cost them an action. Because remember, depending upon what edition of Palladium's rules you're looking at, it truly does divide things by attacks per melee. Like, Your speed could get divided by the number of attacks that you have. So if you only have 2 attacks, but you're, you're cutting off, you can't just wait and then at the end of the turn run 30 miles or something.

Right, right, exactly.

You gotta, you gotta wait till it's all done. Sorry, you gotta pay the cost, pay the price.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So yeah, it's, it seems to be a staple of most games these days that is somewhere it's described or in the rules somewhere, a hold action or a ready action. Something like that. And we've never, just never been in the Palladium system. Now, I think it works in the Palladium system though. But as you say, it has to cost a little bit. You just don't get it for free.

And I think there could be situations where if you are using the ready action option that we are coming up with and you choose to keep that going across multiple, let's call them phases of the round where people were cycling through their attacks because That seems to be the most common approach that I've seen to people running Palladium. That's how we're doing it in the Rifts game that we're doing on the show. That's how I've seen it in every game that I've played with pickup players. If you do that, if you choose, you know what I was readying to do didn't get to happen last phase, but there's still a chance that it will happen. So I'm going to keep doing that. I'm still readying it. I would say that you simply, again, spend an extra action point each round to hold, to dedicate that action. So that, and that is the tax, the action tax for getting to ensure that your action happens before the opponent's should that event trigger.

Yeah, absolutely.

Hmm. Yeah. I mean, it seems pretty straightforward.

Absolutely. And just the fact that it wasn't in the rules doesn't mean you can't house rule it. And Palladium, if anything, Palladium is the system you're going to do a house rule with for some reason, some variable somewhere.

Yep.

And as we've talked about before, just make sure everyone at the table knows what that house rule is and how you're gonna interpret it. So it's not a surprise. That's, that's never fun. And yeah, have fun with it.

And you don't have to come up with all of these house rules before you run the game. If you do come up with something like this on the fly, At least make sure everyone knows what you're coming up with. Write it down, but then also be prepared to revisit it and revise it if you need to.

Absolutely.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, quick one. Ready versus hold. And if you have some thoughts on this, because it's always entertaining that people have these strong-held opinions about these very esoteric rules, come visit us on the Discord and check it out. You know, talk with us about it, this or any other podcasts. And if you're in the mind, go check out our merch page, get some really cool stickers for the Glitter Boys logo, maybe a bunch of some, uh, uh, a throw or a rug or something like that with Glitter Boys on it. Maybe not rug, throw, throw. And then, uh, if at all, and you feel like supporting us a little bit, show up on our Ko-fi page.

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