Using action points instead of initiative has been great. It works like this:

Just Go!

We just start, then whoever said they hit the bartender spends an Action Point. Most characters have 3. Once everyone’s spent their Action Points, a new round begins.

The table doesn’t have that feeling of ‘combat!, wait, no, roll initiative, record it, wait for it, who’s first? okay-go-roll-go’.

Every Initiative System Fixed

The table sometime uses ‘round the clock’ initiative (left-of-the-GM starts, then round the table). Once someone runs out of Action Points, they stop taking actions, but you still go round the table until nobody can act.

At other times, we default to something like ‘just go whenever you want’. In this case, the Action Points resolve disagreements about who’s going first (most Action Points wins) and provides arbitration about how many actions are ’too many actions’ for a round.

Or we can use players-then-monsters initiative, or…

You get the idea. Action Points provide a limit. The table can go with the flow, even changing how they want to handle ‘initiative’ mid-way through a combat round.

System Pit-Falls

Air-Time

You don’t want someone hogging the spot-light, going ‘um’ for five times as long as everyone else. BIND uses various fixes.

• Make combat fast! Because people feel more forgiving of someone getting the spotlight for thirty seconds, when they got 5 if the entire fight takes 60 seconds.
• Have things to do! Moving, shouting, and guarding a player all cost an Action Point, so players with 2 Action Points will move with care, and those with 6 will zip around the fight, carelessly shouting suggestions.
• Make actions costly! A halberd can destroy a basilisk in one hit, but costs 3 Action Points to use. So characters with 5 Action Points will often move, attack, defend, then stop.

Hit-and-Runs

The system must avoid someone running up to an opponent, bopping them on the head, and running away before the opponent can do anything. If the PCs use this tactic, it feels cheap. If the NPCs use it, the players will feel cheated, and start talking about ‘realism’ (and rightfully so).

Other systems have tried to patch this problem with the extra rule: ‘attacks of opportunity’. As usual, I recommend avoiding rules whenever possible . BIND doesn’t have this problem, as all attacks are resisted actions. That means, when you run up to an opponent and roll to bop them on the head, a failed roll means they bop your head instead.