Idea for decreasing handling time in Runequest combat

Runequest orders actions in terms of "strike ranks". You declare your action, and you look up how many "strike ranks" the action takes, which may be modified by your character's formal attributes. Then we go through the different actions in order of strike rank, from lowest (fastest) to highest (slowest).

People run Runequest strike ranks in one of two different ways:

  • When you have made your action, your turn ends, and resets the next round
  • When you have made your action, you declare a new action, which "wraps around" to the strike ranks of the next round

I find the latter much, much more interesting. If I ever play Runequest (and it's on the list) I'll be doing the latter.

If you don't play with wraparound strike ranks, I think Runequest has the same action ordering procedure as AD&D's segments. Welcome to snoozefill! I already play D&D all the time, I don't need a d100-clone with fancy worldbuilding.

On the other hand, if you play with wraparound strike ranks, actions will frequently get out of hand. You'll have trouble coordinating with your allies (this is a good thing). Combat will unfold chaotically, unpredictably, nobody will be able to easily put a stop to it.

I want to organize strike ranks in a circle, as a clock. If you're doing an SR1 action, you're at 1 o'clock. If you're doing SR12, you're at 12 o'clock. If you did an SR2 action, we've reached 2 o'clock, and now you're committing to an SR3 action, you're at 5 o'clock. Everybody knows how to read a clock, so we simply have to go in a circle around the clock.

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