4 ed combat without movement

[Sir Edgen]

Hello everyone!
One of my friends asked me once about emulating turn based jrpg-style battle system in tabletop games. My first thought was about d&d 4 ed, but there is one problem. In 4 ed tactical movement is one of key elements of battle, and in many jrpg's, where characters "move" to an abstract space during combat, it simply doesn't exist. How would you convert simple movement and effects of powers such as "push target x squares" or "shift x squares" so that they would still benefit players in jrpg combat? One of my thoughts was accumulating positive or negative "movement points" which you gain when you move or forced to move and which you or your enemies can spend to gain some benefit or affect other characters (for example, spend x points to gain bonus to attack or trip opponent)

[Morty]

Like you said, forced movement is such a major part of 4E that this would be a hefty project and very tricky to balance. Building up points to use on something seems like an interesting idea, but you'd have to make it up from scratch.

Also, how would AoEs work in such a system?

[ScrivenerofDoom]

Check out 13th Age for how this might work.

The combat rules are in the SRD.

[MoutonRustique]

It would not be without potentially important consequences, but something that really fits the feel of forced movement for a "static" JRPG fight would be initiative manipulation.

You get pushed, slid = move down
You get an advantageous position/extra movement = move up

If you wanted to be intense, you could say that the last person on the list is [dazed] when pushed further, and conversely, the first person on the list gets CA against everyone when it gets a boost up.

[MinotaurWarblad]

It would not be without potentially important consequences, but something that really fits the feel of forced movement for a "static" JRPG fight would be initiative manipulation.

You get pushed, slid = move down
You get an advantageous position/extra movement = move up

If you wanted to be intense, you could say that the last person on the list is [dazed] when pushed further, and conversely, the first person on the list gets CA against everyone when it gets a boost up.

This one is the idea that looks best to me, at least on the drawing board. It’s neat in that it if you incorporate movement speed, it tilts things such that elves and gnolls get a natural edge to initiative, while dwarves and heavy armor wearers probably go last. I kinda like it. Certain classes have to choose between better defenses or better initiative... The improved initiative feat is even better than before.

Initiative would work better round-by-round with the above method. Maybe add +1 or -1 to initiative rolls for each point of speed above or below 6, then any time you get to shift as part of a power you add half the number of squares you shift as a bonus to your initiative roll for the next round? On the flip side, being pulled, pushed, or slid inflicts a penalty equal to the total number of squares of forced movement to next round’s initiative roll.