What combat implications has this proposed alternative initiative rundown?

Question

Combat in the WoD is notoriously lengthy. The git rundown is about this:

1. Roll initiative
2. Sort high to low
3. Combat Round Start
4. Announce spending of rage for extra actions & handle "pre round" effects
5. Announce actions from bottom to top
6. Handle actions for the normal rundown in the order from top to bottom
7. Repeat 5 to 6 for rage rounds
8. Handle any "end of round" effects, such as regeneration.
9. Check for dead characters
10. Goto 3

To slim combat down, my groups often developed ways to try and speed combat up. So far my game experience of about a decade has brought the conclusion, that the up-and-down was hampering flow at the table the most, slowing down combat. So, in an attempt to speed up combat, my latest group developed this rundown:

1. Roll initiative
2. Sort high to low
3. Combat Round Start
4. Announce spending of rage for extra actions & handle "pre round" effects
5. GM announces the presence of enemy attack actions for the normal round, that players could react to (e.g. "The BSD (ini 5) attacks Alice (ini 7)" is announced but "The BSD (ini 5) attacks Charly (ini 3)" is not.)
6. Players that can and want to defend announce that
7. All actions are announced and handled at once, top to bottom
8. Repeat 5 to 7 for Rage actions
9. Handle "end of round" effects
10. Goto 3

This has so far proven to speed up the combat quite some, as step 5 is just one announcement, skipping some 10 minutes just to announce actions and further shortening the execution step for each player because people won't bicker what they had initially announced or not. It doesn't stop them from trying to discuss a bonus out of the situation here or there, looking up what their abilities need or do, or needing to calculate or request values repeatedly, but that's a case of 仕方がない (shikata ga nai) anyway.

Besides speeding up combat, are there other implications that the altered combat flow has?

Answer 1

You're removing the ST's ability to make enemies react to player actions, but that might actually be a plus.

Well, at least as far as time-in-combat goes. The general purpose of most ST/GM opposition is to hit hard and lose anyway. If they don't have a chance to defend themselves against slower attackers, that just enhances that purpose, since every hit the opposition blocks just muffles how hard they hit and delays the intended exit.

Really I wouldn't change much, with the possible exception of a big notable throwdown with opposition whose entire thing is that you're too slow, where you could add a step 5a and ask for slower players to declare attacks against them. Step 5a itself would do a lot to establish how important their speed is.