3eish draft - action sequences

My 3eish concept has been through a lot of drafts, but I recently arrived at the following rules for action sequences (combat) and I think they're quite close to what I'll use in the final thing. Who knows, maybe I'll even use the same words.

rule

Encounters take place over rounds, representing a few seconds each.

Actions

Each character may act once per round. Characters act in order from highest initiative (aka adrenaline) to lowest and then from highest Wisdom to lowest. Changes to initiative affect the next round's sequence, not the current round.

A character may make only one reaction between one action and the next. They may only react a second time by forfeiting their next action.

Actions that take a few seconds require a character to commit to them; a committed character can't react until after their next action.

Movement

A character may move up to their Move score as part of their action; if they take no action, they may move twice that amount.

Careful movement---such as balancing or leaping---requires a check; a failed check occupies the character's action. A failure by 5 or more means they fall.

Contested movement---such as climbing, parting tangles or swimming---requires an action, at least one free hand and a check; a failed check takes a few seconds (committing the character). A failure by 5 or more means they fall, become entangled or sink. 

if our lives be short - the gloghack

Being an excerpt of the beating mechanical heart of Hulk Rats, themselves being a light revision of Maze Rats.

HP as adrenaline (also initiative, I guess)

rule

In the general course of events, characters have Stamina which is depleted by strenous activity or injury. Every time they become injured, roll (an appropriate type of roll) under your stamina or take Critical Damage. However, when a crisis that needs to be resolved moment-to-moment breaks out, they can rely on a Rush of strength and agility to protect them instead.

Once a character becomes aware of danger, the player may spend points of their stamina up to your level (if your game has variable hit dice per class, two-thirds level for clerics/thieves and one-third level for mages [rounded up]) and roll that many dice. The total is your Rush, which is used for several things:

• Each round, action proceeds from highest Rush to lowest Rush and then from highest Stamina to lowest Stamina for characters that do not have the benefit of a Rush.
• When a character takes damage, they may spend points of Rush to reduce the damage by that amount (to a minimum of zero).
• If you have a Rush, taking any careful or deliberate action while being menaced by a danger (for example, within reach of a foe) costs 1 point of Rush.

A player may only roll for a Rush when their character becomes aware of a new source of danger. An encumbered character can't roll up a Rush.

If they have a chance to rest after a crisis is resolved, characters may exchange Rush for Stamina at a rate of three to one. If there is no opportunity to rest, or if there are excess points of Rush after exchanging the rest for Stamina, they are lost.

why?

Joke: everyone can backstab.

Woke: everyone can rage.

Listen, there are a lot of different interpretations of HP. This is another one, clearly. Probably someone's thought of it before. A lot of different ideas are coming together to form this: hit dice as a resource to replenish hit point pools (sort of reversed), hit dice being rolled at the start of an encounter, Into the Odd-style critical damage rolls, and (weirdly enough) an example consequence for failing a 4e-style Skill Challenge being the loss of a healing surge (out of combat) or damage (in combat).

Oh, and the rule about spending Rush to take actions while you're being menaced is taken from the Pressure mechanic from OLOG, an extremely cool replacement for Attacks of Opportunity which is (as far as I know) only described in the parenthetical note to the Arsenal ability of the Marine class in this post.

One thing I like about this is that the consequences of surprise/backstabbing sort of comes for free. I also think the Electric Bastionland rule about burdened characters having zero HP fits in very naturally. Not sure what else to say, I just kind of like it.