Homebrew '82: Combat Flowchart

If I ever get back into running a tabletop RPG, it would probably be my own evolving Homebrew '82 system, with players most probably being friends and colleagues who haven't played D&D or any other RPG at all. Thus, I'm aiming for my Homebrew '82 Player's Guide to contain enough introductory material for total newbies to get comfortable with it all.

Thus, here's a draft of a visual flowchart for the typical progression of combat...

Click for bigger version.

Of course it will be backed up by several pages of text, but it may be useful to have this sitting out on the table. It's pretty basic stuff for most readers, probably, but hopefully useful for people just starting out.

FYI, out of curiosity, I googled the phrase "combat flowchart" and found a strange hodge-podge of quasi-similar things, but not much that fits into the old-school D&D-ish box that I'm comfortable with. Probably because combat is pretty simple in these systems (at least compared to the 3rd and 4th editions of ye olde game) and doesn't really call out for something like this. But still... newbies...  :-)

I should mention that I'm not intending to have a formalized "declare actions" phase in each round. I get the nuances of strategy that this can offer, but I generally agree with Cyclopeatron that it simplifies and speeds things up to drop this step, and also that the side that loses initiative already has enough to deal with (you know, like maybe dying before getting a chance to strike back?)

Also, I'm dumping lots of things into the "Take 1 melee action" phase. Attacks, parries/blocks, spell-casting (which is instantaneous), missile firing, sneaky maneuvers, or an extra burst of movement -- they're all possible actions, and they're all done in this step. This idea may be blasphemous to many readers used to spells and missiles going off first, but it's a reflection for how D&D always seemed to go for us back in the day... even when we started with the best intentions of following all of the rules to the letter.  :-)