I had a really complicated but what I thought would be really cool magic/ability system for my RPG I was going to make years ago.
Essentially, every round would have a reserve of time tokens and every action from every character, even enemies, took time tokens away from the pile. Characters would have an initiative similar to Dungeons and Dragons so quicker characters got the first choice and slower characters had to deal with a potentially small pot of time tokens.
That way when building and leveling up your character you really have to balance out power and speed. You'd also have to worry about enemies taking time away from the pile so I think it would really keep the typical JRPG grind fresh. Will you fight a group of quick enemies that eat away at the time pot? Do you want one character to have a huge attack that takes a lot of time so the others can take little time? Do you want everyone to try to make balanced attacks?
I also planned for augments that could do things that let characters overpower attacks (say Fire typically cost 5 tokens, you could overpower it to 10 for increased damage), give more time to the pot, give bonus to initiate, etc.
There were of course a few problems-- would I have to have 0 point abilities? How do I account for higher level actions, do I always keep the same amount of time in a round or increase the token pot?
It was a fun idea, I just never really got around to balancing it and I never got around to actually making the game.
