Initiative: if you go first then you went first.

[K]

Initiatives come in these varieties:

5. Ready: Waiting for someone to round the corner, saw them first because of longer sight in darkness or they were making noise, hiding or sneaking ambusher, etc.

4. Prepped: Guards in war zone. Adventurers poking around a tomb.

3. Alert. Guard in a a peace zone. Basic adventurer sitting in an inn.

2. Distracted. Average guy walking down the street. Person working at something.

1. Oblivious. Doing something loud and distracting. Dozing off.


Highest initiatve goes first and everyone goes based on alertness. This means that groups will go simultaneously.

Actions are declared before each round and changing actions in min-round drops you one level.

Sound workable?

[Captain_Bleach]

It is, assuming that all parties involved do not have extra-sensitive senses (tremorsense, supernatural awareness, etc.). It works quite well. So how would you handle a Rogue attempting sneak up on an enemy he sees, only that he does not know that said enemy has Blindsense, and the enemy realizes that someone's sneaking up on him.

[Aycarus]

You still need to be more specific as to how simultaneous actions are resolved. For example, Person A and Person B are on opposite sides of a doorway and have the same initiative. Person A declares he is attacking Person B and Person B declares that he is closing the door. What happens?

[Captain_Bleach]

Whoever is more alert goes first. How to determine Alertness, K has not said yet.

[Voss]

Meh. I don't much care for it. Sometimes people just react faster than others. You can have two people walking down the street chatting with each other and one reacts to the mugger popping out of the alley while the other hasn't even noticed yet. In fact, its not inconceivable that he reacts so quickly that he acts before the mugger does (who was prepped and waiting for someone to come by).

What sort of benefit are you looking for in this?

[K]

1203371543[/unixtime]]You still need to be more specific as to how simultaneous actions are resolved. For example, Person A and Person B are on opposite sides of a doorway and have the same initiative. Person A declares he is attacking Person B and Person B declares that he is closing the door. What happens?

Door closes, and A has to change his action. You declare your action before the turn

--------------

A person's level of alertness is determined by what they are doing and when you notice someone, and if you can act first you can act first.

[Voss]

1203372114[/unixtime]]
A person's level of alertness is determined by what they are doing and when you notice someone, and if you can act first you can act first.

Which means what? Oblivious guard is dozing off at his post. Readied guy starts charging him. If, at some point during that charge, the guard notices him, does he get to shoot him?

[Manxome]

1203372114[/unixtime]]Door closes, and A has to change his action. You declare your action before the turn

But what's the general algorithm for deciding which action has priority, assuming the actors have equal alertness? Die roll? Seating order? Plot importance? The DM's intuition about which action is "faster"?

You should also specify the order in which actions are declared, and when players have the option of changing them (which could be "(reverse) initiative order" and "at any instant before you act," but you should still make that explicit). Some clarification regarding the number of times you can revise your action (and whether you suffer cumulative penalties for it) may also be in order.

[K]

1203373129[/unixtime]]

1203372114[/unixtime]]
A person's level of alertness is determined by what they are doing and when you notice someone, and if you can act first you can act first.

Which means what? Oblivious guard is dozing off at his post. Readied guy starts charging him. If, at some point during that charge, the guard notices him, does he get to shoot him?

No. Readied guy acts first.

[K]

1203373157[/unixtime]]

1203372114[/unixtime]]Door closes, and A has to change his action. You declare your action before the turn

But what's the general algorithm for deciding which action has priority, assuming the actors have equal alertness? Die roll? Seating order? Plot importance? The DM's intuition about which action is "faster"?

You should also specify the order in which actions are declared, and when players have the option of changing them (which could be "(reverse) initiative order" and "at any instant before you act," but you should still make that explicit). Some clarification regarding the number of times you can revise your action (and whether you suffer cumulative penalties for it) may also be in order.

A simple "higher Dex moves first and declares last" works for me, with a roll off for ties.

[PhoneLobster]

Oddly I'd just written something similar myself having realised that any sort of bonus+roll contest initiative system is just too onerous.

But this...

Actions are declared before each round

Means you may well also need some order of resolution precedence for declaring the actions as well as for resolving them.

[Voss]

1203375313[/unixtime]]

1203373129[/unixtime]]

1203372114[/unixtime]]
A person's level of alertness is determined by what they are doing and when you notice someone, and if you can act first you can act first.

Which means what? Oblivious guard is dozing off at his post. Readied guy starts charging him. If, at some point during that charge, the guard notices him, does he get to shoot him?

No. Readied guy acts first.

OK. So, what keeps the party from flatly declaring 'we are always readied unless you decree otherwise'? (ie, sleeping, studying, or whatever)

It sounds like you're going to have a lot of roll offs for ties, anyway, unless the range for Dex scores is really high... so, again, what are the benefits of this?

[K]

1203376131[/unixtime]]

OK. So, what keeps the party from flatly declaring 'we are always readied unless you decree otherwise'? (ie, sleeping, studying, or whatever)

It sounds like you're going to have a lot of roll offs for ties, anyway, unless the range for Dex scores is really high... so, again, what are the benefits of this?

I think being readied has to be readied to a specific action. So, you can say: "I'm ready for those monsters to rush through the door" and the invisible demon in the room will get the jump on you.

The benefits are:
1. No surprise round.
2. A lot less rolls.
3. An initiative system that makes any sense.

[NineInchNall]

The only thing I don't like is the retarded old-school action declaration bullshit. It serves no purpose except to confuse things. Have people choose their actions on their turns.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

"Actions are declared before each round." is not workable. This means that "oblivious gaurd" has to declare his action to attack an opponent that he has not observed, if I am reading it right. That seems pretty lousy.

I would like the above system as an addendum to the current situation. Everyone rolls initiative, but you get a +10 for status changes. For instance:

PCs hide behind wall, they are "ready"
Monster walks around wall, he is "prepped"
The PCs all get +10 to their initiative roll and the monster gets his flat roll. This likely means that the PCs go first.

Monster hides behind wall, he is "ready"
PCs walk around wall, they are "prepped"
This means that the party rogue or wizard may get in a free lick before the monster has a chance to act and demostrates that their character is surprisingly quick on the uptake, which I like.

What I don't like is the following situation:
PCs (a party of dwarves) are wandering around the empty tomb after 2 hours of non-incident (alert)
Gelatinous Cube is constantly ready for more dungeon-food (readied/prepped)
Gelatinous Cube clobbers dwarves when they walk around the corner, despite it's -5 initiative and 15' move speed. It gets up to 4 dwarves, and they pretty much die without getting any more actions.

As is not the case with oozes, but I also have a problem with closet trolls waiting in the closet so they can auto-win initiative and perhaps auto-kill PCs (ropers can be very high on this list).

Obviously, there are always going to be issues with closet-trolls when they win initiative all of the time, but I would like to at least give the PCs a fighting chance of saving against them (+5 maybe?).

[Crissa]

Can't A just end up attacking the door?

-Crissa

[K]

1203377204[/unixtime]]The only thing I don't like is the retarded old-school action declaration bullshit. It serves no purpose except to confuse things. Have people choose their actions on their turns.

Yeh, I think action declaration can go.

Closet trolls can't be in any workable system, so I'm not worried about them.

[JonSetanta]

Cut the 'alertness' categories down to 3.

[Koumei]

With action-declaration gone (I've only seen it slow games down rather than speed them up or make things more fun), I approve of this. It does seem fairly simple.

I suppose I have yet to see any major problems that will crop up, or arguments as to why this is the worst idea since Hitler's parents felt a bit randy, but that'll happen soon enough.

[Crissa]

I think five is good. It saves from the arguments about being alert in combat vs being alert on guard duty.

-Crissa

[JonSetanta]

It does prevent situations such as one I remember in the Guardians of Order forum years ago:

Two forces are in combat in a wreckage strewn field. One guy is crouching behind cover with only his head and a laser rifle sticking out, while another rushes up to deliver a devastating kick to crush his skull. This guy ain't just a D&D Fighter; he has power armor, supernatural abilities, whatever.

They are both aware of each other at the same time.
The melee specialist wins initiative even though they are hundreds of feet apart. He sprints towards the sniper and drop-kicks the turtling bastard with one blow.

Much arguing ensues.
Should the sniper have been able to shoot first?
Or, since this is in the realm of 'anything-goes-fantasy', is it possible for a character to run and attack faster than one hand pulls a trigger?

With K's proposal, the gunner is Ready while the superwarrior is only Prepped or Alert, at least IMHO.
Init would almost guarantee the shooter goes first, no?

[Aycarus]

1203384642[/unixtime]]With K's proposal, the gunner is Ready while the superwarrior is only Prepped or Alert, at least IMHO.
Init would almost guarantee the shooter goes first, no?

I assume the shooter needs to specify on the round before that his next action will be a readied action. (Should preparing a readied action constitute an action as well?)

As I understand it, assuming that the shooter is "readied", the shooter wouldn't necessarily go first, but he goes as soon as his "ready condition" is met. In this case, his "ready condition" is "somebody runs into my field of fire." If the ready condition is never met, he either (a) loses his turn or (b) goes at the end of the turn.

[JonSetanta]

But you can't ready an action if your init count has not arrived yet. It was a debate between the abstract function of an RPG against real-world physics, which does seem to clash quite often.
Rules on falling, for instance.

[K]

1203384642[/unixtime]]It does prevent situations such as one I remember in the Guardians of Order forum years ago:

Two forces are in combat in a wreckage strewn field. One guy is crouching behind cover with only his head and a laser rifle sticking out, while another rushes up to deliver a devastating kick to crush his skull. This guy ain't just a D&D Fighter; he has power armor, supernatural abilities, whatever.

They are both aware of each other at the same time.
The melee specialist wins initiative even though they are hundreds of feet apart. He sprints towards the sniper and drop-kicks the turtling bastard with one blow.

Much arguing ensues.
Should the sniper have been able to shoot first?
Or, since this is in the realm of 'anything-goes-fantasy', is it possible for a character to run and attack faster than one hand pulls a trigger?

With K's proposal, the gunner is Ready while the superwarrior is only Prepped or Alert, at least IMHO.
Init would almost guarantee the shooter goes first, no?

It'd have to work like this (and please forgive my ignorance of the game and/or genre):

Take One:
Sam the Sniper is walking along and he sees a dropship coming down from the sky. He runs up to a purch and gets Ready by declaring he'll "shoot any fvcker he sees wearing the wrong colors."

Pete the Power Armor guy pops around a corner, having just disembarked from a dropship for combat (Prepped). He takes one to the face from Sam.

Take Two:
Sam the Sniper is walking along and he sees a dropship coming down from the sky. He runs up to a purch and gets Ready by declaring he'll "shoot any fvcker he sees wearing the wrong colors."

Pete the Power Armor is sneaking toward the enemy base wearing stealth power armor for combat (Prepped). Both guys have a chance to see each other, but Pete makes his Save to find a hiding guy and Sam doesn't (because Pete is moving like Predator).

Pete smashes in Sam's face.

Take Three:
Sam the Sniper is walking along and he sees a dropship coming down from the sky. He runs up to a purch and gets Ready by declaring he'll "shoot any fvcker he sees wearing the wrong colors."

Pete the Power Armor guy pops around a corner, having just disembarked from a dropship for combat (Prepped). He's wearing infiltration armor and is wearing the right colors.

Sam knows something is wrong because this is a restricted zone, and so has to change his action, dropping it to Prepped. He has a higher Dex than Pete, so he gets to shoot Pete in the head.

Take Four:
Sam the Sniper is sitting in a purch and Prepped, because he's a guard and Command told him to expect an attack sometime today.

Pete the Power Armor guy pops around a corner, having just disembarked from a stealth dropship for combat (Prepped).

They both have the same Dex, so they roll off to see who gets the first shot. Pete wins the roll so before Sam can get his act together he gets his face kicked in.



-K

[SphereOfFeetMan]

This means that groups will go simultaneously.

Do you mean that Team Monster and Team Party will each be counted as a group, and they alternate turns? If so, this can create huge problems. One of the benefits of having (randomly) staggered initiatives alternating between Team Monster and Team Party is that you can react to the opposition intermittently. If all of Team Monster goes at one time, you have no chance to react. Focus Fire kills. Also, this problem is exponentially more problematic the larger the gaming group is.