Thing is, though, if your spells fizzle when an enemy hits you, then placing spells higher in initiative order makes them more powerful. Of course, in the 1-6 system, with magic at the end, that's relative to your own actions, so presumably you're only doing melee or magic in one round. Re-rolling each round was a terrific way to add some terror / excitement to "when will the mage's spells go off?" If I'd rolled initiative before declaring what I was doing, and I rolled low, I wouldn't risk losing my big gun spells that round. If the initiative order stays the same throughout combat, you're more likely to see hoarding of powerful spells in one combat, vs another. I like the idea of round-by-round initiative, and declaring which spells will be cast at the beginning of combat also helped make casters' power much more limited compared to 3e (4e's solution was just to make magic weak-sauce, i.e. you were much better off with a second ranger than any controller in your party, b/c killing stuff faster was taken away from wizards, and given to rangers, and controlling enemies' position is also weaker than chopping them to pieces).
I'm all for a new initiative system, but now that I recall how challenging it was to play my evoker in 2e, I can't help but think they made it too simple. I didn't like declaring my actions at the start of the round, because how do you react to what's happening around you? All you could do is say "I'm no longer doing that, or just targetting a different foe. Anything more complex than that, you'd have to wait till next round). Fighters never had that problem.
I'm all for a new initiative system, but now that I recall how challenging it was to play my evoker in 2e, I can't help but think they made it too simple. I didn't like declaring my actions at the start of the round, because how do you react to what's happening around you? All you could do is say "I'm no longer doing that, or just targetting a different foe. Anything more complex than that, you'd have to wait till next round). Fighters never had that problem.