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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 7099995" data-attributes="member: 5143">The default method is that you roll initiative when 2 opposing sides become aware of each other.  Generally, that means the second a door opens and at least one of the enemies have line of sight to at least one PC and at least one of the PCs have line of sight to at least one of the enemies.This gets a little confused in situations where you can already see the enemies but you didn't think they were dangerous or that you were going to fight them.  In this case, you roll for initiative when someone declares they are taking a violent action (or at least an action that the other side is going to want to react to).When someone has said "I cast charm person", I've said "Ok, roll for initiative since the person you are talking to sees you reach into your spell component pouch and start moving your fingers around while mumbling. They don't know what you are casting and they think it is harmful. It takes a couple of seconds to complete your spell and they aren't just going to stand there and wait for it to finish. If they go before you, they might kill you before you can cast the spell."I know that in some situations it SEEMS counter-intuitive to have the person who opens the door go last but look at it this way:You are about to open a door. You hear monsters inside. You open the door ready to do battle with them. You need to look around and quickly take stock of the enemy's locations, the obstacles in the room, any traps or other dangers you might not have heard and then you need to move the distance across the room to get into melee with an enemy, determine the right kind of strike to use and the angle to strike at.All of that takes time. It isn't immediate. Although we run everything as a turn based system, in theory it is all happening simultaneously. The Fighter who kicked open the door isn't actually standing there while all his allies run past him and kill all the monsters.  He's running up with them and winding up his swing, but his faster allies get their attacks in half a second before he does. Or the monsters heard the door open and were just quicker about running up to him before he got a chance to survey the room.It's just that in an effort not to go insane, we only let one person act at a time and there's some weirdness involved in that it appears the Fighter who opens the door stands there dumbfounded while everyone else fights around him.  It's just an issue you have to deal with since the alternative is constant arguments about who goes first.After all, if the Fighter is ready for combat, hears enemies in the room and opens the door, he should go first.  But what happens if the enemies heard the Fighter before he opened the door and got their weapons ready and prepared to attack as soon as the door was opened. Surely they should go first. But what if the enemies are across the room and only have melee weapons and so does the Fighter. The Ranger with a bow standing behind the Fighter was also prepared for combat and it takes less time to fire the bow than run across the room. So surely HE should go first. But wait, one of the enemies has a bow as well and he nocked it and pointed it at the door before it opened. The Ranger has a Fighter in front of him and has to wait for the door to open fully before he can see the enemies. The enemy just needs the door open far enough to see the Fighter in order to fire. Surely HE should go first.You then eventually figure out that you could make a case for literally ANYONE in the combat going first and you're back to just rolling randomly. That's kind of the point of initiative. It's also why Christopher Perkins said that the Ready action cannot be taken until AFTER initiative is rolled and you are in combat.</blockquote>

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