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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Harzel" data-source="post: 7180445" data-attributes="member: 6857506">Oh, ok, that's an interesting way to look at that.Yes.Thanks!Macros FTW <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />IIRC, declaration order is based on INT?  That is why Rath and Rupert had to declare before knowing what the NPC was up to, but Delsenora* gets to declare last.  Correct?*Somewhere there should be an NPC ally who greets her with "Delsenora... Delsenora... I see heaven when I see thee, Delsenora."Since she went last anyway, how would Delay have helped in this instance?Ok, very good description.  I think maybe one thing that gets in my (or really my players') way has now crystallized for me.  With cyclic initiative, at the time a player declares their action, they have exactly one scenario to deal with.  With an approach that wants to have concurrent actions, but uses initiative rolls when it must during resolution, the player faces a fluid situation which can play out differently depending on initiative rolls - or at least that is the way a player used to cyclic initiative is likely to think about it.  The 'problem' is more or less noticeable depending on how widely initiative rolls are needed in the resolution.  And one major cause of dependencies that in turn cause initiative rolls that in turn induce multiple scenarios is somebody casting an AoE.As an example, suppose we look at the situation above from Shoalar's point of view, with one change - that Rupert also declares that he is also going to move in addition to shooting (which seems like it would be not that unusual).  If he is an NPC, we don't mind him doing something dramatic but nonoptimal.  But if he is a PC (with Rath & company as NPCs), then he is going to be more worried about the effectiveness of his action.  So when Shoalar declares his action, he knows that Rath and Rupert are going to be moving and that Dels gets to declare after him, which means she will undoubtedly move also if he is casting Tidal Wave.  Casting Tidal Wave (or any other AoE) now seems like a questionable decision, because if he goes with a simple action declaration - cast Tidal Wave at a particular fixed spot - he might catch all three, but he could also end up doing nothing more than creating a big puddle.The only way I see for Shoalar to alleviate this is to (if allowed) make a more complicated action declaration - one that defines some aspects of his action in terms of what has been done by those with higher initiative rolls.  But you don't get very far down that path before it looks a lot like cyclic initiative, but with a programming exercise added in for Shoalar's action declaration.To me, this doesn't seem like an unlikely case because I have 3 casters amongst my PCs (well, 4, but the druid never casts - long story) and the one time that I suggested trying concurrent out, two of them wanted to cast AoEs first thing.  They had no idea how to proceed in a way that made sense to them, and I didn't have any help for them.Am I missing something?  In any case, I do thank you again for engaging on this.</blockquote>

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