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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8405804" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't understand your schema. Are the times times at the table or are they imagined times in the fiction? And what is the meaning of the "prime" markers on T1? And are you asking about my description of D&D turn-by-turn combat, or my description of a system that would not have the same issue?In any event, I've already posted an illustration of the issue upthread; so has [USER=6795602]@FrogReaver[/USER]. I'll set out another. We have two characters in the initiative order, P (controlled by a player) and N (controlled by the GM). They are separated by 25', a distance which either an cover with a single movement. N is at the top of the initiative order. Here are two possible sequences of events that follow.(1) The GM decides that N holds their position, and shoots P. The attack hits. P's hit point total is adjusted. The player decides that P takes some sort of healing action in response to being shot.(2) The GM decides that N holds their position, and shoots P. The attack hits. P's hit point total is adjusted. The player decides that P closes to melee with N.According to the rules of the game, both (1) and (2) occur over a 6-second period. The rules of the game (including the rules for movement, opportunity attacks and similar) also establish that it is possible, in some circumstances, for P to close the distance to N and get too close to N for N to shoot effectively. (This would be the case in a scenario that resembled (2) but the initiative order was reversed.) That knowledge informs our understanding of the actual scenarios.So in (2), something must have happened that made it possible for N to get a shot off before P got all up in N's face. You have suggested one possibility: P stumbles. N's choice In the fiction) to shoot rather than, say, fall back, is informed by observing that P stumbles. But at the table, we cannot establish the fiction that P stumbles until after N's turn is fully resolved, and we now come to P's turn, and we have to posit some fiction that will explain why P couldn't get to N before N got a chance at a clean shot.That is reinforced by (1), where there is no narration that P stumbled, because P doesn't move at all. In (1) P's action clearly follows, in the fiction, on N's - N shoots, P treats the resulting wound - which does make one wonder what is N doing while P treats their wound? Perhaps at the top of the next initiative order we will come up with another bit of narration that explains that - maybe N is taking a long time to nock another arrow? - but we won't be able to narrate that either until after the GM declares N's action. Yet in the fiction whatever that is is supposed to be a (partial) cause of whatever action it is that N takes!I hope that I have made the point reasonably clear.</blockquote>

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