Celebrim
Legend
moritheil said:
:shakes head: Come back when you have some idea about what you are talking about. D&D on the whole (and especially in its modern incarnation) takes the design position that rules and other game related things cannot be detected in character and therefore that rules should not be written which are based on the character's (rather than the player's) knowledge of the rules. Initiative is precisely a case in point. It exists at the game level as a simulationist tool, but it's merely a means of approximating what actually is going on. Characters in the game don't actually take turns moving and they don't actually know thier own initiative score. The difficulties to disarm traps aren't actually generally assumed to be in the universe described by the game to be divided into well known discrete units by people with enumerable levels of skill. Magic mouth's and Bindings can't actually be set to trigger on classes or a particular level or specific number's of hit points any other mechanic which is external to the simulation and cannot be observed from within it.
There is a very big difference between things that are real, things that are real in the game, and things that are real in the world being simulated by the game. I'm not the one failing to understand the subtle differences. For example:
moritheil said:
Is a statement that seems to imply that time moves differently for characters when they are in combat and when they aren't, as if the analog world suddenly became digital and discrete and filled with stop motion turns just when hostile spirits were present, and then moved back into continious time the moment hostility passed by. It's as if you were suggesting that the world was neatly divided into 5' steps and creatures really didn't have a facing. Not only is this a bit ridiculous, but its impinging the rules onto the game in a petty way that clearly violates their intention. Think about what you are suggesting. You are suggesting that the characters cannot prepare a combat action if the NPC is asleep, but could if he wasn't. What are you going to do when the PC says, "I pull my bow back and aim an arrow at the hobo. If he stirs I'm going to shoot him."? Do you say, "No, that's a ready action and since the ready action depends on the initiative order you can't actually take one until an initiative order exists, and the initiative order can't exist until the NPC is awake so you can't bend your bow and aim at him until he is."??? Nonsense. There is absolutely nothing that demands that initiative only be rolled in the round immediately before someone hits someone else, and in particular not allowing the player's to make initiative checks until they know for sure that combat might be emminent not only is unfair to the player's but at times conveys information to the players that might otherwise be concealed and can potentially complicate the DM's job. For example, if the player's enter a room containing a trap with a time delay, it's worth while knowing who takes actions in what order especially if PC's are competing to investigate something first (to scoop treasure if they can). Some sort of order needs to be kept, and actions will have to be termed in rounds so I will know who will be where when the thing goes off. But if I must ask for initiatives whenever the PC's are in danger, I'm letting the game impinge on the universe it simulates.
If there has been a stand-off situation where people have been talking or something, then when initiative is rolled I count it as being "not the first round, we just hadn't bothered actually rolling it yet". So people act in init order but in this kind of situation nobody is flatfooted. It just seems sensible to me that if both parties have been aware of each other and potentially prepared for combat that they have all passed beyond the flatfooted state. They were virtually delaying or virtually readying or whatever.
