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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5626109" data-attributes="member: 4937">Huh?  No, I'm trying to convey that if you start the rule AFTER it starts to have significance, then you get illogical results.They are trying to model a situation where one side is acting before the other is ready.  My interpretation does not undermine this.  I merely suggest that not every encounter is an ambush.I don't know what you hope or not, but that's what I'm suggesting.  Two individuals encounter each other.  Roll initiative.  If you delay that action, then you are being wholly arbitrary and you'll occassionally get wacky results. No, they are entirely the same.  When you throw initiative entirely determines whether the FF rule applies, because as you say, the game doesn't offer a decision over whether it applies but it does tell you when it applies.  When a DM arbitrarily decides the when, then he's arbitrarily applying the FF rule as well.No it's not.  You roll initiative whenever two groups encounter each other.  For various reasons, DM's decide not to do this.  They may decide that they don't want to give away metagame information (one side intends to attack, but the players aren't supposed to know that), or they may decide that they don't want to bias the players toward an expectation of combat that might not be real, or they may decide that combat is so remotely unlikely that there is no need to waste time rolling for initiative.  And all that is well and good, but anything that happens later in your game shouldn't depend on whether or not you decided to arbitrarily apply the rules at an earlier point.Numerous people can't agree on many different things.  That doesn't mean that the problem lies with the rule.  The best I can say is that the rule is poorly explained because the designers had expectations of simplistic hack-n-slash.   No, but they are being arbitrary.  It's pretty easy to show that.  'Intent to injure the other' and 'moves to do so' are very expansive categories.   Suppose a player says, "I want to quafe a potion of heroism."  Isn't that part of the battle?  Suppose we roll for initiative and one character says, "I want to quafe a potion of bull strength." and another says, "I want to run and leap behind the low stone wall." and another says, "I want to cast Prayer.", and another says, "I take a full round action to line up by shot.", and another says, "I take a double move to get around the opponents line.", and another says, "I cast invisibility.", and another says, "I want to ready my longspear to recieve a charge.", and another says, "I want to take a defensive stance and move at half speed toward the enemy.", and another says, "I want to use my Bard's Inspire Heroism ability."  Should after this the DM say, "Well, I guess we should roll for initiative again, because no one actually attacked."?  At the end of the round, everyone has already acted; are you suggesting that the battle hasn't already started at this point?Suppose to lines of men form shield walls and begin advancing at each other across an open field.  Does the battle not begin until they reach each other?Suppose the horse mounted highwaymen from the earlier example have every intention of launching an attack as soon as they are in range and are trying not to alarm the party by a swift and agressive approach.  Has the battle not begun just because the highwaymen are trying unsuccessfully to hide their intention to attack?Look at your own example of the two gladiators.  You say the battle doesn't begin until the gates open, to which I replied, what if I try to make the battle begin before the gates open?  What if I hurl taunts to try to intimidate my foe?  What if I actually have some spell-like ability I can cast on the target through the gates?  What if I fling a stone at him?  Hasn't the battle therefore begun at that point because one side has taken an action?  Well, if that is true, hasn't the battle also already begun if both sides take defensive actions? Then you are not really interested in debating the most relevant part of the FF rule.So, you aren't interested in debating when to throw initiative if you want the FF rule to obtain plausible results, but you are interested in initiating a 'debate' about whether turn based combat is realistic?  I put debate in scare quotes, because that's not going to be much of a debate.  I agree, abstract turn based combat is inherently unrealistic.  Even back in 1e, when when all actions had to be declared simultaneously and were resolved simultaneously, it was still inherently unrealistic.And here I will fall on hubris; I'm pretty confident of my ability to see how the parts fit together.  That's why so many changes to the rules were required once I started changing a few.  However, this is one area where I didn't have to touch the rules to achieve what I wanted.  I just had to realize that they assumed a consistant application of initiative checks, and that when I wanted to get away from that for whatever reason, that I was 'breaking the rules' and needed to back up and treat every situation as if initiative was rolled in the first round of the encounter. You know, the US Supreme court itself often interprets the law in two different ways.  Fortunately for our government, there is no requirement that there be universal agreement, or we'd have no laws.No, I think the intention, right or wrong, is that if you have 8 square feet of shield on one side of you, it still interferes with an attackers ability to hit you, even if you aren't using it to actively defend yourself.  The real complaint I would have is that the shield protects you the same whether you are passively using it as cover or actively using it to parry and block attacks.  I've partially addressed that under my rules, but even if we had a rules system where there is both passive and active defense a shield could conceivably add to your passive defense.  I don't see anything inherently dumb in that. First of all, pet peeve here, but in proper English something 'based on reality' is not real.  When something is 'based on a true story' it means, 'this is not a true story'.  So to say that something is 'not based on reality' means that it is not not real, or that it is true.   Second of all, D&D combat is based on reality.  Sure, it's not perfectly realistic, but neither is it intended to be wholly fantastic.  There is intended to be a large amount of casual realism and plausibility about the game system to encourage suspension of disbelief and 'common sense' interaction with the game environment.  Thirdly, to the extent that you are just saying that the game system is merely based on reality, I don't think you are making a very important point.  Everyone agrees that D&D takes a large number of liberties with reality.  What I am trying to say is that the flat footed rule, even though it takes liberties with reality, does not lead to nearly as impluasible results as you suggest provided that you apply it consistently.   If you apply it inconsistently, namely, "The battle begins, here, or there, or maybe here if I decide so, but not necessarily you know when the enemies make contact with each other because that would be crazy.  Maybe I'll decide the battle begins a couple rounds after that or maybe a couple of minutes, I'm not sure, and I'm not saying when until I do and you won't be able to predict that. Nor am I going to let you take an action until I say you can take an action, because you know, only the actions that I think should count as actions actually do."The DM that treats the rule as above, is adding problems to the system that aren't found within it.It makes perfect sense to me.  You didn't know there was a creature there.  Now it is.  You might not have time to alter your course of action - in this case running - to account for the sudden appearance of the creature.  And if you don't, then you are flatfooted with respect to that creature.  The initiative check arbitrates between those two possibilities.Now, on the other hand, if the creature jumps out 100 yards away from you, wins initiative and cranks a heavy crossbow, and on your turn you keep running, then you are now longer flat footed because you have had time to consider the creature in your future plans. And the DM who said, well the battle hasn't already started because no one has attacked so we won't roll initiative until the creature fires, and that point you may or may not be flat footed even though you've had 6 seconds to prepare yourself is being... well, IMO he's being a jerk and a poor DM.  Of course, I don't know of DM's that actually do that in such a clear cut case, but I have heard of some who refuse to roll initiative in conceptually similar situations - like the above scenario with the horse mounted bandits.  I won't speculate on why they do that, so let's just generously grant that they may be confused.Technically, the game only denies you a dex bonus if you are unskilled at the activity you are partaking in.  If you are skilled, then you aren't denied your Dex bonus.  If two people are running, for small differences in speed there is probably no difference in their ability to avoid attacks.  In know that in football (the gridiron variaty), the ability to be illusive is only partly related to straight line speed and many of the players who have demonstrated the highest skill in evasion weren't in fact particularly fast.  I would presume that they had special skill in running while being evasive, which in D&D I would model with the Run feat.Whether a feat is the best way to model this is a wholly different question than whether or not is reasonable to say, "If you are dexterous, you must retain that same advantage regardless of your experience in the task you are pursuing."  Obviously, a high dex person maintains some natural advantage (a better untrained balance skill check, for instance), but D&D chooses to say that training and experience in the activity is far more important in many ways than native ability.  That doesn't to me seem to be obviously wrong. I agree.  And it probably seemed an even greater evil to define down to 0 Dex, because that would have raised the argument with some rules lawyerish type that if they effectively had 0 Dex, then they technically ought to be immobile and hense helpless.  Likewise, the term of art, 'denied your Dex bonus' is such a useful one for encapsulating when certain effects like sneak attack are triggered, that it seemed a bigger problem to shatter this unified mechanic than retain the small loss of consistancy.  It was a case of unintended side effects.  Different langauge would have resulted in a different range of situations in which sneak attack and other mechanics would apply, which would have forced rebalancing the other ways of inflicting those other conditions.  And also I imagine that they didn't want to heighten D&D's existing problem with the extreme advantage that the side that wins initiative has in combat (which is unrelated to FF, and has more to do with the number of attacks each side has made in the middle of round N).There could be some clean up here that would eventually elimenate the inconsistancy, but it would be a large amount of work for what I would argue has a very small impact on the game.  Misapplying the FF rule by arbitrary application of initiative checks however has a huge impact on the game and the metagame, and I believe that it unnecessarily drags the game toward 'hack-n-slash' because it leaves the players feeling that the DM can spring an ambush on them at any time - even if the see it coming - and there is nothing that they can do about it except instantly and unhesitantingly attack.   If you misinterpretation of the rules is leading to a game were negotiation, parlay, and NPC interaction is suppressed because the PC's are fearing (rightly) the DM metagaming against them, then you have a far more serious problem than the slight inconsistancy of low Dex being punished more than might be strictly fair (if that is what is going on).</blockquote>

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