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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 5623959" data-attributes="member: 32740">When a characters turn comes up in the initiative order he is in effect reacting to anything and everything that has happened in the combat up to this point.  Initiative is primarily about determining the order of resolution of actions, not necessarily which one actually takes place first.  Even if one action takes place first by the tick of the clock another characters action might be resolved first (an attack readied as a RESPONSE to an expected attack). Although all the turns of all the participants in a battle are largely assumed to be simultaneous in a given round, we use initiative order to establish a sensible means of RESOLVING all those simultaneous actions one at a time.  On your characters turn it is generally in your best interests to ACT.  You don't wait for an opponent to try and hit you - YOU pick an opponent to hit and kill BEFORE he can do likewise.  Given the way all these actions are resolved by turns it does introduce the possibility that you might want to prepare some more specific response to an opponents action - and that is what the Ready action is for.  Using it, you give up your ability to act unopposed NOW, on your own turn, for the ability to act later, when it is NOT your turn, by placing specific conditions upon what will trigger your action later.  IF your action is triggered this then rearranges the order of initiative as necessary.  If your action is not triggered then you blew your opportunity to act when you had the chance - ON your turn. For purposes of sensibly resolving your characters actions on your turn other characters ARE where they ARE when your turn begins - even though they might be moving at insane speeds or not moving at all.  For ease of actually getting things resolved and moving the game forward every participant moves one at a time on their individual turn.  Otherwise the game would have to proceed one 5' move at a time with every possible action listed by how many seconds or partial seconds it takes to perform and having that determine what gets resolved first. The order of initiative is not a secret.  After you've rolled you know where you are in the initiative sequence (or at worst it takes the first full round to know when the opponents actually act). But when YOUR turn comes up you know who has taken their turn and who hasn't.  All you have to do is choose your actions and targets based on that knowledge - just as all your allies and opponents have to. The Ready action and attacks of opportunity pretty well cover any needed exceptions to resolving your own actions only on your turn.</blockquote>

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