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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 4971803" data-attributes="member: 5143">The law is completely unrelated to this discussion.  Regardless of your definition of the word threat, as was said above, the point of initiative is to determine who goes first when that's important.  Two people have swords pointed at each other, who gets to strike first?  A puck drops, who is the first to get it with their stick and so on.  When walking down a hallway, it isn't important who goes first.  No one else is around.  When talking to someone, it doesn't matter who goes first, they can both talk over each other for all anyone cares.  So, you don't roll initiative in these cases.What?  Why would you need to roll initiatve when you walk into a bar?  What purpose does this serve?  How does it help the game?  How does it make the game more fun?I'm not sure what you mean.  It was just a story.  I was explaining that I had a DM who didn't like flatfootedness and it unbalanced Rogues.  They were no fun to play because they could suddenly do a lot less damage than they could when flatfootedness plus rolling initiative at the very beginning of combat was in effect.Without flatfootedness, the Rogue was one of the least powerful members of the group.  To the point where I rolled up a fighter just so I could compete.  With flatfootedness, the Rogue was still slightly less powerful than everyone else, but still competitive.Our DM decided to change the rules from the ones in the book to better fit his sense of "realism" and in the process made a class less powerful that I, and the rest of the group, thought it should be.I'm saying that allowing initiative to be rolled whenever you want essentially removes flatfootedness from the game, causing the same effect.How does anything I've said bend the rules?  There's nothing in the rules that says if you walk into a room with a guy with a sword, you MUST roll initiative immediately.  Failure to do so is bending the rules.In fact, as pointed out above, it says the exact opposite.  It says to roll for initiative only when you need to know who goes first and timing is important.Wow.  No need to be offensive.  But I do have one question...how does this wreck any game?  How does this interpretation make the game less fun for anyone?  It is a fair interpretation that means those who roll higher initiative get a bonus(no dex modifier for their enemies for one round) that isn't removed simply by stating "I'd like to start initiative early".Also, why is everything surreal?Precisely.  There are many times when both parties are expecting something to happen, but they don't know when.  The person with a faster reaction time gets a small bonus in these circumstances.</blockquote>

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