Initiative Tweaks

[tomBitonti]

Pondering initiative, I'm considering the following modifications:

* An initial initiative that is over 40 is forced to 40.

* Anyone in the initiative over that has a value over 20 has the choice of a full-round of actions (which subtracts 20 from their initiative), or a move equivalent action (which subtracts 10). Anyone with a starting initiative over 30 must take a full round of actions. Any player may choose to give up all or part of these bonus actions to reset their initiative to 20. Anyone with an initiative 20 or more lower than the current actor is flat-footed to that actor.

* Anyone with an initiative of 0 or less must wait for the initiative to cycle once before acting. Their initiative is at that point reset to (InitialInitiative + 20).

* After initial actions are taken, initiative changes are made mod 20. That is, taking just a move action at initiative 5 gives a new initiative of 15.

* Anyone taken out of initiative because they were dropped may still have an action, depending on the current initiative count:

(CurrentInitiative - TargetInitiative):
0 .. 5 Standard Action
6 .. 15 Move Equivalent Action
16 .. 20 No Action

* Anyone in initiative can take just a move equivalent action, and which subtracts 10 from their initiative value.

I'm still figuring out what to do when someone enters initiative.

I'm also thinking to restrict flat-footed somewhat: Two antagonists who are aware of each other should not start out flat-footed with respect to each other. That's why we have feint/improved-feint and hiding.

 

[Pyrex]

That puts some weird bumps in the initiative curve:

Player 1 rolls a 20 Init and can take one Full-Round action this round.

Player 2 rolls a 21 Init and can take two Full-Round actions this round.

Ponder the following instead:
Full-Round actions cost 20 Init
Standard actions cost 12 Init
Move actions cost 8 Init (Standard actions are stronger)

When your initiative comes up you may spend up to 20 Init, you may only reduce your initiative score below 0 if this is the first time you have acted this round.

That way to upgrade from a Full-Round action to two Standard Actions you need to roll at least a 25 initiative, take your 1st standard action at 25 and your second at 13 (or one Full-Round action at 25)

 

[I'm A Banana]

When your Initiative roll exceeds 20, you can gain additional turns in the round. You gain an additional turn for every 20 points of Initiative you gain, and these turns are considered to be at an Initiative Count equal to your roll minus 20 (and then 40, 60, etc.)

For instance, if your total Initiative roll at the beginning of combat was 45, you would receive one turn at Initiative Count 45, another at Initiative Count 25, and a third at Initiative Count 5.

When you take actions during your turn, it reduces your Initiative Count in the form of a delay. A full-turn action imposes a -10 delay and a standard action imposes a -5 delay, by default, but certain abilities can impose a greater or lesser delay. As your Initiative Count changes, you may gain or loose actions.

For instance, if your Initiative Count was 45 (giving you a second turn at 25, and a third turn at 5), and you took a full-round action, your Initiative Count on the next turn would be 35. this would give you a second turn at 15, and you would loose your third turn.

At the same time, if you took a full-round action to wait, you could add +10 to your Initiative Count. At the end of two turns doing this, the character above would have a turn at 65, a turn at 45, a turn at 25, and a turn at 5. Such a character would effectively have "bided his time" until it was right to strike. And when it was, he would strike with a great fury.

Delays and bonuses to your Initiative Count are not applied until the end of the round, after all creatures have taken their turns. They do not change your Initiative Count for the current round, rather for the next one.

If a character drops into negative Initiative Count, they may loose turns. A character who rolled a 6 total for Initiative and then took a full-round action would be at Initiative Count -4. She would loose her turn on the next round. Any character who looses their turn is considered to be taking a full-round action to wait: they gain a +10 bonus to their Initiative Count. She would have an Initiative Count following the round in which she lost a turn of 6 once again.

My advice for this is to nix multiple attacks from high BAB in a round if you go with it. FFZ's system is pretty sweet and adds a bit of tactical time-management to the mix, I think, but I'm probably biased.

 

[tomBitonti]

Weird bumps ...

That puts some weird bumps in the initiative curve:
Player 1 rolls a 20 Init and can take one Full-Round action this round.
Player 2 rolls a 21 Init and can take two Full-Round actions this round.

So ...

Player 1 has initiative 16
Player 2 has initiative 15

Action sequence ...

P1 goes on 16
P2 goes on 15
P1 goes on 16
P2 goes on 15
...

Player 1 has initiative 21
Player 2 has initiative 20

P1 goes on 21
P2 goes on 20
P1 goes on 01 (Initiative reset to 1)
P2 goes on 20
...

For nearby players, there is no difference.

However, consider:

P1 has initiative 25
P2 has initiative 02

P1 goes on 25
P1 goes on 05 (Initiative reset to 5)
P2 goes on 02
P1 goes on 05
P2 goes on 02

Here there is a big difference.

Hmm, an important point would be the removal of surprise rounds and the current notion of flat-footedness. So:

P1 has initiative 25
P2 has initiative 12
P3 has initiative 02 (and is flat-footed w/respect to P1: difference more than 20)

P1 goes on 25
P2 goes on 12
P1 goes on 05
P2 goes on 02
P1 goes on 05 (P3 is no longer flat-footed w/respect to P1: difference now only 3)
P2 goes on 02

Another point is that having a high initiative doesn't give you extra actions per round, it just allows you to get in an extra action at the beginning because you are able to react faster.

 

[Pyrex]

I must be totally misunderstanding what you're trying to accomplish then.

If your system isn't allowing for multiple actions/round, what does it do?

 

[tomBitonti]

I must be totally misunderstanding what you're trying to accomplish then.

If your system isn't allowing for multiple actions/round, what does it do?

The system has a couple of effects:

*) A round is normalized 20 to initiative points.

*) The flat-footed condition is redefined.

*) Actors get an action even after they are removed from initiative, say, because they were dropped by an attack.

*) Partial-round actions (costing 10 initiative points) are allowed.

The result that I am trying to achieve is to allow actors the chance to act even when they are removed from initiative, a "last action" that would seem to fall out of the mapping of simultaneous action to an initiative system. To get to the last two effects, I had to force initiative to be normalized.

My reasoning is that two actors, one on initiative 11 and the other on initiative 10, are going right after each other. The effect of the actor on initiative 11 ought not to take effect until some point in the actor on initiative 10's go. That should leave the actor on initiative 10 an opportunity to get a little done before 11's action takes effect.

I was thinking to follow this with the idea of committed actions, for example, if you are hit by a fireball, you may gain a +2 to your reflex roll by hitting the dirt (falling prone), or a +4 bonus by moving out of the area of the fireball, but as a consequence committing you to take the specified action as your next action. In this case, falling prone is a free action, and the move is either a 5' step or a move action.

 

[robberbaron]

Must be a little dense this morning because I can't see what the heck you are trying to do here.

You want player A's action in 11 to not happen until player B's action in 10, so player B can do something about it.
So, what is the point of rolling 11? If you roll higher initiative than someone else you generally get to act before them.

If you want a more cinematic feel why not ditch initiative completely and have everyone acting at the same time?

 

[tomBitonti]

Well, A's action (at initiative 11) still occurs, and its effect on B (at initiative 10) cannot be removed. However, B still has a chance to act. This would seem to increase the tension and excitement of an encounter:

A attacks B, dealing a critical that slays him. B, in his last moments, seeing but not being able to stop the lethal attack, hurls a bead from his necklace of fireballs to the floor. The flame engulfs both he and his opponent, obscuring lastly his wry but fading grin.

That B should get to act falls out of the near simultaneous actions of A and B. A's action does not occur *at* initiative 11, but in reality sometime later. Using the mid-point of A's round (which is initiative + 10) as the *expected* point of the action, then B should get (B's initiative - (A's initiative + 10)) worth of action.

Also, I'm trying to obtain a deducible definition of being flat-footed. The current definition (A's initiative is higher than B's, and B hasn't gone yet) doesn't work in certain circumstances.

 

[the Jester]

I honestly don't see much being gained from your adjustments, and they complicate initiative pretty severely. YMMV, but at least in my group, this would be a bunch of extra stuff to remember without any kind of payoff. Also, I think that your system here will end up really advantaging anyone with a high initiative- sometimes they'll even get extra actions out of it.

 

[Destil]

The system has a couple of effects:

*) A round is normalized 20 to initiative points.

*) The flat-footed condition is redefined.

*) Actors get an action even after they are removed from initiative, say, because they were dropped by an attack.

*) Partial-round actions (costing 10 initiative points) are allowed.

All of the ones in bold I'd say were semantics, and do nothing for the system, though the last one can cause all sorts of problems and is a real pain.

The 3rd point you can simply get like this: Status effects such as stunned take effect at initiative 0 and last until initiative 0 on the last round of the effect, including unconsciousness from loss of HP.

Note that this makes low initiative better in some instances, since you get to see how the earlier actions turn out before making your move. But since delay favors people with high initiative bonuses this should be fine.