NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="abirdcall" data-source="post: 6899426" data-attributes="member: 6748898">You are misinterpreting what it means to win initiative and then are troubled by your own misinterpretation. Of course you are troubled by it because it doesn't make sense.Think of it this way: The Assassin fires the bolt at their target. Target rolls initiative, if they fail they don't get a chance for a special reaction. If they succeed they do.Also, 99% of characters won't have a reaction to use anyway. Even if the guard does succeed on initiative, they are highly unlikely to have a reaction to use. In this case it just means that they adjusted themselves (or whatever) in a way that the Assassin didn't anticipate, and so they only do sneak attack damage, not an auto-critical.I get that you think things represent different things. Here is the thing: This isn't 3.x or 4e or some other different game.This is how 5e has always been. You just misinterpreted how to play it and haven't been playing by the rules the whole time.I get that much of the terminology is the same or similar to previous editions, but this is a new edition which means that it is a new game. It has different design goals and the rules are constructed in a different way. I am personally 100% on board with the new design philosophy which is probably why I read it correctly from the start.Transition periods are always the most difficult thing to handle. In this case we are looking at how different games handle the transition from a loose narrative timing structure to a strict turn based one. 3.x is very strict in what you can do turn by turn and is much more simulationist in its approach than 5e is. 5e is more concerned with representing tropes and story beats and is more narrative in its structure than 3.x. As a result they have entirely different ways of handling a similar situation. It is because they are different games.</blockquote>

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