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<blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 7761401" data-attributes="member: 37579">Having a high initiative is good for the first round of combat at best. Then initiative stops being a linear progression and becomes a cycle where it doesn't matter who rolled high or low. The thing is, starting with the initiator doesn't necessarily punish those with a high Dexterity, because the initiator *might* roll really high. Or really low and those with a high initiative follow them anyway. Realistically, people also roll poorly for initiative all the damn time, so I'm also &quot;rewarding&quot; people who had bad luck. There's even a decent chance a character with a normally high initiative rolled poorly in any given fight since the Alert rogue only gets a +10 and the dice add 1-20. Plus, characters with a high Dexterity has a high probability of being one likely to be hiding and starting trouble anyway, so this allows them to act first even if their initiative roll betrays them. Which is especially useful for assassin rogues.Also, there's generally a tactical advantage from an ambush, so the players are being rewarded by enabling that. I like to reward smart, strategic play and not handicap cool strategies by slavishly adhering to RAW. This is also not the &quot;norm&quot; of initiative. Most fights have initiative rolled normally. I only do this when it would be weird and disrupting the narrative for that character to come later in the initiative order. So those with bonuses still get to act sooner (on average) in the majority of normal fights.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jester David, post: 7761401, member: 37579"] Having a high initiative is good for the first round of combat at best. Then initiative stops being a linear progression and becomes a cycle where it doesn't matter who rolled high or low. The thing is, starting with the initiator doesn't necessarily [I]punish [/I]those with a high Dexterity, because the initiator *might* roll really high. Or really low and those with a high initiative follow them anyway. Realistically, people also roll poorly for initiative all the damn time, so I'm also "rewarding" people who had bad luck. There's even a decent chance a character with a normally high initiative rolled poorly in any given fight since the Alert rogue only gets a +10 and the dice add 1-20. Plus, characters with a high Dexterity has a high probability of being one likely to be hiding and starting trouble anyway, so this allows them to act first even if their initiative roll betrays them. Which is especially useful for assassin rogues. Also, there's generally a tactical advantage from an ambush, so the players are being rewarded by enabling that. I like to reward smart, strategic play and not handicap cool strategies by slavishly adhering to RAW. This is also not the "norm" of initiative. Most fights have initiative rolled normally. I only do this when it would be weird and disrupting the narrative for that character to come later in the initiative order. So those with bonuses still get to act sooner (on average) in the majority of normal fights. [/QUOTE]

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