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Message: <blockquote data-quote="PHATsakk43" data-source="post: 9486533" data-attributes="member: 7041071">I don’t think that anyone used 1E initiative RAW. It was probably the worst mechanic of the entire game.1E initiative was so bad, it alone could have warranted a 2nd edition. To that end, weapon mastery rules and fight style specialization did boost initiative for fighters in 2E so, they would strike not only harder and more often, but also earlier in the combat round.I’ll also say that 2E initiative was the best out of any of the TSR or WotC editions. “Lower is better” is a better mechanism for initiative. Having a bounding floor value for the “fastest”  action is better than any of the d20 games. The d10 provides enough variability to allow for some “luck” in the combat sequence but keeps everything fairly tight unlike a d20. The d6 initiative was fine if weapon speeds, casting times, and other initiative modifiers from AD&D were not used.It also highlights an inherent problem with “higher as better” as a design choice which caused both the ridiculous DCs of 3/3.5 and the introduction of bounded accuracy (which also is IMHO a hack to stick with “higher is better” design). AD&D and other TSR D&D games were touted as being “too complicated” because of not having an inherent and single core mechanic. Which I suppose is somewhat of an intuitive concept, until you consider the constraints of constantly increasing DC targets and the associated constantly increasing skill bonus associated with the DC roll.Initiative isn’t the only thing that this applies to either, as the “roll under” mechanic for ability score checks and NWPs is also better (IMHO) than the DC system, period. “Roll under” and “lower is better” are slightly different as the former also allows for “Price is Right rules” for skill or ability score challenges. Additionally, it made 2E psionics the best implementation of a mostly bad system of any other variety of D&D.Having a system that has the “DC” something inherent to the character opposed to some arbitrary target value also creates a path to avoid things that shouldn’t increase with class level. 2E NWPs were the best skill system the game has had because of this. I suppose technically, they are nearly identical to “1.5” NWPs, so they really aren’t solely a 2E thing.</blockquote>

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