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<blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 6796944" data-attributes="member: 7006">Except for the fact that since a complete action in a round is 6 seconds long... the split-second starting-pistol-going-off reaction is so miniscule in comparison to the entire time you get to act that (at least in my opinion) there's no reason why any one stat is or needs to be the &quot;end and and be all&quot; to initiative.&nbsp; Yeah, someone's reaction time would be mightily important when the totality of action occurs between when the first person acts and then the second person acts (like say in a pistol duel)... but when the first person gets to do a complete set of actions over 6 whole seconds, who's to say whether the person's reflexes allowed them to it, the person's intellect to scout and anticipate what the action needed to be allowed them to do it, the person's perception allowed them to see what had to happen to do it, or even so far as to say that the person mere presence overwhelmed the reaction time of the enemy for that moment which allowed them to act first?And on top of that... it doesn't even actually matter what the &quot;real world&quot; application is, because the person still gets to do a full six seconds worth of activity before anyone else gets to go.&nbsp; Which basically means the whole thing about Initiative is merely a game construct to determine who gets to play the game first.&nbsp; And thus, ANY abstraction you want to use to figure that out is just as &quot;realistic&quot; as any other-- which is to say, not realistic at all.The game says &quot;Add your Dexterity Modifier to your initiative roll&quot;, because the game required a game rule to adjudicate it.&nbsp; But it could and can be anything else, because the rules for it are just game constructs and nothing more.&nbsp; There's no &quot;real world&quot; involvement here at all.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="DEFCON 1, post: 6796944, member: 7006"] Except for the fact that since a complete action in a round is 6 seconds long... the split-second starting-pistol-going-off reaction is so miniscule in comparison to the entire time you get to act that (at least in my opinion) there's no reason why any one stat is or needs to be the "end and and be all" to initiative. Yeah, someone's reaction time would be mightily important when the totality of action occurs between when the first person acts and then the second person acts (like say in a pistol duel)... but when the first person gets to do a complete set of actions over 6 whole seconds, who's to say whether the person's reflexes allowed them to it, the person's intellect to scout and anticipate what the action needed to be allowed them to do it, the person's perception allowed them to see what had to happen to do it, or even so far as to say that the person mere presence overwhelmed the reaction time of the enemy for that moment which allowed them to act first? And on top of that... it doesn't even actually [i]matter[/i] what the "real world" application is, because the person still gets to do a [i]full six seconds[/i] worth of activity before anyone else gets to go. Which basically means the whole thing about Initiative is merely a game construct to determine who gets to play the game first. And thus, ANY abstraction you want to use to figure that out is just as "realistic" as any other-- which is to say, not realistic at all. The game says "Add your Dexterity Modifier to your initiative roll", because the game required a game rule to adjudicate it. But it could and can be anything else, because the rules for it are just game constructs and nothing more. There's no "real world" involvement here at all. [/QUOTE]

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