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Message: <blockquote data-quote="swrushing" data-source="post: 1245236" data-attributes="member: 14140">I think my biggest beef with d20 (as opposed to DnD) is the initiative system.I do not like how the current system RESOLVES the actions based almost exclusively on WHO is doing the action (the character's initiative) and for the most part ignores the WHAT is being done. The easiest examples come from having two guys stand across a room from each other. One has a loaded pistol in hand and one has a sheathed knife. Their actions for the round are "shoot the other guy" and "rush across the room and stab him." D20 uses ACTOR-based resolution. WHO matters more than WHAT. If the gun toter gets a higher initiative, then he gets to take his action first. If the knife wielder does, he goes first. The actions, what they are doing, are irrelevent. With a little better roll, the knife guy will rush across the room, drawing his knife along the way and stab the gun toter before he ever gets to think about shooting.You can drwam up any number of other possible scenarios where the choices the init and actor based makes things come really screwy in how they are sequenced out.So what would i do?One option is to resolve things in half-actions.Another option is to have an initial declaration phase where everyone declares their actions, work thru the actions in init order but then apply the effects of all results at the end of the round, not incrementally.A third, kind of a hybrid and probably my favorite, is to have the declaration phase but then lump actions into three categories called immediate (shoot the gun in hand), normal (rush across room and stab), and delayed (see who moves closest and then shoot) and *resolve* them within those categories in initiative order (So all the immediates happen before the normals but within the immediates the initiatives determine who goes first.)The latter gets, IMO, a good balance between the WHAT and the WHO, between the ACTOR and the ACTION in terms of influencing which action gets resolved first.</blockquote>

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