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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6007571" data-attributes="member: 42582">I've played a lot of Rolemaster, which has an action declaration phase and (more-or-less, depending on which variant initiative system is being used) continuous action. It tries to cope with the reactive dimension by permitting "press and attack" as one of the declared options.The system still produces oddities, though, which don't correspond to anything in the gameworld. For example, moving causes a penalty to attack and/or parry. So, depending on how initiative falls, one or the other character may be the one who bears the greater burden for the movement required for the two to close (because you can't exploit the headstart your initiative gives you unless you close to melee range - the system doesn't easily support charging quickstrike duels like that in the Seven Samurai). Also, because the allocation of weapon skill between attack and parry happens as part of the declaration, depending how declared movement works out relative to the distances involved can mean that a player does or doesn't get a chance to declare a new attack/parry split in response to an enemy closing on his/her PC.My players referred to this sort of thing as being "initiative purged".This is why I like 4e's high number of out-of-turn actions: they cost handling time, but they reduce (but don't completely eliminate) the sort of absurdity that you describe here.(I liked your other examples too, but can't XP you at this time.)Well, for some of us it's more than a small headscratcher. It can be a serious issue for verisimilitude, and hence for immersion.You make it sound as if I, the player, am making decisions that draw on a different pool of information from what my PC drew upon, and which don't correspond to the decisions that my PC actually made on the basis of that different pool of information.I though that that was meant to be the very definition of "dissociation"!After all, that's just what happens with a martial encounter power: I, the player, decide to use the power now, based on one pool of information (say, that now would be a tactically sound time to get to attack with a close burst); while my PC makes a decision based on a different pool of information to which I, the player, am not privy (say, noticing an opportunity and deciding to exploit it).</blockquote>

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