Quote:
Originally Posted by simonmark6
As for bulk, I generally use it either as a penalty in CQB situations or as a tie-breaker between equal initiatives. To refine it I might assign an initiative penalty to characters who are using a weapon whose bulk is higher than their Strength and Constitution averaged to represent that it is too big and awkward for the person carrying it. Even that seems necessarily complicated.
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You could use it simply as an initiative penalty for situations when shooting in confined spaces.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Badbru
I remember back in the day myself and my players hated rolling for the initiative stat during character generation. A high result could make a REMF into a combat god and a low result could kill off any enthusiasm for a previously considered decent character. Everyone hated the arbitrary nature of it the most I think.
So I devised an alternative based on character stats.
It went something like this...
Add your Agility stat, to represent speed of action, to your Intelligence stat, to represent speed of thought, giving you a number from 0 to 20 as stats are 2d6-2. Divide by 4, rounding down if civilian and up if military. Add any career based additions to initiative as noted in the bonus section of careers.
Most characters ended up with 3 or 4. One had 5 from memory due to a career bonus.
And as allways, remember it's a game with the goal being for your players to have fun.
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I had always interpreted initiative to be not so much speed of action but coolness under fire / decisiveness. You could argue that higher Init characters go first because they have observed and acted faster because they are combat trained and used to getting shot at. A super-smart yoga instructor may have high Agl and Int but may freak out when shooting and getting show at. It's not a bad idea but I don't agree with it. Having said that I did change Init in character generation to give a tighter spread, especially for military characters (just a tweak of dice roll, can't remember details) and low Init characters will move up after a firefights anyway (I had a PC start with Init 1, and even using the squared Init value to advance that's 2-4 combats to get 2).
Having read this post I see poker chips or something like that to be very useful, no matter what version or house-rule you use.