Thinking about Intiative

[Legbreaker]

I quite like that idea actually. The way 2.2 gives an additional acton in every 5 second round just doesn't sit well with me - can a person really run two lots of 30 metres in the same five seconds everyone else only gets half the distance?
Although a little cumbersome, I've always prefered the 2.0 method, BUT players and GM must use repetative actions to make it work properly AND be aware and implement (can't stress enough) injury restrictions. Only really penalises a character in the initial stages of combat, where you'd expect to see low initiative characters hesitating. Once they get into their groove and training takes over, they're still at a bit of a disadvantage (they can't change actions other than stop until their next scheduled action), but they can still be effective.
Although the rules say it should be the same action from five second phase to five second phase, I would expand it to the same general action such as fish out grenade, pull pin and throw, repeat, or aim, fire, aim, fire. Both these examples should by the rules take two actions of five seconds duration to complete.

[kcdusk]

"Initiative" is one of those polorising topics.

I think most people agree it needs to be quick, give some advantage to "battle tested" characters and be realistic, if possible.

We have to remember though that initiative isnt just "who can draw" first or fastest, western style. Its who "acts" first. Taking action under fire is as much "courage" as it is "fast twitch fibers". It can be compared to sportsman where they test well (benchpress, 40 yard dash, vertical leap) but simply dont "play the game very well".

I think initiative also represents "dumb luck" to some degree. Even the best operators get surprised or caught off guard from time to time. In my own system i tried to callibrate "initiative" so that a novice PC who rolled a "6" would win a "draw" verse a high level character who rolled a "1" on a D6 (effectively a 1/36 chance for the novice to win).

I like weapon choice to have an impact on characters. So i try to use weapon "bulk" in determining initiative (rifles at a disadvantage to pistals).

I like each combat round to be different, so i am OK with player die rolls to go towards who acts first in each combat round.

Coolness under fire and hesitation V1.0 style was a good idea, that doesnt work in practice.

I agree that injuries are under sold.

I think everyone has their own homebrew initiative to reflect how they view it. All you can do is take other peoples ideas into consideration when weighting your own system.

[B.T.]

The idea to take the bulk-rating and subtract it from the Initiative seems to be a good way, to ballance things out a bit. To my mind, it works.

But there is a point, where I'm not sure, if I understand the rules properly: PCs get rewarded special points to increase the Initiative (In v2.2, that is). But what is the highest possible value for Initiative? Can a PC build up Initiative-values that exceed 7?

[Adm.Lee]

I had forgotten/didn't realize that v2.2 had tweaked Initiative. I think it's the static nature of Initiative that rankles me most-- an Init 5 PC will always have the drop on all Init 4 NPCs. Maybe I play too many other games, but that rubs me wrong.

Repetitive actions are very useful, but when the high-initiative PCs are staging an ambush, mid- to lower-initiative NPCs not covering areas get hosed.

I agree the injury penalties are key. I remember using them in my later games of v.2, but I wonder how much the players played along?

I was thinking about 2 different things, one for each system.
1. For v1, I was thinking of giving each PC a set of 6 counters (I play wargames, I have lots of two-sided counters), one side labelled "hesitate" on one side, and "action" on the other. They could lay them or stack them on the table, and arrange them how they liked, as long as the proper number of hesitations were showing. Each action round, they move down the line, hesitating or acting as needed. If they got hit, or some other thig came along to change things, they could flip the necessary changes.

2. For v2, I clicked on the idea of the deck of playing cards, as in Savage Worlds. Deal each PC a hand of cards equal to their initiative. The GM gets a hand for each batch of NPCs (like, one hand for a leader, another hand for the followers). Then, go down through the cards in descending order (Aces high). If someone gets hit and has to take an initiative penalty, they give up their next 1 or 3 cards, and won't get so many next hand.
- This would scramble the order of actions all over the place, so it's not always the 6's going first. They'll get more actions (or, more decision points), but not always first.
- Repetitive actions (and other conditions) would still apply, that character would act as usual, discarding cards as they came up, unless they change action, of course.
- Jokers could be ignored. They could also be wild, allowing someone a lucky break, allowing them to interrupt someone else's action if they pleased. That might be too random?
- Tied cards (i.e. I have an 8, you have an 8) could be resolved in suit order, or Agility or weapon Bulk. Maybe the GM could waffle on that, as he desires.

This was one of those things that came to me in the middle of the night. Could be a good idea, could suck.

[simonmark6]

I think that high Initiative PCs or NPCs do have the advantage in most senses. In ambush situations those being ambushed usually do end up getting hosed. This would happen even if a group of low initiative NPCs ambush a bunch of PCs, the NPCs would have been conducting continuous "overwatch" actions and thus it would be they that initiated the combat.

After that, lots of the PCs are going to be injured and dropping in initiative or able to fight back in the hail of beaten fire and repeated actions. People get creamed in ambushes, that's why they are so popular. The rules work fine, you just have to apply them.

If you want a little variety, add the odd high initiative novice NPC to the mix to represent the up and coming young gun or guy with hair trigger reflexes, the BYB even suggests this to explain Monk's high initiative for a relatively inexperienced combatant.

If you are going to the bother of tracking things minutely, you might want to just roll for initiative for NPCs instead of using the book numbers. Military NPCs would get a straight d6, Elites get a 5 or a 6+1. Non-military would get d6/2 or whatever you deem correct.

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.

In conclusion, I believe that the initiative system is fine as long as you make your NPCs fight sensibly and use the wound rules strictly.

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by simonmark6

In conclusion, I believe that the initiative system is fine as long as you make your NPCs fight sensibly and use the wound rules strictly.

Exactly right. An Initative 6 character isn't going to stay that fast very long in a proper combat. The first "scratch" wound will cause them to loose an action. The second "scratch" or first decent injury (more than half the hit location's capacity) is going to drop a whole point of initiative as well as make them sit out the rest of the turn (30 seconds). Meanwhile the enemy has free reign to plug away at them.

Add on top of that a "serious" (more than capacity) injury and the character has lost 3 points of Initiative AND the use of the limb. If that's a leg, they're not walking. If an arm, they're not using it to steady their weapon. If it's abdomen or chest, they're not doing ANYTHING and if it's the head, they're probably already unconscious.
A serious wound also cuts Strength in half. This means the character is rather unlikely to be able to move at all, even if it's an arm injury, due to their suddenly reduced load carrying capacity. They're also MUCH less able to control their weapon - they may have been able to fire off say 3 single shots before injury without recoil penalty, now they might manage just one.

And then there's "critical" wounds (x2 capacity). Cut intiative again and if yourre lucky enough to still have an effective 1, EVERY action requires a roll to stay conscious as well as all the previous penalties. A critical head wound means you're dead and given the average head hit capacity is around 10, a single bullet could well put you down for good.

Armour helps, but the wearer still suffers some injury even if the bullet doesn't penetrate. The first round will inflict a "scratch", and the second a "slight" even if both rounds are nothing more than a .22LR. What armour will do is allow you to be injured more times before decending further down the one way slide into combat ineffectiveness.

[leonpoi]

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.

This is basically the approach that I use.

And just curious; we have a growing consensus that the Init system is fine but which version to you use, 1, 2 or 2.2?

[Legbreaker]

Any system isn't perfect and all of them work to some degree - could be a simple coin toss to see who goes first right up to the complex calculations and player decision making required in the Phoenix Command system.
For pure fast paced action, 2.2 is probably the better of the three, but for gritty detail, 1.0 is the way to go (especially the realistic healing times compared to 2.x). 2.0 appears to be a decent balance of the two, provided the rules are used in full.

[leonpoi]

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.
.

You could use it simply as an initiative penalty for situations when shooting in confined spaces.

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.

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.

[Legbreaker]

A high initiative character in 2.0 goes after lower initiative characters in latter phases of the 30 second turn. This I believe is to model their ability to respond to others actions accordingly.

Even a seriously low initiative character (V2.0), or one with a horrendous CUF (V1) isn't completely screwed though. Provided the player uses their heads, and the other players take their limitations into account, the slow characters can be very, very effective.

For example, if a 2.0 Initiative 1 character is given the teams machinegun (belt fed thereby limiting the need for reloading), they can carry out "repetitive actions" - continue the same action they were doing which commenced on their last "actionable" phase. This could be crawling, observing, aiming, or laying down suppressive fire. If aiming, they can use opportunity fire at anyone entering the area they're aiming at.
When I'm GMing, I allow them to continue a sequence of actions no longer than 2 phases (10 seconds) which may be firing a GL, reloading, firing again, over and over (without taking time to aim), providing the additional rounds are out and ready.
Also, one of the best uses is Loader for a crew served weapon (tank gun, artillery piece, assistant machinegunner) where a higher initiative character can give them direct commands and artificially raise their initiative a point or two while ever communication is possible between them. Loading an 81mm mortar may even be considered a form of repetitive action.

In V1.0, a high CUF character could be employed in a similar manner.

2.2 significantly reduced the difference between initiative "steps" with everyone acting in the same 5 second turn/phase/whatever. It's my belief this was partly done as many players and GMs didn't understand how powerful repetition could be.

Another issue is wounds and how they impact initiative. This is an area which in my experience is usually completely overlooked by players and GMs alike.
It only takes a light wound to effectively prevent a character from acting for a while. An opposing force throwing/firing grenades can absolutely DEVASTATE a unit, even without anyone being hit by shrapnel. Just the concussive force alone can prevent anyone acting, allowing their opponents to close at their leisure and kill them.

This is why infantrymen are trained to keep a decent spacing between them - to stop more than one, or at worst two people being in the blast radius of any one grenade. It also takes next to no skill to throw a grenade with effect - near enough is usually good enough.