Initiative

[spidersrepublic]

What happens when you reach initiative 0 and want to react? or if you need to lose initiative from recoil or heft or suchlike. Do you lose a turn? or simply can't react any more?
Do you get into situations where everyone is at initiative 0 and acting simultaneously?

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Within the Core Rules there is not anything to say that reaching initiative 0 or lower prevents taking actions. It is a placeholder, if you like, to indicate when a character may act in the round. Actions or reactions which lower one's initiative value only change when they can act. If the action or reaction changes their allowed actions (1 Major action, 1 Minor action, free actions), that itself is a different issue entirely.

 

[Infojunky]

Once the numeric/positional order is established, the exact number ceases to matter.

I started to write a detailed explanation in number/counting theory and my core spatial theorist took over.

So the interrelation of were on the initiative scale matters but not the specific external number.

 

[spidersrepublic]

ah cool. So i can just go into negatives.... too easy!
thanks for the quick replies

Example:

I rolled low initiative, and through reactions and auto-fire, I have subtracted it all.
I'm at initiative 0
I fire my assault rifle on auto-fire.
Because i have average strength (no modifier), my initiative is reduced by 3. (recoil 2, plus 1)
Therefor i will be at initiative -3 next turn.

That work?

 

[CosmicGamer]

ah cool. So i can just go into negatives.... too easy!
thanks for the quick replies

That work?

Mostly I think this is no problem and doesn't even require a house rule as I believe it could be one of the possible interpretations of the rules as written. If you don't mind a little house ruling you might consider certain voluntary/optional things, like reactions, are not allowed after the number goes to zero or below.

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

If initiative reaches 0, we take the view that the character misses one rounds worth of actions, but then resumes the next round on his normal initiative.

However, this hardly ever happens, as all changes to initiative "affect your initiative for one round only", and, in practice, character rarely make more than one reaction in one round, and recoil penalties rarely exceed -2.

Personally, I can see a case for recoil penalties being cumulative if the weapon is fired continuously, and also for wounds having some affect on initiative as well, but we have never experimented with those variations.

At the other end of the scale, when initiative exceeds 12, we allow an extra minor action, useful as it can allow a second attack in one round, as well as the opportunity to move a little faster.

Egil

 

[spidersrepublic]

all changes to initiative "affect your initiative for one round only"
Egil

Ah that's where I've gone wrong. This should help stop initiatives going off the scale