We had this topic come up when someone's vigilance was higher than cool and they thought they were being penalized for being prepared. My GM told him that, if he wanted to go in unprepared, he should holster his weapon, put away the things he took out for the fight and walk in backwards. While he might get the better roll if he wasn't, he was certainly a lot better off being prepared. I don't know if that works all the time but it seems to have put an end to that discussion.

Plus, unless you're alone, you're just rolling to create a slot in the list. The group's going to allocate which PC goes where and what each player rolled isn't important. Even if you roll high, you might go last based on what you can do vs. what's needed up front.

--emphasis mine--

Exactly! And well put. The initiative roll in EotE is not actually determining the order like most games, it is determining what might be called a potential order.

Nice post.

Knowing your talents is one thing, but knowing which talents you bought on the tree in which order is another thing entirely. It's really easy to keep track of -- all you need to do is print out your talent trees and check off what you have -- but when you're "doing it in your head" it gets more difficult. (You'll have no idea how close you are to Dedication, for instance.)

Ha!

Oh I know exactly how far my characters are from dedication.

To be clear, I have a notebook with character sheet, talent trees, backstory, and gear lists on hand. It's just not something I use often. Probably due to the fact that I take time to put the information together in a nice, neat fashion.

Doesn't everyone do that?

Our GM keeps track of how much XP we should have and periodically audits us. He doesn't seem to keep track of everything we buy though.

I have everyone's character sheet's memorized. Once I write something down -- ANYTHING -- I tend not to forget it. But two things I don't keep track of are everybody's exact XP and the paths they're taking through their talent trees. (That information doesn't help me craft adventures, after all.) Instead, every few sessions everyone busts out their sheets and counts up their XP, then we have everyone land on the same target number (give or take a few XP as determined by species).

This is also around the same time we do a roll call on everyone's Obligations and Motivations. This helps players figure out which Obligations they'd like to tackle, and gives us all an opportunity to see which Motivations are actually being used as weighed against alternative Motivations that might have arisen during play.

Impressive. Most impressive.

Nice! I just use JasonJRR's character builder and keep the backups of character sheets in my Google Drive. So that way if my players lose their sheets (they have in the past), I have a copy.

All listed opinions are compelling,and have valid points.

The way i see the two skills used for initiative is as follows.

COOL is used in initiative when preparing to attack the enemy the characters are aware of.

VIGILANCE is used when the characters are taken by surprise.(or any other unexpected situation)

Although i agree that two skills are not needed for initiative,they make sense in their own way.

After all,if someone jumps from an alley to attack a person,that person must react to the situation without the option

of being prepared.(vigilance)Meanwhile,if your the attacker then you have things prepared for the attack.(cool)

Anyways,as i stated that there don't need to be multiple skills for initiative,but they work well.

I have had no issues with initiative....so far.

My players and I actually really love this initiative system because it adds flavor to the start of a battle. I also like that some Min-Max clown cannot just power his init to go first everytime.