Not as much a question as an invitation to discussion. The subject is "Initiative". It is quite apparent that a high initiative can be very benificient in the first round of a combat if it is a sort of Clint Eastwood style shootout. If there is a Surprise round, initiative doesn't really matter for that round. But what I'm interested in is the rest of the rounds.

Lets say Albert and Beatrice are fighting. Albert has higher initiative and stuns Beatrice for 1 Round due to a critical damage or maybe the Stun full action (DH rulebook p 191 and RT p 243) . I can find several interpretations of what would happen:
1) Beatrice is stunned until Alberts Turn next comes up.
2) Beatrice is stunned until Alberts Turn next ends.
3) Beatrice is stunned until her next Turn ends.
4) Beatrice is stunned until her next Turn after that starts.
5) Beatrice is stunned until this current Round ends.
6) Beatrice is stunned until the following Round ends.

For alternative 5 and 6, Albert will gain a lot of extra benefit from having a higher initiative. For 3 and 4 It would have been better if Beatrice had higher initiative than Albert, because then she would remain stunned for a longer while, giving Alberts mates a better chance to hit her while she is down. 1 and 2 makes no difference whatsoever as to who has initiative. I'd say 5 or 6 is most consistent with the rules as they are written, although most GMs I've talked to use 1 or 2.

Regarding reactions. I have this theory that if you have a party with one really dangerous damage dealer, you want her to act at a very low initiative, because the reactions reset at the start of each Round. So it would be excellent if the weaker attackers "use up" the targets reactions so the nasty damage dealer gets the best chance to cause damage.

Let me give an example: Albert is an adept with a laspistol. Beatrice is an assassin with a lascannon (yes I know...). They are both fighting Charlotte the arch heretic who can dodge once. Lets assume Charlotte is busy summoning daemons, and the two heroes needs to kill her as soon as possible. It is likely that Beatrice will have highest initiative. She will fire her Lascannon, and Charlotte will have a chance to dodge. Then Albert will fire his laspistol, Charlotte has no dodges left and will be hit for a very nonlethal damage. Had Beatrice had a worse initiative, she would have made more of an impression.

So, how do you handle Initiative? I would like to think that high initiative is a good thing, but I can't quite see it. Maybe there are some clever houserules or better interpretations out there?

A character with a high initiative, assuming using RAW, could delay. Using your example, the assassin delays, lets her companion fire first in this and the following round, so that the hertic has already used her dodge, then fires her lascannon after her companion, probably for lethal damage against the hertic.

Another way to use high initiative, is to change how delay works, and allow the character to act in the same round as the delay is declared, with results similar to the above, but with out the one round delay.

For the stun example I would probably go with statement 1 (i.e. one round from when the stun effect took place).

I see high initiative as primarily giving its users more options and of course the initial edge as they react faster to the outbreak of combat. The assassin can delay to coordinate their fire better with their allies but similarly opponents with a higher initiative can use the fleeting seconds to dash into cover or simply shoot first and see what happens.

As combat wears on the high initiative matters less and the tactical situation emerges as the deciding factor. It will help you win the inital gunslinging face off against heretic #137 but as their mates join in the fray all the initiative in the world won't help if your stuck out in the open while the rest of the heretics shoot you from cover. The delay action can play a part again to allow those on a lower initiative to forgo an action to act at the same time as their higher scoring opponents.

2) Beatrice is stunned until Alberts Turn next ends.

I would say this. If Albert goes first, and stuns Beatrice, she is stunned until her next turn comes around, which is after Alberts next turn according to your initiative order.

Mellon said:

The general rule of thumb that I apply to combats is that the person who manages to shoot or hit first will have an upper hand. But that's because I purposefully make NPC's deadly, in order to simulate real life as close as possible. And in real life, the person who shoot first, most oftenly wins...

There's another situation where a high initiative may not be beneficial, and where winning the Initiative roll may be bad.

Consider two evenly matched highly skilled Melee fighters, both with Lightening attack (or at least Swift) and a high probability of managing a Dodge or Parry. They start the fight within Charge range (this could be a formal Arena fight or something, so Surprise is not an issue)

Now, to get the most bang for your round, you wish to use the Lightening Attack option to make 3 attacks (4 if you wield 2 weapons). However, he who wins the Initiative must choose between Charge (and make just one attack), or Delay (letting the opponent charge, but still only making one attack yourself)

The person who looses the Initiative, will probably be Charged. If so, he may Dodge or Parry this attack as normal, and he may then make his Full Action attack of choice, unleashing a furious hail of blows with his Lightening Attacks.

Of course you get to "go first" in consequent rounds, but that doesn't really mean much in a 1v1 fight, where you will be taking alternate turns anyway.

The "flaw" in the system here is that the quick-reacting fella can't choose to act later with his full options intact, he can only Delay a Half Action.

Darth Smeg said:

That's not so much as a flaw in the system as it is a flaw in real life. In any swordfight, knifefight or hand to hand combat istuation between equal fighters it will often be the one whose attacking first who will be at a disadvantage.

Also, in my opinion, a melee fighter have only himself to blame for specializing in melee weapons only. A smart all-round fighter would've just drawn a pistol and shot his enemy at that range instead of standing around preparing to attack in melee.

Or, you delay, wait for the charge, dodge the charge, use your delayed action to Feint before it is your turn again, and suddenly you can deal all those Lightning Attacks unhindered from dodge or parry.

from france

i say that it also depends on the state of mind of the players or a npc. i wil take to examples

"the man with the golden gun" in james bond is colder than ice when he shoot. his opponent in the litle part before the movie is higly nervous so when he shoot, he shoot firts but not verry well even if he is a trained killer. so if you are scared your are high initiative won't help so much.

Varnias Tybalt said:

'xactly. The proper response to this situation is: "I quickdraw my autopistol and saw him in half"

Yes, I agree that there are several options for the character in question, but it seems strange to me that even though I am FASTER than the opponent, have better stats or got lucky on the Init roll, I must "lose" half my turn if I choose to act after him.

A house rule could be that you may elect to act at a lower Initiative order than the maximum one you rolled, but now we're not talking RAW any more. I also agree it's not a big problem, but it highlights some 'quirks' with the initiative/turn based system.

Another (not so slightly) forced scenario is one where you have several characters, spaced 10 metres apart in a long line. In one round, of ca 4-5 seconds, you would actually have time to pull off the following: The first character charges the next, and deals him a spankin' blow across his face. This person now charges the next, and so forth, for as many links in this "chain" as you could like. Now, apparently these people all act more or less simultaneously, with "split-second" differences between their actions. But it is obvious that as the blows connect, person B cannot start his move before person A has finished, etc etc.

Some creative and geeky applications of basic maths and physics, and you end up with fighters charging at ridiculous speeds. Example, a line of 10 people, 10 meters apart. 10 charges, sequentially, in a 5 second round. Average speed (not counting acceleration or the time for the actual attack) of the chargers is 20m/s. Increase the number of "combatants" to 50, and we're talking speeds of 100m/s. On foot. In armour

Yes, I'm creating some very unlikely scenarios, but it demonstrates a weakness in the system.

A more likely scenario would be where two people are facing off, some 10m apart, and one person wishes to run away from the other. The quick-footed rogue (with a higher Move score, and perhaps a Sprint Talent) looses the Initiative Roll, and the other person charges. Note, we are not talking Surprise here, just the importance of Initiative. The RAW results in the Charger catching up to (and getting an attack on) the would-be runner. The Runner will now suffer an additional attack if he decides to Sprint out of combat.

The runners player would argue that "the split second" that separates the Initiative scores would not result in him hanging around doing nothing, watching the other person (probably a slow-moving, armour-encumbered, Feral Fighter with a massive, two handed GreatAxe) run the 10 meters between them. If the players really were moving at (more-or-less) the same time, the Charger would never catch up to the Runner.

Varnias Tybalt said:

If your next Action is anything other than a Standard Attack, you lose this advantage. [Feint, p. 190]

One flaw IMHO is that people can react (use reactions) before they can act (use actions). Even the one to dodge for cover, i.e. move. That too takes away from high initiative. The character with high initiative is often the one to open the door, be parried/dodged and all that. Pretty stupid.

Chester said:

That's not a flaw, it's just a symbolization of the fact that some people might just be skilled/lucky enough to RE-act before a faster character acts.

Reacting is often very limited and can only be used for so many things (like dodging or parrying) and it doesn't have to imply that the people who reacted actually acted "faster" than the ones with higher initiative. They just happened to keep their wits about them enough to get out of harms way in the nick of time, but not even close to being fast enough to turn the situation into an advantage (i.e being able to attack before the one with higher initiative).

The limited nature of reactions show this pretty clearly. For instance there's very few things that can provide a bonus to dodge or parry tests, you always have to go with the raw skill. But attacking (both with melee weapons and firearms) can stack up all sorts of bonuses.

I think this symbolize the apparent advantage that a higher initiative character has over the one who simply have to "go with the flow" and react to the faster ones actions.

Darth Smeg said:

But if there are 10 people standing 10 meters apart, they would only be able to actually have a chance to charge their directly adjacent opponent in one round. They couldn't attack most of their opponents standing on the "other side" because diagonally they would be more far away than 10 meters. So it would be assumed that most of the things will happen simultaneously, and not having to turn everything into a "light speed" scenario like you claim.

The new warhammer offer a intriquing way of using Initiative.

the basics is this: after everyone have rolled for initiative (the Bad guys too), than when it is the first initiative number for the player group, any one acolyte can use that initiative to act for his round. It really doesn`t mean antything who of the acolytes rolled that number. the party for themselves agree on who will act at the according initiative numbers, the same apply for the badguys.

I still have to read wfrp rulebook to get all the details about initiative. But I found it exciting as it involves team work on a new level. A well oiled team of acolytes could benefit greatly from such rules. But again applying to Dark Heresy, could complicate matters, that has yet to be tested. But I am thinking of using the warhammer initiative in DH and RT as well.

Varnias Tybalt said:

You misunderstood: The people are standing in a straight line, and one person can indeed only charge the one immediately next (well, 10m) in line. In real-life these people would all be running at roughly the same speed, in the same direction. As such, no one would catch anyone.

But in the Initiative order, Full Action system, They would all catch the person next in-line, before that person ran off to catch his target, etc, etc, ad naseum.

Like Dominoes, one chip doesn't start to fall before the one next to it falls upon it. It can go quite some time from you start a chain of Dominoes until the last one falls, but in the "System" it would all be over in one turn, regardless of the length of the chain.

As I said, it's not a likely scenario, but you can have somewhat similar situations where a player will exclaim (rightly) that "there is no way I'll be just standing there, waiting for all that to happen!"

@DarthSmeg

Yes, I'm creating some very unlikely scenarios, but it demonstrates a weakness in the system.

So... care to offer a fix that can be implemented without the aid of a computer while still keeping the system fluid enough to make play worthwhile?

There have been some suggestions over the years (The ole' Warhammer Fantasy suffered from much the same syndrome), but it all involves houserules and as such falls outside the scope of this topic.

And they don't really fix the issue either. The only 'solution' I saw was Didz't method for resolving actions in his Play By E-mail guide, where all participants state their intended actions for the turn, and the GM then resolved these and replied with the result. The scenario above would resolve itself with all people running after each other, rather than the domino-effect.

However, this might be a bit time-consuming for a tabletop game.

Darth Smeg said:

What we have done to somewhat eliminate this situation is to allow 2 types of delays.

1. Delay. You get a half action before your next turn.

2. Delay. You get a FULL action before your next turn, however you lose your reaction

Works pretty well for our games.