Hello Acolytes and Inquisitors.

I'm new to Dark Heresy and while reading the Core book the one actions thet left me with more questions is "Delay".

I've searched these forums and the majority of people handle delay's actions like RT, spending a half action to call the delay and then the remaining half action to act in the round. Thats clear to me and makes sense. The obscure part is the opos. agil tests and after searching I've seen two POVs on that.

First let me type a simple imaginary situation to base my examples on.

Lets say that A is hiding behind cover and B is aware of his position but Delays to be able to shoot A when he is no more behind cover.

Now A acts and decides to move not using Tactical Advance since moving to the next cover requires only a half action and he wants the second action to shoot.

The 1st PoV suggests that B must beat A in an opos. agil test to be able to act first and hit him out of his cover while,

the 2nd PoV suggests that B can act before A since he had delayed and the agility tests must be made only when another player has delayed as well.

To me Delay's RAW is not that clear but it seems it states the later.

What do you think?

Also I've read that some players keep the delayed action and use it just before their turn in order to have an additional half action. I've also read some ways to deal with this but my question is, is this so much game breaking? They actually waste a half action (to prepare the delay), but since Im not familiar with the system and all of its options I cant really tell if that sacrifice can be abused in order to do something game breaking.

ps. Sorry for my English. You see English is not my mother tongue.

I think the second point of view is the correct one, but I do not have my book with me at the moment.

Using delay to effectively have full and a half actions at once is quite powerful. This is because normally, when you "only" take a full action, an opponent gets a full action to respond (like take cover) and regain the use of their reactions (dodge/parry). However, if you have full and a half actions at once then your actions are more potent because the opponent can't respond and will typically only have one reaction to fend you off.

Example:

A has higher inititive than B

Traditionally:

A attacks, B dodges,
B attacks, A dodges
repeat until someone dies

But with this delay tactic:

A holds,
B attacks, A dodges,
A uses held action to attack, B dodges
A attacks, b can't dodge (he already did)

I would agree with the latter interpetation of delay, it allows an action to be interrupted at the cost of a half-action. The Agility test is only required if two people want to interupt each other and who acts first has to be determined.

As Salindurthas has said, Reactions are only issued once each Round so allowing two attack actions in a single Round runs the risk of overwealming a characters defences through simple volume of fire. I would state that a character can only perform one attack action in a Round, so delaying into the following Round simply to get two attacks on a target would be invalid.

Khouri said:

That is already in the rules, that you can only use an action once per round.

Thanks for the replies.

So is A moves out from cover B gets to shoot him but is A delays and moves out a few moments later he gets an agility test? Sounds weird to me to be honest

MILLANDSON said:

I didn't think DH had such restrictions other than that on repeated Half-Actions, but that only applies to a characters turn (which they will get two of if they delay into the next round). RT added a restriction to single atttack actions on their turn but this still wouldn't seem to stop a delaying character from waiting until just before their action, using a standard attack and then on their actual turn for the round using a standard/full-round attack to possibly bypass someones already used reaction.

Elesthor said:

Yup, but then abstract systems can throw up some weird interactions. Although perhaps continuity could be better maintained in this case if A is always considered to have acted first and B then interrupts their delayed action (but interrupts of interrupts can get a bit messy).

For my "double attack" scenario, I'm not sure whether the "no repeated half actions" applies since they are different turns for the attacker. Regardless, you could still do a half action attack and then a different attack.

For the apparently odd case of delayed actions and running out of cover, I think there is no way for there to be an opposed agility test. Afaik, there is an opposed agility test if more than one characters wants to respond to the same thing.
In the case given, B delays, A delays, A runs out (for whatever reason), then B shoots in response to A running out. They are not responding to the same thing.
An example case requiring an opposed agility test would be C delays, B delays and A run outs, B wants to shoot A, and C wants to spear tackle A to the ground (to protect A from potential assailants). So B and C make opposed agility tests.

Khouri said:

I believe the errata added in that rule, as people asked Ross and Sam whether multiples of the same action were allowed to occur in the same round, and the answer was no.

Salindurthas said:

That makes sense, but RAW doesn't make it clear at all.

DH RAW:

If you try to do something at the same time as another character that used a
delay Action, you must make an Opposed Agility Test to see who acts first.

RT RAW:

If two or more characters both attempt to perform delayed Half Actions at the same time, they must make an
Opposed Agility Test to see who acts first.

As for the 2nd question and since delaying just before your turn may result to imbalanced actions I think Im gonna follow an advice Ive read on an older topic and suggest to the group that the delay action takes you to the initiative count of when you did the delayed action like other systems do. I hope that would be fair and not lead to other imbalances.

Khouri said:

Indeed. In RT there are overall groupings of actions and you cannot preform the same group type twice, but in DH you just cant perform the same action twice. It seems up to DM fiat, though I would argue that RAI you shouldn't be able to perform the same action in the same round.

I tend to treat the Delay as consuming a half action to get a half action, not just letting you use your other half action whenever you damned well feel like it. It creates some weirdness (as seen above) if you let them do that; since you end up with being able to do a standard attack, delay, standard attack. If you just make them use a half action to use delay in the first place, there is nothing they can duplicate.

As I understand the combat system, which may or may not be completely wrong, if you have 2 combatants say Iniative rolls of 7 and 8 for A and B respectively. If B chooses to delay spend a half action to act later in the round, perhaps he's expecting some special to happen or the other player to arrive. Combatant A then acts, if B does not use his half action before the Iniative counter reachs 0 the end of that turn he would then lose that half action. it would then be a new turn, starting again from the top of the iniative.

Delay is something that most players will rarely use, and the easiest way to GM it is to use cinematic combat, if player A delays to shoot enemy B when he breaks cover even if he's doing so tactically, then the player wins, he's ready for him to move, apply half the cover as it a tactical move.