I just Googled up a bunch of old threads talking about the rally step and didn't see this really addressed, so I thought I'd give it a go.

Can you have a rally step in the middle of the initiative order or do you wait until the round or whatever is over?

I ask because I've always assumed it has to wait until the end of the round, but if the triggering pause passes and then other characters do stuff it really feels like the moment is passed. It only just occured to me that maybe you have it happen immediately and then keep going. So, for people that are still playing with rally steps (I know a bunch of us have basically ignored it), how do you work it?

I haven’t ever called for a rally step in the middle of an initiative specifically unless the PCs are the only ones left on the tracker for some reason (between waves of enemies, enemy is barricaded and requires PCs to break through, etc).. That being said, I don’t see why you couldn’t if the situation calls for it or it seems reasonable.

I included werewolves in a game, unsuspecting villagers who turned as the full moon (Mannslib actually) rose on the sky. I had a progress tracker which allowed the werewolves to grow and become more powerful and frenzied at certain points of time, but the growing took a few moments so I had rally steps each time they grew. It allowed the player characters to rest, get some quick first aid in and prepare to continue to fight. It worked like a charm. This I used at the end of the round each time, but it would probably work as well after a werewolf turn or something.

Problem with doing it in the middle of a roundand resuming there after the rally step would be to remember where on the initiative track you were, sometimes rally steps takes a bit of time, another problem is that during rally steps the player characters may opt to try to increase their initiative. What happends if they increase an initiative token up over the current initiative? Do they loose that turn?

When I've stopped the encounter for a rally step in the middle of the initiative order I've allways started over from the top initiative when we resumed the encounter. As the step is about everyone taking a quick break. So starting over feels both smoother and more logical to me. It also encourages the player characters to try to increase their initiative, to get to go earlier.

Often though, rally steps are initiated by "outside" events, like reinforcements arriving, a change of the scene or similar happenings and I genereally track those things at the end of a round using a progress tracker, so mostly it happends between rounds.

I usually call a rally step when I feel an appropriate break has been reached and sometimes that is right in the middle of combat, mid initiative step, whatever, then once it's over, I'll often have new enemies coming in anyway, so I usually call up a new initiative roll.

I've never really managed to use Rally Step unless I've specifically written them into the adventure ahead of time. And I've never felt they served any real purpose.

I'm considering binding them to achieving specific things mid-action. For example, if they're fighting a group of beastmen, they get a rally step when they kill the leader.

It is a good reward for a group when they do something interesting mid game. I've also used it quite a number of times to reliably break a combat between two game sessions.

I use it as rules written. I would not break initiative etc with it.

I find it works well, a "beat" between different foes, when siuation changes etc.

*acknowledgement*

That is what it's supposed to represent. You could allow a reroll of initiative instead of the res/dis roll to remove stress as well, of course.

valvorik said:

You don't find that sometimes the situation changes during the turn itself?