When you're rolling for initiative, if you get any advantage, threat etc., can that be used or is it ignored?

Salud!

No, but advantage is PART of intiative.

Intiative is a number with decimal, the advantage being the numbers to right of the decimal point

Advantage is important for intiative because you there wont be a huge difference between the highest and lowest. Since the amount of successes you can get is fairly small and going to be close to what others roll, advantage helps sort this order. Also remember, if there is a tie, PC's win and go first in order.

Example

A vigilance roll with 2 success 3 advantage would be recorded as 2.3

Ahh, gotcha. Thanks!

So any advantage rolled would go for the decimal on initiative but NOT to be used for adding a boost die to the next check etc., right?

Actually I just re-read the sections on initiative and specifically cool/vigilance skills. So it looks like the advantage could be spent in other ways. It doesnt do a real good job specifying what happens, but as a part-time GM, I would rule that 'spending' advantage means you are using it and it wont factor into your overall initiative roll/score.

And I was actually wrong, that threat & despair come into play. I'm so used to D&D 4e & SW Saga of initiative just being a number.

Book mentions that advantage could be used to notice a key detail or something that might come into play later, finding "exceptional" cover (which as a GM I would say confers a much higher bonus that the regular 1setback die).

Threat could be missing vital details, inflicting strain since its a stressful anxious moment.

Trimuph could be used to keep your cool when laying an ambush and recover 3 strain, which is great for those characters that can use strain to give themself an advantage (talent Rapid Reaction comes to mind).

Despair could be losing an action in the first round and only being able to do a maneuver. It also mentions maybe even losing a turn. Cant say I'm a big fan of either of those choices. I think getting stuck in place and only being able to use an action makes more sense personally.

Diggles said:

Digg -

Is that from the Beta book? The Beginner Game rules do not include threat/despair on initiative because the check is a Simple one, meaning no difficulty die are used at all. Otherwise initiative is determined exactly as described in the second post: Successes are primary, Advantages are used to break ties, and I assume Triumphs trump advantages (or let the GM and players, as always, do what something cool).

Ex: PC1 rolls 2 successes and an advantage, PC 2 rolls 2 successes and no advantage, NPC rolls 0 successes and 3 advantage. From that you get 2 PC slots first and the NPC slot last - 2.1, 2.0, and 0.3 using the earlier post.

If the Beta Book or full rules have more details that'd be interesting; I know the Beginner's Game is intended to be a very simple system, and we're enjoying that simplicity in my games.

DarkLanternZBT said:

They don''t really. The beginner book is missing some combat action types, most of the bad-guys, much of the equipment, and Char.Gen; the rules, however, are really fairly complete in the beginner box.