Created 07 Jul 2023, Published 07 Jul 2023, Last modified 10 May 2024 23:48
Initiative affects a PC or NPC’s order of action during turns. The higher a PC’s or NPC’s initiative the earlier they will act during the turns. Armour and weapons will modify initiative, e.g. heavy armour and weapons will reduce a PC’s natural initiative. The initiative is worked out as follows:
Each turn the character with the highest initiative will get to go first, but before they do all PC’s and NPC’s declare their action for that round; starting with the character with the lowest initiative.
For example, Ugg, Dave and Roberto have initiatives of 18, 12 and 13 respectively. Therefore Dave declares first, then Roberto and finally Ugg. However, Ugg acts first, followed by Roberto and finally Dave.
If however, it gets to the action stage and the player changes his/her mind about what it is they want to do they will have a minus 20% to their skill roll.
Do not forget that some pieces of armour have initiative modifiers as well as weapons and all these modifiers are cumulative. If players or NPCs are tied on the same initiative levels then opposed percentile rolls should be used. Those with the highest percentile score should be considered to have the highest initiative at this time.
For those who have the ability for multiple attacks, the second and possible third attacks have an initiative modifier of -5 and -10 respectively after all they can’t come before the first attack. There is no need to declare the actions for second and third attacks at the start of the round.