Your take on: Initiative

[Atmo]

How do you guys do it? I use to let my players choose the means they want to fight, this way every encounter is somehow new.

[Evil Genius Prime]

I like to give a free round of actions to whichever side got "the drop" on the other. If it isn't clear who would get to act first, I usually just determine it randomly. I run savage worlds a lot. That's pretty much how it's done in that system.

[sniffycrab]

I just do initiative exactly as the book says. You would be shocked how many times a player used refooting to get the upper hand. I like that if botch your first initiative roll you can spend a turn trying to get a better one.

[JRutterbush]

You would be shocked how many times a player used refooting to get the upper hand. I like that if botch your first initiative roll you can spend a turn trying to get a better one.

Actually, the only reason Refooting works is because you don't have to spend a turn, you can just try it for free at the start of each round. Losing your turn to get a better initiative is no better than just taking your turn, because even if you end up rolling higher than everybody else the second time around, you still end up a turn behind them all (just like you were before rerolling) because you used a turn to do that. What's worse, if you were ahead of anybody in Initiative, you've just negated even that advantage, because you're a turn behind even them when you wouldn't have been before.

When I first read through the rules, I thought you had to spend your turn to use it as well, and I pretty much ignored the rule, because I learned my lesson about wasting a turn to improve initiative way back in D&D 3e. But since it's actually just a free option at the start of each turn, it's actually a much better option than in most other systems.

[Clay]

That’s correct. There’s no “cost” for rerolling your initiative. It’s just an option with the only risk being making your initiative worse. I thought it was a good compromise between rolling for it every turn and keeping it static.

[Joe_Mello]

That’s correct. There’s no “cost” for rerolling your initiative. It’s just an option with the only risk being making your initiative worse. I thought it was a good compromise between rolling for it every turn and keeping it static.

I forget if it was codified in the rules, but I tend to go in reverse order for refooting, with most NPC's declining the option because, well, they're NPC's for a reason.

At some point I might have also thrown in that if you roll straight 1's on initiative you can't refoot until round 2.

[AnimeEclipse]

On the topic of initiative, the book does not specify for things common in other games like delaying or preparing an action and how those would affect initiative order.

Delaying can work as it always has, voluntarily lowering initiative to a point where you want to drop back in, and preparing an action could work the same as well; specify the action and trigger and doing so doesn't alter your initiative.

This is directly from a standard d20 system, but I was wondering if there was any other intended way for such things in OVA

[Clay]

While there are no rules, per se, on “holding” your initiative, the Delayed Ability Flaw makes an action take place just before the start of your next turn, effectively delaying it as much as possible.

That said, I see no reason why you can’t “Refoot” and elect to take any number lower than what you roll if you so desire. I just don’t see many situations where this is advantageous (especially since OVA does not feature an elaborate movement system, where being able to see and react to another character’s placement can be especially advantageous.)