Saturday, October 26, 2013

Grim and Perilous Initiative

The second edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay ditches the Initiative statistic used in the tabletop wargame and the first edition of the rpg; instead it introduces a mechanic that suggests that someone noticed that the book was going to press without rules for deciding turn order. It's a bit half-hearted to say the least so in The Enemy Within we're using a system that I stole from the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game. It goes a little something like this:

  1. Each player rolls 1d10 and adds the result to the first digit of their character's Agility statistic; the GM does the same for each unique non-player-character or group.
  2. Whoever got the highest total goes first; ties are decided by the highest Agility score or an opposed Agility test if scores match. When when their turn is finished they decide who goes next; this doesn't have to be one of their allies.
  3. Repeat step 2 until every character and group has had a turn; whoever goes last chooses the character or group that goes first next turn.

Players can spend a Fortune Point to interrupt the turn order and if the GM wishes to interrupt a player, he or she must award that player a Fortune Point. I must admit that I'm not sure what effect this has on the Delay combat action; I suspect it will replace that option but it's not come up in the game yet.

2 comments:

  1. How is that different from the way WFRP 2E does initiative? It sounds pretty much _exactly_ the same, minus the Fortune Point stuff.

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    1. Hi Richard. In WFRP2 as written, whoever rolls highest goes first, then whoever rolls next highest goes second, and so on. The main difference with the Marvel system is in how you decide who goes second; this is is a bit more flexible and allows players to plan as a group.

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