Idea: Awareness [House]

[I_Got_This_Name]

Awareness indicates your ability to be aware of what's happenning around you in battle. It is similar to, but distinct from, initiative.

At the beginning of combat, you make an Awareness Check. An Awareness Check is a Wisdom Check, with some other modifiers for specific feats.

The PC or monster with the lowest Awareness result declares its action first. The character with the second-lowest is then told whether they go before or after the previous result, and declares an action. Third-lowest then knows whether they go before the other two, after them, or between them, and declares an action, fourth-lowest is told where in the order they go, and declares an action, and so on, in ascending order until all actions are declared. Actions are then resolved in initiative order. If an action is rendered impossible or useless by actions happening before it by those with higher Awareness, another action that is fundamentally the same (movement within a narrow arc of the original move, for instance, or an attack against another, nearby target, or casting a spell on a different target, and so on and so forth) may be substituted.

I'm not entirely sure whether Improved Initiative should also affect Awareness, or whether that should be a separate feat, with another feat for a smaller (+2 or +3) bonus to both; nor am I sure how to work it in rounds after first, although I have a few ideas. I could go with keeping the same rolls, and declaring in order of awareness and acting on initiative again, or go to standard initiative order and make Awareness only come into play in the first round, or reroll both each round, or even reroll one (Reroll Initiative and keep Awareness the same, declaring in the same order and resolving in another, or rerolling Awareness and keeping Initiative the same, so people's awareness of the fight changes, but their recovery time does not). I'm also not sure how vague of an action should be allowed in a declaration (should a rogue be allowed to declare an attack against a flat-footed enemy, instead of an attack against a specific enemy, and hope it acts after them unless they have higher Awareness, in which case they would know)

Comments?

[Rierdrex]

I seem to recall that Vampire The Masquerade functioned sort of like that, but they only had one roll. It seems slightly illogical that the most aware character would act after less aware characters. Maybe simply roll initiative and have the players declare their actions in the reverse order of initiative, then resolve in the usual order. Personnally, having played Vampire The Masquerade, I found the system rather tedious and that it slowed down the battles.

[Lord Iames Osari]

Yeah; there's a point where verisimilitude becomes too much of an impediment to gameplay (It's called GURPS ), and I think this is one of those things. A good concept, and not too complicated, but really just adding yet another roll to the combat round.