Alternate Initiative, Swift Property, and Lightning Reflexes Feat

Rules Discussion House Rules
1

Initiative Thoughts

Initiative Rolls

Players may use any Attribute that makes sense for reacting quickly to ready themselves for an encounter. Typically these are limited to Agility (how fast muscles react), Logic (how quickly analyze situation), Learning (how quickly recall actions or magic), Perception (How fast you noticed what’s going on around you). However, the GM may allow others as make sense for a specific situation or character talents (Prescience to forsee what is about to happen).

Swift Property (on weapons/items)

Option 1

Swift Property on weapons change:
A weapon with the Swift property means you can draw/sheath an additional weapon if it also has the swift property

Option 2

If you utilize at least 1 weapon/item with the swift property, you gain the following options when wielding or planning to wield at the start of initiative:

  • Advantage 2 when you draw a single weapon/item with the swift property
  • Advantage 1 when you draw 2 weapons/items, each with the swift property
  • No Advantage when you draw a single weapon/item with the swift property and another weapon/item with neither the swift nor slow property

[Feat] Lightning Reflexes 1-5

Lightning Reflexes change:
Prerequisites: An appropriate attribute for Initiative at the following Score for each Tier
Tier 1 & 2: Score of 2
Tier 3-5: Score of 4

Each tier you possess in this feat, you gain advantage 1 on the chosen Attribute on all initiative rolls.

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Just a thought as another option to keep things simple, why not make Initiative be calculated by the average of say Agility, Logic, Perception & Prescience? But only include Prescience if they have points in it. Granted it’s not as flavourful as everyone deciding how to justify using their best stat for initiative (because lets face it, most people will take that option). But at least it will help keep things simple. I’m not sure if the math is actually any good for it or not though. Testing that is so not in my wheelhouse.

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that sounds super complicated and not something I’d even want to think about attempting to do.

The point overall is to make it more open, which fits the overall theme of Open Legend, which partially is about finding an Attribute to do the task you want to do, and having an explainable reason for it to work. That is part of the reason when a player says they want to do something I say “sounds like _____, but if you have another attribute in mind and can convenience me of it, I’ll let you use that”

There can be situations where some Attributes won’t work for initiative given special circumstances, but allowing players to use their best stat is part of being Legends too.

You could certainly try taking some sort of average of all of them, but, again, that sounds complicated and I’m not sure it really makes too much sense to do. A person that responds really fast with their muscles doesn’t often worry about taking the time to logically look over the scene. A person that can summon magic with their mind doesn’t need fast muscles to suddenly shoot their magic out, etc.

If in a particular campaign you wanted to emphasize diversifying points, I suppose you could.