Two dumbass questions I should be able to answer. Options

[yesferatu]

1. Group initiative on grunts. So I get that you roll once for the whole group. How do you decide which grunt's initiative to use? Do you just always go with the highest and then apply wound penalties?

2. Initiative - I get that you take your reaction + intuition base score and then roll it. Can your initiative be reduced below your base, or do you always have at least your base? (I'm ignoring glitches for the sake of argument.) I had a player with wounds keep assigning himself a 3 on his initiative and I couldn't find a ruling on that.

[Eratosthenes]

1. Group initiative on grunts. So I get that you roll once for the whole group. How do you decide which grunt's initiative to use? Do you just always go with the highest and then apply wound penalties?

2. Initiative - I get that you take your reaction + intuition base score and then roll it. Can your initiative be reduced below your base, or do you always have at least your base? (I'm ignoring glitches for the sake of argument.) I had a player with wounds keep assigning himself a 3 on his initiative and I couldn't find a ruling on that.

1) I generally break it up by Initiative. All the people with an 8 initiative, I roll together; all the ones with a 9 I roll together, etc. It's up to the GM.

2) You're forgetting to add their Initiative Attribute to the hits generated from the Initiative test, to get their Initiative score. The penalties from wounds, sustaining spells, etc., apply to the Initiative test, not their Score.

Example: Bob has Reaction 3, Intuition 4 (So Initiative 7) would roll 7d6. For the example, let's say he got 2 hits. He'd have an Initiative Score of 9.

If he had a -2 wound modifier, he'd only roll 5d6 for the test.

[yesferatu]

Right...so the base never drops below your intuition + reaction score.
You can get no successes on the test or glitch, but it will never drop below your base.

Excellent. Thanks.

[Draco18s]

Example: Bob has Reaction 3, Intuition 4 (So Initiative 7) would roll 7d6. For the example, let's say he got 2 hits. He'd have an Initiative Score of 9.

If he had a -2 wound modifier, he'd only roll 5d6 for the test.

Technically speaking, you "lose" hits on your initiative roll every time you take a new wound modifier. But the book doesn't say how, so no one uses that rule (that I'm aware of).

[CanRay]

Remember Tommy the Tech Support Cripple says: "There are no stupid questions, only wastes of flesh!" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Technically speaking, you "lose" hits on your initiative roll every time you take a new wound modifier. But the book doesn't say how, so no one uses that rule (that I'm aware of).

I don't know; Once Initiative is set, you just lose position... For example: Initiative is 9, you get 3 hits for a Final Initiative Score of 12...
Take 6 points of Stun damage, you know have a -2 modifier, which moves your Initiative score from 12 to 10; take 6 points of Physical Damage on top of that, and your new Initiative Score is now an 8. You can indeed fall below your "Initiative Attribute", with enough modifiers in place...

[Mardrax]

Your Initiative attribvute is equal to Reaction + Intuition.
You roll this, and add any hits to your Initiative attribute (ignore wound modifiers here? Not explicitly mentioned. Double dipping it seems harsh), this is your Initiative score.
Wound modifiers are substracted from your initiative score directly.

Not only may your Intiative score drop below your Initiative attribute, it may drop below 1, causing you to be unable to act at all.

[Eratosthenes]

Your Initiative attribvute is equal to Reaction + Intuition.
You roll this, and add any hits to your Initiative attribute (ignore wound modifiers here? Not explicitly mentioned. Double dipping it seems harsh), this is your Initiative score.
Wound modifiers are substracted from your initiative score directly.

Not only may your Intiative score drop below your Initiative attribute, it may drop below 1, causing you to be unable to act at all.

Re-reading the initiative section, it would appear that wound modifiers affect both the test, and the score directly? Is that a double whammy, then?

TJ's right, you could theoretically have a negative Initiative Score. Sustain a few spells, tack on some wound modifiers, and have a crappy Reaction/Intuition.

[pbangarth]

From page 144 of SR4A,

When making the Initiative Test, wound modifiers from damage affect
the Initiative Score. In addition, if a character takes damage that inflicts
wound modifiers during a Combat Turn, apply those (additional)
modifiers to his Initiative Score immediately.

The effect is to the score, not the test.

[Mardrax]

Indeed. Wound modifiers are directly substracted from initiative score.
Is it specifically mentioned anywhere that this is instead of having it apply to the test? Or is that on top of applying them to the test? I don't think RAW makes a good point for deciding on either.

[Manunancy]

In my opinion the way it is meant is as follow (based on the 'during the combat turn') :The wound penalty is indeed applied to your initative value. But it won't change your initiative roll for the round, hence the initative score drops by the fresh penalty. Next round you roll with the new initative value.

Exemple : you have an init value of 8 and rolled a 3 for an init score of 11. During the round you get a -2 wound penalty.

For the remainder of the round, your initative score drops to 11-2 = 9 for what's left of the combat turn (assuming you ge no penalties). Next round, you roll your initative with the 8-2=6 modified intiative value.

No double whammy, it's just simpler to alter the straight initiative score than modifiying the initative value and adding the initiative roll for that round to determine the init score.

In my exemple, that would be calculating 11-2 rather than 8-2 = 6, +3 = 9.

[yesferatu]

So to clarify...if your base score is 4 from Intuition and 4 from Reaction which equals 8...
Then you later end up with -3 from stun and -3 from physical wounds...
You should be rolling 2 dice and added successes to 2?

[Mardrax]

The Initiative attribute itself never suffers from wound penalties. End result is the same as applying it to both Initiative score, and as a modifier to the test though.

[Glyph]

The initiative Score is what you get from rolling the Initiative Test. You apply any existing negative modifiers to this score, then apply any additional modifiers from wounds taken during that combat turn to the score, immediately.

Example: Gillette the sammie has an enhanced Reaction of 7 and an Intuition of 4, giving him Initiative Attribute of 11. He has 4 boxes of wound damage. He rolls makes an Initiative Test with 11 dice, adds this total to his Initiative Attribute of 11, then subtracts one from it due to his wound penalty. For example, he gets 4 hits, so his Initiative Score is (4 + 11 -1)=14. If he gets wounded for two more boxes during the round, bringing him to 6 boxes of damage and giving him an additional wound penalty, then his Initiative Score would drop to 13 for the rest of that round. And next test, he would have a -2 penalty to his Initiative Score.

Note that you don't lose dice - it's actually worse than that; you lose hits.

[pbangarth]

Exactly, you lose hits, not dice. As per p. 144 of SR4A.

[Mardrax]

Note that you don't lose dice

Can you or anyone else back that up with a rules quotation? This:

Wound modifiers are dice pool modifiers that apply to nearly all tests the injured character may attempt, except for resistance tests. Wound modifiers are also applied immediately to a character’s Initiative Score

seems to suggest you lose dice as well as losing Initiative score.

In any case, you don't lose hits, since that would mean rolling one hit, with a wound modifier of 1 and half 1's on the roll would be a critical glitch.

[pbangarth]

Can you or anyone else back that up with a rules quotation?

On page 144 of SR4A, under Initiative Score it tells us that the Initiative Score is generated by an Initiative Test. This Initiative Score is different from the results of other tests in that it is the sum of the original Initiative (the dice pool) and the number of hits. It is the Initiative Score that is used in all Initiative comparisons among characters.

Further down, under Initiative and Damage, it tells us that "wound modifiers from damage affect the Initiative Score." Then an example is given of how that applies immediately during combat.

This:

seems to suggest you lose dice as well as losing Initiative score.

In any case, you don't lose hits, since that would mean rolling one hit, with a wound modifier of 1 and half 1's on the roll would be a critical glitch.

This is no different from any number of other modifiers to the number of hits, in all kinds of different tests, that can lead to a glitch.

EDIT: I had to rethink this. Modifiers are usually to the dice pool. Nevertheless, the wound modifier is explicitly stated as applying to the Score, not the Test, so this is an example of a specific being an exception to the general rule.

[Draco18s]

You can only glitch on an Initiative Test if the number of 1s in your dice pool is half the dice or more. Its a critical glitch if you have no successes.

Your initiative score is [Initiative Attribute] + Hits - Wound penalties.

No where does wound penalties make initiative glitches more common (other than by a reduction of dice pool size, which is normal).

[Yerameyahu]

I guess you could decide (interpret) that the wound penalty applies to the Initiative *Test*, just as it applies to nearly all tests. Honestly, this wouldn't matter all that much, but it *would* be a 'double-whammy'; you'd have to decide for yourself if that's good or bad. It's certainly simpler to subtract wound penalties directly (and only) from the post-Test Initiative *Score*.

[Draco18s]

Quite. I don't agree to the double whammy myself, but reducing "hits" due to wounds doesn't cause glitches/critical glitches to be any more likely than they would be otherwise.

[pbangarth]

Yes, thinking about this some more, the Initiative Score is an arithmetic result of the following:

Initiative Attribute + hits from Initiative Test - wound modifiers.

Only the middle term is subject to being a glitch. If the Test itself is not a glitch, modifying the Initiative Score won't create a glitch because the modification comes after the Test.

OK, that makes sense.

[Mardrax]

Quite. I don't agree to the double whammy myself

I don't agree with it either. Makes for more bookkeeping, and brings up the grit a bit too much for my liking. I was just wondering if there's anything to make clear that it shouldn't apply. Since the part on wound modifiers saying they apply to "nearly" every test but resistance tests, and are "also" applied directly to Initiative score. RAW seems to argue against ignoring it., though "nearly" certainly leaves room. *shrug* I tend to like my rules specific. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)