I made up a number of tables to show the possible total initiative scores given a base initiative and a number of initiative dice. The tables are based on a natural initiative of 2 to 13 and up to +3 from reaction enhancers.

The colors are use to denote how many actions your final initiative will give you. I include a step between each 10 to indicate when you have enough initiative to take an interrupt action without losing a full action.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key...tCVjRnVUE#gid=0 (you may have to click file and do open with spreadsheets)

After looking at the tables I think the base initiatives to aim for are:

1 die - 8 or 9
2 die - 12
3 die - 14
4 die - 12 (17 if you can get there)

Any thoughts?

I like what you are trying to do here, but found your tables a bit confusing. I think you switched formats between the two of them?

I have a hard time thinking in terms of % in SR I think in fractions i.e. on 1d6 you have 1/6 chance for any particular number to come up. on 2d6 you have 1/36 chance to roll a 2 but a 1/6 (6/36) chace to roll a 7. I would take a look at the table here. It gives some nice info on d6 odds.

http://www.jimloy.com/math/probabil.htm

The two tables on a single sheet are formatted differently.

The first on has your base initiative an the Y and the value of your roll on the X. The box contains the chance of that roll.

The second table has total initiatives on the Y and base initiative on the X. The box contains the chance of getting AT LEAST that total initiative. Empty boxes are either lower or higher than a possible roll.

I disagree with using fractions only because unless you use a common denominator it is hard to compare different values. That is fine for 1D6 and 2D6, but when you get to 3D6 and 4D6 you are talking about common denominators of 216 and 1296, respectively. And those values are too high for most people to have an instinctive understanding of how often something like 35/1296 actually happens (where as 2% isn't hard to understand).

fair enough. I'm use to doing large fractions in my head.

Ok, I gotcha now. Simple enough. What might help is a table showing the diffrent odds for rolling x number per d6s

3d6
3- 1/216- .004
4- 3/216- .014

ect. ect.

after that adding the base initiative gives a good idea what the bell chart would look like. Hell I'd offer to macro it in to where you just half to type in the number to an excel sheet and it gives you the possible initiatives, odds, and a graphical representation, but..... I'm bad at excel.

Okay. I added some VBA to do what you mentioned. But now you need to actually download it and run it in Excel.

The first sheet will let you input your base initiative and your initiative dice and then will generate a graph showing the bell curve and will list out all the possible total initiatives as well as there individual chance.

I am still messing around with the programming to see if I can get it to color the bell curve based on your IPs, but I haven't figured it out yet.

The other charts are still attached on the other sheets.

EDIT: Okay. The graph now changes colors to indicate initiative passes.

Link: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxX_Zfgmwxf...dit?usp=sharing

Thanks for the charts. I'm a little surprised that they aren't generating more chatter.

What I take from this is that even guys with 1D6 can be extremely viable in combat, but 2D6 looks like a sweet spot in terms of what you have to give up for it through cyber/bio/magic.