Am I reading this right? You can only decide to use an interrupt on the first action phase of the current Combat Turn?

I believe that you are incorrect. You can perform an interrupt as long as you have initiative points remaining, though some actions require them to be initiated on your actual turn, while others can be enacted at any time.

You can normally use an interrupt anytime like TJ said so long as you have some initiative to spend.

What you may be thinking of is the following line in Core pg 167.



I.e. if you get surprised, you can not use an interrupt action like block or dodge to defend with before your normal action-- because you are surprised and caught flat footed if only for a split second.

While people are looking at this, I'd like to double check on how I've been running this in my game. Probably easiest to put it into an example.

George the security mage-troll uses edge to move to the front of the initiative stack (going on 25), but his actual initiative roll is 13. i.e. instead of going on 13 and 3, he's expecting to go on 25 and 3. So far so clear.

Now, George is a big fan of SoySnax, and when I say big I mean big enough to make two trolls, so George likes to be effecient with his energy expenditure. In other words, he uses his first action to tell a couple of spirits to go and be active on his behalf, and will only go on full defense if he figures he's about to be attacked. He's used his action at 25, but the pass isn't done yet, and he still expects an action next pass (at 3).

If someone attacks him at this point, he'll reluctantly start dodging, and will want to use full defense. He's used his actions for this pass; can he still declare full defense at this point? (if he does I assume that his init drops from 13 to 3, and at the next pass then drops to -7 and he can do nothing else this turn)

Now let's assume nobody bothered him for the duration of the first pass, so he didn't go on full defense. The second pass comes around and his init score is now 3. At init=5 one of his opponents realizes that the easiest way to deal with the spirits should be to gank the mage. George only has 3 init left, but does have an action owing to him. Can he declare full defense at this point? What if nobody bothered him before his turn, and at 3 he cast an armor spell on himself (because 30 soak just isn't enough), but then at 2 somebody attacks him -- at that point can he go on full defense?

Now let's rewind time once again to go down a different leg of the option tree. On the second pass nobody attacks George, and when it comes to init=3 he holds his action. We go into the third initiative pass, and his init is now -7, but he still has an action held. If at this point the heavily-wired-but-not-so-bright elven gunner on the other side finally decides to target the mage, can George give up his action to go on full defense?