Enchanted Realms Rulebook

Initiative

During the ten seconds of a round, everyone is acting simultaneously. As one person does something, it impacts the viability of another’s actions. Should a monster be running one way, will a PC be able to catch up to attack? Who got the jump on whom? All these questions are answered by determining initiative.

Initiative is merely a word to determine when each member of the battlefield gets to take one’s turn. From a game perspective, it is the order of effects that occur. However, players should not think this process as a truly-accurate portrayal of the combat in a stop-action method but rather merely as a game mechanic. Resolving conflict by the mechanics may appear like a chess game, but in the theater of the mind, players should imagine all the efforts happening simultaneously - just some effects resolve quicker than others.

If someone’s turn happens first by initiative, making another’s intention less desirable, then that’s just the incalculable nuances of combat playing out in the game mechanic. Conversely, someone acting later in the round might gain strategic advantage from examining the changes of the battlefield. That too is just the breaks of happenstance.

To determine the order of action, every participant rolls a d10, then adds any modifiers from Agility, skills or magical effects, then adjusts for weapon modifications. Unlike some other fantasy games, initiative rolls occur every round so the exact order cannot be known from round to round; this helps avoid meta-gaming.

The creature or character with the highest number takes the turn for the round first. Then each lower number is processed in descending order. If two creatures tie on the initiative score, then roll off on a d20 with the highest score being the winner. If ties continue to happen, keep rolling until the result is determined.

Initiative = d10 + AgilityMod + Other Modifiers