Who has the initiative?

[Glorelendil]

thank you very much. Now i found it.

Nevertheless, I would find it more realistic to make opposite battle rolls each round, taking into account battle skill and vocation for monsters, instead of determing initiative once and for all in the first round.

But the book says that " Each combat round is resolved following the order of action set by the stances chosen by the players"...so if the companions win initiative in the first round, they are going to act first all the following rounds until the end of the fight.

Yup. After it has been determined then it just follows that order for the rest of the fight.

You are, of course, free to houserule it, but TOR is intentionally designed to keep combat as simple as possible.

[Majestic]

Yep, and I find it goes much quicker to just keep that order the rest of the fight. By not rolling each turn, it makes it so that no 'side' goes twice in a row. It all moves pretty quickly.

[Stormcrow]

Initiative in this game isn't so much about who's got quicker reflexes than it is about who's got the better defended position. If you take a defensive position against aggressive attackers, they generally have to get past your defenses before they can hurt you, while simultaneously opening themselves up to attack. On the other hand, if you ambush a party successfully, they don't have a chance to find a good, defensive position, and you get to land your telling blows more easily.

[bluejay]

Yep, and I find it goes much quicker to just keep that order the rest of the fight. By not rolling each turn, it makes it so that no 'side' goes twice in a row. It all moves pretty quickly.

This is an important point because many of the conditions of combat are reliant upon this constant back and forth with no side getting two turns in a row.

[Robin Smallburrow]

cataclib has picked up on an important point though, which is that the side with the initiative in Combat tends to win most TOR combats (unless heavily outnumbered - numbers are also important!)

I have lost count of the number of adversaries that were dead before they got an action....

Robin S.

[Stormcrow]

That's a good feature to me. It shows that you shouldn't just charge headlong into combat without arranging your tactical position.