Resolution, Initiative, and Reactions
Resolution, Initiative, and Reactions
Tick order doctrine
Within each tick, a fixed deterministic order:
- Movement
- Exec effects
- Prep completions
- Recover completions
- Perception / observation
Deterministic, seeded, logged. This is what makes fights replayable for debugging and tuning.
Initiative
- Rolled at combat start (Perception or Stealth style, as in Pathfinder), fixed for the whole fight.
- Used as priority for same-tick, world-affecting resolutions only (exec effects, reactions, movement events) - not for internal phase transitions.
- Tiebreakers: dex, then level, then PCs-over-monsters, then a coin flip pre-rolled once per combat (so identical actors stay consistent all fight).
- Initiative as a speed stat: a small random jitter is added to PER cycles; initiative reduces prep and recover time (never exec - exec durations stay consistent so active windows remain readable). High initiative therefore produces more actions over a fight. The jitter is seeded per combat so replays reproduce.
Reactions
Reactions are short actions taken out of sequence, triggered by observing another actor's phase. Two axes:
Can I react at all? - gated by your own phase:
| My phase | React? | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Prep | Yes | Cancels or delays my prep, per the cancellation policy |
| Exec | No | Committed - this is the point |
| Recover | Yes | Small PER tax (e.g. 0/1/2); pushes back my next cycle |
What can my reaction do? - gated by the observed target's phase:
| Observed phase | What a reaction can do |
|---|---|
| Prep | Can cancel the target's action (interrupt the windup). Knowledge-gated: only actors who can read prep as prep can target it. |
| Exec | Can mitigate the action (reduce or disrupt its effect) - or do something entirely unrelated. |
| Recover | Cannot affect the completed action at all - but the target is vulnerable, so this is an exploit window: act while they wind down. |
Reactions never need to counter the triggering action. They trigger on phase events, not as restricted counters: a magehunter reacts to a mage's casting by throwing a knife; a mage under attack reacts by casting shield for extra AC.
- The reactor-side tax is the budget: "one reaction per round" has no meaning in a tick world, so reactions throttle themselves by eating timing.
- Baiting is a core player skill: a monster that has already spent its reaction window has no answer to a maneuver.
- Movement-adjacent reactions resolve in a fixed order: "leaving" reactions before "entering" reactions, initiative breaking ties.