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Resolution, Initiative, and Reactions

Resolution, Initiative, and Reactions

Tick order doctrine

Within each tick, a fixed deterministic order:

  1. Movement
  2. Exec effects
  3. Prep completions
  4. Recover completions
  5. 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 windowedshort actions taken out of sequence, triggered by phaseobserving (execanother isactor's thephase. lockedTwo state):axes:

Can I react at all? - gated by your own phase:

PhaseMy phase Reactions?React? Cost
Prep
Yes Cancels or delays my prep, per the cancellation policy Exec No Committed - this is the point PrepRecover Yes Cancels or delays prep, per the cancellation policy Recover Yes Allowed; the reaction imposes a smallSmall PER tax (e.g. 0/1/2) that; pushes back themy 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 reactionreactor-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.