Effective Initiative

This is an attempt at converting the EI system for V1 to V2, to include the new V2 skills and
talents, as well as codifying the EI system as it was, and clarifying a few of the rules. If you’re new
to the EI system, to run a combat with EI, follow the steps below. It’ll probably take longer the first
couple of times, until you get used to the system. To start off with, just follow the steps below.

1) Determine Initiative scores for the round. Roll 2D10, the first determines if the combat round is
in the PCs’ favour (6+), or their disfavour (5-). The second roll determines by how much – add
or subtract the rolled number from all PCs’ Ag values to determine their Initiatives. PCs will
always be in the same order relative to each other
This step is optional and can be left out for purposes of keeping combat quicker.

2) Divide each participant’s Initiative by their attacks characteristic, and spread the attacks evenly
throughout the round. Eg. Sedric, with I60 and A3 has attacks occurring at I60, 40 and 20. Note
these attacks and their EI times down.

3) During the round, go down Initiative values. At each character’s Initiative value, they may make
their actions. They can delay, and act whenever they wish, except that attacks always come at
the Initiative values calculated, they can never be delayed. In the case of Sedric, should he wish
to delay his actions until I55 to see what his opponent is doing, he would miss his first attack,
and be unable to use it. He would however be able to attack at I40 and I20.

4) Actions take time. To represent this, whenever a character performs an action, he has to spend a
number of EI points before he can perform his next action. This works by assigning an Effective
Initiative time duration, which must be spent performing the action before any further action can
be taken. So, if a character with I40 and A2 decides to draw a dagger (EI-10), he spends all the
time from I40 to I30 drawing the dagger (and thus misses his first attack), and can then attack
with his second attack at I20.
Should an action take a character into negative EI (such as drawing a dagger, starting at I5,
which should last until EI-5), the GM can either let him complete it, or rule that it takes the
remaining amount out of his next turn as well (causing him to miss any attack opportunities at
the beginning of the round).
Movement is a special case. You can move a number of yards equal to twice your M
characteristic once during the round, declared anytime you could declare any other action, for no
EI cost. If you make no other actions at all during the round, you can run six times your M value
in yards instead.

Sample action times:

Drawing a weapon: Two-handed weapons/bows: full round.
Shields/Bucklers: full round.
Hand Weapons: EI-20
Knife/Dagger: EI-10
Aiming: EI-20
An attack Until your next attack
Getting something out of a pack 1 round per 30Enc points inside
Switching Opponent 1 attack*
Aiming an attack EI-20
Casting a spell EI-25 per ½-action
Channelling EI-15
A Heal attempt full round
Feint EI-15
Reloading EI-20 per ½-action
*To switch opponents during combat costs 1A, unless the previous opponent is killed or
incapacitated. Eg Bertold (I60, A3) could attack Goblin1 at I60, use his attack at I40 to switch to
Goblin2, then attack Goblin2 at I20. This would take up a full round’s worth of actions. If you
declare at the end of a round that you are switching opponents, you do not suffer this penalty when
attacking your new opponent in the next round.
An action that takes a full round must be started as soon as your action begins, and lasts until the
end of the round. You may move while performing a full round action, unless in combat.

Parries, miscellanea and clarifications

Whenever you could attack, you may opt instead to save your attack for a parry instead. Whenever
a successful hit is landed against you, you may use a saved attack to parry it. You may also use an
attack from later in the round that you haven’t been able to use yet, in which case the next time you
could attack, you must use the attack action, but don’t strike any blows (this represents being off-
balance from the parry). You do not get free parries for specific weapon combinations (although
may use their parrying bonuses). You may parry more than once per round, if you can pay attacks
to use them.
Dodge Blow is still a free action, as per the WFRP2 rules. It can be used at any time, even in the
process of performing another action.
When you charge an opponent and strike them, only your first attack gets the +10 bonus, even if
you strike 2 or more blows against that opponent in that round.
At the end of each round, anyone armed with an unloaded missile weapon gets a free 20EI to reload
in. If they are already in the middle of reloading, they don’t get an extra 20EI.
Surprise: instead of missing the entire first round, and standing there gobsmacked for the first ten
seconds while their opponents beat them senseless, being surprised means PCs lose the first D10x5
points of EI from the first round; thus slow-witted combatants will often find themselves unable to
do anything, but faster characters may be able to act later in the round, perhaps even taking their
second or third attacks if they have them, although they will have to miss their first attacks.
Attacks: these are more valuable now than in the normal WFRP2 rules, and should probably be
priced at around 300EPs. This is optional and can be ignored if you don’t think it’ll be a problem.

Rules taken from V1 (not required)

At the end of the round, in each combat, whichever combatant was dealt most wounds is pushed
back, and is moved 2 yards away from his opponent. The opponent may then choose to advance 2
yards to engage him, or alternatively to take a 2yard step in any direction. He is not obliged to do
so, but if he does, he gets +10 to his next roll to hit against that opponent if he engages him. If he
does not, the pushed back character cannot make any actions in the next round unless engaged.
Parries: a parry doesn’t block out all damage, but rather D10+SB. There are no free parries or
parrying stances.
There is no disengage option – you can move out of combat, but your opponent will get a chance to
hit you.

Talents, and how they interact with EI

Lightning Parry I’m stumped. Any ideas? Perhaps parries block an extra 2 damage?
Quick Draw Halve weapon-drawing times
Rapid Reload Reduce reloading time by EI-20 for each reload.

Examples of Combats
PCs
Methanin, elf Kithband Warrior (Ag45 A1) with a bow
Rudolf, human soldier (Ag30, A2) with a sword and shield.
Felix, human apprentice wizard (I29, A1) with a quarterstaff.

NPCs
3 beastmen, (Ag35 A1) with swords.
Combat Round 1

1) Initiative – Dice come up 3 and 8. The PCs lose initiative by 8. Thus Initiatives are

37 Methanin
35 Beastmen
22 Rudolf
21 Felix
11 Rudolf’s second attack

37 Methanin begins, and opts to draw his bow, taking up his full round.
35 The beastmen use their move actions to move 10 yards, and draw their swords (EI-20)
22 Rudolf uses his move action to charge one beastman, 10 yards away. He attacks with his first
attack, with a +10 bonus, but misses.
21 Felix decides to make a channelling test, to try to cast a spell.
15 The beastmen have finished their actions, but take no more actions this round.
11 Rudolf uses his second attack to attack the same beastman. He hits, and rolls a 10 for damage.
He passes his WS test for Ulric’s Fury, and, rolling another 8, kills the beastman outright.
06 15 I points after starting to channel, Felix has finished, and rolls his test. A pass. Now he wants
to cast the Drop spell. This takes him 25EI points. The GM decides Felix could reasonably
channel and cast in 10 seconds, so allows him to complete his action. Felix successfully casts
his spell, and causes one of the beastmen to drop his weapon.
00 Methanin uses his free 20EI to load his bow with an arrow and prepare to fire next turn.

Combat Round 2
The EI rolls are 8 and 7, so the PCs win by 7.

52 Methanin
37 Rudolf
35 Beastmen
36 Felix
18 Rudolf’s second attack

48 Methanin chooses to attack, shooting at a beastman. He hits, dealing it 4 wounds.

37 Rudolf attacks a beastman, hitting, and causing it 4 wounds. Note that he goes before the
beastmen this turn.
35 The two beastmen charge Rudolf, getting +10 to hit each. Both hit. Rudolf uses his Dodge
Blow skill to dodge one, and uses up his next attack to parry the other with his shield. He
passes both rolls. The damage done by the parried blow is 9, plus the Beastman’s SB of 3.
Rudolf rolls a 1 for his parry. The parry stops 2+his SB of 3, his TB stops another 3, and he
isn’t wearing any armour, so he takes 4 wounds.
36 Felix decides to channel magic (costs 15EI)
21 Felix passes his channelling roll, and decides to cast Drop again.
18 Rudolf has to use his attack to balance from his parry.
00 Felix fails his casting roll.
Methanin uses his free EI-20 to reload his bow, ready to shoot again next round.
 Tips for speeding up EI
The most obvious thing that stands out about EI is the number-crunching involved in sorting all the
Initiatives out. This is actually not as complicated as it seems. For a start, NPCs fighting against the
PCs don’t have variable Initiatives, so you as GM can write down their attack timings at the very
beginning, and not have to worry about them varying after that. For PCs, you can save yourself a lot
of work by allowing the players to calculate their own EI scores. All you have to do is keep track of
the NPC actions, and let the players work out when their PCs get to act, and interject if and when
necessary.
Another issue is that of EI action durations. By keeping action durations to multiples of 10EI as
much as possible (and 5 where not) the maths becomes a great deal easier for you and the players,
meaning things can go along more swiftly. A general rule of thumb for determining the duration of
an action is that 10EI is roughly what a normal person can achieve in 2 seconds, although don’t
stick to this religiously if it doesn’t seem to make sense. Also, you don’t have to allocate every
action an EI time, you can just tell the player to wait, and then let them know their action’s finished
at a suitable time later in the round.
Ignoring the first step of EI (variable Initiative) can help immensely (or roll once per combat if you
want a bit more variety); it will also make a number of calculations a lot easier, as all actions should
use only multiples of 5 for EI duration, so there will only be 2 possibilities of units digits to
calculate (i.e. I47 can only ever have 7 or 2 as units digit).
Do use a notepad if you think it’ll help. Whenever an NPC performs an action that takes, say 20EI
to complete, make a note of the EI at which he’ll finish, so you don’t forget later.
Finally, if you realise halfway through that you’ve got the entire sequence of the last three rounds
totally wrong, don’t stop to try to correct everything; you’ll just get more confused. Carry on the
way you were going, improvise where necessary, and sort out the details later. And don’t let players
with better and more expensive calculators than you derail your story because you subtracted a
number wrong.

Is EI the system for you?

There is no doubt that EI is a slightly more complicated system than the system from the WFRP2
rulebook. On the other hand, it allows for a lot more description and variety in actions, since you no
longer have to allocate everything as a free, half or a full action. In addition, since many actions will
just be attacks, a lot of the complexity of the system (number crunching) won’t apply to most
circumstances. And when it does, you’re definitely doing something the WFRP2 rules don’t cope
well with: getting the characters to interact.
EI allows a better sense of interplay between characters; more interactivity, less being bound by
slightly artificial rules and mechanics. The main focus of the rules is to allow you to do anything
with them – if a PC wants to do something unexpected, you can work that into the rules and give it
a time to be completed in, to make it take as long or as short as you like; rather than having to
choose between 0, 5 and 10 seconds. You could even have actions have random durations, to add to
the uncertainty of when one character finishes his action (such as D10x5 EI); will the mage finish
casting his spell before the goblin gets his turn and charges him? As casting now has a proper
duration, rather than most being finished in one full or half action before anyone else can have a go,
you can have mages interrupted in the middle of casting spells more easily. You can come up with
weird and wonderful rules for interruptions, such as rolling on the Tzeentch’s Curse tables as if all
dice had come up 1’s, or whatever else strikes your fancy.
The absence of stances like the parrying stance, the all-out attack stance and all the rest of it means
that’s one more thing you as the GM don’t have to worry about, allowing you to spend more time
focussing on the interactivity between characters, and the narrative aspect of the combat. For all its
rules, EI likes to focus on narrative combat; detailed rules for various actions are useless unless
someone’s going to use them. You can literally give a timing for the PC trying desperately to bar
the door before the watchmen beat it down. But don’t forget simply to throw all the rules out of the
window if it suits your style of play better. At the very least PCs with multiple attacks will see them
staggered throughout, lending a more believable and less tactical wargame-like aspect to the
combat, as well as not having to constrict everything into full, half and free actions.
EI is not for everyone; you may feel it’s too complicated, or gets you confused, or you don’t use a
computer and can’t be bothered to do it in your head. Your players may not understand it, or it may
just make no difference at all to you. Just do what helps the role-playing aspect most, and what’s
most fun for you; that’s what it’s about, at the end of the day.

Just to finish off, here is the above example combat, using the WFRP2 rules, to contrast.

PCs
Methanin, elf Kithband Warrior (Ag45 A1) with a bow
Rudolf, human soldier (Ag30, A2) with a sword and shield.
Felix, human apprentice wizard (I29, A1) with a quarterstaff.

NPCs
3 beastmen, (Ag35 A1) with swords.

Agility rolls come up…

Methanin (6)
Rudolf (9)
Felix (3)
Beastmen (5)

So, the order for the entire combat is…

Methanin (51)
Beastmen (40)
Rudolf (39)
Felix (32)

Round 1
Methanin Readies his bow [half] and draws an arrow [half]
Beastmen Ready their swords [half] and move [half]
Rudolf Charges a Beastman and misses [full action]
Felix Channels [half], succeeds, and casts Drop [half], making one beastman drop his weapon.
Rudolf can’t use his second attack because he charged, so doesn’t kill the beastman as in the
earlier example.

Round 2
Methanin shoots [half] and reloads [half], dealing one beastman 4 damage.
The two armed beastmen charge Rudolf [half]. Both hit. Rudolf Dodges one, and uses his free parry
for having a sword and shield on the other, and succeeds, so takes no damage.
The other beastman Readies his weapon [half] and moves towards Rudolf but can’t charge him
[half].
Rudolf Swift Attacks [full] to attack one beastman twice. He hits and kills the beastman.
Felix channels [half], succeeds, and casts Drop [half], but fails.

This method is a bit shorter, but certainly lacks the interaction. Each character in turn attacks. For
Felix there is no threat of being interrupted while casting, for Rudolf he isn’t striking throughout the
round, just in his little window of time. Methanin acts once at the beginning of the round and
doesn’t do anything much for the rest. And this combat only features one combatant with more than
one attack, and in the EI example the two given rounds the participants’ Ag scores were far apart
enough to ensure that EI didn’t change the order much. And none of the combatants tried anything
fancy, that might have come outside of the usual actions listed in the WFRP2 rulebook.
NB: this might just be a bad example I picked, as I rolled it randomly. Perhaps it should be replaced
with a combat that shows off the differences a bit more?