Fantasy Heartbreaker: Initiative vs Strike Rank

Strike ranks never did it for me. Rolling initiative once and having everyone attack in that order again and again never did it for me either. One minute long rounds seem super-long. Most initiative systems seemed overly complicated.

Back in the day we rolled group initiative every round and it worked very nicely. This gave you the chance to destroy an enemy before they had a turn but made the potential for an enemy to go twice in a row a real possibility which could be a nightmare.

My group took this system over to RuneQuest and HarnMaster in turn. I figured I'd adapt the same system to my heartbreaker except that instead of  having the high initiative win I'd go with low initiative wins. We were using a roll under system for skills and all so this would make for better consistency.

I settled on 10 six-second rounds in a minute. Having a six-second round matched the six possible results on the 1d6 which had a nice symmetry and allowed a GM to match each point on the die to a specific second if necessary.

So each side rolls 1d6, lowest roll goes first. Roll again each round.

Quick, uncomplicated, and with serious risks.