SKILL: Tactician

[Deleted]

Tactician - The character steals initiative by winning IQ.

in the beginning, i was really unsure of how to apply the Tactician skill. i'm still not 100% confident because of the way the Stalker skill is worded, so i usually don't take this skill. by reading between the lines in games run in the forum, i think this is how it is used normally:

roll for initiative. if your party loses, a character with Tactician can attempt 3/IQ+Tactician. if he passes, your party has the initiative.

if that is correct, i think the rules would benefit greatly from the addition of 3 little words:

Tactician - The character steals initiative for the party by winning IQ.

assuming i am interpreting correctly and that i have a character in my party with the Tactician skill, would it be against the LAW if i just made my Tactician check before rolling for initiative? if i pass, there's no need to roll for initiative, right? usually i would have better odds of passing a Tactician check than winning initiative, so it seems like it could speed up play.

[blacknigel]

I've always understood that using the Tactician skill was performed as the character's Action for that turn, rather than a 'free' action before any movement or combat starts. So using your example:
Roll for initiative, if your party loses, the opponents Move and Act first.
Then on the Player's turn, the character with Tactician skill (if they haven't already forfeited their turn with a Dodge, Counterattack, or Defended a takedown) can attempt to steal initiative *for the party* as their Action for that turn.

I've always understood it to be *for the party* and if it isn't, totally agree with you that it should be.

In some adventure encounters it explicitly states that the foes have Suprise (a free turn plus Initiative) or just Initiative. These distinctions would be almost meaningless if Tactician is a free action.

[Deleted]

maybe i should first get schooled in rolling for initiative. here's how i've been doing it:

if the adventure text says the enemy has surprise or initiative, i do nothing. i roll nothing for initiative or Tactician. they have initiative. it's predetermined. when the adventure text says that we have initiative, same thing.

when neither initiative or surprise is indicated in the text, i roll 1d6 for my party and 1d6 for the enemies. the highest rolling side wins. i know that in other games initiative is re-rolled at the beginning of every round, but i can't find anything in the rules that says we do this here and i thought i read somewhere or someone say that in LAW, we only check for initiative once, at the beginner of an encounter. if that's the case, i don't see how Tactician has any meaning after the other side has already taken action.

EDIT: found where i read initiative was handled this way...
www.darkcitygames.com/docs/LegendsTurnCard.pdf

perhaps Tactician works like a Reaction? roll for init. if you lose, your Tactician character can try to steal it back by passing 3/IQ+Tactician. however, the tactician character forfeits his next turn.

[blacknigel]

Hey no problem ewookie, (It's not wise to upset a wookie)
These boards are a constant reminder to me that every one plays LAW just a little bit differently - and that's cool.

I think you've got the basic jist of initiative (as I see it) with one clarification.

Feb 24, 2013 17:08:39 GMT -5 @ewookie said:

maybe i should first get schooled in rolling for initiative. here's how i've been doing it:

if the adventure text says the enemy has surprise or initiative, i do nothing. i roll nothing for initiative or Tactician. they have initiative. it's predetermined. when the adventure text says that we have initiative, same thing.

when neither initiative or surprise is indicated in the text, i roll 1d6 for my party and 1d6 for the enemies. the highest rolling side wins.

I'm completely with you so far. That's how I play it.

Feb 24, 2013 17:08:39 GMT -5 @ewookie said:

i thought i read somewhere or someone say that in LAW, we only check for initiative once, at the beginner of an encounter.

Yes, except for when one side, usually the player's characters, have the Tactician skill. If you've got Tactician, you can use it as an action to 'steal' initiative back.

So, at the start of an encounter where the instructions don't say who has inititive, you roll. For purposes of example your foes get intitiative.
On their turn they come stampeding towards your dudes while their archers take potshots at you.
On your turn, your spearman countercharges the lead baddy (Attacks), Your thief fires a shot at their archer from his bow (Attacks), and your dwarf begs for a someone to hit with his battleaxe (runs as far as his sturdy legs will take him but doesn't get adjacent to a foe).
Meanwhile your leader Sun Tzu, takes no offensive action but studies the enemy's approach with his Tactician skill (rolls 3/IQ). He succeeds, because Sun Tzu is badass when it comes to this. He starts yelling out orders to the team.

Turn Two - Player has stolen initiative, and so Spearman attacks again, Thief fires his bow, Dwarf runs and finally wacks somebody, and now Sun Tzu is free to join the fray and attack or do whatever Ancient Masters do.
THEN the foes get to move and/or attack on their 2nd turn.

Unless the baddies have a Tactician of their own, they have permanently lost initiative for this encounter, and the Player's charcaters always go first from here on out

If both sides have Tacticians then it could go back and forth depending on how often the foes and the characters are willing to sacrifice their action for the turn to try winning the roll. But the key thing to remember is that Sun Tzu and Azog can't take an Action AND try their Tactician skill in the same turn. In this case, attempting to use the skill IS their Action for that turn.

At least that's how I understand and play it.

[Deleted]

hey, thanks for the reply. i can see the logic in how you are doing it, although, to me, it seems more like you are stealing a turn since initiative is only checked one time at the beginning of the encounter. i'm leaning more toward handling the Tactician check like a Reaction. i hope others will chime in and describe how they handle it.

as a side-note, it is this wookie's experience that it is less desirable to be an upset wookie than to create an upset a wookie. laughter is good for the fuzzball. however, it is better to have passed an upset terd and be relieved of it than to hold it in and turn to the dark side.

however, a true jedi can use the force to polish and deodorize the upset terd. also, he never forgets to flush.
EDIT: also, if there is a fan available, he will use that too.

a true jedi is a padawan and a padawan is a true jedi. me? i'm just a wookie

[mister frau blucher]

Hey guys,

Blacknigel is right about how we use it, with the only caveat that if the other team had Tactician it would not keep going back and forth. You can only use it once in an encounter. That used to be in the rules, but it must have been dropped somewhere.

Originally, George had intended for it to be used only at the beginning of an encounter, and that is why it is worded as Initiative rather than Turn. But as often has happened, things change a bit with play.

As far as Reaction - you can play it that way, and it would work, but i usually just treat it as an action in your own turn, as blacknigel's example above.

[Deleted]

Feb 27, 2013 14:28:05 GMT -5 mister frau blucher said:

Hey guys,

Blacknigel is right about how we use it, with the only caveat that if the other team had Tactician it would not keep going back and forth. You can only use it once in an encounter. That used to be in the rules, but it must have been dropped somewhere.

Originally, George had intended for it to be used only at the beginning of an encounter, and that is why it is worded as Initiative rather than Turn. But as often has happened, things change a bit with play.

As far as Reaction - you can play it that way, and it would work, but i usually just treat it as an action in your own turn, as blacknigel's example above.

thanks for weighing in. i prefer george's original intention. it makes the most sense to me and is easy to explain. i wasn't really making it a Reaction. i was just trying to take a shortcut to explain that when you use it, the character using it forfeits that turn...or in better words, it is not a free-action; it counts as your action that turn.

[Deleted]

actually, i want to thank both of you, blacknigel and mister, for weighing in. i was really fumbling in the dark to start and letting it be a free-action. your posts have been very enlightening. although i don't like they way you guys are handling it, your posts enabled me to find a way that i do like.

it's sort of like baking a cake. having never baked one, i had no idea where to start. thanks for sharing your recipes. i hope no one is offended that i modified your recipes to my liking.

i am a bit disappointed that no one had any wise cracks about my philosophical jedi terds though

EDIT: oh no. did i use the word cracks in that sentence?

[mister frau blucher]

Feb 27, 2013 16:07:48 GMT -5 @ewookie said:

i am a bit disappointed that no one had any wise cracks about my philosophical jedi terds though

EDIT: oh no. did i use the word cracks in that sentence?

I decided to butt out of that one.

;D

[Deleted]

Feb 27, 2013 16:28:13 GMT -5 mister frau blucher said:

Feb 27, 2013 16:07:48 GMT -5 @ewookie said:

i am a bit disappointed that no one had any wise cracks about my philosophical jedi terds though

EDIT: oh no. did i use the word cracks in that sentence?

I decided to butt out of that one.

;D

that was a good one. i'm having a hard time squeezing anything out of it. ;D

[gbigdan]

I used to play TFT with a dedicated group for many years. I do not in any way consider myself an expert, BUT here's how we handled it. First, simpler is almost always better for this elegant rules system so that philosophy permeated everything we did including house rules. Second, with the tactics skills: at the beginning of each encounter, the tactician would roll 3/IQ and if successful would have a +1 to initiative for every round until the encounter was over, and we did roll initiative every round. Using this system, it was certainly still possible to lose initiative, but less likely. Otherwise I think it makes this skill too powerful to auto-win every round. There were 2 levels to this skill that stacked (expert tactician) that would therefore grant a +2. I could even see a third and fourth level (strategist and master strategist) for +3 and +4 respectively. Of course, when fighting intelligent opponents, they could also have a tactician which made them even more deadly (as it should be), but this is easily handled because it's just a matter of higher roll wins and reroll all ties. That's my 2 cents.