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If you could delay while dying, you wouldn't ever die, since you can delay your turn indefinitely.You can only delay to an initiative of 0.
Not true.
Your initiative result becomes the count on which you took the delayed action. If you come to your next action and have not yet performed an action, you don't get to take a delayed action (though you can delay again).
If you take a delayed action in the next round, before your regular turn comes up, your initiative count rises to that new point in the order of battle, and you do not get your regular action that round.
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Incorrect, you can delay into the next turn without taking any action at all.
Delay
By choosing to delay, you take no action and then act normally on whatever initiative count you decide to act. When you delay, you voluntarily reduce your own initiative result for the rest of the combat. When your new, lower initiative count comes up later in the same round, you can act normally. You can specify this new initiative result or just wait until some time later in the round and act then, thus fixing your new initiative count at that point.
You never get back the time you spend waiting to see what's going to happen. You also can't interrupt anyone else's action (as you can with a readied action).
Initiative Consequences of Delaying
Your initiative result becomes the count on which you took the delayed action. If you come to your next action and have not yet performed an action, you don't get to take a delayed action (though you can delay again).
If you take a delayed action in the next round, before your regular turn comes up, your initiative count rises to that new point in the order of battle, and you do not get your regular action that round.
If you allowed people to delay while dying to prevent them from rolling to stabilize, then there's nothing stopping them from choosing to delay their action again on their next turn and prevent the stabilization roll again (short of more DM fiat).
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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So, oh Venture-Captains, how would you handle someone totally new to PFS, first PC, first game, first encounter, getting their PC killed by a crit?
Well, which of those should matter. kinevon?
I've been playing PFS for a while. Is it okay for my PC to get killed from a critical hit?
What if it's my (7th) character's first game? The first encounter?
Are you suggesting that the rules about ht points shouldn't apply to players for a while?
I'm with Kyle. You say, "Yoikes!" And then we go on. It's the first encounter, so I'd probably let the player rejoin the group with a new character. "Is your Lantern Lodge gnome sorcerer dead? Well, then, try a half-orc bard. Or a human barbarian. Or, if you like gnome sorcerers, I'll bet we can find a character sheet for one, sitting right in front of you."
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OMG someone recalled a rule from memory incorrectly and he has 5 stars! Get 'em! The internets mustn't stand for this!
I still say that Delay being listed as "No Action" is a gray enough area to fudge and try to save the life of a PFS newbie. It helps foster a bit of drama as those who haven't acted in the round rush to try to save the person's life.
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.........OMG someone recalled a rule from memory incorrectly and he has 5 stars! Get 'em! The internets mustn't stand for this!
I still say that Delay being listed as "No Action" is a gray enough area to fudge and try to save the life of a PFS newbie. It helps foster a bit of drama as those who haven't acted in the round rush to try to save the person's life.
Chill, Kyle. It's just a sore spot for me since people have been running it wrong since they pulled that out of the rules in the 3.5 switch. I'm all for being a little creative in grey areas to save a noob if it'll keep them playing.
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Chill, Kyle. It's just a sore spot for me since people have been running it wrong since they pulled that out of the rules in the 3.5 switch. I'm all for being a little creative in grey areas to save a noob if it'll keep them playing.
I'm always chill. ;-)
Funny thing is that I actually run it correctly, but I thought I was always running it incorrectly. Make sense?
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Funny thing is that I actually run it correctly, but I thought I was always running it incorrectly. Make sense?
** spoiler omitted **
That's exactly how I run it. The rules in 3.0 also allowed a refocus, which basically let you bump back up to the top of the initiative order in the next round, at the cost of your delayed round, at which point you could just delay again, which made the lint on how long you could delay and the refocus action kinda pointless, which is why I was happy to see them go in 3.5
More to the point, I was more concerned that a less experienced GM would see your post and think they were running it wrong than that you were messing it up. Your reputation in the Society is such that I'm not too worried about your GMing. (We all do make mistakes, though -- I think my running dominate person as a 1 action casting time spell resulted in an unnecessary character death at Animefest. Fortunately, Brian and I go way back and he took it in stride even after we discovered the error.)
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Something I have found helps people with understanding initiative is to think of it not as a list, with a top and bottom, but as a circle. The initiative rolls put everyone in order, and say who gets to start things off, but once that happens the rolls no longer matter and the person who was "first" is now just another person who comes after the one who was "last". If you delay, you come out of the circle and choose when to rejoin it; if you ready, you stay put, but if/when you take your readied action you move to your new spot.
The circle metaphor is vastly helped by index cards, since the physical process of cycling through the cards reinforces the metaphor. Handing the card to the player who delayed also helps remind them that you aren't going to call on them until they hand it back to you.
On topic: A character that is unconscious is helpless, per the "unconscious" condition description. A helpless character is treated as having a Dexterity of 0 (ie, Dex modifier of -5). If Initiative were kept as a list, this would have the effect of potentially lowering them in the initiative order (depending on their original roll and those of the other characters). Would it be reasonable to say that if a character becomes unconscious on another character's turn (which is usually the case, due to combat damage), they could "delay" their initiative order to just before *that* character's next turn? This would allow all the other characters a chance to respond before the now-dying character has to make that stabilization roll.
(Of course if the character goes from conscious to dead in a single, horrible hit, all bets are off, but this would help the more usual case, as well as the corner case of going to 1 bleed point from dead. It could also have the negative affect of allowing other enemies another shot at the dying character.)
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On topic: A character that is unconscious is helpless, per the "unconscious" condition description. A helpless character is treated as having a Dexterity of 0 (ie, Dex modifier of -5). If Initiative were kept as a list, this would have the effect of potentially lowering them in the initiative order (depending on their original roll and those of the other characters). Would it be reasonable to say that if a character becomes unconscious on another character's turn (which is usually the case, due to combat damage), they could "delay" their initiative order to just before *that* character's next turn? This would allow all the other characters a chance to respond before the now-dying character has to make that stabilization roll.
Do you normally change initiative dynamically based off of changes in dexterity?
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On topic: A character that is unconscious is helpless, per the "unconscious" condition description. A helpless character is treated as having a Dexterity of 0 (ie, Dex modifier of -5). If Initiative were kept as a list, this would have the effect of potentially lowering them in the initiative order (depending on their original roll and those of the other characters). Would it be reasonable to say that if a character becomes unconscious on another character's turn (which is usually the case, due to combat damage), they could "delay" their initiative order to just before *that* character's next turn? This would allow all the other characters a chance to respond before the now-dying character has to make that stabilization roll.Do you normally change initiative dynamically based off of changes in dexterity?
Not normally, no; I was thinking as a "GM's prerogative" to give someone about to die a fighting chance, particularly if they go next after the attack, before any assistance is possible.