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Yeah, I know, my title is a bit of a click bait. I've played Delay by the book, both as a player and a GM, and I've found it was creating issues.
1. No more reactions. That's a big deal, because it's breaking one of the rules of the game: Scoring high in initiative can be detrimental. If you're, say, a Fighter and you score high in initiative, you may decide to Delay if you don't want to charge the enemies heedlesly. But now, you lose your ability to perform attacks of opportunity while you Delay. If you had scored a lower initiative you would have kept your Reactions (provided that your GM allowed you to use them during the first round). Also, I don't understand why delaying prevents you to use Reactions, it seems illogical to me.
2. Doubling negative effects. This one is there to prevent abusing Delay. But at the same time, it creates useless punishments to the players. Most players are not abusing Delay, and taking twice the Hazardous Terrain effect because you decided to play just after your comrade is harsh. The double negative effect rule should be conditional, and clearly aimed at situations where a player abuses Delay.
Overall, I find myself disappointed by Delay. As a GM, I will certainly end up houseruling Delay because I'm sick of punishing my players for no valid reason.
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Yes. The wording of Delay is pretty awkward and mostly aimed at preventing corner cases of abuse while trying to keep consistent with the rest of the actions system.
And it does end up punishing players for no good reason.
PCs should still be able to use their reactions, maybe with the same conditions as before their turn begins, ie GM's call.
And detrimental effects should not happen twice to a character within the same round.
Of course, this is made worse by the fact that most NPCs will not delay, often because they are the ones setting up the ambush.
2. Doubling negative effects. This one is there to prevent abusing Delay. But at the same time, it creates useless punishments to the players. Most players are not abusing Delay, and taking twice the Hazardous Terrain effect because you decided to play just after your comrade is harsh. The double negative effect rule should be conditional, and clearly aimed at situations where a player abuses Delay.
I had read the sentence, "When you Delay, any persistent damage or other negative effects that normally occur at the start or end of your turn occur immediately when you use the Delay action," to mean that the beginning-of-turn effects occur when the character delays instead of at the beginning of their turn at the new initiative.
1. No more reactions. That's a big deal, because it's breaking one of the rules of the game: Scoring high in initiative can be detrimental. If you're, say, a Fighter and you score high in initiative, you may decide to Delay if you don't want to charge the enemies heedlesly. But now, you lose your ability to perform attacks of opportunity while you Delay. If you had scored a lower initiative you would have kept your Reactions (provided that your GM allowed you to use them during the first round). Also, I don't understand why delaying prevents you to use Reactions, it seems illogical to me.
I had forgotten the part about reactions, because it never came up. The champion in my campaign, who frequently uses her Liberating Step reaction, never delays. The monk does delay, but I have not seen him use his Stand Still reaction during the delay--maybe he remembers that rule.
Let's look at the Delay action. The rules are in italics, my comments are in regular text.
Delay [Free Action]
Source Core Rulebook pg. 470 2.0
Trigger Your turn begins.
Okay, the character can delay at the start of their turn.
You wait for the right moment to act. The rest of your turn doesn’t happen yet. Instead, you’re removed from the initiative order. You can return to the initiative order as a free action triggered by the end of any other creature’s turn.
This is the essence. The character's turn shifts to later.
This permanently changes your initiative to the new position. You can’t use reactions until you return to the initiative order. If you Delay an entire round without returning to the initiative order, the actions from the Delayed turn are lost, your initiative doesn’t change, and your next turn occurs at your original position in the initiative order.
I don't understand the restrictions on reactions, either. The part about delaying an entire round loses the character's actions fits how my players play. I often have a PC delaying because they don't have anything worthwhile to do during their turn, so they wait in case the situation changes. And if the situation does not change, they waste the round. The alternative is taking their turn and declaring they do nothing, which is what the one-round delay becomes.
When you Delay, any persistent damage or other negative effects that normally occur at the start or end of your turn occur immediately when you use the Delay action. Any beneficial effects that would end at any point during your turn also end. The GM might determine that other effects end when you Delay as well. Essentially, you can’t Delay to avoid negative consequences that would happen on your turn or to extend beneficial effects that would end on your turn.
Er, so when do beneficial effects occur during a delay, such as Frightened 2 dropping to Frightened 1? When do negative effects end during a delay, such as the flat check to end persistent damage? This is incomplete.
The 10th-level rogues in my party now routinely use their 9th-level Debilitating Strike, modified by Precise Debilitation or Tactical Debilitation. Since these debilitations benefit the entire party, the timing when they end, "lasts until the end of your next turn," is important. I would not want them to be extended through a simple Delay. Thus, I understand why beneficial effects end when the Delay is declared.
For a houserule, how about:
Mathmuse's Delay [Free Action]
Based on PF2 Core Rulebook pages 468-470, Turns and Delay
Trigger Your turn begins.
You wait for the right moment to act. You take the beginning of your turn and the end of your turn (see Turns, PF2 Core Rulebook pages 468-469), but take no actions.
As a free action triggered by the end of any other creature’s turn, you may resume your turn and take the actions granted by your turn. You do not repeat the beginning-of-turn nor end-of-turn effects. This resets your initiative for your following turns to the position in the round when you took your actions. If you Delay an entire round without taking your actions, the actions from the Delayed turn are lost, your initiative doesn’t change, and your next turn occurs at your original position in the initiative order.
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And while I understand the reaction to the disincentive to delay, I think referring to it as "punishment" is hyperbolic. The game wants you to take your turn when it is your turn, rather than exactly whenever you want to, and provides an actual choice in the matter instead of one way or the other always being a better option.
By "the game wants" I presume you meant the game designers carefully thought through what would make Pathfinder 2nd Edition the most fun. Yet this seems to contradict the design's emphasis on tactics. Delaying is a tactic; for example, the scoundrel rogue in my party might delay to after the thief rogue's turn, because the thief rogue has Precise Debilitation that can make a creature flat-footed to everyone until the end of her turn.
A few tactics can break the game; for example, a two-action Ready to Step away when an opponent attacks you. I would ban that if my players ever tried that. But being able to arrange turns into a good order for teamwork feels like a worthwhile tactic for me.
Plus, when most of your complaints against Delay can be solved by a simple "I also carry a ranged weapon" planning step, it looks like there really isn't much to be complaining about.
My main complaint is that Delay is so complicated that I forgot many details in it. I am usually excellent at remembering details, but the details in Delay do not feel integral to the action. As The Raven Black said, they feel like they are meant for corner cases of abuse.
And the ranger in my party carries a ranged weapon and often delays to after the scoundrel rogue's turn, because that rogue likes to begin with Glad-Hand diplomacy, "Hello, we could be friends if we tried." Once the ranger takes a shot, the encounter is no longer the "casual or social situation" required for Glad-Hand.
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As was mentioned, the rules are there to make it so that you can't cheese out extra resources such as reactions or things with a duration that would end on your turn, delay consequences like persistent damage, etc.
If you're not worried about your players doing that and/or want delay to be a more powerful option than it currently is, then you can just not bother with that part of the rules. Personally I think Delay is good enough as-is, and I'm glad there's something like it, because what actually feels bad to me is when it's actively worse to roll higher on initiative. A lot of systems don't have a way to remedy that nearly as well as delay does, and I'm personally fine with the slight penalties I have to take to make that not problematic in the game designers' eyes.
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And while I understand the reaction to the disincentive to delay, I think referring to it as "punishment" is hyperbolic.
I had a player leaving the table because of that. I had a table coming to a stop with an hour discussion on delay (only time I ever got that in my games as my players know I know the rules very well). So, no, it's not hyperbolic.
The loss of reaction doesn't happen very often. But taking double persistent damage or double hazardous terrain effect because you delay, yeah, that's a harsh lesson to learn, and clearly the word punishment is not a small one.
And while I understand the reaction to the disincentive to delay, I think referring to it as "punishment" is hyperbolic.I had a player leaving the table because of that. I had a table coming to a stop with an hour discussion on delay (only time I ever got that in my games as my players know I know the rules very well). So, no, it's not hyperbolic.
I don't know if it's fair to put that on the rules for delay themselves. An hour is way more than players should think is acceptable to derail the game. If you want to have a long discussion wait until after the session or a break or something.
The loss of reaction doesn't happen very often. But taking double persistent damage or double hazardous terrain effect because you delay, yeah, that's a harsh lesson to learn, and clearly the word punishment is not a small one.
I agree that that can be punishing, and if you don't like it then feel free to change it, but I feel like it's worth noting that you can also just... well, not delay. If delaying is "punishing" in a specific situation, then you know what that tells me? Delaying isn't the right tactic at that exact moment.
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And while I understand the reaction to the disincentive to delay, I think referring to it as "punishment" is hyperbolic.I had a player leaving the table because of that. I had a table coming to a stop with an hour discussion on delay (only time I ever got that in my games as my players know I know the rules very well). So, no, it's not hyperbolic.
The loss of reaction doesn't happen very often. But taking double persistent damage or double hazardous terrain effect because you delay, yeah, that's a harsh lesson to learn, and clearly the word punishment is not a small one.
I dunno, dragging your feat and not acting immediately when you are on fire or standing in an acid pit does kind of seem like it should be punishing to me. Those are not things your character should be OK delaying a response to.
I also recognize that this opens up the whole "all turns are actually happening simultaneously" can of worms, but turn order is always going to need to compromise with that idea.
I dunno, dragging your feat and not acting immediately when you are on fire or standing in an acid pit does kind of seem like it should be punishing to me. Those are not things your character should be OK delaying a response to.
I imagine that if a character is in an acid pit at initiative 18 and their teammate at initiative 17 is going to lower a rope to let them climb out, that tiny delay of 2 ticks of initiative would seem like waiting for the rope rather than dragging one's feet. And waiting for regular initiative on the next round could result in enemies attacking the rope handler.
For a non-imaginary situation, my party once ambushed a hobgoblin army in a canyon. The rogue/sorcerer Magical Trickster Sam had chosen to hide atop a 10-foot-tall rock rather than 40 feet up the cliff like the archers, because of the short range of his Produce Flame cantrip. When a hobgoblin troop climbed up after him and beat him down to 2 hit points, the archer above Sam lowered a rope for him to climb. The turn order worked out, so that Sam could Step to the rope and climb it before the enemies attacked again. But if the turn order had been different--Sam 1st, archer 2nd, hobgoblin troop 3rd--then Sam would have delayed to wait for the rope. Nevertheless, the Delay rule does not count being adjacent to an enemy (with Attack of Opportunity) wanting to hit the character as a negative effect, so the enemy would not get a free Strike if Sam delayed.
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I don't know if it's fair to put that on the rules for delay themselves. An hour is way more than players should think is acceptable to derail the game. If you want to have a long discussion wait until after the session or a break or something.And while I understand the reaction to the disincentive to delay, I think referring to it as "punishment" is hyperbolic.I had a player leaving the table because of that. I had a table coming to a stop with an hour discussion on delay (only time I ever got that in my games as my players know I know the rules very well). So, no, it's not hyperbolic.
I've accepted, as a GM, the derail, because I had the whole table completely mad at me telling me that "it shouldn't be that way", "you misread the rules" and so on. It ended up the session. I've never had such a situation in PF2 before. I really had to cool things down for an hour.
I agree that that can be punishing, and if you don't like it then feel free to change it, but I feel like it's worth noting that you can also just... well, not delay. If delaying is "punishing" in a specific situation, then you know what that tells me? Delaying isn't the right tactic at that exact moment.
My players didn't know about the rule and I'm pretty sure a lot of people don't. It's not exactly the most obvious one.
If it was a rule everyone knows about, it would be fine. But chances are high that the rule will be raised at the exact moment you need to delay (or worse, when getting out of delay), and as such the player will feel punished like my players did.Also, as Mathmuse said, it was not a case of a player trying to abuse anything, or waiting for an entire round in an acid pool, it's a player just delaying to exchange his initiative with the next one. A case where no one was expecting to take a bunch of damage (and an illogical case, actually, because there it was just a split second of delay).
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@SuperBidi
Well, also, I think part of the problem could be related to there simply being two ways of interpreting the last paragraph of Delay. The reactions part is pretty clear, but the part where it talks about delaying or avoiding negative effects could easily be read as happening when you delay instead of when your turn happens, especially since the RAI of the rule is very clearly stated in the last sentence as "Essentially, you can’t Delay to avoid negative consequences that would happen on your turn or to extend beneficial effects that would end on your turn." Unfortunately casual language tends to have issues with implied words. Does the description imply that it happens when you delay in addition to it's normal trigger, or instead of it's normal trigger? Neither is clearly stated, but technically the default in English would be in addition to, so by RAW I'm pretty sure you're right. RAI I have no idea.
On the one hand I don't like assuming RAI is different from RAW without a good reason. On the other hand I feel like triggering on the delay but not a split second later doesn't sound like avoiding negative consequences that would happen on your turn to me. It sounds like not doubling down on the damage in a single round.
Strict RAW I do believe you're correct, as stated, but it's totally reasonable to rule it differently, and I expect many do. Perhaps that's a sign that the wording should be changed to make it more clear what the intention is, but that's a separate discussion.
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Delaying to exchange one's order in the initiative is a strong option.
In 3.X/PF1 I had a houserule (and I barely have any) that to Delay meant moving at least one notch down in initiative so that if players delayed/swapped turns enough they'd get down to an enemy's turn.
Same is true for monsters, of course, though only the most tactical ones would do this. Clumping's strong.
Separately, if one were to recognize that tracking combats takes effort and time and therefore wanted to simplify Delay they'd make it so one gets one's complete turn at the new initiative, w/ nothing else to track. And then to close loopholes, effects on a timer still go off as usual. This would lead to another loophole re: Reaction replenishment too so the simplest answer is to turn those off in the interim.
And so we have the PF2 version. It's about as simple as possible, yet retains the strengths of Delay albeit with an odd drawback.
It seems the simplest solution for those unhappy with the oddity would be to have Reactions replenish on the initial turn before Delay, then the creature doesn't get it replenished again when the resume acting. But from a game designer's perspective, that doesn't seem simple to present.
Also re: persistent damage, if one took damage at the Delay, then didn't take it when they resumed, but did again on their next round that extends a damage interval. The only "fair" way to do it would be to have the effects kick in on the creature's previous initiative order; this adds another item to track and gets wonky when ending the condition would still be part of the creature's turn.
So yeah, PF2 runs Delay & the repercussions thereof in the simplest manner that avoids loopholes. That's led to an unexpected cost, but as noted above, that makes it more of a choice.
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Many players, especially those who are PF1 veterans, will not expect that delaying means you take persistent damage twice (and have your PC go down, maybe increasing their dying score, thus with real risk of PC death).
In fact, a cursory reading of Delay does not immediately show that this is what will happen should you choose to delay, as it puts far more importance on the abuse they want to avoid, and not on the actual consequences of Delaying.
BTW, I was there when the player quitted. He was already frustrated by the seeming inability of the system to support actions he wanted his PC to take. And then, for taking a seemingly innocuous option (Delay), he saw his PC going down because he took high persistent damage twice in a row. Of course he only realized it worked that way at the end of his delayed turn, thus when he could do nothing about it. The rule being really nonsensical and looking pretty surreal (ie in exchange of less than 2 seconds of delay, you get twice the damage), he did feel punished by the way the system worked. And all the players just could not believe that a rule of PF2 could be so awful in its implementation, hence the long time spent on trying to find the sadly absent rule or wording we might have missed that could have saved our fellow PC's bacon. To no avail.
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Regarding reactions, it's rarely strategic to delay through your opponent's turn.
Given the original example, suppose the order is Fighter -> Monster -> Allies
If the goal is to wait for monsters to come to you, the fighter can just end his turn. The fighter keeps his AoO and if he wants to go first next turn, his allies can all delay after him.
Edit: a better option for the above fighter is to ready an attack.Another example, suppose the order is Tripper -> Monster -> Allies. Tripping is best if your allies can attack the tripped foes, so the order here is bad for the Tripper. One option is to have the Tripper delay past the Monster's turn, but then the Tripper loses a turn and reactions. Instead, the Tripper should take his turn normally, and when the Allies' turn comes up, the Allies should delay after the Tripper.
This supposes that all players clearly understand the consequences of delay. Which is very often not the case, especially for PF1 veterans.
And when they learn of it (ie, when it happens), the consequences are usually immediate and fairly detrimental.
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I tried to envision an abuse of Delay that deserves persistent damage twice a turn. I failed.
Let's have four player characters, Alfonzo, Bernice, Claudius, and Dawn, their loyal NPC minion Nodwick, and three monsters, 1, 2, and 3, in that turn order. In round X a monster sets Alfonzo on fire, 4 persistent damage a round.
Round X+1: Alfonzo Delays until after Nodwick's turn, taking 4 fire damage. Nodwick attempts Assisted Recovery on Alfonzo. Alfonzo attempts Assist Recovery on himself, takes 4 fire damage, and rolls a DC 15 flat check at the end of his turn.
Round X+2: Nodwick attempts Assisted Recovery on Alfonzo. Alfonzo Delays until after Dawn's turn in round X+3, taking 4 fire damage.
Round X+3: After awn's turn Alfonzo attempts Assist Recovery on himself, takes 4 fire damage, and rolls a DC 15 flat check at the end of his turn. Nodwick attempts Assisted Recovery on Alfonzo.
That is 5 Assisted Recovery checks and two end-of-turn flat checks, so let me assume the 7th check succeeds. Alfonzo has taken 16 damage from persistent fire. If the Delay rules had no repeat of the persistet damage at the end of his turn, he would have taken only 8 fire damage.
If Alfonzo did not Delay, the 7th check would have been his own Assisted Recovery early in Round X+3. He would have taken 8 damage from persistent fire.
Okay, this example does not explain the reason for repeated persistent damage. Delaying moves the damage to before Alfonzo can take his own Assisted Recovery to extinguish the fire, so delaying hurts.
If I extended the example to round X+6, then Delaying Alfonzo would have succeeded on the 14th check and taken twice as much damage, 32 or 16 depending on the rules. Non-Delaying Alfonzo would have his successful 14th check on his end-of-turn check on round X+5, taking 20 damage. The Delaying tactic without repeated persistent damage saves him 4 damage but costs him a turn. And failing 13 DC 15 flat checks in a row happens only 1% of the time.
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Delay is great! In my experience playing a Braggart Swashbuckler with One for All is that I can usually persuade any fellow party members that go before me to Delay by explaining to them that I can Demoralize the enemy, move into flank, and/or Aid them on their next attack roll.
I'm not convinced Delay forces you to take persistent damage twice in one round. The wording of the text is mostly about avoiding cheese. But if taking persistent damage twice in one round is RAI, that isn't much of a downside. If you have few HP and are suffering persistent damage, then don't Delay. An edge case doesn't invalidate Delay as a way of optimally timing buffs/debuffs.
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I do think there should be more sympathy in this thread since delaying doing persistent damage and such twice is pretty harsh <_< (I do personally interpret it as "instead of when it would normally happen, it happens when you delay" aka that it only happens once per round and not twice if you delay)
That said, I do feel pretty angry about the player who rage quit because that kind of stuff just leaves bad taste in mouth for everyone at the table :P Like regardless of whose "fault" it is, rage quitting permanently like that is extremely rude. That said I'm not part of that table so perhaps players in the table don't feel as bad about it, but I certainly get feeling it had strong effect because of this entire thread
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Okay, we have your A, B, C, D, N, M1, M2, M3. A is on fire.
Case 1: not using any delay at all.
Round 1: A tries to put out the fire. Fails, takes persistent damage. B, C, D and N each also try to help. Round 2: A again fails to put out the fire, and takes damage again. B, C, D and N all try again too. Round 3: A has another chance before damage. Altogether, there were 11 chances before the 3rd packet of damage.
Case 2: using Delay as currently understood RAW.
Round 1: delays, takes damage. B, C, D, N all try to put it out. A's turn again at the end of round 1. Fails again, takes damage. Then round 2 starts with B, C, D, N and then A. Five chances, somehow all fail, then damage again, then round 3, five more chances, then A takes damage again. By the time A takes the 4th packet of damage, there have been 15 attempts to do something about it.
Case 3: what if, when you Delay, you take the hit, but not when you resume?
Round 1: A delays, takes damage. B, C, D, N try to help. A tries to help themselves, doesn't take damage then. Round 2: B, C, D, N, A all get a chance before A takes damage again. Round 3: B, C, D, N, A all get a last chance before A takes damage again. Altogether, 15 chances before the 3rd packet.
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Yeah, it looks like there's a way to extract some advantage from it, but it does require some rather tortured scheming.
Designer
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Remember that you get a flat check to end persistent damage each time you take it as described in the persistent damage condition on page 621 of the CRB.
"Persistent damage comes from effects like acid, being on fire, or many other situations. It appears as “X persistent [type] damage,” where “X” is the amount of damage dealt and “[type]” is the damage type. Instead of taking persistent damage immediately, you take it at the end of each of your turns as long as you have the condition, rolling any damage dice anew each time. After you take persistent damage, roll a DC 15 flat check to see if you recover from the persistent damage. If you succeed, the condition ends."
So in the above case 2, you're actually depriving the person who's on fire of rolls to end the effect at multiple steps. It would actually be-
"Round 1: delays, takes damage, gets a free DC 15 flat check to end the ongoing effect. B, C, D, N all try to put it out. A's turn again at the end of round 1. Fails again, takes damage, receives another DC 15 flat check to put the fire out. Then round 2 starts with B, C, D, N and then A. Five chances, somehow all fail, then damage again, then another free DC 15 flat check, then round 3, five more chances, then A takes damage again, then another free DC 15 flat check,. By the time A takes the 4th packet of damage, there have been 18 attempts to do something about it."
And that's assuming no one thinks to do something that triggers the second clause in Assisted Recovery- "Automatically end the condition due to the type of help, such as healing that restores you to your maximum HP to end persistent bleed damage, or submerging yourself in a lake to end persistent fire damage." The likelihood of failing fifteen DC 10 flat checks and three DC 15 flat checks without succeeding at any of them is vanishingly low.
You'll always have had at least 2 opportunities to put out the persistent damage before you take damage a second time. The exception to this would be if you're taking persistent damage because of standing in hazardous terrain like a vat of acid or lava flow, but there's an argument to be made that delaying your turn while standing in lava and then ending your turn still in the lava is probably not the wisest tactical decision.
My players usually only use delay at the start of a fight, so those negatives don't generally affect them. Delay not a great action to use mid fight unless you don't have any persistent damage or meaningful reactions and are setting up a spell or some other meaningful reaction.
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You'll always have had at least 2 opportunities to put out the persistent damage before you take damage a second time. The exception to this would be if you're taking persistent damage because of standing in hazardous terrain like a vat of acid or lava flow, but there's an argument to be made that delaying your turn while standing in lava and then ending your turn still in the lava is probably not the wisest tactical decision.
Hazardous terrain happen in general in the beginning of your turn, so the sole action of delaying will generate the double damage.
And I'm of course not speaking of characters who stand in lava for rounds, but of a character who just waits after an ally playing just after him. So, a split second of delay.
That said, I do feel pretty angry about the player who rage quit because that kind of stuff just leaves bad taste in mouth for everyone at the table :P Like regardless of whose "fault" it is, rage quitting permanently like that is extremely rude. That said I'm not part of that table so perhaps players in the table don't feel as bad about it, but I certainly get feeling it had strong effect because of this entire thread
That's a separate issue. As a side note, I haven't opened this thread because of this case. I have opened this thread because it happened again this week, with less impact as the players did already know about the double damage, but still the feeling hasn't been nice once again.
Also, players are in general delaying because they just need one change to the battlefield to be able to act, like their ally blocking the path, or the Wizard that needs to cast fly for them to get out of the acid pool. I've seen countless times players acting just before the Bard (I've often been the Bard), so I can pretty safely say that players tend to take their turn whenever they can even if Delay would be useful. So, having to take your turn can actually be equivalent to losing your turn. That's why, this week, my players chose to take the double dip.|
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I rarely see Delays happening while people are actually taking environmental or persistent damage. Most of the time it's really just "wait one second for me to apply a buff or debuff".
Most Delays tend to happen to rearrange a few players in a "block" in initiative without any enemies in between.
If taking negative effects unreasonably frequently is bothering you, maybe a compromise house rule could be that if you don't Delay across an enemy's turn, you don't double dip negative effects? That's also still quite easy to track.
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Round 1: delays, takes damage, gets a free DC 15 flat check to end the ongoing effect. B, C, D, N all try to put it out. A's turn again at the end of round 1. Fails again, takes damage, receives another DC 15 flat check to put the fire out. Then round 2 starts with B, C, D, N and then A. Five chances, somehow all fail, then damage again, then another free DC 15 flat check, then round 3, five more chances, then A takes damage again, then another free DC 15 flat check,. By the time A takes the 4th packet of damage, there have been 18 attempts to do something about it.So it does double dip. Interesting.
A quick reminder that nothing said on the forums is an official answer and you can still run your game however you want as long as it's a reasonable interpretation, PFS or otherwise.
Just wanted to put that out there considering how many people I know will see Designer and take it as gospel, which I already know from several posts of Mark's in the past is not what he typically is trying to do. He's just trying to be helpful, and it was helpful. Thanks mark! :)
The most logical way to handle persistent damage and effects duration would be giving them their own initiative count. I do that sometimes for important effects, but using initiative for everything makes the game more complicated and is only marginally useful.