The commander is so close to complete as a class that this issue is much less of a big deal than the big deals of many other playtests, but there is one issue that I think is going to cause the greatest variance between tables on how effective a commander is, and how much tactics have to be limited:
The order of operations for issuing commands that grant multiple free actions and reactions at the same time needs to be more clearly spelled out than it currently is in the game.
Does the Commander decide the order of operations for the actions? Does it resolve in turn order? And especially with advanced tactics like Ready, Aim, Fire, does everyone have to go through with each action? and what is the order of it?
I think Ready, Aim, Fire! is one of the clearest examples of how confusing this can get and how much Order of Operations can affect its utility.
One reading of it, which fits the narrative very well, might be that everyone participating draws their weapon at the same time, reloads at the same time, and then fires at the same time.
If this is true, then all of the characters participating should end up holding a ranged weapon that has already been fired by the end of the tactic, regardless of whether the first shot or the last shot killed the enemy.
Another reading, which makes less sense narratively, but will probably be common because it keeps things organized, is for the characters to cycle through drawing the weapon, reloading it, and firing it one by one, in some order decided either by the commander or the GM.
When it happens this way, you could have the heaviest ranged-hitters cycle through first and only have the melee teammates draw their ranged weapons if the enemy is both still alive, but feels close enough to death that the potential loss of actions having the melee teammates switch to ranged is outweighed by the potential of ending the combat early.
Part of this is that there is no clear delineation about when allies have to be committed to responding to the tactic. I think it probably makes the most sense that all allies that might potentially commit have to make that decision as soon as the tactic is issued, but before actions start getting resolved, so that players can't wait to decide whether their characters are participating until they are sure there is an action they want to take...as that gives substantially more power to the multiple ally tactics.
Right now, one of the biggest ways the commander blows up the action economy of encounters is that their multi ally tactics kind of throw initiative order out of the window, and while there are many ways that is a lot of fun, there are a lot of pitfalls and complications that can arise when a player gets to completely rearrange the turn order for just the sliver of time that is their own action, especially when that could happen twice in a turn.
There's a general rule that I use as basis to govern the reactions order:
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This limitation of one action per trigger is per creature; more than one creature can use a reaction or free action in response to a given trigger. If multiple actions would be occurring at the same time, and it's unclear in what order they happen, the GM determines the order based on the narrative.
OK this is a rule for trigger what's no exactly the case of tactics but I used without any problems without need a more strict rule. When the commander uses a tactic that gives the players actions via reactions/free-actions due the narrative I delegate to the commander's player to decide the order. If I think that in some rare situation is better to me to govern the order I simply say what the order needed to be followed.
This worked perfectly fine in my playtests with the own players deciding how and when they act with me intervening only in cases that I think that is narratively necessary.
Did you have anyone use Ready, Aim, Fire! ? It seems like the advanced tactics are the ones where different interpretations will swing the power level of them the most, although I saw it cause some issue with form up. The players choose what to do with their actions, not the commander
Yes I hade played both with Ready, Aim, Fire!, Form Up and Pincer Attack (that is the most complicated one in terms of orders because they always discus of who will move to where). I just give them to choose what order they will do and give the word to the commander's player to coordinate this (giving to him the final word) or to myself as GM (but I only used this once due their actions triggering an AoO with Form Up so I stoped the discussion asked them to give the action order that they decided and stoped it when the first player triggered the Reaction Strike to attack this player).
It's not too different from others TTRPGs that uses non fixed initiatives. Also I have deal with this in other tables (I had multiple players with RS that need to be ordered and I always give the order choice to them).
OK I admit that different GMs may decide the order a bit differently (maybe some GM may want to follow the current initiative order for example) but I just give the players this governance (also because if I was follow the initiative order due the lack of Delay the thing may end a bit unfair).
This could look a big problem but in practice never wasn't.
The other point is that the players that choose if they will accept the reaction/free-action or not. This is enough to give the order governance to them.
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Yes I hade played both with Ready, Aim, Fire!, Form Up and Pincer Attack (that is the most complicated one in terms of orders because they always discus of who will move to where).
Pincer Attack really does need to be clear on this, because one of the other things that can happen is that if the Banner is on a Mount, and the Mount moves during the Pincer Attack, it can completely change things up.
It matters a whole lot for form up too, since everyone’s move has to keep them inside the banner aura.