So, I agree with all that you've said here, although I don't quite get how waiting works in relation to whether you draw low vs high each round. Perhaps you could explain a bit?
Also though, Monsters always hit? Is that right? If that just Monsters that don't wield weapons, sorta similar to FL, or...? Please explain here, because that could spell TPK real quickly unless I'm mistaken.
Thnx a lot! It's great so far though, with a few typos of course, as expected naturally, and a paragraph disjointed that I found.
The monsters always hit thing is brilliant. It means that there's a clock on combat with a monster. Each round will get more dangerous. While some of the monster attacks allow saves, most do some damage which means you are under pressure to move that combat forward. When I ran a test combat it really incentivized Pushing. I feel like the combat really sang with that alternate rule.
I was going to start a thread on initiative but then found this thread.
So it seems like the advantage to going early in the round is that you get to deliver damage quickly and maybe take out the bad guys before they can attack. The advantage to going late in the round is that you can use your action to parry, or to attack if the bad guys missed.
Does that oversimplify things? I'm worried that my players will all try to move to later actions so that they have the parry option, and that nobody will want to go early.
If they do that they'll be playing very defensively and may be allowing their opponents to choose targets and will be sacrificing their own damage on the chance of mitigating damage. It's a strategy that might work best against foes that work under PC rules. None of the monsters in the quickstart parry or dodge (but the rules imply some will have that ability) it does lose a little punch against them since if you all had the ability to go first you might be able to focus down the monster.