Arafelis/HouseRules

Initiative

I don't really like the Initiative bit described in the PG, because in reality, most fights ARE about scrabbling to be the last one to act. You establish your initiative precisely BY taking advantage of the other person 'breaking' and going for it.

But they bring up a good point about this detracting from combat. So here's the idea: Reacting to a higher intitative count costs one die per three full points of difference. Magnificent Harvest Moon acts on count 16, and Tikuru acts on count 10. Magnificent Harvest Moon declares an attack, and Tikuru opts to parry; because of the difference between their initiatives, Tikuru's parry takes a two-die penalty. A slightly harsher Storyteller could instead add this to successes required. Holding your initiative brings no penalty; it really bothers me that the official system penalizes fast characters (by charging them- rather significantly- for Holding to wait for dodge and parry pools to drop- while the slow characters, often those with the Big Friendly Bloodsucking Reaver Daiklaves (BFB-RDs) get to choose between defending themselves at no penalty and laying massive smackdowns on that dumb guy who chose +Initiative Charms and weapons instead of damage) to 'fix' the Initiative race-for-zero delay.

This would allow a high initiative character to either act rapidly, costing their slower adversaries in defense, or wait and see. The penalty is based on when an attack action is actually taken, rather than what the character's rolled initiative is.

A good option if you don't mind slowing down combat a little bit is to wait until all the actions are declared before rolling hits/damage. This allows high initiative characters to actually 'abort to dodge' without furious erasing. Of course, tactically speaking, it's good to make characters think about what they're doing; you might want to get in the habit of declaring two or three actions per turn or keeping your charms in reserve as a strategic choice. If you move fast and don't hold back, you should be prepared for foes to act as if you've overextended yourself- because you have. A tactical fighter would always hold off (just a little bit), just in case- represented by the split-die-pool penalty, and Hold their second action. If nothing else, you can use it at the end of the turn as another attack.

Accuracy

I'm not a big fan of this weapon stat, because it's blatantly overpowered. It has the same effect as Damage, only also it helps you hit. If you're given bonus points to allocate to any given weapon, Accuracy is always the obvious choice. So, rather than Accuracy, I'd advocate weapons having Balance; a combination of the Rate and Accuracy traits. A character who uses a weapon once in a turn may apply the entire value as an accuracy bonus; a character who uses the weapon more than once must allocate it between accuracy per use and overall rate (so a weapon with Balance 5, used twice in a turn, might have a +2 accuracy bonus to each attack, or +4 to an attack and +0 (useful for parrying), etc). Weapons that have unlimited rate- such as a Glorious Solar Saber- don't also have unlimited accuracy; they simply do not have a Balance trait and rely purely on the character's skill to hit.

Unarmed attacks always have a Balance equal to the character's Wits (or Dexterity, if the character in question has Wits of 0 for some reason, such as being an automaton). If the Storyteller desired, this could also apply to weapons such as the Glorious Solar Saber/ Resplendant Shadow Blade.