Delayed actions in shadowrun are handled quite differently to most RPGs. Whats more, the rules are standard Catalyst junk. To help, I've written up a little guide, and am looking for feedback. It won't cover all corner cases, but it's much easier to handle than the gloop on SR5 161.
Delayed actions in Shadowrun are very specific.
- At the start of any of your action phases, you must declare you are taking a Delayed Action.
- There is no specific trigger allowed. You can wait until an arbitrary Initiative Score in the combat turn.
- Delaying your action does not effect your Initiative Score.
Acting on a delayed action is done as follows.
- At any point after declaring a delayed action, you can declare your character is intervening at a specific initiative score. This does not alter your Initiative Score. This declaration can be announced when it is time for characters at the declared initiative score to act.
- If there are no other characters acting on this initiative score, you take an action phase as normal.
- If other characters are acting at the declared Initiative Score, then you can choose to act before, at the same time, or after those characters.
- You can also choose to act last in an Initiative pass.
- Actions taken when acting on a Delayed Action suffer a -1 Dice Pool Penalty.
If a character has not acted on their Delayed Action by the end of the Initiative Pass, decrease their Initiative Score by 10 as standard.
Note that if you choose to act at the same time as another character, and they do something you were not expecting, you still must take your action phase then. For example:
Lady Razor is hiding on one side of a hallway intersection that she knows is covered by a roof mounted turret. Steven White, the corpsec rigger is itching for her to stick her head out and blow it off.
Steven White, in hot sim, has a higher initiative (25) than Lady Razor (19), even when she is on drugs. He declares that he will be delaying his action.
The Initiative Pass comes to characters who act on Initiative Score 19. Steven Declares he will be acting at the same time as those characters. Lady Razor, instead of crossing the hallway as Steven White expected, chooses to backtrack and find another route. Steven White's Action Phase ends with nothing happening, and he is no longer Delaying an Action.
Hope that covers the general basics of delaying actions and helps you frag that drekhead who keeps popping out of cover to plink at you.
