The initiative system is bad, there's no other way to say it.

Here's how it works for those who don't or haven't really cared enough to realize it:

(Initiative System Explained)
Let's assume there is 4 characters in a fight, 2 Player Characters (PCs) and 2 mobs.

For argument's sake, let's go crazy:

Player 1 has 4 million initiative.
Player 2 has 3 million initiative.
And the two mobs have just 10 each.

With such values, surely the PCs should go first, right? Yeah, no.

Player 1 has the highest initiative BY FAR, therefore he/she gets to act first. This is great, makes sense. Then, for no logical reason, that rotten, putrid, zombified magister (who we'll call Pillock) gets to act second. This, despite the fact that Player 2 could pick the wings off of a fly before it had a chance to even move them.

Only after Pillock has farted himself silly and waddled towards the PCs, does Player 2 actually get to use his 3 million initiative to go before Pillock's uglier (and even more rotten) cousin.


As you can see from the example above, or even from your own realizations; that the initiative system is awful. I won't say 'broken', because that would be disingenuous to state and just simply melodramatic; but it is bad.

If you have a couple player characters (PCs) throwing some points into Wits, they are competing directly with each other. They're allies, but are having (essentially) a 'stat war'.

If you have 2 rogues who need to go first to activate Chameleon and get into position, one of them is forced to bite the bullet and risk getting saturated with status effects in the opening turn, and no amount of Wits can fix this. Otherwise, the 2 rogues will end up in a 'bidding war' for first turn and ruin their damage, because they can't pump Finesse.

If a group of enemies has more initiative then their opponents, then they deserve to go first. They are levelled that way to try and win first strike. Vice versa for the PCs.

Conclusion/TL;DR: Initiative system is warped; needs to unlock the 1-2-1-2 ordering and just order by the initiative values themselves. Wits attribute is also uninspired, boring, and (most importantly) with the current ordering scheme, intrinsically worthless..