I confess I find the 'buy initiative' rules a little complex. I've been thinking about ways to streamline them whilst still keeping the tradeoff. My current take is the following:
The buyer spends dice from their CP up to the limit of their REF + WT. These dice are then rolled against a TN equal to the opponents PER. The opponent gets to roll their REF in dice against a TN equal to the buyers WP.
The buyer needs to gain more successes than the defender to pre-empt. In the event of ties, you could either rule a double-hit or assume that the buyer failed. I kind of like the double-hit possibility - it's more dramatic!
This makes pre-empting not unlike an additional contest of reflexes, but with different TN's to reflect the battle of the buyers determination (WP) vs the attackers awareness (PER). Also, the defender gets 'free' dice equal to his REF, whilst the buyer has to spend dice from his CP, so the trade-off is still preserved.
Opinions?
I've yet to load both rule models into my TROS dice roll spread-sheet to examine the expected results for a range of REF, WP, WT and PER values to see how closely they model each other. The opposed pool vs target mechanic gives some interesting alternatives when formulating rules - I quite like the flexibility to do a little 'oppositional calculus' (as I call it :-)
Suggestions are always welcome. I, too, think the buying initiative rules aren't as slick as I'd like.
Jake
Heck, i ran with a gruop that just had you add whatever dice you wanted from your combat pool to the dice from your reflex roll for inititive