Hi, SGM,

The movement all starts at the beginning of the round for all parties involved. If an actor is making a "full move" and then melee, or half move and then missile or spell, though, the actions are resolved in phase 2. Phase 1: party with winning initiative goes first and takes care of all phase 1 actions; then the initiative loser (or initiative nonwinner for the sensitive!) knocks out all phase 1 actions. Then phase 2 goes the same way, with anything left over from phase 1 happening: the resolution of full-move melee and harge attacks, the resolution of missiles or magic after half moves; the completion of full moves.

A lot of this doesn't even need to be "public facing." The players tell you what they want to do, and you tell them when it all happens in the round.

But for actions by one party in one phase, I have it all happen at the same time. I don't break down the party by DEX--really, just in the order they're sitting around them table. Then I "give the kill" to one of them. Usually the one that will make the most people angry!

If I understand the question, then I think not: A player making an ordinary missile attack who wins init. can fire all available shots at once in Phase 1 if s/he wants to, and this would come before the enemy finished its movement. All movement begins at the same time at the beginning of the round, but a stationary shooter who won init. gets his/her arrows off as desired, and all those arrows in phase 1 will be fired before the enemy completes the move (though whether the enemy manages to get under cover before all shots are fired seems like it would be up to DM judgment.

I assume if I'm just blowing smoke here someone will correct me!

One way to think about this is that all movement begins at the beginning of Phase 1 but does not end until later in the round. A character making a half move would reach his goal at the end of Phase 1, while a character making a full moves completes the move at the end of Phase 2.

So in your example a character making a half move hoping to become adjacent to the stationary archer, would not reach the archer until the end of Phase 1, after the archer has attacked.

The exception to this would be a character who plans to attend then move, his move would begin at the start of Phase 2 and be completed at the end of the round.

If the combatant moving to cover lost initiative, I'd say yes, the archer can shoot him before he reaches cover. If the cover were within a half move, and he won initiative, I'd allow him the cover bonus when the archer fired later in phase one.

Also, welcome aboard, SavageGM!