I have been following this thread with some interest.
The comments generally are skirting around three principal concerns:
(a) emergency actions planning is a matter of risk assessment and risk management; ie pay more attention to that which is going to kill you soonest, and try not to turn a small problem into a major screw up.
(b) in a (well trained and competent) multicrew environment, one-man-band cowboys and off-the-cuff decision making scenarios generally are bad news. While one can always find examples which might suggest that the procedural rules are not sound (eg the Concorde accident and the DC10 (as I recall) which lost the port wing LEDs) the probability of a satisfactory outcome in the event of mishap is, on the majority of occasions, enhanced by adopting well thought out and standardised procedural approaches to the implementation of emergency procedures.
(c) at the end of the day, one's actions, in the event of an accident, will need to be justified in an appropriate legal forum, presuming that one survives.
If I may offer several comments of my own..
(a) the previous reference to FAR 25 and changes below 400 ft is unfortunate and misses the point. FAR 25 is an airworthiness standard .. operating standards are specified elsewhere. The requirement referred to is intended to stop the manufacturer 'cheating', eg by scheduling a manual thrust reduction to reduce Vmca problems or by scheduling a manual thrust increase to improve WAT performance. The requirement only addresses the engine failure case - considerations of when fire drills ought to be commenced are a separate (operational) consideration altogether.
(b) In regard to risk issues, accident histories and sim studies clearly suggest that rehearsed drills and predictable sequences have, generally, a better outcome than letting Cowboy Bob rule the range, sixshooters in hand.
Given that fire warnings during takeoff occur relatively infrequently, and that many are subsequently found to be false warnings, there is an argument for de-emphasizing the need for immediate panic (sorry, action).
On the other hand, the likelihood of an OEI flightpath's deviating outside the obstacle trapezoid, or the shutdown manoeuvre's ending up in a UA, is an immediate and very real risk. In my experience on endorsement training, the majority of pilots under training (even those with considerable experience in similar jets) perform more reliably if the workload is well managed. Throwing a low level engine shutdown into the soup pot on a takeoff from an obstacle limiting airport is usually not as satisfactory as getting the aircraft up a bit first and then worrying about the system problem ... after all, if you hit the hill, or go in inverted, the (probably false) engine fire is not really all that important. I would take the view that it doesn't matter whether the recommendation is 400 feet or 200 feet or 1000 feet ... the important thing is to keep the priorities sensibly ordered.
(c) in respect of initiating an RTO from above V1, this presupposes that the pilot concerned is competent to assess the distance numbers involved and this is generally not the case - brake energy considerations aside. Boeing has a very useful little video based on the 757 and looking at the RTO manoeuvre in which the message is strongly pushed that the risk is better managed if the takeoff is continued and a planned recovery made with whatever resources might be required being available.
An interesting thread, nonetheless ....