What is your way for doing Initiative?

WhosDaDungeonMaster · Jan 27, 2019

It is interesting to hear how many people use the system as is and I am surprised others think there is any difficulty in tracking effects when you re-roll each round. We switched to the custom d6 simply because it makes the countdown faster. Right now no one has more than a +1 so I can start the count at 7, then 6, 5, and so on. We did have a Ranger with 18 Dex and the Alert feat (normally +9) who would have been +3 with this system, but the player got a job and can't make it now. Anyway, we rule a natural roll beats an augmented. So if a player rolls a 3, but gets +1 for a total of 4, any natural roll of 4 goes first. It works very well and is very quick. I don't have to say "ok, 20's or higher", then "15 and up", etc. with one player saying "14" and another saying "12" and a third calling "15", and then remember who called what and remembering which order they go in.

Anyway, thanks for the responses so far!

TarionzCousin · Jan 27, 2019

Everyone goes first; it's fair.

WhosDaDungeonMaster · Jan 27, 2019

TarionzCousin said:
Everyone goes first; it's fair.

I like it! I guess I could give it a try, but how to you determine who goes first on a tie?

Maxperson · Jan 27, 2019

pukunui said:
I tried using passive initiative, but that got boringly predictable after a while, so I switched back to using the default rule of rolling once and leaving it for the rest of the combat.

I do find other methods -- such as rerolling every round and speed factor initiative -- in theory, but they just seem like they would be too much bother and slow things down too much in actual play.

Rolling every round takes virtually no time if you do it right. We have one person track initiative. When a person is done with his turn, he is asked to roll for the next round while the next player it taking his turn. By the time you get to the last player, that player is the only one who has not rolled yet and it takes all of about 2 seconds to roll and get his initiative.

ccs · Jan 27, 2019

What we do: Roll once with Dex mod (and other mods as applicable).

What I'd like to do: That, but every round.

I could probably get my preference 1/2 the time (when I'm the DM) if I insisted. But it wouldn't be worth the pushback I'd also get from most of the group.

WhosDaDungeonMaster · Jan 27, 2019

Maxperson said:
Rolling every round takes virtually no time if you do it right. We have one person track initiative. When a person is done with his turn, he is asked to roll for the next round while the next player it taking his turn. By the time you get to the last player, that player is the only one who has not rolled yet and it takes all of about 2 seconds to roll and get his initiative.

Wow, that is a great idea and I can't believe I never thought of it! Sure, if I have the caller track initiative, when I am dealing with the next player, the previous one can roll for the next round and give the result to the caller. I will definitely try something like this in my group next week! Thanks!

TarionzCousin · Jan 27, 2019

James Grover said:
I like it! I guess I could give it a try, but how do you determine who goes first on a tie?

Yes.

WhosDaDungeonMaster · Jan 27, 2019

TarionzCousin said:
Yes.

Oh! Of course, that is simply and makes so much sense! Your players must love rolling initiative that way.

toucanbuzz · Jan 27, 2019

We're using the Optional Speed Factor rules, in which you declare actions which modify your roll, and you roll each round. I posted awhile back our feedback on it. It's going swifter than a default initiative, once people get used to it and don't need to reference modifiers anymore. However, the negative is that if the goal is to put more emphasis on your choice affecting initiative, it still gives way too much weight to the randomness of a d20 (given most modifiers range -2 to +2, a 10% shift). I plan on shifting us to an action die system and see how that goes.

Not trying to sell people on anything, just saying don't knock it till you try it (and for more than one session).

LordEntrails · Jan 27, 2019

pukunui said:
[MENTION=6804070]LordEntrails[/MENTION]: Using software to automate the process would certainly make alternative initiative methods more appealing. Unfortunately for me, I don't use any software when I run my games, so we'd be stuck with stopping the combat at the end of each round, having everyone reroll, having me shuffle the initiative tents I hang on my DM screen around to reflect the new order, then commencing with the next round of combat.

That's why I said:

LordEntrails said:
YEa, on paper it would such doing it our way.

Of course I meant 'suck' and also [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] proved us both wrong with the way his group handles it.

Bacon Bits said:
Initiative is one of the systems that is vastly overestimated in importance. The only time it matters is the first round. After that, the division of rounds is fairly arbitrary. That's why you only roll once.

It depends on the players. I have one player who is a damn near genius. If we don't shuffle initiative and I don't do anything crazy with the NPCs and he can predict the other players actions then by the end of the first round he can pretty have the entire encounter resolved in his head.

So, when I run cons and other players, static initiative is fine. But with my standard group, it pretty much needed.

There is no right or wrong answer, just what works or doesn't work for any given group

What is your way for doing Initiative?

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TarionzCousin

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