D&D 5E A Matter Of Initiative

[HomegrownHydra]

I would have him kick in the door and THEN do initiative. Often the door breaker isnt the first into a room.

That seems like something that the players would work out ahead of time, not left up to the dice.

 

[machineelf]

Does it work the other way?

In my experience, if the GM says, "The NPC pulls out a dagger and stabs you." then there will be howls of, "don't I get to roll Initiative?".

Everyone rolls initiative from the start. But the characters who are surprised are in the surprised condition until the end of their turn. After their turn ends, they are no longer in the surprised condition and can take a reaction. (But they have lost their action and bonus action and movement for that round, since their turn is over.)

So, in your example of an NPC assassin sneaking in the darkness and attacking, the person being attacked can take a reaction if his initiative is higher than the NPC's.

 

[Li Shenron]

By default rules, is starting combat on an initiative other than the highest initiative allowed?

Written like that, it sounds to me as if you are asking on whether the DM can decide that the first character/creature to take a turn is the one with a specific Init result, instead of the one with highest Init. But this would mean to essentially punish someone with a higher Init result, making her skip the first round of combat, which doesn't make much sense. If there's another reason why someone should skip the first round, it's not in the bare Init result.

OTOH, if you meant whether a player can decide that her character doesn't want to act first even if her Init is the highest, then the only official options are to either use Ready to act later in the same round, or forego the round completely. However it wouldn't be much of a problem to allow also a Delay action like in 3e, which would allow the PC to voluntarily (but permanently, i.e. for the whole encounter) lower her Init.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

I always go by initiative order rolled. In fact, I even adjust my narration based on the result so that it sounds reasonable. Paladin goes first, opens the door and the rolls lowest initiative? Well, he had a small shock when he saw the enemies behind.

If you are going so far and change who starts based on who you feel should go first, then that completely negates the benefit from DEX for initiative and you might as well change the rule from rolling initiative to "The DM decides the initiative order based on context".

 

[Arnwolf666]

I really like this for a houserule

 

[Arnwolf666]

If the party starts combat when one player acts, I tend to rule that's when we begin the turn order.

Everyone is ready to attack and the fighter kicks in the door. Roll initiative. The fighter gets a 12. Characters could act before the fighter, but they weren't the one that started things, and it makes zero sense that they're able to do anything before the fighter's action occurs. And it also makes zero sense that the fighter, that started the fight and initiated action, might act in the middle.

If a player has something they really want to do first, I'll ignore the above somewhat. "You're fast and can see the fighter about to act, and have time to cast bless before they can finish their thought." Because that's more fun for them.

It can get funky if everyone is aware of each other. Most often it makes sense to begin with the person that started things. I could say everyone saw them about to act, and began striking preemptively, but that 's often funky. Especially if there's a lot of combatants who shouldn't have been paying that much attention. And if they instigator rolls ass for initiative.

I really like this for a house rule. And Logical if the fighter is entering the room first. Great house rule. Love this. Not even sure it needs to be a house rule of the Fighter is entering the room first.

 

[machineelf]

If the party starts combat when one player acts, I tend to rule that's when we begin the turn order.

Everyone is ready to attack and the fighter kicks in the door. Roll initiative. The fighter gets a 12. Characters could act before the fighter, but they weren't the one that started things, and it makes zero sense that they're able to do anything before the fighter's action occurs. And it also makes zero sense that the fighter, that started the fight and initiated action, might act in the middle.

I would do this if I needed to and it made sense. But OTOH, in the example you give, I think a better way to look at it is that the group switches from their non-combat exploration initiative order to their combat initiative order.

In other words, initiative is always on even for non-combat exploration. I'll have my characters roll for initiative to tell me what they want to do while they are exploring (or in reality we usually just go around the table clockwise for non-combat exploration).

This helps to make sure everyone is involved and gets some spotlight for each character during exploration and keeps players from unwittingly trying to do everything themselves. For example, Rothgar the rogue says he wants the search the body. Then he says he wants to look at the bookshelf. Then he says he wants to listen in at the door. Meanwhile the other players are just sitting at the table letting the player playing Rothgar do everything just because that player is more talkative and takes more actual initiative in real life.

By holding players strictly to their individual turns and initiative order during non-combat exploration (where each round is a minute of activity in game-time), what happens instead is: Rothgar says he wants to look in the chest. But he is sitting in the middle of the table and isn't to my immediate left. So I say, "OK, well hold on for a bit on that. Let's start with Sarai here to my left, what are you doing this round?" And we go around the table in an ordered fashion.

With that all in mind, let's look at your example: The barbarian says he wants to kick in the door. OK, well there still is an initiative order, so the barbarian doesn't kick in the door until it gets to his initiative. Now it gets to him and he kicks in the door and, surprise, there are orcs on the other side! Everybody roll initiative for combat! Now with the new combat initiative in place, the players can go on their turn. If Rothgar is first and not the barbarian, maybe Rothgar quickly rushes past the barbarian through the door and attacks.

 

[S'mon]

Once when I was running a game of 13th Age (which uses the standard d20 initiative system a la 3e/4e/5e) the party was exploring a tomb with the paladin in the lead. When he entered a room with a bunch of skeletons in it, I called for initiative rolls. The result was that the paladin had to go last despite being in the front and being fully ready for combat. This didn't make any sense in the fiction and the only justification would be to say he stumbled for some weird reason or was uncharacteristically passive, either of which would go against the type of heroic and cinematic gaming I like. I saw this as a huge system fail, so much so I immediately started looking for alternative methods.

Probably the best most rules-compliant method is to give the paladin a surprise round. Otherwise you could just stick him at the top of init.

 

[S'mon]

Or, even worse, "A crossbow bolt comes out of the darkness and hits you. You are surprised, the archer is an assassin rogue, so you take, hmmm, 45 points of damage. No, you don't get to cast shield, you were surprised."

What? There's something wrong with this? How the heck else would it work?

Edit: There's a good reason why the Assassin in the MM is CR8!

 

[machineelf]

What? There's something wrong with this? How the heck else would it work?

I wondered that too. It sounds as though Greenstone doesn't think an assassin NPC should be able to do what an assassin is supposed to be able to do.

If his main question is about using the shield spell as a reaction, I clarified for him how reactions work during the first round when surprise has taken place: If the assassin has an init of 15 and the target has an init of 20, then the target cannot take an action or movement during their turn, but the target is no longer surprised by the time the assassin fires, and therefore could use a reaction to cast shield. However, if the target has an init of 10, then he is still in the surprised condition when the assassin fires, and therefore cannot take a reaction to cast shield.

It seems like a confusing and complicated nuance when one first thinks about it, but it actually is fairly simple and straightforward.