So, I had an idea for an initiative house rule, and wanted to toss it out there and see what people think.
The goal: In principle, I like the idea of rolling initiative each round. I hate the predictability of side-based or regular cyclic initiative; I don't want players strategizing around knowing exactly who goes in what order. However, rolling each round and then sorting out who goes when seems like a major hassle--just not worth the effort.
I know one approach to initiative is to give each combatant a card and shuffle them, but this has the effect of negating high initiative bonuses. My party includes an assassin rogue, so that's a big deal. But... what if you could get more than one card?
The house rule: Each combatant (or, for monsters, each group of combatants) gets a number of initiative cards based on their modifier. If your modifier is +1 or less, you get one card. If it's +2 to +4, you get two cards. If it's +5 to +6, you get three cards. For each point above 6, you get an additional card.
Each round, the DM shuffles the cards, then flips them over one at a time. When one of your cards comes up,
if you haven't taken a turn yet, you take your turn. The rest of your cards are simply discarded when they come up.
Why those numbers of cards? They roughly match the result of rolling for initiative by the book. There's some math involved, but the idea is that we pick any two combatants X and Y with different initiative modifiers, determine the chance that X goes before Y, and give each one a number of cards that results in a similar chance for X to beat Y. It lines up remarkably well.
The benefits, in theory:
- The benefits of high initiative are preserved.
- Rolling initiative and tracking it are combined into one system, streamlining play.
- You can't strategize around who goes when, even within a single round.
- Adds excitement with each flip of a card. Do I get to go next, or does the monster in my face?
- Opens up scope for other improvements. For instance, a limited form of "delay" could be introduced by shuffling your card back into the deck. Legendary monsters could have legendary action cards so the DM doesn't have to remember to inject an LA after each player turn. Etc.
Possible issues I can see:
- In a party with a lot of Dex-based PCs, or encounters with high-Dex monsters, there could end up being an awful lot of cards, resulting in "(flip) Bob's card. He already went. (flip) Alice's card. She already went. (flip) Bob's card. He already went. (flip) Carol! You finally get to go!"
Thoughts? Ideas? Criticisms? I'm probably going to put this to my players tomorrow evening and see if they're willing to give it a try.
