D&D 5E Tried Speed Factor Initiative for the first time last night. Your thoughts?

I always ignored speed factor in AD&D. Mostly because I was like 13. But I've been wanting to try it in 5e for a while, and finally got my group to try it out yesterday.

My main interest in the variant has been creating more chaotic combats. I hate the chess-like approach to combat where each player surveys the battle field, considers all her options, polls the other players on what they will do on their moves, and then finally declares an action. I've tried putting people "on the clock," or asking them to turn down the meta-game, but it ends up feeling like a never-ending battle. I loved the idea of asking players to declare their actions at the start of the round, without knowing when those actions would actually occur. This cuts down some of the meta-gaming on their part, and hopefully provides an organic way of getting them to make their decisions quickly.

The whole "speed factor" part was actually fairly unappealing to me, and I toyed with getting rid of it altogether. I could care less about the increased simulationist modeling, and we're not a very crunchy table. On the other hand, I like the idea of the different stages of combat from B/X D&D (though we never played that way when I was 9), and I could see how the speed factors created some of that, while allowing a lucky initiative roll to mix things up a bit. So I went with it.

I printed up an index card for each of us, with the various speed factors typed out. It took a little explaining, and, initially, players had a hard time remembering to add their initiative bonus to the speed factor, and the fact that some obvious actions were left out (being +0) was also initially confusing. ("Wait, I'm attacking with a short bow. Is that ranged, loading?")

We declared actions at the beginning of each round by going around the table. I tried to alternate clock-wise and counter-clockwise each round. It was hard for players to just declare their general action, without planning out their entire turn. (I wanted, "I'm gonna attack with my short sword and then follow up with my off-hand dagger!" but instead got, "I'm gonna go to here, attack this goblin with my short sword, hopefully kill him, and then get this one with my dagger.")

Players were frustrated when they charged into a room melee heavy, only to find that the goblins were all out of reach. "But can I cast sacred flame instead?" On the other hand, it was satisfying when they saw the same thing happen to a group of goblins, effectively burning 4 attacks in a round because only one goblin could get to a target.

The main frustrating thing was that it seemed to discourage improvisational actions. Without knowing what the scene would look like, players were hesitant to do "fun" things, and instead fell back on declaring their standard attack each round.

A few changes I'm considering next week.

1. If you decide not to take your declared action, you can choose to dash, dodge or disengage. Those actions are +2 if declared in advance.
2. If you see the opportunity to do something creative, you can take it. I might stipulate that you need to take the difference in speed factor as a penalty to your ability check. (Hopefully encouraging players to declare the fun actions at the start of the round.)

Anyway, what have all y'all's experiences been with this variant? How many people use declared actions but just ignore the speed factor? Do you feel like you lose anything by doing that? How do you encourage your groups to be creative in combat, but not contemplative?

It seems speed factor has very little to do with your points above, it is more about how you are having players declare their actions. IIRC, all speed factor does is modify an initiative score so slower weapons go later (in general, the last time I played with speed factor was around 1980).

Personally, I don't mind the back and forth among players during combat, so long as it doesn't get out of hand. D&D is a social game and that is part of the socialization. If I think a player is taking too long to take an action, I just prompt them with a "What are you doing? I need an answer right now."

Having players pre-declare actions seems to overly complicate things to me.

If you want something more frenetic and unstructured, take a page from Dungeon World style "initiative." In Dungeon World, there is no initiative, the DM just focuses on individual PCs as it makes sense. (Google "dungeon world initiative" if that doesn't make sense.)

In D&D, you could adapt that system something like this:

DM: The five orcs charge the party. Two charge Ardwell the Fighter in the middle, one each charges Clewell the cleric and Rasimar the Rogue on the flanks and the fifth tries to sneak around the edge to attack Melesial in the rear.

DM: Melesial, you have some time before the orc reaches you. What do you do?

[Resolve Melesial's action]

DM: Does everyone else brace for melee? [Players nod] Ok, the orcs engage! Ardwall, the two orcs charge you in the middle. One tries to skewer you on a spear while the other slashes at your with a rusty axe. What do you do?

[Resolve Ardwall's action and the actions of the two orcs. If it's really important to figure out who goes first, you could let Ardwall make an initiative check modified however you see appropriate based on the speed of the action. Otherwise, I would let the spear strike first, followed by Ardwall, then the axe. But mostly simultaneous is ok.]

Resolve Clewall and Rasimar in the same way, then:

DM: Ok, Melesial, the orc has worked its way around the edge of the room. Now it raises its axe above its head, howls in fury and charges. What do you do?

...from here, you can continue in the same cycle or - if something exciting happens - feel free to focus on that for a while. If one PC is dueling with a monster by himself, run a couple rounds of that combat before you go back to the main action. If a PC gets into a pickle, then turn to the nearest PC and tell them that their friend is in danger, but so are they. They can try to save their friend and risk their own danger or focus on their own plight and leave their friend to the monsters bearing down. What do they do?


In this system, you divide up the monsters among the PCs and each monster effectively goes at the same time as the PC they are fighting. Because you are moving around based on narrative logic (bearing in mind that you need to make sure that you're giving each player a fair amount of time in the spotlight), the whole encounter moves less predictably and players spend more time on the edge of their seat, waiting to for the action to move to them.

-KS

Initiative is plenty metagamy enough for me. It tends to disallow obvious reactions to what's going on around the character as is. Declaring actions just makes it worse, IMO. (Joe Fighter declares that he's going to attack the Orc over there, but before his turn comes up that other Orc charges the squishy wizard. Now he can't go help the wiz, which is the smart thing to do. Usually.)

Ed_Laprade said:

Initiative is plenty metagamy enough for me. It tends to disallow obvious reactions to what's going on around the character as is. Declaring actions just makes it worse, IMO. (Joe Fighter declares that he's going to attack the Orc over there, but before his turn comes up that other Orc charges the squishy wizard. Now he can't go help the wiz, which is the smart thing to do. Usually.)

Click to expand...

The idea is that you wouldn't necessarily react to something that's happening simultaneously with what it is your doing. The actions are occurring more or less simultaneously, with the initiative order handling the order in which actions are resolved. It's gamey and imperfect, but it's an approach that I'm going to try.

Honestly, while I respect that all y'all aren't interested in the particular system proposed by the DMG, that is the system I am attempting to use. I will jettison it if it ultimately doesn't work, but I'm not really interested in advice that runs along the lines of, "don't try it."

(The DungeonWorld initiative does sound interesting, though it's also a much greater departure from what we're doing already. I might try it, but I still want to do more trial with the DMG variant. The declared action -> initiative -> resolution mechanic has its roots in most early editions of D&D. From the best I know, it's only the later WoTC editions that got rid of it entirely and formalized the roll-once cyclical initiative system.)

I have used this variant the last two weeks at my Game, and I love it! It adds an element of chaos to a battle (i.e. every round is not resolved in the same order, things change). This has the dual benefits of being a little more realistic (ahhh! realism in D&D, the horror!), and keeping the players a little more involved since they don't know when they'll be going next. Makes weapon choices a little more interesting too. I have a longbow fighter that pretty much rules the dps race. He is feeling the price of that awesome piece of death dealing gear with a -4 modifier causing him to go towards the end of each round...

My only fear was that it might slow things down with a roll every round, but it has not done so to any appreciable degree. I go around the table and ask each player (by character name): "Ulfbehrt, what are you planning to do?" I give them about 5-6 seconds to look at the table, they declare their intention, and roll initiative. Quick and simple.

I posted a chart on the outside of my DM Screen that I made with all the different speed factors on it so each player knows the modifier before hand. Also, until we get a good handle on things, I have told my players up front that the monsters will be using a static initiative for now. I just give them a roll of '10' each round with their modifiers adjusting. As it becomes more and more second nature I will start actually rolling for them.

redrick said:

The declared action -> initiative -> resolution mechanic has its roots in most early editions of D&D. From the best I know, it's only the later WoTC editions that got rid of it entirely and formalized the roll-once cyclical initiative system.)

Click to expand...

This is not my recollection. I started playing in the late 70s. In AD&D, IIRC, you rolled party initiative against the monsters and then acted accordingly. Winning initiative let you act first, as a group. We never played that you had to declare specific actions other than "We are attacking" or "We are running away". Speed factor was used to determine who acted first when a weapon was being used against an opponent doing an action other than attacking with a weapon. It was usually used to figure out whether you hit a caster before he got a spell off. In essence, speed factor=round segments. It was also used to determine multiple attacks when using a faster weapon against a slower weapon.

Rounds would then repeat, with a new initiative roll each round, until the combat was completed.

So...to my recollection, 1st edition has some wacky initiative rules but pre-declaring actions was not one of them.

Also, there is a reason they got rid of those rules. They weren't very good. They were overly cumbersome and forced the party to act as a group rather than as individual characters.

My problem with changing initiative each round is there are some effects that end at the end of the enemy's next turn. That sort of ability is wasted it initiative goes against you next round. But maybe I should see that as a boon?

I wouldn't bother with declaring actions beforehand I don't think, I'm not sure that really adds anything? The dungeon world approach is interesting.

AriochQ said:

This is not my recollection. I started playing in the late 70s. In AD&D, IIRC, you rolled party initiative against the monsters and then acted accordingly. Winning initiative let you act first, as a group. We never played that you had to declare specific actions other than "We are attacking" or "We are running away". Speed factor was used to determine who acted first when a weapon was being used against an opponent doing an action other than attacking with a weapon. It was usually used to figure out whether you hit a caster before he got a spell off. In essence, speed factor=round segments. It was also used to determine multiple attacks when using a faster weapon against a slower weapon.

Click to expand...

As with most things in early D&D, what was in the rulebooks wasn't always what people used. It didn't help that Gary Gygax was absolutely dreadful at writing a coherent initiative system. There have been many attempts to work out how initiative worked in AD&D. There are some really good attempts! However, they all require assumptions that aren't actually in the rules.

D&D (1974) initially didn't have an initiative system of its own, instead deriving it from Chainmail. The version presented in Eldritch Wizardry is actually missing a table, so requires a lot of interpolation. And then there is the glorious incoherence of AD&D's initiative system. Meanwhile, Holmes gave his house rule for initiative in the first version of Basic D&D, then Moldvay gave a different version in the 1981 set, which was copied for the Red Box in 1983. Moldvay's has the advantage of actually being clear - as was the AD&D 2E version of 1989, all three of them!

I've written about the original initiative systems here: http://merricb.com/2014/06/18/the-development-of-add-initiative/ (and then more articles on Basic, AD&D and AD&D 2E initiative)

In any case, AD&D 1E initiative as written definitely requires spell-casters declare their spells before initiative is rolled. "1. Spell casters must note what spell they intend to cast at the beginning of each round prior to any knowledge of which side has initiative." - DMG page 65. The timing when non-spellcasters choose actions is a little less clear, and varied from table to table...

Cheers!

Psikerlord# said:

My problem with changing initiative each round is there are some effects that end at the end of the enemy's next turn. That sort of ability is wasted it initiative goes against you next round. But maybe I should see that as a boon?

I wouldn't bother with declaring actions beforehand I don't think, I'm not sure that really adds anything? The dungeon world approach is interesting.

Click to expand...

I feel like there are less of these in 5e than 4e. I would probably deal with these on a case by case basis, and probably in the players' benefit. I think I'll probably just rule that characters doing things like death saves come last in the initiative (meaning that you have an opportunity to attempt to heal a character back up before they waste their turn on a death save.)

For me, the whole point is declaring actions before-hand. The speed factor is just part of the package as presented by the DMG, and I'm giving it a shot for now. The goal is to introduce a little more uncertainty into combat, where character actions are taken without exact knowledge of what is happening at the same time during the round. My hope (and what I've read elsewhere with people who've tried it) is that it also tends to make player decision-making a little faster in combat, because there is less possibility to construct "the perfect move."