Deciding What to do Before Initiative is Rolled.

[kaomera]

Used it for sure. Admittedly we got most of the rest of the combat sequence wrong, but it worked. In fact I'd say that the way we ran things it it actually sped up play quite a lot - the DM only had to describe the scene / situation once, and then the players' intentions just got adjudicated from there.

we did play with probably looser / broader declarations than was official (I honestly couldn't say for sure: how kosher would "I move to keep the Orcs at bay and take a chance to engage the Ogre if I get one." have been?) It definitely required more input from the DM, but if I ran a pre-4e nowadays, that would be a bonus for me.

I brought up the idea in my 3e games, but generally the players felt that houserules amounted to cheating.

 

[Jasperak]

On a tangent, Final Fantasy 1 has to be one of my more favorite RPGs for consoles/handhelds. I still play all of the versions I have except one--NES. Losing an attack because someone else killed the monster resulted in the game becoming more about mathematical calculations to determine the optimal number of attacks per monster. Boo.

In a similar vein, I thought in one of the older versions of D&D there was a combat order chart that listed in which order actions occur. I remember us using something similar in my game anyway, where each player would state, "I am using my bow, sword, moving, or casting a spell" but not requiring to choose a target until their turn came up. I think you could change your mind but you acted in the next phase as a penalty. I don't recall having any problems with that. But my memory is fuzzy.

 

[Stormonu]

I'd pretty much forgotten about this rule, along with morale rules. We used it all the time in 1E and 2E. There was often competition between the fighters in the group of who could drop whose target before they could act. I think at one point we instituted a rule that allowed you to change targets if your foe got dropped, but I can't be sure about it.

 

[Lanefan]

Two words: spell disruption. This was a combination of two factors.

First, the previously mentioned system of declaring actions before rolling initiative. This meant that a spellcaster usually will not be able to ensure that he will cast his spell before any of his opponents can act.

Second, the rule that an opponent who attacks and damages a spellcaster before he casts his spell disrupts the spell, causing the spellcaster to lose it without effect.

Before he casts, or while he casts?

Realism would indicate disruption can only happen while casting, as allowing damage taken before casting to disrupt opens up a nasty can of worms that's ugly to even try to explain but it involves damage near the end of the previous round potentially being closer in time to your early-in-round start-to-cast time than damage taken early in a round vs. your late-in-round start.

One thing I did ages ago was to line up the segments. Originally, spells worked on a ten-segment round and melee worked on a 6-segment round. This is seventeen kinds of messy, so I put everything to a 6-segment round (and adjusted most of the spell casting times accordingly). Now it's easy - if you start a 3-segment spell on init. 5 you're interruptable until you resolve on a 2...but I've never had it that you're interruptable when you're not actually casting.

These two factors made spellcasting in combat a riskier and more uncertain proposition than it was in later editions, since there was always the chance that due to a bad initiative roll on your part, or good initiative rolls on the part of your enemies, your opponents will attack and damage you before you could act, causing you to waste both your action for the round and one of your spells for the day.

I'll have to take a closer look, but I don't remember anything saying you lose a spell you have not yet begun to cast. Interesting.

I fully agree about the risky part, though. Doing away with casting times was IMO a big mistake at the design level.

Lanefan

 

[FireLance]

Before he casts, or while he casts?

Disclaimer: working off hazy 20+ year-old memories, here.

I think the way we played it was: spellcasters start casting their spells at the start of the round, but the spell only goes off on their initiative count. Thus, hitting them at any point between the start of the round and their initiative count would disrupt the spell.

Realism would indicate disruption can only happen while casting, as allowing damage taken before casting to disrupt opens up a nasty can of worms that's ugly to even try to explain but it involves damage near the end of the previous round potentially being closer in time to your early-in-round start-to-cast time than damage taken early in a round vs. your late-in-round start.

That's just one of the potential oddities of determining initiative on a round-by-round basis which we just didn't think about too much. As for realism, I was in high school at the time and I was playing a game. I was too busy having fun to worry about real world implications (that phase came later).

 

[Badapple]

We used all kinds of systems. Mostly we rolled a die and highest roll went first but sometimes we got more in depth. The closest we got to pre declared actions was as follows:

What we would do is everyone rolled a d20 for initiative and then added their spell casting time (usually it was +1 per level of the spell, but some spells like power word kill had a casting time of 1) or the weapon speed. Then they subtracted their dex modifier.

The lowest rolls went first. If a wizard cast fireball (speed 3) and had a dex of 15 (-1 bonus to initiative I think) and rolled a 14 then his spell would complete on segment 16.

If I recall correctly, for multiple attacks we added 5 to each swing. So if a fighter was due two swings this round and he rolled a 9 with a longsword (speed 5) and no dex mod he would take his first swing on segment 14 and his next swing on segment 19.

We didn't do 10 segment rounds. We just went segment by segment until everyone finished their actions then we all rolled initiative anew.

So yeah, spellcasters had to announce what spell they were casting BEFORE initiative was rolled, but on their turn they could change targets or decide to abort the spell (and not have it used up). Fighters could chose any target they wanted or even to use a different weapon (as long as the weapon was equal or less than the weapon speed they added at the time they rolled), so it wasn't totally rigid.

Despite seeming complex it really wasn't that bad. It was kind of a cool system in that lower level spells tended to go off rapidly, but higher level spells took longer to cast, and thus were more prone to interruption. Also made certain spells that had a low cast time more valuable. I think I had a character with a polearm and it had a weapon speed in the double digits and that poor sucker never got to go first.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Despite seeming complex it really wasn't that bad. It was kind of a cool system in that lower level spells tended to go off rapidly, but higher level spells took longer to cast, and thus were more prone to interruption. Also made certain spells that had a low cast time more valuable. I think I had a character with a polearm and it had a weapon speed in the double digits and that poor sucker never got to go first.

I rember the running joke in BD&D about initiative. A polearm or two handed sword always went last in the round. A zombie always struck last in the round.

An encounter between a two handed sword wielding fighter and a zombie would result in a staring contest as neither of them could strike the first blow!

 

[Raven Crowking]

They both strike at the same time, at the end of the round.

(That's what I ruled, anyway.)


RC

 

[billd91]

Before he casts, or while he casts?

Realism would indicate disruption can only happen while casting, as allowing damage taken before casting to disrupt opens up a nasty can of worms that's ugly to even try to explain but it involves damage near the end of the previous round potentially being closer in time to your early-in-round start-to-cast time than damage taken early in a round vs. your late-in-round start.

In 2e, which I remember a little better in this case, the game's reality assumed that the wizard was casting from the beginning of the round until the spell went off at his initiative, which was d10+casting time. We did modify this a bit. If the caster was injured before the value he rolled on the d10, his ability to cast was disrupted without actually losing the planned spell. But if he was hit between his roll and the modified role due to the casting time, the actual spell would be lost. It was a slightly less harsh version of the official rule.

And, because it was a fresh roll every round, the caster had no way to predict with any certainty who would be going before him and whether they had a chance to disrupt or not. There was a real trade off between picking a quickly cast low level spell or a slower and more powerful higher level spell (a LOT of spells took 1 segment to cast per spell level).

Contrast this with the cyclical initiative of 3e and most spells being 1 standard action casting times. It's hard to disrupt a spellcaster in 3e without holding an action that may never be triggered and which may not do enough damage to make the caster blow the concentration check.

As convenient, from a gamist perspective, as the cyclical initiative is, it was a big game-changer in the balance between spellcasters and non-spellcasters.

 

[The Shaman]

Did you?

Yes.