Deciding What to do Before Initiative is Rolled.

[Lanefan]

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.

That, and the ability for all participants to use the turn order to their advantage, and the knowledge that there's relatively little anyone else can do on your turn thus you're going to be able to move/cast/whatever mostly unimpeded (I suspect the AoO system was an attempt to put interrupts back in, it's a good try but not at all perfect).

I'm a huge fan of re-rolling init. each round, particularly in our game where it's a d6 unmodified in most cases. Re-rolling on a modified d20 like we did in 3e admittedly became cumbersome...too many segments to count through.

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

This is also huge - the newer editions simply do not have any provision for simultaneous actions. How can you ever have the dramatic scene where the hero and villain run each other through at the same time, and die together?

Lanefan

 

[El Mahdi]

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[pukunui]

Thanks, el mahdi. I used to do something similar (except for the Initiative each round) when I was DMing 3.5. Spreadsheets and egg-timers and such can help. These days, I'm running a SWSE game, so combat moves pretty quickly anyway.

I don't actually remember the rule being discussed in this thread (I was only 13 when I started playing AD&D 2e), but I like the idea of having to plan out your actions ahead of time to better represent the idea of everything happening at the same time.

 

[keterys]

Tried it, didn't like it, kicked it to the curb.

Have done a few 'casting a spells takes X time, and you can try to interrupt the spell during that time' variants during older editions, though. Those held more traction.

 

[LostSoul]

I used it (in AD&D and Star Wars d6, my two main games of the 80s and 90s) and liked it.

I am using a similar thing for my 4E hack; it makes combat chaotic and unpredictable, which I like.

 

[Mephistopheles]

We're using it in our 1E game, but only for spell casters declaring if and what they are casting before the rolling of initiative - I don't think the 1E rules call for any other actions to be declared in this way.

 

[Victim]

I already have that game, only done better. It's called Space Alert.

The really weird thing about the old style initiative is that it's usually preferable to go last, then first - to get two back to back actions - then to win every time.

 

[El Mahdi]

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[Man in the Funny Hat]

Always used it through the entire run of 1E and 2E but it always grated. It sucks for all the reasons already mentioned but what I found after NOT using it for a while is that there is one thing it COULD do well - when players weren't trying to "game the system" it did a great job of mimicking the chaos and unpredictability of combat. One could never be sure from round to round if an opponent would be where you expected him to be, do what he was expected to do, etc.

Moving to 3E's smooth cyclic initiative SEEMED for quite a while as if it were the solution but it became dull, TOO predictable, and all-but-irrelevant after the first round. I came to realize that declaring actions prior to rolling initiative would still suck as much as it always had - but rerolling initiative every round was an important missing element that needed to be reintroduced.

 

[Wik]

Yeah, we used it in 2e. It worked rather well, but we allowed minor variations when your turn came up. As in, if you said you were gonna charge an orc that got knocked down by an arrow... you could change mid-charge into a new target.

It did make casting times a bit more scary - though since most spells were faster than weapon speeds, the wizards USUALLY went first...