D&D 5E Alternate Initiative Rules

[DND_Reborn]

that means rolling initiative EVERY.SINGLE.ROUND. That is a huge time sink and too much micromanagement.

Which a lot of groups are willing to do because they feel it adds to their games and so I suggested a variant for the OP. Regardless of which method you use, if you want to roll every round and are happy with the results, what does it matter? This is why rolling each round, and speed factors, were offered as variants in the DMG for initiative.

Now, we abandoned rolling each round a long time ago and I agree with you that it does take time away from the game. But in prior years, we rolled every round and it worked fine because the table was experienced and we could handle it quickly. With my current group, most of the players are relatively new, and so it was too slow to roll every round.

 

[Nebulous]

anything +1/2 level reminds too much of 4E and its unified treadmill so that is a big no-no

haha, didn't think of that.

 

[Nebulous]

I think my ultimate goal is to turn Initiative into a fun little dice pool game, not hard to learn and has some built in tension. Having a tough monster rolling 4d10 at the start of combat will scare some players!

 

[tetrasodium]

With the use hit die size to roll initiative, rolling the largest unspent hit die+stat would be good too. It could go further & drop the size to a d4 or something if there are no more unspent hit dice to put some teeth into 5e's sometimes overly generous recovery without actually forcing death spirals

 

[Ruin Explorer]

So you would say "Fast is up!" then all the Fighters, Barbarians, Paladins, etc would simultaneously resolve their turns. "Medium is up!" which was mostly NPCs and monsters the DM didn't think counted as Fast or Slow. "Slow is up!" Which is the Bards, Clerics, Wizards, etc resolving their turns last.

How did this work out with subclasses which antithetical to the typical way the class is played, like Blade/Valour Bards? Seems like they should be Fast or Medium given their deal is melee combat and so on. Multiclasses go with the highest level or best or?

Also "simultaneously resolve"? Presumably there was still some kind of order, because if a Fast monster is killed by an attack it wouldn't normally, in D&D, still get to attack and so on? Or if the Paladin killed an Orc with his attack, presumably the Barbarian would be able to decide to attack a different Orc.

 

[Iry]

How did this work out with subclasses which antithetical to the typical way the class is played, like Blade/Valour Bards? Seems like they should be Fast or Medium given their deal is melee combat and so on. Multiclasses go with the highest level or best or?

Subclasses didn't matter since even a Blade/Valour bard or Bladesinger wizard are still full casters. Multiclasses go with the highest level, or the faster class in the case of a tie.

Also "simultaneously resolve"? Presumably there was still some kind of order, because if a Fast monster is killed by an attack it wouldn't normally, in D&D, still get to attack and so on? Or if the Paladin killed an Orc with his attack, presumably the Barbarian would be able to decide to attack a different Orc.

The order was "Players go first, unless you get surprised." So all the Fast players would do their thing in whatever order they felt like, then any Fast monsters would go. Followed by Medium players > Medium monsters. Finally Slow players > Slow monsters.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

My house rule is longest weapons can attack first, because it happens in the real life. Try to fight with toy weapons to test, but the other can block with a shield.

 

[Blue]

While I don't have a particular problem with the default initiative system, I think yours (the OP's) can work fine. I've also seen replacing DEX with INT, as a "quick to plan and react", plus DEX was the most overloaded ability and INT the least.

My only sacred cow in terms of D&D 5e Initiative is that a lot of durations of spells/features are things like "until the start/end of your next turn" and expect that that means it will affect everyone, but only once. So systems that change the initiative order every turn I think hit into that streamlining shortcut of 5e's and have some unintended conseqeunces. (That work fine in other systems, it's just the interaction with that duration streamlining that causes oddities.)

 

[Nebulous]

While I don't have a particular problem with the default initiative system, I think yours (the OP's) can work fine. I've also seen replacing DEX with INT, as a "quick to plan and react", plus DEX was the most overloaded ability and INT the least.

My only sacred cow in terms of D&D 5e Initiative is that a lot of durations of spells/features are things like "until the start/end of your next turn" and expect that that means it will affect everyone, but only once. So systems that change the initiative order every turn I think hit into that streamlining shortcut of 5e's and have some unintended conseqeunces. (That work fine in other systems, it's just the interaction with that duration streamlining that causes oddities.)

Yes, that caused problems occasionally with our initiative card system, although overall I greatly preferred that to the default Dex roll. I wouldn't mind leaving Dex out completely and doing Int and Perception or some combination.

 

[Nebulous]

I recently learned of initiative system used in Shadow of the Demon Lord (I think mentioned above as well). I hate rolling initiative, so it's an interesting take for me. It would probably need some work to adapt to 5E, though, as that system gives the option for using two actions (I haven't actually read the system as a whole, so not sure what all is considered an action in that system). Probably easiest thing to do would be to say that characters taking fast turns can either just move or just take an action, and slow turns can do all the things. I'd consider adding a few action options like charging or maybe being scary to frighten people for some extra flexibility in those fast turns.

Demon Lord: Who Goes When? - Schwalb Entertainment

For many players, combat is the best part of the game. It is a chance to test his or her character’s capabilities against worthy foes, to take risks and, hopefully, gain great rewards. The tension combat creates—the risk of injury, unconsciousness, or even death—builds excitement at the table...

schwalbentertainment.com

I didn't see this earlier. That is REALLY cool. I always wanted to play Shadow of the Demon Lord, it was an appealing system that was gritty and capped at 10th and looked really fun. It looks like you would have your Attack or Move action as a Fast Action, and if you wanted to do both it would be a Slow action. I'm not sure how Bonus actions would fit in.