“Who started it?” Initiative order

[BookBarbarian]

The biggest advantage would be in the lower levels. Given a standard size party of five or six, acceding one initiative, occasionally, to the one character who
actually starts the attack seems little enough, to keep play moving, and morale up. Given, of course, that it is an unpredicted and unobvious attack, at the time.

Emphasis above added. As time constraints seem to get more numerous I find this to be of more and more importance to me.

 

[Yunru]

Isn't that what surprise is for?
If they're expecting betrayal, they're not surprised.
If they are surprised but win the initiative, they manage to recover from their surprise before the attack connects.
If they are surprised but lose the initiative, they're caught completely off-guard.

Either way the only characters taking actions on the first turn are going to be the players (maybe only the instigator if the rest of the party are caught by surprise).

 

[Xetheral]

I've played with a very similar houserule, and it works great. One small difference: at my table it's not enough for the character's actions to be unexpected... they have to be the only PC or NPC who wants to take a hostile action at that time. In other words, when only one character wants to act first, I let them go first in the initiative order. If multiple characters want to go first, the question is resolved via an initiative roll.

The houserule does require the players to be honest about their character's intentions, without relying on their OOC knowledge that their fellow player just declared an attack.

Overall, the houserule had two effects. First, it slightly increased the number of encounters that resulted in combat, which was a positive change, because some of the players were getting dissatisfied with how infrequent combat had become. Second, it avoided the occasional problem of characters winning initiative but having to skip their first turn because the action that triggered initiative wouldn't be officially declared until a later initiative count.

There are many other ways to get both of those effects, but I find this initiative houserule to be the most elegant option at my table.

 

[dco]

If the player gets the enemy unaware I give him a surprise round.
On those situations where he breaks the hostility in front of enemies I give him advantage, and some enemies could have disadvantage depending on what were they doing.
Works both ways.

 

[AmerginLiath]

Isn't that what surprise is for?
If they're expecting betrayal, they're not surprised.
If they are surprised but win the initiative, they manage to recover from their surprise before the attack connects.
If they are surprised but lose the initiative, they're caught completely off-guard.

Either way the only characters taking actions on the first turn are going to be the players (maybe only the instigator if the rest of the party are caught by surprise).

Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal?

 

[FieserMoep]

We handled it this way:
Suprise rounds are only for actual surprises. They take effort, intention and skill to pull of. They grant a strong reward for that.

If someone attacks or does something aggressive and thus escalates a situation like striking with a sword we roll for initiative after they resolved their attempt.
On the first round of Combat they don't act again.

To me its important to resolve the initial trigger to have a clear stage that allows the PCs and Players a concious mind about what happened. For some people it may be important to only act in self defense when needed etc. Ofc. someone may announce that they are looking for physical giveaways like tensing muscles, changes of stance but these at best would be guesses unless you started to actually read someones mind. If they get clues and think someone is going to attack, they may initiate combat themselves but then it would just go the same. To me its important to not award the aggressor with two rounds for the price of one or to diminish the strict rules of surprise. It may diminish the value of high initiative scores and/or boosts for at best you can act second after the trigger but that is the price if you wait to see if someone actually goes through with his threat. Ofc. I still allow reactions etc. to be taken against that initial attack.

Another system I tried was announcing the offensive move and then resolving it by proper initiative but you have to be very vague about the nature of that action for a low Ini Score may result in that action not being viable or even possible at all.

Bad example: You see the Thug lunging forward to hit X with his fist after you insulted his mom. He rolls poorly and at that point his actual narrative-target ran out of range and he goes for someone completely else.
Good example: You notice that time for talk is over, muscles tense and expressions change, they mean business.

While Vague the second example require one thing to work. And that is accepting that your PCs might have some default abilities of reading body language etc.
Thus I reserve this for the other system where I allow Insight Checks so people may try to get ahead of another aggressor and thus receive the default first turn.