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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 6541724" data-attributes="member: 6778044">Only one combat, as it turned out, but it went well. There wasn't really any situation where it was important that one opponent got the jump on the other. No issues with spell durations though, which was good.What was quite different is that the story just flowed into the combat. Half the party was working on crossing a small lake, and the ranger had already crossed so was investigating what was left of their horses in the underbrush in the swamp. Unfortunately he failed (both himself and his check) to remember that there wasn't much in the way of large vegetation where they had left the horses. So having not noticed the shambling mound, it got the first attack at him (and missed). He retaliated, and yelled to let the others know. The shambler attacked again and he backed off, and released a weasel from his newly found bag of tricks (he was hoping for something larger...).By this time the others were onshore and running over to help. As I said before, I generally have them rolling their attacks at the same time. In the end, one of the bards was engulfed by the shambler, two rounds before the party killed it.I think that since it was only one creature, there wasn't much need for tracking initiative anyway. As it was, everybody rolling at the same time (including the shambling mound) sped things up even more (5e combat is fast as it is). But I think it really worked well to keep them immersed in the scenario.In the meantime I read The Angry DM's post about speed factor:<a href="http://angrydm.com/2015/02/fine-i-wrote-about-speed-factor-initiative-in-dd-5e/" target="_blank">http://angrydm.com/2015/02/fine-i-wrote-about-speed-factor-initiative-in-dd-5e/</a>I'm not opposed to speed factor, and I think that if we do move to static numbers it's easy enough to implement. What stood out to me though is part two of his example combat. It's not specifically about initiative, but the count to the next turn is the sort of thing that I'm hoping to eliminate to make it feel less 'gamey.'Anyway, so far, so good. I generally have no idea what the PCs are going to do each session, but I suspect that the next one will involve very little, if any, combat since they just got back to Daggerford and will probably spend a good portion of the session looking for information and visiting a few NPCs to try to fit together the many clues they've picked up recently.Ilbranteloth</blockquote>

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