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<blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 7923259" data-attributes="member: 6779196">I’ve used speed factor initiative from the DMG, which Mearls’ “Grayhawk initiative” is essentially a variant of, and in my experience, it doesn’t slow combat down to any meaningful degree. What it does is changes around where and how that time is being spent.At the top of the round, announce what the monsters are doing in batches (e.g. “The goblin pikemen advance to continue their assault, while the archers ready another volley”), then whip around the table and ask each player what they do. Keep it simple, picking one of the actions from the “actions in combat” list from the PHB is sufficient, no need to choose specific attack targets or anything at this stage. Once they’ve declared, they roll the appropriate die or with the appropriate modifier based on their action. It helps if you give the players cheat sheets. Have them hold onto their initiative numbers in their heads or on paper or whatever until you’ve gotten everyone’s action declarations, then start counting - up from 1 with Grayhawk or down from 25 with speed factor. When a player’s initiative number comes up, they take their turn, and can only take the action they declared.The effect this has is that, while there is a brief pause at the top of each round to declare actions, turns go by much faster because the players are spending them executing an action they’ve already decided on, rather than deliberating what they should do. A lot of DMs worry that the deliberation will just shift to the declaration phase, but in my experience it does not. Because the declaration phase is shared time, players are generally more inclined to make their decisions quickly than they are when its their turn.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Charlaquin, post: 7923259, member: 6779196"] I’ve used speed factor initiative from the DMG, which Mearls’ “Grayhawk initiative” is essentially a variant of, and in my experience, it doesn’t slow combat down to any meaningful degree. What it does is changes around where and how that time is being spent. At the top of the round, announce what the monsters are doing in batches (e.g. “The goblin pikemen advance to continue their assault, while the archers ready another volley”), then whip around the table and ask each player what they do. Keep it simple, picking one of the actions from the “actions in combat” list from the PHB is sufficient, no need to choose specific attack targets or anything at this stage. Once they’ve declared, they roll the appropriate die or with the appropriate modifier based on their action. It helps if you give the players cheat sheets. Have them hold onto their initiative numbers in their heads or on paper or whatever until you’ve gotten everyone’s action declarations, then start counting - up from 1 with Grayhawk or down from 25 with speed factor. When a player’s initiative number comes up, they take their turn, and can only take the action they declared. The effect this has is that, while there is a brief pause at the top of each round to declare actions, turns go by much faster because the players are spending them executing an action they’ve already decided on, rather than deliberating what they should do. A lot of DMs worry that the deliberation will just shift to the declaration phase, but in my experience it does not. Because the declaration phase is shared time, players are generally more inclined to make their decisions quickly than they are when its [I]their turn[/I]. [/QUOTE]

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