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Message: <blockquote data-quote="5ekyu" data-source="post: 7292084" data-attributes="member: 6919838">not a bad approach. Definitely adds a more serious umphh to a loss in init.i went a different route and removed it.Start of a non-surprise encounter where order is needed - 1 - i ask players "first or last" and they give me a quick answer. They mus agree or quickly reach an agreement. if not, they dithered and i choose."first" means on of your side goes first in each round AND one of the other side goes last."last" means one of your side goes last in each round AND one of the other side goes first.During that first round we alternate back and forth each side putting another up to act. Alternate until (if sides are imbalanced) there may be a multiple go in a row for one side with the numbers advantage) but the side with "last" always has one last guy.That sets the init order for the combat.Now, obviously, in many cases, first is going to be the kneejerk answer. Everybody thinks getting our hits in first is better, but in some circumstance and over time, tactics adjust for it, they have seen going last, knowing it AND getting to choose who goes last, can play a significant role in a complex encounter for being able to "survive this round and setup the next." Honestly, in any serious encounter, i think they have fared better whenever they chose "last" and worked it.  My feeling is that "first" tends to promote "quick individual acts" while "last" is usually part of a "planned" thing or a "thinking of coordination" and that is why the difference matters.in a surprise encounter, first goes to the surprise side.Now some might say this is de-powering Dex and to that i say "well, yeah." Then again, i never liked Dex as init anyway and always thought "how fast do i decide what to do" should be a matter of WIS-PER or WIS-INS to reflect getting an assessment of situation or intentions... you know... situational awareness being more tied to awareness and discipline than to agility or your dagger skill.The "Make Dex Great Again" lobby can sue me if they want.But it allows the players and NPCs to choose their order of actions for the combat which makes a lot more sense in a "cannot delay to reset our order" mechanic than a random order does - IMO. We even tried letting that first-last be decided round by round and order to change round by round but that seemed to lessen the importance of the choice as it only applied for a very brief moment and so the "once at start then keep" is now used as a middle road letting the decision have teeth either way it is chosen.So far it is working out great. I wont say it is faster... decision vs roll... not necessarily faster... but they like having the decision over having the dicesion and so do I.</blockquote>

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