Alternate Initiative System

[Horatio]

I use cards for initiative since the beginning of the 4.0 (and I'm quite sure I already posted my method somewhere around here alredy).

Thing is, I made my own cards. Each player has a card with his character portrait (so it's easily recognisable), name, class and some basic stats that helps me, as a DM, to, well, be DM (defenses, passives...). I made a card for each enemy type as well (soldier, lurker, boss...) with different colors for easy manipulation.

I have a special card called "End of turn" too, for apparent reasons.

We roll initiative as usual and pile the cards accordingly. The one on top acts. He's done - he goes bottom of the "deck" (end of turn goes bottom automaticly to remind us that another turn have passed). Delay = goes down 1 position. Multiple delays = all goes down under the 1st who isn't delaying.

Result: no delay because of initiative, lastin effect tracking (spells, etc.), no number erasing due to delaying / readying. No number tracking at all. As all that matters is only the order in which combatants act and not the exact initiative count.

As for special effects that "acts" in special initiative count (or will end in, etc.), those have cards too and again, it only matters who goes before them and after them, not in which initiative count exactly.

 

[Camelot]

The problem with a deck is that player's can't automatically see when they are coming up; they have to remember. I tried a deck behind the screen, and that didn't work very well for my group. For yours, I'm sure it's different. Personally, I'm going to see how the cards work spread out.

 

[Horatio]

It's "face up" deck. Each card is with the picture up. Otherwise, no point doing it

 

[Camelot]

Yes, but can they see which card is under the current card? And then what comes after that?

With everybody having a face-up card, including monsters after their first turn, the players can see when they come up and plan accordingly. "I have the 9, so I come right after the 10...that's Leah, the cleric. And right after me is 8...oh jeez, it's the vampire lord. But Billy the barbarian is right after that...Hey, Leah, why don't you use a radiant power on the vampire, then I can sneak in an attack, distracting him, so Billy can come up from behind to gain flanking?" That's how I picture it.

The way it is now, my players start doodling on their character sheets, texting, or talking while it's not their turn. Combat doesn't seem to flow, and I think the problem is they are just waiting for me to say, "Okay, your turn."

 

[Acid_crash]

I can see having them roll it, then hand out the cards in order from highest to lowest and have the cards face up would help a lot so they can plan around what they see.

 

[Starfox]

I used to use a deck like this, but because only the deck-holder could see the order, we switched. Now we have little folded paper icons with portraits on them that I hang over my DMs screen.

 

[Rothe_]

We use cards with character portraits and names plust typical monster role names on the different cards.

Instead of stacking them, we just spread them so that the fastest character is the leftmost card and so on. Then we just have a "cursor" token to indicate who is acting. Delaying is handled by removing the card from the pile and inserting it later on. End of round card sometimes has a counter dice on it to track how long the whole fight is taking (perhaps something happens on round x).