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D&D 5E Alternative Initiative: try this


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davout1805

Explorer
But i don't have illustrator so i can't use the template.

QopWEWu.jpg

Yours look pretty good to me. Anyway, I'm no export but I think you can use Inkscape (free) to use ai.files.
 




Nebulous

Legend
Our game might get pushed to Thursday, but i told the players i was going to introduce this new system. One guy just told me, well I have a +3 Dex, but in this system i don't think it's going to be that granular unless you burn a feat or take some other extraordinary measure to be faster.
 



Inconnunom

Explorer
The way I think I will be handling initiative cards is like this. For starters all of my players pick a color. Their dice are that color; their bases are that color; I even have little binder clips of different colors. All the enemies are black. Visually this simplifies things because we use the Pathfinder Pawns for minis right now and they are all two-dimensional.

How does this play into the initiative cards you ask? First, get a pack of colored paper. Using spray adhesive, spray the paper and stick on playing cards or ultra cheap magic cards face down. Then trim all the excess. Now instead of having an ornate picture that doesn't particularly matter, I hold up the card. My job as the DM would be to remember the name of the player, while the players pay attention to the color of the card I'm holding.

So for example, (Reaches in pulls out a blue card). All players looking at the color. Blue player instantly gets ready to roll. I say, "Cornelius you are up." about the time he is already going.

As far as how many cards each player gets, I think 2 cards for everyone and an extra card for each "+2" initiative. If you have 7 dex or less then you only get one card. Alert works out well in this situation, if you have a Rogue with 20 dex (+5 initiative) picking up alert puts him at +10 initiative. That would give him 5 cards plus his initial 2 for a total of 7.

Comments and critiques are welcome.
 

I am always baffled by the new ideas I still get from other people games after years of gaming...the "one color dice" per character is brilliant!

Even if I must say that we usually roll once at a time, so it's not so needed to distinguish results, but surely is useful for the "where's my lucky 20?" things!

One question: how did you get your players to manage their preferences? As far as dice are concerned, I have all kinds of players, the one using the metal ones, the one liking pink-and-purple and so on...you get what I mean, I'm sure.

As per the initiative cards, apart from the bloat of cards reducing tension, which I already said a lot about so not repeating, I fear that colors are worse than images for inspiration sake.

Once again...it will work for sure, only a little bit less intriguing, I think.
 

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