D&D 5E Alternative Initiative: try this
Nebulous
Legend
How do you get the corners so perfectly rounded?
camilaacolide
First Post
davout1805
Explorer
One more idea. Maybe someone already suggested this, if so my apologies.
Each character gets 1 card in the deck. Then based on initiative modifier each character gets a number of interrupt calls/cards (however you want to logistically handle it). I would say characters with negative modifier get 0, characters with a zero modifier would get 1, and above that GM's choice. Anytime during the session a character may play one of the interrupts after an initiative card is revealed. Doing so allows the interrupting character to go before the revealed initiative card. Once an interrupt is used it is gone for that game session.
If 2 people activate an interrupt at the same time, if one is a monster and the other is a player I would allow the player to go first*. If both are players then you could rule either (1) the player with the most remaining interrupts goes first, (2) the player who started the session with most interrupts goes first, (3) the player with the largest sum of starting and current interrupts goes first, or (4) roll die.
* Monsters are likely only to have 1 combat in an entire session anyway.
Each character gets 1 card in the deck. Then based on initiative modifier each character gets a number of interrupt calls/cards (however you want to logistically handle it). I would say characters with negative modifier get 0, characters with a zero modifier would get 1, and above that GM's choice. Anytime during the session a character may play one of the interrupts after an initiative card is revealed. Doing so allows the interrupting character to go before the revealed initiative card. Once an interrupt is used it is gone for that game session.
If 2 people activate an interrupt at the same time, if one is a monster and the other is a player I would allow the player to go first*. If both are players then you could rule either (1) the player with the most remaining interrupts goes first, (2) the player who started the session with most interrupts goes first, (3) the player with the largest sum of starting and current interrupts goes first, or (4) roll die.
* Monsters are likely only to have 1 combat in an entire session anyway.
camilaacolide
First Post
Another followup to this amazing initiative system!
In the game last night I decided to push it to its ultimate limits!
Disclaimer: During Episode 4 of the Hoard of the Dragon Queen, I decided to make some of the Road Events happen during the trip to Baldur's Gate in the River Chionthar, to better distribute some of them and make the river trip a little less "uneventful" as the adventure puts it. As such, you can see the cards for Arietta and Zelina below (Event: Roadside Hospitality)!
As everybody knows, no ship-based adventure is complete without a giant Kraken Fight, so the players faced a combat with a tuned down Giant Octopus. There were 14 cards in total, ALL of them performing interesting actions, with no need to track their order at all, and with this order changing every round:
- One card for each of the 4 PCs.
- One card for each of the 4 tentacles (melee, ranged and grapple attacks).
- One card for the Giant Octopus (it would shake the whole ship, DEX Save required).
- One card for the Ship itself (which meant that a cannon/harpoon was ready to be fired by a PC for major damage).
- One card for each of the 4 PC's sidekicks (which granted the PCs an extra action with some strings attached. For example: Arietta and Zelina were the Thiefling's sidekicks, and they would be grappled by the tentacles when their card showed up, granting an extra attack for the Thiefling in order to save them. Also, the Ship's Captain Kelsia was the Dragonborn sidekick, and when her card showed up she would have done preparing a Pirate's Arquebus with powder, and would throw it to the Dragonborn granting him an extra Ranged Arquebus Attack, etc...)
The Giant Octopus completely lifted the ship from the water using 4 of its tentacles, and was attacking it with the other 4 tentacles, while it remained hidden below the ship, out of the line of fire (which the players quickly found a way around by swinging from ropes outside of the ship's deck)... the idea was to defeat/weaken the 4 attacking tentacles, so that the Giant Octopus would lower the ship back into the water, and then the players would be able to fight the creature itself.
There was so much dynamic back and forth between PCs, NPCs and monsters, that it would be IMPOSSIBLE to be properly done with the normal dice system. The whole combat flowed great, all the massive overhead I would have had in order to track this mess were used instead to give interesting options to the PCs and to do a lot of talking/shouting from the NPCs during the combat...
This combat was insanely crazy, and due to the sheer grandiose of it, it lasted for almost 2 hours with no slow down whatsoever, round after round, and a constant thrill throughout the whole event, alternating between all the participants of the battle. Everybody was literally EXHAUSTED after it from non-stop action, roleplaying and laughter, that we were forced to wrap up the game: The Thiefling was so into his sidekick girls after saving them and being congratulated with kisses during the combat, that he took them directly to the ship's bedrooms, only to discover that their lipstick was infused with a muscle-freezing poison and they were ready to cut him open in bed while he was still conscious. A cliffhanger scene for the next game.
The combat was played without miniatures, and just a hastily-drawn ship's deck sketch.
The session (90% of which was the combat) was really praised by the players after the game!
I say it again: this system is great and changed my game!
Thanks once more Fabio!
Some extra cards made for the last session (some weren't even used):
In the game last night I decided to push it to its ultimate limits!
Disclaimer: During Episode 4 of the Hoard of the Dragon Queen, I decided to make some of the Road Events happen during the trip to Baldur's Gate in the River Chionthar, to better distribute some of them and make the river trip a little less "uneventful" as the adventure puts it. As such, you can see the cards for Arietta and Zelina below (Event: Roadside Hospitality)!
As everybody knows, no ship-based adventure is complete without a giant Kraken Fight, so the players faced a combat with a tuned down Giant Octopus. There were 14 cards in total, ALL of them performing interesting actions, with no need to track their order at all, and with this order changing every round:
- One card for each of the 4 PCs.
- One card for each of the 4 tentacles (melee, ranged and grapple attacks).
- One card for the Giant Octopus (it would shake the whole ship, DEX Save required).
- One card for the Ship itself (which meant that a cannon/harpoon was ready to be fired by a PC for major damage).
- One card for each of the 4 PC's sidekicks (which granted the PCs an extra action with some strings attached. For example: Arietta and Zelina were the Thiefling's sidekicks, and they would be grappled by the tentacles when their card showed up, granting an extra attack for the Thiefling in order to save them. Also, the Ship's Captain Kelsia was the Dragonborn sidekick, and when her card showed up she would have done preparing a Pirate's Arquebus with powder, and would throw it to the Dragonborn granting him an extra Ranged Arquebus Attack, etc...)
The Giant Octopus completely lifted the ship from the water using 4 of its tentacles, and was attacking it with the other 4 tentacles, while it remained hidden below the ship, out of the line of fire (which the players quickly found a way around by swinging from ropes outside of the ship's deck)... the idea was to defeat/weaken the 4 attacking tentacles, so that the Giant Octopus would lower the ship back into the water, and then the players would be able to fight the creature itself.
There was so much dynamic back and forth between PCs, NPCs and monsters, that it would be IMPOSSIBLE to be properly done with the normal dice system. The whole combat flowed great, all the massive overhead I would have had in order to track this mess were used instead to give interesting options to the PCs and to do a lot of talking/shouting from the NPCs during the combat...
This combat was insanely crazy, and due to the sheer grandiose of it, it lasted for almost 2 hours with no slow down whatsoever, round after round, and a constant thrill throughout the whole event, alternating between all the participants of the battle. Everybody was literally EXHAUSTED after it from non-stop action, roleplaying and laughter, that we were forced to wrap up the game: The Thiefling was so into his sidekick girls after saving them and being congratulated with kisses during the combat, that he took them directly to the ship's bedrooms, only to discover that their lipstick was infused with a muscle-freezing poison and they were ready to cut him open in bed while he was still conscious. A cliffhanger scene for the next game.
The combat was played without miniatures, and just a hastily-drawn ship's deck sketch.
The session (90% of which was the combat) was really praised by the players after the game!
I say it again: this system is great and changed my game!
Thanks once more Fabio!
Some extra cards made for the last session (some weren't even used):
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Nebulous
Legend
.
Dude, this is so amazing. Good job. I'm totally stealing your stuff
Ok, my only beef is that I need quick sturdy card stock, print in color, white on one side, pattern on the other and they spray gloss to protect it. I will not spend much time doing this, the preliminary ones i did took WAY WAY too long to make, and i haven't even used them yet.
Nebulous
Legend
Ok, so as far as DM prep time, I KNOW this takes time for you to think about and plan, same as making a battlemap. The template really saves times, and if you have access to a quick color laser printer, it's really a snap. Print and Cut and Gloss and you're done. If the time invested changes the game into something new and fantastic (and honestly I have hated the standard Initiative system for many years now) then it's worth it! And the more cards you queue up into your collection, you can really cover any situation, you don't need each Kraken tentacle per say. Badass as that is.
camilaacolide
First Post
Indeed!
Right now I have 37 cards, 30 printed for the penultimate session and 7 more printed for this last session.
Since RPG and improvisation walk hand in hand, I like to have both generic cards to cover a lot of situations, and also specific cards to add flavor to the adventure and inspire my players. And more, some of the cards (like the informative faction cards) will probably never be part of a battle.
I am planning on printing one card sheet per session (up to 8 cards), and as you said: as you collect them, they can cover a lot of ground, and this work diminishes over time! In this battle, each tentacle was represented by a generic Monster Card (printed in 4 different colors), and the Giant Octopus itself had an specific card (not to scale, but nobody cared!).
Right now, the majority of the time is spent finding and adjusting good images to make a pack of cards. The process of physically creating the cards (printing, glueing, varnishing and cutting) is streamlined and takes less than 1 hour. I add "glueing" because I use two kinds of paper glued together; later I'll try to post a tutorial on how I do it!
Last edited:
Nebulous
Legend
God, I hate sea monsters. Pics of them always always always creep me out. Anyway, I think I want to find some sturdy paper that is like card stock and be able to print straight to that and then spray gloss it. But I agree, finding the right artwork takes the most time. That's true for my story summaries as well, it takes considerable effort to find the right images.
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